A New or Improved Substitute for Wooden and Iron Railway Sleepers.
Year: 1899

page_text: Date of Application, 17th Apr., 1899-Accepted, 13th Jan., 1900
COMPLETE SPECIFICATION.
1
A New or Improved Substitute for Wooden and Iron Railway
Sleepers.
I, PAUL KORFF, 39, Friedrichstrasse, Mülheim, on the Ruhr, Germany,
Architect, do hereby declare the nature of this invention, and in what manner
the same is to be performed, to be particularly described and ascertained in and
by the following statement:.
As is well known the use of wooden railway sleepers is extremely uneconomical,
on account of their comparatively. short durability and high prime cost. For
these reasons in more recent times iron sleepers have been much used; but the
latter have the disadvantage that they are subject to being indented and broken
at the points where the rails are supported on them, by reason of the great
pressure concentrated at these point: This disadvantage is further increased
through the section of the. sleeper being greatly weakened at these points by the
openings, made therein for fasteni the rails.
The other part of the sleepers ing between the rails is on the other hand
subject to very little wear and tea', from this cause there arises a considerable,
and quite useless waste of materia Besides this iron sleepers suffer very much
from rusting away under the influence of climatic conditions in general so that
their duration is also comparatively short.
The present invention has for its object the production of a substitute for
wooden and iron railway sleepers which not only does away with the above-
mentioned disadvantages due to the wooden and iron material of sleepers hereto-
fore in use but possesses certain advantages over these which arise from the
peculiar construction employed.
According to this invention instead of being made of the homogeneous materials
heretofore used, the new sleeper is made up from various materials, namely an
inner metal core, and an outside layer or covering surrounding this metal core,
such layer or covering consisting of cement, magnesite (a colourless, but some-
times yellow or gray glassy.mineral, the chemical symbol of which is MgCO3
found in St. Gothard, Silesia, Tirol, Vermont, Norway, and Prussia, sometimes
in combination with silicate, and largely used in the manufacture of carbonic
acid gas, and also fire-proof tiles), coccolith (a variety of the mineral pyroxene or
augite, an aggregate of green or brown irregularly formed grains, found in
Andrada in Sweden) plaster of Paris, compressed and asphalted paper, wood-
pulp or similar material, by which means the inner metal core may have a section
of the most advantageous form for resisting the wear and tear and for providing
the greatest strength at those points where the greatest wear and tear occurs; so
that the material used is employed to the best advantage. Of course an iron
core is most suitable for the manufacture of these sleepers, the same being
surrounded with an outer layer or covering of compressed or liquid cement, as
this material adheres well to iron, possesses a high co-efficient of fracture under
pressure, is not a good conductor of heat, and therefore is not subject to any

page_text: or other similar material capable of resisting the effects of climate and tempera-
ture and possessing great power of resisting a crushing strain, substantially as
described.
Dated this 17th day of April 1899.
P. KORFF.
Per W. H. Beck,
Agent, 115, Cannon Street, London, E.C.