got a place near sydney that give them away for free let me know if
interested.
"Trish Brown" wrote in message
...
Rod Out back wrote:

A lot of wooden railway sleepers (in QLD anyway) have been treated with
creosote, or something similarly carcinogenic. I remember seeing railway
workers in the late 1980's that had pretty nasty skin irritations from
the
chemical on the new sleepers. Of course, they should have been wearing
the
heavy gauntlets they were supplied with, but apparently they get a bit
hot
to wear all the time....

I dont know if they still treat all sleepers with this stuff (or if it
is
only a QLD thing to deal with termites), but I have been somewhat
sceptical
about using railway sleepers for garden work ever since. Especially
where
they might be sat on or leant against regularly, or where the sleepers
might
leach contaminants into garden bed soil.

Maybe gardening stores have access to untreated sleepers; I would hope
so,
when looking at how nasty creosote is...I would be very insistent to
hear
how they guarantee their sleepers dont have anything that might leach
into
the soil.

Sleepers most likely arent still treated with Creosote, but I would be
interested to find out if they are treated with anything, as it may have
an
effect on a garden, or young children(or both).

My $0.02.

Cheers,

Rod........Out Back

Dunno... but I think it's six of one and half a dozen of the other,
really.

Used sleepers are weathered nicely but protected with whatever it is that
State
Rail puts on them (as well as train poo, and who could guess what *that*
contains!). New sleepers are treated with the same (or similar) chemical
they
use to treat Kopper logs. It's a salt of copper (and therefore poisonous
to man
and beast) and it escapes me how they can use those logs in playground
construction when it would seem to be so dangerous to kids! Dunno...

FWIW, I was once renting a place where the long, narrow garden beds were
raised
to a height of three sleepers sat one on top of the other for their full
length.
I've never found weeding and planting and cultivating so *easy*! It was
exactly
the right height to sit comfortably on and the only problem was that heavy
rain
would wash a tiny bit of soil out from between the sleepers. Not much,
though! I
still dream of finding a cache of weathered sleepers hanging around
somewhere so
that I could build a similar garden in my own place!

--
Trish {|:-}
Newcastle, NSW, Australia