Creosoting Railway Sleepers.

Waimate Daily Advertiser, Volume IV, Issue 267, 9 October 1902, Page 1

Creosoting Railway Sleepers.

The creosote works which the Railway Department has established at Woodville will be ready to operate in a few days. The woi ks are situated on the railway, and aie very complete. There are two buildings, one for stoiing the creosote, 3000 forty-g:il!on barrels being stored therein at present, and a corrugated iron engine-honso. The cost of the buildings was about £IOOO. The plant proner is not under cover, and this?, with the engine and boi'er, was obtained at an expenditure uf close on £)5000. It consists of a great cylinder, called the creosote receiver, nn iron tube 78ft tiin in length and 7ft in diameter, two large iron tanks (one of which has a creosote storagecapacity of 21,017 gallons), and an 80 h.p. boiler, and the pumping engine. The object of the process is to replace the natural moisture of wood by creosote, or oil of tar, and thus secure railway sleepers which will last in the ground for fully thirteen years, and this with such a timber as white pine. The process of treatment is to run the sleepers into the creosote receiver on specially constructed trollies. The Woodville receiver will take nine trollies, each carrying 42 sleepers. The air is first of all drawn out by suction, steam for the purpose being raised to a pressure of 1501bs to the square inch. Then ]the same power draws out the ! moisture in the wood. The wood J in the vacuum, with the pores open, absorbs tne creosote, which is forced in by another set of pipes by the same steam pressure. It takes a little over an hour to treat one set of sleapers, and in the proeess about three gallons of creosote are used to each sleeper. Nearly 2000 j sleepers a day will be the capacity iof the Woodville plant. It is i calculated that sleepers treated by | the process will cost 3s Gd each, an | advance of about a hundred per j cent on the original price. Rimu I and tawa timber will be treated as i well as white pine. The resuit of | the experiment with Zealand I timbers is awaited with considerable interest. —New Zealand T : mes.