Question

Explain why wooden or concrete sleepers are kept below the railway line.

Answer 1

Hint :We have to know that Wooden or concrete sleepers are kept below the railway line because the weight of the train is spread over a large area of the sleepers. Therefore, the pressure acting on the ground under the sleepers is reduced. This prevents the shrinking of the ground under the weight of the train. According to the concept of weight. We also know, the wooden sleepers help to increase the area of contact between the train and wooden sleepers and thus because of the large area of contact there would be less pressure and the train would move smoothly.

Complete Step By Step Answer:
We know that Concrete or wooden sleepers are kept below the railway line so that the weight of passing trains is spread over a large area of ground and the track may not sink into the ground.
Therefore the pressure acting on the ground under the sleepers is reduced. This prevents the shrinking of the ground under the weight of the train. So, we can say, Railway tracks are laid on large sized wooden sleepers so that the thrust due to the weight of the train is spread over a large area .This reduces the pressure on the ground which would prevent the yielding of the ground.

Note :
We have to keep in mind that wooden or concrete sleepers are kept below the railway line because the weight of the train is spread over a large area of the sleepers.