Allotments 4 All
Allotment Stuff => The Basics => Topic started by: vixter on October 31, 2003, 20:38:49
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Helo there
Can anyone point me in th eright direction to get hold of some railway sleeps for cash or bartering?
I am about to start a new allotment in Oxfordshire and want to create raised beds.
My poor loondon allotment is/was besieged by everything going so I hope some raised beds will put a few of the old bugs off.
Bar knocking on Network Rail's door - anyone got any suggestions?
Ta muchly
Vixter
:D
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Hi Vixter.Try GardenCentres, local D.I.Y. centres not the biggies,etc. I have seen them round about here but that's not much use to you.
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They may well be no longer available as the old ones are soaked in Creosote which is now banned as carcinogenic, New sleepers are often advertised in local newspapers and free press thingies. Another suggestion is to use old scaffolding boards, thinner and cheaper and easier to cut to size, again local rag or such like.
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HONESTLY!! - as if we were going to sit there sniffing them!!
Our 6 X metre square bins are now 45 years old - and good for another 20!! - Tim
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We bought our sleepers from a reclamation yard - before they were banned. A tenner each and they were the hardwood ones - took hours and hours and hours to saw throught them! Blisters - never seen blisters like it after sawing for hours and hours and hours and hours...........
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Never buy if you can skank - find a local scaff company and ask the yard man very sweetly (being a girl helps here I'm afraid) if they have any boards they are scrapping. Also scaff companies often have to cut boards to fit jobs and they often scrap the smaller bits - which may not be any good for long beds, but great for short edges, even little paving blocks - worth trying a builder's yard, building sites etc etc. I reiterate, being a girl, and not using the right terms for things and sounding a bit sweet and enthusiastic goes down a treat - sad but true.
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I have just bought 84 feet of 4 inch half round pressure treated logs for £23 10 at our local Farm Garden and Pet Supermarket. Cheaper than sleepers and scaffolding boards (except freebies of course). Easy to cut and easy to make into 8 inch or 12 inch high raised beds
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Hi Vixter, (fellow Oxfordshire alllotment holder). I have also being considering sleepers for use in raised beds, and have found a few places in the north of the county that sells them.
These include Blenheim Sawmill, near Woodstock, and CountryWide Store Near Chipping Norton. They are however fairly expensive at £17 a go at each of these places.
I also looked on the web and found www.railwaysleeper.com which has a large range, but again they are expensive.
I hope this helps and do let me know if you find any local places for getting cheap sleepers or equivalent material for raised beds. Regards, Thomas.
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Personally I've always thought that raised beds give slugs etc a nice place to hide. My plot is completely open plan (apart from my greenhouse of course)
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Thanks a million to you all for your help. on this one.
I am a Newbie to this forum but it is very welcoming.
Will let you know how I get on.
Also Thomas ( Fellow Ox-Lottie) I will give you a shout if I find any on the cheap.
cheers
Vixter
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Hi vixter, my bro-in-law works on the railways do you want me to ask him for sleepers? the only trouble is i live in the north-east :-/ and transport might be a problem. Sorry
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Hi all
The only raised bed made with sleepers I've ever worked was INFESTED by slugs; hard to grow anything at all. The sleepers were "mature" - and real five star slug hotels.
There was the biggest toad resident I've seen - permanently resident in the bed; so obese, it probably couldn't move. Mind you it didn't need to - it just sat there, getting ever fatter, on the "passing traffic".
All best - Gavin
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Hi I've just had a look at The Railway sleeper site. There are some salt treated ones which it says slug don't like and recommends them for raised beds. But wouldn't the salt get into the soil? Isn't that bad?
Super green novice
Sarah
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I too have recently taken over an allotment and the advice I was given in another message board was to use the turfs stripped off the “pasture” (the allotments have not been used for years) and build sides to the plot out of the turfs.
In our case the allotment is 12 foot by 70 foot with the top being 6 – 7 foot higher than the bottom so I shall be constructing a series of steps about four foot long and the full width of the allotment wide.
But enough about me, railway sleepers are about ten inches wide, so your plots will have a wall thickness of nearly two feet if you use these, that is the width needed for a row of carrots!
If you know a hunky engineer type chap, here is what you do. Place paving slabs 2 footers or 18” vertical into the soil, you can adjust the height to what you like by sinking the slabs in the ground and then construct a frame of angle iron (11/2 “- 2” is best) where the angle lays on top and down the outer wall, welded at the corners to retain the top of the slabs from spreading outwards under the weight of soil within. It looks something like an M.F.I. Sarcophagus, but you will have an extra row of carrots over the sleeper people.
The idea works, I have these in my garden! When the top of the soil is two feet up, what need is there to bend when sowing or weeding? If you wish you can cut a piece of scaffolding board to just sit on top of adjoining plots and sit there weeding watching the others bending their backs. Collecting the last runner beans can be a bit of a climb but I have a solution to that problem but that is in a later programme. Have fun, Tony.
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Got the train from P'boro to Huntingdon on Friday and as we were zooming through the countryside (ok, the fens) I saw mound upon mound of old railway sleepers....how I could have jumped off the train there and then!!