Building an extension with oak railway sleepers

Only for 'normal' track, special track sections, points and crossings still use wood sleepers (but they tend to be both wider and longer than normal sleepers.

You mean 'preserved' lines, both seem to use wood within the station area, but many now use second-hand concrete sleepers out in the country.

We were somewhere around Barstow, on the edge of the desert, when the drugs began to take hold. I remember Rob Morley saying something like:

Yes, but why let the facts get in the way of a dig? 'For centuries' makes it sound like several centuries.

So 19th, 20th, 21st doesn't constitute "several"?

I know what you mean though - sounds more like wooden ships or Roman aqueducts than oily bits of wood that have been marinated in excrement. :-)

There were no rails but they recently found a timber surfaced trackway in the north dating back to the iron ages (circa 5000 years old)

We were somewhere around Barstow, on the edge of the desert, when the drugs began to take hold. I remember Matt saying something like:

I wonder just how many people in how many ages have come up with brilliant ideas, only for them to be forgotten and re-invented centuries later in some other place.

We're incredibly lucky; we have a huge technological base to work from, and for centuries now have had fairly reliable knowledge bases. Earlier folks, who were just as bright as us, had to make do with wood, stone, fibre, mud and (if they were lucky) a bit of metal for making things from, and their ideas usually died with them.

We were somewhere around Barstow, on the edge of the desert, when the drugs began to take hold. I remember Rob Morley saying something like:

"Buy a piece of history; a hundred years of s**te."

I'd not say I am obsessed with oak sleepers & I've considered brick

timber frame >

-- cantorthomas

there are many sites on the web selling sleepers - e.g.

-- cantorthomas