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| Sunday, 19 September 2004 |
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| News Business Features Editorial
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Concrete sleepers again for rail tracks By Anton Nonis The laying down of concrete sleepers on rail tracks which was stalled for some time due to the non availability of clips and other fixers, has resumed, according to engineers of the Track & Bridges of the railway. The engineers have completed about 200 miles of the sleeper laying program out of its 900 mile long rail net work. The present sleeper laying program is a continuation of the work which was started by an Australian company, John Holland Ltd., during 1991. Railway engineers said the company carried out the work up to 1994 and thereafter, was taken over by the State Engineering Corporation (SEC). The work of concrete sleeper replacing the wooden ones was not something new in the country. The railway had concrete sleepers on tracks from the year 1971, between Kosgoda and Balapitiya which covered a distance of about 20 miles and also between Wellawa and Kurunegala up to about two miles. According to railway sources, these were produced by the Ceylon Cement Corporation (CCC). Technology on the sleeper manufacture was due to engineer, A.N.S. Kulasinghe who was well known for his work on such areas. The sleepers laid on those locations still exist without any damage to the sleepers. The difference between those made during the early seventies and the present sleepers is one height. The present sleeper measures five inches more than the former while the other measurements remain, more or less, the same. Sources said, that the railway had stopped placing orders for fresh stocks with the SEC due to an ex-stock of about 150,000. They are stored at Dematagoda and Negombo yards. The railway would place fresh orders with the SEC once this stock at hand had been utilised. The concrete sleeper laying work is laborious. The department is capable of laying down only about 2,000 per month. At this rate of sleeper laying, the engineers have estimated that the sleeper laying task to take about ten years or more, to complete. The work is handled by an Inspector Permanent Way (IPW) of which there are a group of them. Each IPW has under him six or seven gangs and a gang composed of 42 men. The engineers said the sleeper laying is done from one end of a line to the other end, and not haphazardly as in the case of the wooden sleepers. This is because the concrete sleeper being five inches more in height than a wooden sleeper while the other measurements remained the same. The bigger height in the concrete one is due to the embedding of iron strips on its upper and lower surfaces. The difference in heights among the two types of sleepers would not permit laying of the concretes at any point on a line that has wooden type fitted on it. The laying down has to be from the beginning of the line to the end. The concrete sleeper laying is in progress, from Colombo, from Maho, from Negombo and from Alutgama. Work on these areas is carried out simultaneously. Asked why this work could not be expedited, engineers say the concrete sleeper laying process is laboriousness. Workers are irregular. Absentees are more than reporting for work. Out of 42, sometimes only 15 turn up. The department also has the difficulty of shifting workers from one area of work to another as they are responsible to work in their place. A concrete sleeper costs Rs. 3,000 while the wooden ones too cost nearly the same. An engineer of the Track and Bridges division said that concrete sleepers could be used for about 30 to 40 years while the average lifespan of wooden sleeper was about seven years. The wooden type tends to decay thereafter. |
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