Staple Bend Tunnel Trail, Stone Sleepers

Stone sleepers along the trail

NPS

These large stones embedded in the ground were actually the railroad ties of the Allegheny Portage Railroad. They were called sleepers and were hand-cut from local sandstone. These sleepers were used on about 31 of the 36 miles of the Portage Railroad. Stone sleepers were not used on the inclines of the Portage because the heavy stone blocks would have shifted out of place on the steep slopes. Each sleeper took about 24 hours of total work to create, from the quarry to being ready to place in the railbed. The workers made over 200,000 sleepers for the railroad. Can you imagine making a 500 pound sleeper with just a hammer and chisel? Hard work indeed! Notice that there are two holes drilled into the top of each sleeper. Wooden plugs were pounded into these holes and then railroad spikes to hold the iron rails had a place to be driven into. Stone sleepers were only used for a short time on early railroads in America. The technology had been copied from Great Britain and American railroad builders quickly determined that it would be much easier and cheaper to use wood for railroad ties instead. Wooden ties would not be permanent like ones made of stone, but they would be cheap and easy to replace and also created a more stable railroad because the two rails of each track were actually connected together and could not spread apart like rails laid on individual sleepers.