Wooden Sleepers

1.0 In the initial years of inception of Railways world over and for quite some time thereafter, wooden sleeper was the standard sleeper for the Railway Track. Indian Railways also in the beginning depended heavily on the use of wooden sleepers for all portions of Railway Tack. Later, as the need arose and due to environmental considerations it gradually started reducing the use of wooden sleepers and Steel sleepers and Cast Iron sleepers were developed. Lastly, IR found an ideal sleeper for Railway Track in the form of Prestressed Concrete (PSC) sleeper. PSC sleepers were initially developed in the early 70s but its production got stabilized in eighties. PSC sleeper being technically superior, economical and, much better in performance and service life, it has successfully replaced wooden sleeper as well as steel and cast iron sleeper from main line track. Over the years, Indian Railways has developed adequate production capacity for manufacturer of concrete sleepers to meet its annual requirement. At present there are about 75 plants, well spread across the country which have a capacity of producing more than 1 crore sleepers per annum. As a result of this, Indian Railways has been able to reduce its annual requirement of wooden sleepers from 3.5 lakhs cum per annum in the year 1962 to about 20,000 cum per annum at present i.e. about 6%. Presently, use of wooden sleepers is limited to steel girder bridges, and other specified locations like non-standard Turnouts, Diamond crossings and complex lay outs where their use is inevitable due to technical reasons. The use of wooden sleepers at steel girder bridges and at specified locations is a standard well known practice all over the world and all the advanced countries like USA, Italy, Canada, Switzerland, France and Australia use wooden sleepers on steel girder bridges even today.

Indian Railways has been able to eliminate wooden sleepers completely from main line track and has stopped procurement of main line wooden sleepers after 1991-92. Thereafter procurement has been limited to only special sleepers for girder bridges and special layouts.

2.0 Procurement of wooden special sleepers for girder bridges and special/non standard layouts, in the past few years has been as under

Year	Line Sleepers procured (cum)	Special Sleepers (cum.)	Total (cum)
1985-86	1,53,000	24,000	1,77,000
1990-91	12,000	50,000	62,000
1994-95	-	30,000	30,000
1995-96	-	15,600	15,600
1996-97	-	17,000	17,000
1997-98	-	14,194	14,194
1998-99	-	26,110	26,110

(No procurement has been possible after 1998-99 as explained in para 3.0 below)

3.0 While disposing of a Public Interest Litigation application, the hon’ble Supreme Court imposed a complete ban on procurement as well as use of wooden sleepers by Railways in the whole of India in may 1999. Later on pleading by Railways, though the Supreme Court vide its order dated Feb. 21, 2000 allowed the use of wooden sleepers already procured and lying in the Railway Stores, yet further procurement remained banned. Due to this ban, procurement of wooden sleepers has not been possible after 1998-99 and the process of renewal of bridge timbers and wooden layouts under Points and crossings got a setback. To overcome the situation, Railways took the following steps.

(i) Efforts were accelerated to find an alternative sleeper to wooden for such locations and trials for Steel Channel Sleepers, FRP sleepers and Composite Plastic Sleepers for girder bridges were expedited. Similarly, replacement of wooden layouts by concrete sleeper layouts was accelerated.

(ii) Suitable speed restrictions at such location where existing wooden sleepers could not be renewed, were imposed. Over 279 bridges and 110 special layouts are still under slow down speed restrictions from consideration of safety.

(iii) A special application was filed in the Supreme Court to allow Railways to procure and use wooden sleepers to the limited extent of their absolute minimum requirement of 20000 cum per annum for use on girders bridges and non-standard/special layouts for which no other alternative sleepers to wooden was available even on the other world Railway systems.

4.0 The Apex court vide its order dated Feb. 2002, has lately allowed Railways to procure 20000 cum wooden sleepers for girder bridges and special layouts per annum by way of import. Court has also permitted to procure 13472 cum of wooden sleepers from Madhya Pradesh Export Corporation (MPEC), which were lying with the corporation duly manufactured against Railways order at the time of imposing the ban. As per the directions of the Supreme Court, Railways has since taken supply of wooden sleepers form MPEC and distributed between all the Zonal Railways as per their requirement. Railways has also taken action to procure wooden special sleepers and open tender for supply of 40,000 cums of special sleepers, made out of imported logs of Malaysian Balau Species to cover the requirement of two years has since been invited and opened on 25-4-2003 and is under finalisation.

(Madan Lal)

EDTK(M)/Rly. Board