Sleepers (railway)

“ Iron “pot” sleepers have therefore been generally adopted, and they have been found very serviceable, especially on lines where the speed is not high. Some of the engineers are in their favour, even where trains are run at high velocities. Thus the District Engineer and the Locomotive Superintendent of the Punjaub Railway report strongly in recommendation of them. “I have never,” says the latter, “travelled over a finer piece of road, than the seventy to eighty miles of pot sleepers road laid between Montgomery and Mooltan. ”

“ From the fact that wrought-iron and steel sleepers have been laid down in so many places where cast-iron sleepers were discarded or refused a trial, it is evident that the former are considered to have qualities which the latter did not possess. Rolled iron or steel sleepers are coming more and more into use, especially on foreign or colonial railways. So long, however, as good, well-creosoted timber sleepers can be obtained for our home railways at prices from 3s. ”

“ As the sleepers under the chair road suffer less from the crushing of the timber, they have a much longer life in the line, and remain serviceable until they are incapacitated from decay. This is a very important item in places where timber sleepers are expensive. The steadiness of the chair prolongs the efficiency of the spikes.
As the actual wearing portion of the rail is the head, or wheel contact surface, a liberal area—consistent with the expected traffic—must be given to that part, whether for a bull-head rail or a flange rail. ”

“ Excellent running roads have been made with longitudinal sleepers, notwithstanding the difficulty of making a good bridge-rail joint; but it is well to bear in mind that almost all the lines which originally adopted this form of permanent way have since reverted to the ordinary cross-sleeper road. The longitudinal sleeper road is an expensive road to lay down and maintain. The main pieces are of large scantling, must be of good quality of timber, and are consequently costly. The cross-pieces, or transomes, must be carefully fitted and secured with heavy ironwork. ”

“ In a similar manner the timber sleepers for the [Pg 228] chair road frequently have the spike-holes bored to template by machinery, as indicated on Fig. 341. Steel or iron sleepers are delivered with the recesses for rails, and holes for bolts or fastenings formed complete by machinery.
The distances apart of the sleepers will be regulated in a great measure by the weight of the rails and the description of the traffic. Where light rails are intended to carry heavy engines the sleepers must be laid closer together than would be necessary for heavy rails. ”

“ Timber sleepers intended for the flange railroad should have the rail-seats grooved by machinery to ensure perfect accuracy in the position of the grooves, and in the angle or inclination of the rail-seats. Fig. 340 is a side view of part of a sleeper grooved to receive a flange rail. The presence of the grooves materially facilitate the laying of the rails to gauge, but must not be allowed to interfere with the constant use of the platelayer’s gauge. ”

“ It was quite out of the question to spike the rails firmly to the sleepers, since the movement was so great that the metals would have forced themselves from their foundation. As it was, the gangers had to overhaul the stretch of track crossing the muskeg once every week. The engineer strove valiantly to overcome the eccentric movement of the rails,229 and only succeeded by dint of great effort in rendering it perfectly safe. But in this work he had to use sleepers measuring 12 feet in length, instead of those of standard dimensions of 8 feet. ”

“ The spaces between the sleepers were filled in with gravel or broken stone to form a roadway or hauling path for the horses. A little later double rails were introduced, by placing a second or upper timber on the top of the lower one, as in Fig. 228.
This double rail arrangement not only strengthened the framework, but by increasing the height allowed a greater [Pg 184] quantity of suitable material to be placed over the sleepers to protect them from wear by the horses’ feet. It can be easily understood that a wooden tramway could not be very durable. ”

“ Two or three extra sleepers should be allowed to the rail length, and in some instances it will be necessary to introduce two, or even four, rows of strong longitudinal timbers—half balks—under the transverse sleepers. The object of all this extra timber is to obtain a large increase of bearing area on the soft yielding surface of the boggy material. Notwithstanding these special precautions, the trackway will sink down a little during the passage of an engine or train, but will generally return to its former level. ”

