Railway sleepers

**Suresh** · 26th July 2004, 10:29 AM

Does anyone know if there any problems with using railway sleepers in terms of chemical treatment they may have received. I recently got hold of some old sleepers that were being sold off for firewood.

It turns out to be beautiful timber once the crud on the outside is trimmed off. An acquaintance tells me that they may have been treated with either arsenic or creosote, either of which I want to avoid.
These are very old timbers, probably ironbark and have been in the tracks for probably over 50 years.
Thanks
Suresh

**Rowan** · 26th July 2004, 11:03 AM

you may want to look at my post regarding "finding chemical contents of used wood???" I am guessing that these may be the same issues I had. I decided not to test mine as the only person in geelong I could find was going to sting me close to 150 to find out!!!

**Bruce Micheal** · 26th July 2004, 08:38 PM

Suresh

Please don't take my views as gospel.
Qrail in QLD seldom if ever treated their timber sleepers (someone will probally tell me I'm wrong). There are too many of them to treat, and for them it is quicker, cheaper and easier to replace them as the need arose. Qrail is replacing many of their timber sleepers with steel ones now, so a ready supply is at hand for landscaping etc.
I don't know which state you are in, but I would check with your rail authority to see what they did in the past.
You mentioned that these sleepers were to be sold as fire wood. If they were treated with any chemicals, burning these in the fire place or on the barbie wouldn't be the brightest thing to do.

Tell me, how do you go about getting the 'crud' from the outside of the sleepers? With what I've tried in the past, I wont even touch one of these sleepers with an old axe! With all the dirt and grit embedded in the timber, it sure is hard on your tools.

**Richard Casey** · 27th July 2004, 07:47 PM

115mm grinder fitted with a wire brush from supercheap auto.

**LineLefty** · 28th July 2004, 11:53 AM

I use a 30cm long piece of really thin profile, less than 1mm, aluminium angle to scrape away most of the crud and then a cheapy hand plane (set rank and with a VERY wide mouth) to clean up the rest before moving onto a good jack plane.

**Kris.Parker1** · 4th August 2004, 01:08 PM

You'd find that creasote and arsenic rarely pentetrate deeply enough to harm anyone just take a good couple of inches off and you should be right. I just use an bench saw I picked up an auction and run it through a coupl eof times. You can usually get a couple of spare blades from around the traps. Not a bad investment for $150. It does a pretty good job just use the good tools once you get rid of all the ****. WATCH OUT FOR THE DOG SPIKES BURIED DEEP INSIDE THEY MIGHT LOOK GOOD AT NIGHT WHEN METAL HITS METAL BUT DOESN'T DO ANYONE ANY GOOD IN THE LONG TERM.

Just make sure you wash your hands afterwards...

Cheers

Kris

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