... railway bridges that had open sleepers ...

Meaning of "open sleepers"

Hello, I have been reading an article about Jack Churchill and I came across a sentence I do not understand. Article is from: https://www.historic-uk.com/HistoryUK/HistoryofBritain/Fighting-Jack_Churchill/ And the sentence goes like this:

In Burma, he used to cross railway bridges that had open sleepers by stepping onto the sleepers and pushing his bike along the rails.

Does it mean he hopped from one open wagon to another and was steering his bike, which was somehow driving on the tracks at the same time? I thought "sleeper" meant a wagon that people slept it, but open sleepers? I think I have it all wrong because I have no idea how he could have done it.

It has nothing to do with sleeping cars. Railway sleepers are made of wood, steel or concrete and are laid on ballast or rocks for stability. The rails are bolted to them with brackets.

Sometimes they are covered, but in this extract they are open as in the picture.



Jack would step from one sleeper to the next, pushing his bike along one of the rails.

'Sleepers' in this context is a distinctly BrE usage. In AmE those are 'railroad ties', typically just shortened to 'ties'.

It means that there was no decking between the sleepers. This was common on trestle bridges.

Here is a smaller scale example. You can see from the shadow that nothing fills the gap between each sleeper.

@juelka Note that I have changed your thread title. Titles should be unique, relevant only to your thread and include some/all of the phrase/sentence you're asking us to look at. Your actually question or request should appear only in the main body of the post.

I believe @SoothingDave pointed out that in AmE they are not called sleepers but railway ties. I'd be very intrtested to know why his post disappeared. The only thing I can think of is that he himself deleted it, but that would be strange because he was right.

@probus I remember that post

There is no trace of anyone deleting a post in this thread. Skrej mentioned the railway sleepers in post #3