“ The success of the Decauville railway has been so rapid and so great that many inventors have entered the same field, but they have almost all formed the idea of constructing the portable track with detachable sleepers. There are thus, at present, two systems of portable tracks: those in which the sleepers are capable of being detached, and those in which they are not so capable. ”

“ For gauges varying from 4 feet 81⁄2 inches to 5 feet 3 inches, cross-sleepers are cut to the length of 8 feet 11 inches, and are generally rectangular in section, as in Fig. 303, measuring 10 inches in width by 5 inches in thickness. On some of the lighter railways with small traffic, sleepers are often used only 9 inches wide by 41⁄2 inches thick, while occasionally on some lines, and in places where there is exceptionally heavy and constant traffic, sleepers 12 inches wide by 6 inches thick are adopted. ”

“ These should be well charred or tarred at some distance from the lower end before being firmly driven in. The tops should slant outwards. Then nail cross-pieces to the posts; old railway-sleepers are sometimes cheap and useful. ”

“ The sleeper on the 3.35 a.m. elevated train from the Harlem bridge was awake for once. The sleeper is the last car in the train, and has its own set that snores nightly in the same seats, grunts with the fixed inhospitality of the commuter at the intrusion of a stranger, and is on terms with Conrad, the German conductor, who knows each one of his passengers and wakes him up at his station. The sleeper is unique. It is run for the benefit of those who ride in it, not for the company's. It not only puts them off properly; it waits for them, if they are not there. ”

“ Now for a plunge into Cimmerian night, with that dull, sustained buzz outside, as of some gigantic machinery whirling round, which seems a sort of lullaby, contrived mercifully to make the traveller drowsy and enwrap him in gentle sleep. Railway sleeping is, after all, a not unrefreshing form of slumber. There is the grateful 'nod, nod, nodding,' with the sudden jerk of an awakening; until the nodding becomes more overpowering, and one settles into a deep and profound sleep. ”

“ Coming out of the lane along the darkness, with the dark space spreading down to the wind, and the twinkling lights of the station below, the far-off windy chuff of a shunting train, the tiny clink-clink-clink of the wagons blown between the wind, the light of Beldover-edge twinkling upon the blackness of the hill opposite, the glow of the furnaces along the railway to the right, their steps began to falter. ”

“ All the switches are planed out of the solid, and the crossings are of cast steel. Special cast-iron sleepers are employed on the girder bridges. These are of bar form, having below a cross-piece which is tightened up to the sleeper by two bolts, and which grips the inner flange of each girder. It is thus possible to set the rails to any moderate curve, on straight girders. For crossing roads a short and very strong sleeper, only 2 feet in length, is employed, with jaws fitted to take a second rail on each side to act as a guard-rail to the running one. ”

“ The greater part of the line is now laid on these cast-iron sleepers, which weigh 28 lbs. each, inclusive of the chairs, which are cast on. This pattern has now had some eighteen years’ test, and has proved entirely satisfactory. With a 14 lb. steel rail, the sleepers being spaced 2 ft. 3 in., and at the suspended fish-joint 1 ft. 3 in., the road, under the load of 25 cwt. per axle, requires very little repair, some parts having stood for five or six years without being touched, though constantly run over.
The length of the sleeper is a very material point. ”

“ Unfortunately, it is not every railway company which has them, and it is by no means every train on which they are run.
The drawing-room car, when you get it, is in itself a comfortable thing to travel in. There is a good deal of room in it. There is satisfactory lavatory accommodation. The attendants are civil and competent. Any one who can sleep in a train at all could sleep in a drawing-room car if only he were not waked up every time the train stops or starts. Trains must stop occasionally, of course. But there is no real need for emphasizing the stops as American trains do. ”

“ At every stop for hours the train would hardly come to a standstill before a couple of men were at that box. The engines have no bells on them and the whistle is blown just before the train starts rather than before it stops as in our country. The train was largely made up of sleepers and a diner. ”

