anchoring vertical railway sleepers

Meclor

I wonder if someone could advise me on the a good approach to securing railway sleepers in vertical sections for a retaining wall.

Similar to what can be seen in the photos below.

Essentially my garden is dug down 6ft into solid rock (slate), so I'll be building the sleeper wall about 3/4ft out from the rock so I can have a raised bed going around the edges of the garden.

The average wall height will be approx 2ft, going up to 3ft in places just to add some decorative curves.

so the wall will be holding back approx 4ft depth and 2ft height of soil at any point.

Now, as my garden was excavated from slate, I only have about 3-4inches of soil into which I can dig the sleepers until I reach rock again.
So Im wondering if anyone has some advice on how to secure the vertical sections to hold back the amount of soil, given that I only have 3-4 inches to dig into too.

Can I cement them in or use some other combination of secure footing and battening.


photo 1

photo 2

Eurorunner

For the shorter sections in photo 1 - you could drill hole in bottom, drive a length of rebar into the ground and insert sleeper into rebar.

For the longer sections as shown in photo 2, i'm not as sure. Maybe a combination of that plus horizontal fixings also?

Meclor

thanks for the reply, I was also considering driving rebar into the rock below and fixing the vertical section down onto them, however I've worked out I'll probably have about 80 vertical sections, this translates into a huge amount of drilling rock, drilling sleepers and lots of rebar cutting.

If I used a form of heavy duty bracket the attach every 5th/6th vertical section to the rock below and then used a batton to secure the inbetween sections would that work, along is the bases being cemented in a 2-3 inches.

time lord

If you have a number of the sleepers in a curve I would strap the outer parimeter with expanded metal contineouus of course. Once or twice about 18 inches from the bottom. The sleepers will have to be buried about two feet +.

When standing dry in their trench I would fill in around them with 4inch down. Then I would pour a sand and cement mix generously into the run of the 4inch down front and back.

This is a real "farmers" method but i've used it on similar jobs and no call backs.

Meclor

thanks timelord

GreeBo

Meclor wrote: »

thanks for the reply, I was also considering driving rebar into the rock below and fixing the vertical section down onto them, however I've worked out I'll probably have about 80 vertical sections, this translates into a huge amount of drilling rock, drilling sleepers and lots of rebar cutting.

If I used a form of heavy duty bracket the attach every 5th/6th vertical section to the rock below and then used a batton to secure the inbetween sections would that work, along is the bases being cemented in a 2-3 inches.

2-3 inches is going to hold anything, those long ones especially could have a terrific force on them if someone was to lean against them for example.
If I was going to do this I would want them to be rock solid as if you do it half-arsed it will be more than twice as hard to fix.

Id dig a trench at least 2 feet, fill with 4-6 inches of gravel and then cement them in place. Id also have the trench at least 2 feet wide and wider on the bottom than the top, the wider the footing the less likely they are to shift, especially if you are not going deep (my concrete fence posts are down 3 feet for example as the area is windy and they can be taking a beating some days)

If you fill them in groups of say 5 or more then you shouldnt need to strap them as they will be holding each other.

Methinks its a job requiring some small plant rental and 3 day weekend