"Janet Baraclough" wrote in message
...
The message
from "Mike Lyle" contains these
words:


Sally's problem with the stuff getting walked into the house on a hot
day hadn't occurred to me, I must confess -- it sounds like bad luck, as
I've never suffered it. I wonder if a coating of sand, applied in hot
weather, would be enough to stop it.

Not IME. I had the same problem as Sally. The sleepers I used, had
left the railway at least 30 years before I acquired tham, and had been
weathered ever since. 28 years after I laid them, the top surfaces were
STILL oozing black oil on every sunny sumer day. So, that's at least 50
years since they were last treated :-) They predated electric trains and
I imagine that as well as the creosote used to preserve them, they spent
their working lives being dripped on by engine oil too.

I was thumbing through an old (30-40) gardening book (The NZ Bible, Yates
Garden Book) of my dads the other day and even back then it said do not use
treated timber for vege gardens. The chemicals used in treating wood were
harsher 40 years back however even then somebody was suspicious of the
dangers of chemicals in vege gardens.

rob