thank you Gil,for your advice,very interesting,
neil
Gil2 wrote in message
...
Proper railway sleepers are first put in a vacuum chamber to open the wood
pores then flooded with preservative (possibly creosote) which soaks in to
them to about half an inch deep. You can then put them on the ground and
run
trains over them for 25 years or so whilst the British rain & sun belt
down
on them and they need no further maintenance (normally). Even after this
they are sold on for many different purposes and will last for another
25-40
years or more.

The point then is, what is it you want new railway sleepers for ? - as the
chances are you would be massively over engineering by using new sleepers,
not to mention the unreasonable use of good wood. With the old ones, like
anything second hand, just use your common sense to pick out ones which
are
reasonably sound, then pour some creosote down the old baseplate holes and
bang in a plug of wood - thats all they will need.

New railways mostly use concrete or steel these days but there are still
many miles of old wooden sleepers out there before you need to start using
new in the garden.

Regards,

G

"the q" wrote in message
...

"nb" wrote in message
...
Could anyone please tell me which is better,proper old sleepers,or the
new
ones you can buy which have been treated?
1 Which ones look better?, look better for what? new one normally
won't
have the damage from their previous use. No tar stains to stick to
either.
2 Which ones are low/no maintenance?, unless you intend to re-creosote
them, neither needs much looking after.
3 Which ones last longer?, old good condition ones will normally last
longer as they have years of creosote or the like soaked into them.
Many thanks in advance from all you garden lovers.......
neil

The Q