Concrete sleeper
In 1877, Joseph Monier, a French gardener, suggested that concrete reinforced with steel could be used for making sleepers for railway track.
Their first use on a main line railway was by the Reading Company in America in 1896, as recorded by AREA Proceedings at the time.
[citation needed] Major progress was not achieved until World War II, when the timbers used for sleepers were scarce due to competition from other uses, such as mines.
These conditions spurred the development of concrete sleepers in France, Germany and Britain, where the technology was perfected.
[citation needed] The 1 ft 11+1⁄2 in (597 mm) gauge Lynton and Barnstaple Railway (1898 to 1935) in North Devon, experimented with concrete sleepers at a number of locations along the line.
[4] This design was used by the government-run railways during World War II and in particular immediately prior to D-Day when timber was scarce and track extension or replacement was urgently required.
[citation needed] In 2021, sleepers made of sulphur concrete, which requires low energy and no water in manufacture, were used in Belgium.
British Rail experimented with slabs during the late 1960s and laid several miles alongside the main running lines north of Derby.
To reduce the wear on the ballast, and in some cases offer vibration isolation, pads are fitted to the base of the sleeper.
[citation needed] Despite concrete sleepers being less elastic than timber ones, it has been established that they do not cause higher noise emissions when trains run over them.
German railways have experienced cracking of their sleepers on high speed lines and have had to replace many thousands of them after only a short life; however, this was found to be due to use of inappropriate aggregate in the concrete mix.
They are much longer than normal sleepers, have gaps for switch motors, and are generally made by a small number of specialist manufacturers.
In other countries, such as Malaysia and Singapore, various standards are used, such as Australian Standards, AS 1085.14:2012 (Railway Track Material – Prestressed Concrete Sleepers), or EN 13230-4:2016 (Railway applications – Track Concrete sleepers and bearers, Part 4: Prestressed bearers for switches and crossings).
Occasionally, sleepers are made with conduits for track circuit wiring, or extra fixtures for guard rails.
The FRA notices said that the need for the new rules was shown by the derailment of an Amtrak train near Home Valley, Washington on 3 April 2005, which, according to the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board, was caused in part by excessive (more than 0.5 inches (13 millimetres)) abrasion of the concrete.
