Saturday 1 March 2003, Canberra

After the fires of January 2002, gee one year ago, we had an urgent need of new sleepers, as quite a few of those in the track had been burned.

In desperation, El Presidente Bruce Blain increased Telecom's profit margin seeking help from as many sources as he could muster.

We may joke about rust-belt industries producing rust-proof executives etc, etc BUT ... OneSteel decided that they could help us. OneSteel runs the Whyalla steel works and is already in the good books for supplying the Alice Springs-Darwin line with rail.

Their 'little bit' of help turned out to be a donation of 250 steel sleepers plus the jewellery - evidently an accepted term for the rail fastenings - that goes with them.

Also sent were a (long) bar used to lever home the fastening clip that holds the rail and another (long) bar used to take off a clip.

Not a cheap little present. A be-jewelled sleeper retails at almost $80 compared with just under $40 for wood. The arithmetic is there and so was OneSteel.

We have taken a while to use these sleepers, not because we have looked this gift horse in the mouth but because we want it to win as many races as possible.

Steel sleepers offer many advantages but do present some challenges.

They last a long time. A few on the Normanton line in Queensland are just starting to rust out, and they were laid in the 1890s. There is a resident dentist for the local white ants.

Rails on steel sleepers don't move. Gauge widening does not become a problem. Neither do they creep down hills. With our 1 in 40 grades, the thought of our rails in a heap at the bottom of the hill is not so funny.

Those clips are very, very tight.

Tamping ballast up into that hollow inside the sleeper is difficult without mechanical tamping. The vibrating tamping tynes cause the ballast to flow like a liquid under and up into the space. Poor tamping with steel sleepers laid as a group can cause rough, uneven track.

Our solution is to lay steel sleepers well separated so we get maximum advantage for gauge holding and anti-creep where our aged wooden sleepers are starting to give up.

The wooden sleepers may not hold the track but they will support it. Our less than best practice tamping is less of a problem for well-spaced steel sleepers.

The chosen first spot is the straight between 332.500 km and 333.000 km. It is that straight in a low cutting where the Monaro Highway runs up to the line from the Isabella Drive roundabout.

It also has the worst sleeper condition on the line to Royalla and is worse than the closed section of line through to Michelago.

The Flying Toothpick, Rockulator and Tracker Jacker went out early while the rest of us had a more civilised journey in CPH 37.

The CPH also carried tools and the air compressor to spike down the timber sleepers to be placed near rail joins - another place where poorly-tamped steel sleepers don't do so well.

	Coming up to the Monaro Highway overbridge, we found the oil train stowed under the Ipswich Street bridge (these photos were shot through the CPH front window and suffer accordingly).
A clear road led us into Queanbeyan where the compressor and tools were loaded.
	Before work started, Alan Ward briefed the crew on what was to be done and how the gang would be organised. He covered the necessary safety points on where people should and should not be when the machines are working.
We found a few differences using steel sleepers, especially in picking them up with the Flying Toothpick. First, grab your sleeper ...
	Got it!! Errr, mostly.
Solution, place the sleeper across the rails and grab it again.
Continued in next column...

Continued from previous column...
	Then push the sleeper under the rail.
Which it does with only a slight tilt (that is, not sideways).
Then came the jewellery. A round hole each side of the rail takes a steel forging with a round seat and a finger projecting through the hole to grip the inside of the sleeper below the foot of the rail. A T-shaped vertical projection then has the forked clip forced either side of its stem and (tightly) beneath its crossbar. The ends of the forks bear down on the rail foot while the tail of the clip bears down on the sleeper top. The forgings have a flat face on the seat which acts like the shoulder on a sleeper plate against the edge of the rail foot, holding the rail to gauge. The clip-inserting lever has a strong elongated hook bolted near its bottom end. The hook fits over the crossbar of the steel forging with the clip forks either side of its stem.
	The end of the inserting lever bears against the tail of the clip. When the inserting bar pivots on the elongated hook, the clip is forced under the T-bar of the forging.
So, a heave on the top end of the bar should get it home.
	Actually, no, as Ray (Brown) found out. That clip takes two! So Eric (Jochimsen) lends a hand.
A clip went on incorrectly, so we got out the removal bar ... eeeerrr, yes? When in doubt, consult the destructions, as John (Cheeseman) set out to do.
	This bar needed packing out from the rail head to get the necessary leverage.
Some wooden sleepers were put in under rail joints, so out came the spike hammer.

And the result of the day's trip up the learning curve .... 28 steel sleepers and 5 wooden sleepers.

In future, we won't put in steel and wooden sleepers on the same day.

They require the machines and tools to be in a different order, which slows down the progress.

Oh! And thank you Mr OneSteel!