570 



INDUSTRIAL USES OF WOOD. 



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5. Railway-Sleepers. 



Up to the present time rail- 

 ways have made great demands 

 on forests, chiefly for railway- 

 sleepers, or ties, as they are 

 termed in America. 



[The dimensions of railway- 

 sleepers vary in different coun- 

 tries, in England being 9 feet 

 by 10 inches by 5 inches, or 

 3 J cubic feet ; eleven of these 

 sleepers are used for 30 feet of 

 line, being about 2J feet apart, 

 but are further apart towards 

 the centre of the rails and closer 

 near the joints. Each red-pine 

 sleeper is saturated with 2J gal- 

 lons of creosote, which is forced 

 into the sleepers under pressure. . 

 The breadth of gauge between 

 the rails is 4 feet 8^ inches, 

 which with the width of the 

 rails, 3J inches, makes up 5 feet, 

 the ordinary width apart of the 

 wheels of a cart. In France 

 great latitude is allowed in speci- 

 fications of sleepers, as shown in 

 Fig. 329. 



In India, the ordinary gauge, 

 termed the broad-gauge, is 5J 

 feet ; and the meter-gauge, 3 feet 

 3f inches, corresponding to 

 sleepers 10 feet by 12 inches 

 by 6 inches or 9J feet by 10 

 inches by 5 inches, and 8 feet 

 by 8 inches by 4J inches respec- 

 tively. 



The rails are placed on steel chairs fastened to the sleepers 

 by iron spikes, oak trenails, or both, and it is essential that 



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a, c>,3o ------ > 



(Dimensions in meters.) 



Fig. 329. Different sections of rail- 

 way-sleepers used in 

 (After Boppe.) 



