A NOVEL CONSTRUCTION OF RAILWAY SLEEPER
Year: 1869

page_text: PROVISIONAL SPECIFICATION left by William Edward Gedge at the
Office of the Commissioners of Patents, with his Petition, on the
27th August 1869.-A communication from abroad by Camille
Bernard, of Paris, France, Engineer.
I, WILLIAM EDWARD GEDGE, of the Firm of John Gedge and Son, of
No. 11, Wellington Street, Strand; in the County of Middlesex, Patent
Agent, do hereby declare the nature of the said Invention for "A NOVEL
CONSTRUCTION OF RAILWAY SLEEPER," a communication to me from abroad
by Camille Bernard, of Paris, France, Engineer, to be as follows:-
A railway sleeper although made of a single piece may be regarded as
composed of two parts, namely, the extremities intended to rest upon
the ballast and to support the chair and the rail, and, secondly, the body
or intermediate portion, the effect of which is by tieing the two ends.
to maintain the guage of the rails against the centrifugal force of the
wheels in motion which constantly tends to force them apart. In order
that the chair and the rail may find a firm seat on the ends of tho
sleeper it was requisite to give to these ends a sufficient surface and

page_text: thickness, the surface being needed to properly seat the chair, and the
thickness to properly support it. On the other hand, it was requisite
that the intermediate portion or body should be sufficiently bulky,
strong enough to neutralize by its rigidity the tendency of the rails to
come apart, as above explained. The sleeper as adopted fairly meets
the first requirement, but when analysed it will be found to far exceed
the second, and that uselessly and to the detriment of the companies
constructing railways. In fact, if the ends needed the dimensions, the
necessity of which has been above explained, the body certainly did not
require to be of the dimensions now given to it, for were it three times
less bulky, provided it were sound, the effort which it has to resist being
exerted parallel with its fibres could not overcome its resistance. The
real seat of the way lies in that part of the sleeper which carries the
chair and the rail; the remainder in nowise contributes to this end, but
simply forms a connecting line between the two ends, and is therefore
a considerable portion of wood which lies profitless upon the way, with
this serious disadvantage, that such a sleeper can only be obtained from
a tolerably thick tree, and as the relative price of this material increases
in proportion to its bulk this sleeper is very expensive.
The sleeper, the subject of this Invention, while affording in the body
all the rigidity required, presents to the chair and rail even more seat
than the ordinary sleeper, and its cost price is much less, all of which
I will now explain.
For its construction I take a piece of wood of the same length as the
ordinary sleeper but much less bulky; had it but one-third of its thick-
ness it will be seen that it would suffice. But if this piece of wood is
strong enough to preserve the guage between the rails it is clear that
by reason of the small surface presented by its ends it would not afford
a suitable seat for the chair. This defect is overcome by placing trans-
versely under each end a piece of similar wood about 20 inches long, so
as to form a perfect cross opposite the chair, which thus bears upon a
central point, the radius of which, instead of having 4 to 4%, inches, as
in the ordinary sleeper, the breadth of which is from 8 to 9 inches,
has a radius of 10 inches, and its stability is consequently increased, and
the more so that the transversal piece of wood lies with a larger surface
the ballast, and that the two pieces thus united form a thickness
at least equal to that of the ordinary sleeper, which is from 6 to 6%
upon

page_text: inches. As to the method of attaching the cross piece to the body of
the sleeper, this latter may be simply superposed, or it may be received
in a recess of a few inches made for the purpose. The spikes or treenails
which fix the chair on the end of the sleeper passing beyond the cross
piece together with the weight of the rails so bind the two pieces that
no further precaution is needed in this respect.
The arrangement above described is illustrated Fig. 1 of the annexed
Sheet of Drawing, A indicating the body of the sleeper; B, the cross
piece; C indicates the junction of the two pieces by means of the recess
or groove above mentioned, if this method be adopted; D is the chair;
E, E, the spikes which fix the chair to the sleeper, tieing this latter at
the same time to the cross piece. The duration of this sleeper may be
prolonged by a means which, added to the superficial carbonisation to
which it is submitted, will greatly contribute to its preservation. This
means consists in giving it, after the said carbonisation, a coating of
pitch, then a coating of coal dust or fine sand alone or mixed with two
parts of ordinary or hydraulic lime in powder, of which the atmospheric
humidity soon makes an impenetrable mortar.
To profit from all the advantages of this construction of sleeper
the following arrangements may be adopted, or even instead of lining
the whole way with such sleepers they might be placed only beneath
those chairs on which two rails meet, and between these two points
simply place beneath each chair the cross formed by the end of the
sleeper, the body of which would be suppressed, as shown Fig. 2 of the
Drawing; or if it be feared that the absence of this part of the sleeper
might render the rails liable to be pushed apart and destroy the guage
the two chair supports might be tied by a piece of wood from two to
three inches thick, as shewn at A, Fig. 3, or by a light iron rod, as at
Fig. 4, attached to each chair support. This mode of construction is
equally applicable to iron sleepers, in which case the wooden sleepers
will be replaced by a cylindrical or other shaped piece of iron pitched
or galvanized, and having at its two ends a part sufficiently flattened to
receive the chairs, which together with the ends of the piece of iron will
be fixed to the cross piece by two ordinary spikes, but the cross piece
should have sufficient breadth to receive the spikes which fix the chairs.
The cross piece might also be replaced by a piece of cast iron, stone, or
any other solid material, but these would render the way too hard, to

page_text: the inconvenience of the passengers and the detriment of the rolling
stock. By interposing between the chair and the iron plate a packing of
felt, caoutchouc, cork, or other soft or elastic material this defect would
be at once obviated.