How to build railway sleeper steps up a steep bank, from setting out the rise and run to the final decorative chippings.
The short answer is that good sleeper steps are mostly groundwork. Get the overall rise and run measured properly, bed every box on a weak concrete mix, pin it with rebar, then build up a compacted sub base in thin layers. Do that and the steps stay level for years.
The bank on this job was a struggle for the client to climb, so Sam set out a full flight of sleeper steps to make it easy. Each step is a U-shaped box made from spruce railway sleepers ripped down to 177mm, cut into 1200mm fronts with 600mm side pieces. From there it is excavation, levelling, bedding, pinning, membrane, sub base and fill, one step at a time up the slope.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
– Set a peg at the top landing point and use a long straight edge and level down to the ground, so you have an accurate overall run and rise before you work out how many steps you need and how deep they will be.
– Build each step as a U-shaped box from sleepers, with a 1200mm front and 600mm returns, so it can be positioned, levelled and fixed as a single unit.
– Bed every box on a weak concrete mix at roughly 10 parts ballast to 1 part cement, which gives a stable base while keeping a degree of flexibility that suits landscaping work.
– Check every sleeper for level before moving on, because small errors early in the build become far more obvious as the flight goes up the slope.
– Use timber screws and rebar pins together, the screws for the structural connection between sleepers and the pins to anchor the steps into the ground and resist movement.
– Wrap the construction in a woven geotextile membrane so weeds are held back but rainwater still drains freely through the structure.
– Add MOT type 1 in 50mm layers and compact each one before adding the next, building up to about 150mm, which greatly reduces the risk of settlement later.
– Treat the timber before it goes in, including the buried ends with bitumen paint, because those are the parts sitting in ground moisture and they decide how long the whole job lasts.
WATCH NEXT
00:00 Setting out the rise and run
01:33 Cutting and building the sleeper boxes
02:17 Excavating the steps
03:13 Bedding onto a weak concrete mix
03:49 Rebar pins
04:48 Timber screws, countersinking and dowels
06:15 Setting each step in place
07:06 Geotextile membrane
08:33 MOT type 1 in compacted layers
09:01 Protecting the timber
09:37 Filling the steps with chippings
10:02 The retaining wall that got added later
12:45 The finished flight
Would you have gone with a retaining wall from the start, or waited to see if the bank moved? Let us know in the comments, and tell us what you would like to see us build next.
#railwaysleepers #gardensteps #landscaping #SkillBuilder
