Stuart Watson's epic transformation with railway sleepers

We were delighted with the railway sleepers you supplied. Here is our story.
The problem was, we had a horrid sloping garden about 13m by 9m. Our little 2 year old boy couldn't play since the slope was dangerous and an old brick retaining wall was in danger of collapsing. Sarah & I gained inspiration from looking at your website & drew up our plans. I couldn't build a brick wall, without the appropriate skills, but I knew I could build a railway sleeper wall.

The digger and skip loading dumper were rented and 120 tons of unwanted clay were removed from the site. I must add a note of caution here, since when the (Volvo skip loading dumper) bucket was raised on slightly sloping ground near the "drop zone - (front garden) the skip loading dumper fell over, trapping my foot underneath. These things can be dangerous and the fright really shook me up! It took an hour with the digger and a heavy chain to lift it upright again!

It took six 20 ton grab lorry loads to remove the waste soil/clay. As you can see from the photos, it rained solidly for weeks during this phase and each bucket load of clay had to be scraped out by hand with a shovel. This bumped up the cost because days were wasted and the digger / dumper rental doubled. The railway sleepers turned up exactly to the agreed. Initial progress was slow, but eventually the back wall was installed with approx four feet of railway sleeper cemented in a mix of concrete and brocken bricks.

The front wall was supporting tons of clay and needed to be extra secure. Several vertical railway sleepers were carefully installed and braced against each other. They were slowly aligned and were bolted horizontally to the front faces. The Timberlock screws (expensive but far better than cheap, imitation third party copies!) were inserted from behind so no screw heads could be seen from the front face.

Later the deck was installed and the project was finished off. I knew I wanted the deck to be flush with the lawn, giving a usable flat surface. The Rolawn Medallion turf was edged with Terracotta red bricks to keep the damp away from the deck.

Overall, the project cost three times the original estimate. I took five months working every spare minute, evening and weekend.
We particlarly like the feeling of integrity that the railway sleepers give. It looks even better when it rains and the grain in the railway sleepers shows through!

We are pleased with the outcome and received some favourable comments at our recent Christening of our little boy when the weather was fine and 40 people / children enjoyed the garden.
Stuart Watson

RAILWAY SLEEPERS USED:
New Pine railway sleepers
2400mm x 250mm x 125mm

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