slugabed
Zu lang am schnuller.
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Post by slugabed on Dec 22, 2011 19:21:38 GMT
I work at a Charity Shop in Camden Town,and we are in the process of re-vamping the garden area to provide a garden and outdoor seating for the volunteers. We are looking for a few (perhaps ten) wooden sleepers to make some raised beds....would anyone here have any suggestions as to who to approach to get some? The budget is,as you may imagine,miniscule.... Please PM me with any ideas you may have. Thanks!
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Dec 24, 2011 19:02:43 GMT
I've sent you a PM as requested.
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Dec 24, 2011 22:28:43 GMT
Be careful with wooden sleepers as even 'Ground Force' stopped usig them as the creosote posed a potential cancer risk.
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Dec 25, 2011 0:23:37 GMT
Cancer risk? How would it get into your body to pose a risk?
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Tom
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Signalfel?
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Post by Tom on Dec 25, 2011 0:32:03 GMT
I would guess that if you don't wear gloves, through the pores of your skin, and through ingesting traces of it if you forget to wash your hands afterwards...
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slugabed
Zu lang am schnuller.
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Post by slugabed on Dec 25, 2011 9:20:43 GMT
...also inhalation of fumes. A friend in the building trade told me that Creosote had been withdrawn from the market as a result of its carcinogenic nature but that such wass the clamour for it,that a NEW! IMPROVED! non-carcinogenic formula had been put on the market,with the dangerous fractions removed.
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castlebar
Planners use hindsight, not foresight
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Post by castlebar on Dec 25, 2011 11:20:44 GMT
slugabed is correct. Inhalation, such as with asbestos dust, caused the problem. Remember, we used to have brake blocks in cars/trains with an asbestos content. The microdust particles got everywhere. Creosote similar, inhaled particles into the lungs. Oh dear.
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Post by phillw48 on Dec 25, 2011 11:52:00 GMT
There is a swapmeet that I often attend held at a school that has a landscaped area that uses a lot of old sleepers. And to think that I liked the smell of creosote!
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Post by redsetter on Dec 25, 2011 19:50:48 GMT
i have one of these as a step from patio stones to the lawn,in the summer heat it oozes a tar like substance.they look nice in a garden though.
everything is health and safety these days.there is a substitute for creosote now called creocote for domestic use.
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Dec 25, 2011 20:49:25 GMT
Untreated sleepers are available too! They would last a lot longer being in a non-railway environment I bet!
I've seen a picture somewhere of how railway sleepers are treated... They are placed into a long tube which is then pumped full of creosote and is then pressurised to some ridiculous pressure and left for a few hours! I would guess new ones might be treated much differently these days...
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castlebar
Planners use hindsight, not foresight
Posts: 1,316
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Post by castlebar on Dec 25, 2011 21:18:36 GMT
@ Art
Very interesting
Wooden railway sleepers might be treated and ready in a few hours via a high pressure production system today, but it wasn't always thus. The G.W.R. once had a dedicated railway sleeper works where they were left to soak naturally for several weeks in large creosote vats. They were brought up the Grand Union Canal to the special sleeper works near Southall. After a very long natural saturation in creosote, they were then taken from Southall around the GWR system to be used as required.
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Post by phillw48 on Dec 26, 2011 0:01:37 GMT
The process was actually called pickling. The sleepers were 'pickled' in much the same way as the onions and gherkins you will be eating with your cold turkey for the next week.
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Jan 1, 2012 15:49:50 GMT
Our local 'pickling' plant was in the PW works at Redbridge near Southampton. Cutting sleepers causes lots of dust to rise and inhalation of that would be lethal. Facemasks are available from DIY shops but I have no idea how effective they are. As for non-railway sleepers, where's the fun in that! A sleeper isn't a sleeper unless it's been drilled for chairs, placed on ballast for thrity years and matured! Anything else is a thick plank..... which is where I came in!
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Jan 2, 2012 0:17:30 GMT
Can any one tell me the reason why the more modern concrete sleepers are better than the wooden ones, and is the story I was told when I was a kid an old wives tale? It must have been over fifty years ago that the early concrete sleepers started to appear. During our journey to our annual holiday one year I was told by a railwayman that only the traditional sleepers could be used for express trains due to the fact that the wood would compress slightly under load. He said that the new concrete ones were cheaper and easier to obtain but they could only be used for slow trains as the stresses of an express would cause them to crack. Was this likely to have been true at the time? Has new concrete technology, reinforcement or perhaps different ballast made the difference?
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rincew1nd
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Post by rincew1nd on Jan 2, 2012 0:24:41 GMT
I'm not sure how long the sleepers you are after need to be, but the Talyllyn Railway are currently having a major relaying project; they might have some spare bits of wood that could be useful for you. Failing that I suspect they will burn them.
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Post by phillw48 on Jan 2, 2012 10:27:56 GMT
Concrete sleepers have been around for more than a hundred years. The main reason for their use is cheapness, the cost of wooden sleepers has increased enormously in the last 30 years. It has also been the practice in the UK to use hardwoods for sleepers, most often teak which is now unobtainable.
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Post by rogere on Jan 3, 2012 12:52:15 GMT
Up until a year or so ago you could still see "pickling" being done to new lock gates for the canals.
At Bulbourne, on the Grand Union near Marsworth, there were a couple of semi-sunken steel barges that were filled with creosote and the finished lock gates were dropped into them for a few weeks.
That depot has now closed, but I am reliably informed it still happens at other depots on the system.
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