Railway Sleepers

southernsun

Hi,

I have the opportunity to get some used railway sleepers (free) to use in our garden which we are hoping to use to create a veggie garden when we re do our garden later in the year. Before I arrange transport to go and collect them I am a bit concerned about whether we will actually be able to use them for this purpose.

They are quite old and have been treated and I have been told that when it gets hot tar will leak out of them so I would need to cover them (rubble sacks or something) to stop the tar seeping into the ground and getting onto anything which touches it.

I don't want to cover them completely as it is the look of the wood I like and I think having black plastic covering them will look awful. We have a young son who spends a long time playing in the garden and are planning on growing veg around them so the last thing we want is this tar going everywhere and making a mess plus contaminating the ground and making it unsafe for our son.

Basically wondering if anyone knows a way we can use these without completely covering them. Is there anything to treat them/seal them/remove the tar?

Thanks in advance.

WestonDave

Potentially they might if they got hot enough boil off creosote (a form of tar) which is suggested to cause cancer.

However the cancer links to creosote are rather unclear - if you paint enough of it on a rat it will get skin cancer, but the studies of creosote workers don't suggest significantly higher rates of cancer.

Wooden railway sleepers stopped being used new some considerable time ago, so the ones you are getting were probably installed 20 years ago plus as new, and will not have been treated since then. In that time they will have been sat in the open getting nicely warm and boiling off some of the creosote within them - so what is left in them now will be limited.

What you could do is attach something like pond liner to the inner side of them so that there is no risk of chemicals leaching into the soil you are growing in without removing the outward appearance. If you install them right side up - you'll be able to tell as this side will have the markings from the rail "chairs" on, the chances of creosote being near this surface will be reduced - wrong side up will potentially have some left as it will have been underground and cooler!

You probably can't clean them up completely but I suspect you won't get a lot coming out of them after this long.

s_b

inspect before you collect
just in case they are rotten to the core as the tar stops the rotting

27col

Line the inside with plastic and give them a good pressure cleaning before use. This will remove a surprising amount of muck from them.
I did this at the last place that I worked, the sleeper was being used in a showroom to display outdoor light fittings.