“ At the smaller stations particularly, after the last train up and the last train down had passed without killing somebody at a level crossing, or leaving you behind because you thought it was sure to be late, and presumed upon that certainty, an almost holy calm would reign for hours, and those really ill-used things, the sleepers, seemed to have a chance at last. ”

“ They have come hurrying after each other so fast that men going a journey wear sober faces, and enter a railway carriage with an ugly presentiment of its being a probable tomb, and are haunted with dread visions of a fast train dashing up behind, or a slow one right in the path in front, and cannot settle to their newspapers and slumbers as usual. What a pity it is bridges are not built higher, and people cannot travel outside trains as they do on coaches ”

“ I always get hungry in travelling: and even if I am not hungry, eating promotes sleep, and I fancy a desire to sleep as much as possible while travelling by rail, is one very generally entertained by passengers. But yet how am I or my fellow passengers to gratify this natural and innocent taste? It seems to me, that within my memory, railway refreshments have fallen off. ”

“ Come along, sir, I’ll find you another.’”
“What line was that on?” inquired the nervous man.
“When one thinks,” proceeded the dyspeptic, disregarding the question, “of the trivial causes which will produce railway accidents, the only wonder is that there are not more. I have heard it asserted that so slight a thing as the burrowing of a mole is enough to throw a whole train off the line, by causing the sleeper to sink. ”

“ Yesterday the London and North-Western Railway meant more than half my entire fortune; now the stoker who threw coals into the great fiery heart of the engine had more interest in the Company than I! Overcome with these gloomy thoughts, I drew around the lamp that lighted my carriage a sort of double silken shutter, and endeavoured to forget everything in sleep, if it were possible.
Sleep is as a rule not only possible but necessary to me after ten o'clock in the evening, and I soon slumbered soundly in spite of my tribulation. ”

“ To the fantastic mood which possesses you equally, sleeping or waking, the stoppages of the train have a weird character, and Worcester, Springfield, New Haven, and Stamford are rather points in dreamland than well-known towns of New England. As the train stops you drowse if you have been waking, and wake if you have been in a doze; but in any case you are aware of the locomotive hissing and coughing beyond the station, of flaring gas-jets, of clattering feet of passengers getting on and off; then of some one, conductor or station master, walking the whole length of the train ”

“ It must not be thought that the sleepers are anything but comfortable; they are so comfortable as to make travelling in them ideal. The passenger, also, has the run of the train, and can go to the observation car, where he can spend his time in an easy chair, looking through the broad windows at the scenery, or reading one of the many magazines or papers the train provides; or he can write his letters on train paper at a desk; can go out to the broad railed platform at the rear of the car, and sit and smoke, and see Canada unrolling behind him. ”

“ To my mind, however, nothing but hard necessity could compel people to live under such conditions as those to which the inhabitants of the houses exposed to the nuisance of the Elevated Railway must submit. It is not alone that they are under incessant inspection of the passengers if they keep blinds and windows up or open, but that the noise and whirl must be distracting. A train passes every minute, I was told, during the hours of business. ”

“ Rude fates, hard hearts, and prisoning poverty.
[Pg 142]
THE RAILWAY STATION.
The darkness brings no quiet here, the light
No waking: ever on my blinded brain
The flare of lights, the rush, and cry, and strain,
The engines' scream, the hiss and thunder smite:
I see the hurrying crowds, the clasp, the flight,
Faces that touch, eyes that are dim with pain:
I see the hoarse wheels turn, and the great train
Move labouring out into the bourneless night.
So many souls within its dim recesses,
So many bright, so many mournful eyes:
Mine eyes that watch grow fixed with dreams and guesses ”

“ We sent a wire to tell them that we were here, and started back to our hotel by the “Elevated,” an electric suspended railway built upon iron struts above the houses, which cuts through New York in all directions. It made abrupt turnings, and rushed at a reckless pace over the roofs of the houses, or raced through tunnels beneath them. It is great fun looking through other people’s windows, and getting a peep into comedies and tragedies sometimes. The train suddenly stops short with a jerk that sends the passengers into a conglomerate struggling mass, and throws them into each other’s arms. ”