This discussion has made me think about the practical approach to laying
railway track in a mine.  Stone blocks, although in plentiful supply in
some mines, might take more time to select and prepare than a wood
sleeper.

In the North Pennine mines, the workings of the 18th and 19th century
tended to be excavated at the minimum width for the typical wagon. I
imagine that the critical positioning of the track in relation to the
walls might be easier to arrange with a wood sleeper. Fairly simple
matter to spike the chair or rail and adjust if necessary.  Perhaps not
so easy with a stone block?


Original Message-----
From: mining-history [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of
[log in to unmask]
Sent: 27 May 2005 16:42
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Railway sleepers in mines (or elsewhere)

Various respondents have noted that transverse wooden sleepers were used
on
most if not all of the early horse-drawn waggonways, meaning that they
were in
 use from early in the C17.  During the Napoleonic Wars period the price
of
timber in  Britain rocketed, while  simultaneously, the price of iron
halved,
and these two market  price changes encouraged the replacement of wood
on
waggonways, by iron and  stone, i.e. iron for  rails and stone for
'sleepers'.

From about 1800, most new  waggonways in the North East used iron rails
on
stone sleeper  blocks, e.g. the Kenton  & Coxlodge of 1808, and
gradually, the
older waggonways adopted the same  technique, e.g. the  Willington
waggonway in
1819.  Moreover, these were the materials used for track on  the first
steam-hauled mixed-freight railways, the Stockton & Darlington Railway
and the
Liverpool & Manchester Railway, for example.


The Durham  & Sunderland Railway, which opened in 1836, was laid with
cast-iron, fish-bellied rails, (but with some  wrought-iron rails on
embankments),
set upon  large-log sleepers of 7 inch diameter, and  this railway was
probably
the first new line of the  C19, not to employ stone sleeper blocks,
although
many  other earlier lines were, by this time, beginning to convert back
from
stone blocks to wooden transverse sleepers.  But, for reasons which may
always
remain  unclear, some north-east waggonways continued with simple wooden

rails, for example, on the Garesfield waggonway until the 1840s, and it
seems
likely that others never gave up their transverse wooden sleepers.
This means, in short, that you could  find transverse wooden sleepers in
use
at any time after the early C17, in some  parts of the country.
Hope this  helps
Stafford