Railway Plantations and Railway Sleepers in South Africa, 1910–1937

SYNOPSIS

Plantations owned by the South African Railways in the period 1910–1937 were not an important source of timber for railway sleepers. The plantations yielded wood for other railway uses as well as for use in the mines and in box manufacture, for example. Sleeper timber was largely imported, supplemented by purchases of mostly yellow-wood from the Knysna woodcutters. The railway plantations were run at a continual financial loss and all but four of the fifteen were sold in 1937. Their life would have been limited in any event by the rapid adoption of steel sleepers from the early 1920s.

Keywords:

• railways
• plantations
• sleepers