At Morwellham Quay in West Devon, we carried out an archaeological excavation of a spur line from the Tavistock Canal Inclined Plane. This was laid in 1816-17 with granite sleeper blocks and an Outram style plateway, which was replaced in the 1850s with rolled I section edge rails in cast iron chairs.
In the place we excavated, one of these chairs had sat on a wooden sleeper block, rather than a sleeper crossing the trackbed with chairs on either end. The reason seems to have been that the railway was horizontal at this point, and that when relaying, they did not wish to dig up and reset the central horse-path. It seems a very odd thing to do, as the wooden blocks would surely move about much more easily than stone ones, but it appears to have worked until the incline went out of use in 1873.
Robert Waterhouse
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