Re: Timber Turnout timbers at Ringwood

["Stephen Devenish" <JohnnyR@bigpond.com>]

Les Brown <pcc@ocean.com.au> wrote in article
<36f5db36.6182577@news.ocean.com.au>...
> Hey Stephen, can you explain something? Newsrail noticed that your
> company was using wooden sleepers on the points at Ringwood and they
> thought that was unusual, but is it really? I would have thought that
> the reason why is because it would be difficult and expensive to
> prefab concrete sleepers with all the necessary track base-plates,
> etc, in the right spots for Ringwood. What sayeth ye?
> 
> Les Brown

Les like all things price has a major impact on the scale and extent of a
job (Project), when the PTC decided to do the Consolidated Signalling
Project it was mainly looking at the Signalling Side.  They looked at the
track work and only allowed for the alterations to the track to gain an
extra platform.  When they looked at the rest of the yard, they found that
most of the track was not up to current mainline standard.  So they looked
at all the works required to lift the existing track to mainline standard
hence Addendum No. 9 arrived on my desk, price the upgrade of all existing
and remaining track work.  Now that the PTC have allowed for upgrading the
existing track work the cost will obviously increse and cause the use of
cheaper Timber Turnout timbers instead of concrete (Like what they used at
Jolimont).  

We do not normally mix concrete and timber like they do with steel sleepers
as the settlement and depth properties of concrete Vs. timber are a cause
of problems.   As timber prices increase I think theat the move to concrete
turnouts will be made although another lot of problems arise due to the
extra weight..... How do you lift them into place?   At Ringwood the space
is very tight and so moving a concrete sleepers turnout would have been a
big problem, a timber 8.7 60kg turnout can be meoved by 2 30t Excavators
where as the cossesponding concrete turnout would need to be broken into 2
sections.

Hope this shows the light


Stephen Devenish
John Holland