In this era where professionals talk about "lying flat" every day, we actually have a deep misunderstanding of this word. True lying flat is not about lying flat with both hands spread out on the spot, but rather a strong sense of confidence that 'I will stand firm in the wind of the east, west, north, and south'. When it comes to the founder of this philosophy, the oil immersed sleepers next to the railway are definitely top-notch.
Don't look at them now lying on the ballast with a dusty face, looking indifferent to the world. Before officially starting work, these sleepers, mainly made of pine wood, underwent a "perverted" onboarding training.
Pine wood is like a fresh graduate in the wood industry. It grows fast, has a high cost performance ratio, and is full of enthusiasm for work, but its fatal weakness is that it is too "fresh and tender". If you dig it up and nail it onto the railway, within a few months, wind and sun can make it crack, and insects and mold in the ground will treat it as a free outdoor buffet. It is obviously unrealistic to let such a "novice" bear the heavy responsibility of crushing hundreds of tons of trains day and night.
In order to prepare these new pine wood workers for the "lying flat" position, the anti-corrosion treatment factory has arranged an extremely rigorous closed training program for them. The entire training process is not complicated, it's just about taking a sauna or medicinal bath in a few large sealed jars, but all the tricks inside are on the heat.
The cut wooden sleepers will be uniformly packed into a huge anti-corrosion tank. Under strong pressure, high-temperature anti-corrosion oil is forcefully pressed into the body of pine wood. This is not the superficial formalism of brushing a layer of paint, but a real 'soul injection'. In this pressurized oil immersion process, the oil will drill all the way through the evacuated cell pipelines, and the immersion depth often reaches 13mm or more. What is the concept of 13mm? For a sleeper, this is equivalent to putting on a tight fitting protective armor from the inside out.
After this turmoil, the originally white and pure pine wood, emitting a pine resin fragrance, completely changed its appearance. They have absorbed enough oil, their colors have become darker, and their bodies have become harder and heavier. From the moment they stepped out of the jar, they were no longer fragile wood, but workplace veterans officially renamed as "oil immersed sleepers".
With this "defense suit" of 13mm or more, they finally qualify to achieve their "lying flat" ideal on the railway.
The environment along the railway can be described as' extremely harsh 'in four words. In summer, one must endure the scorching sun and the surface temperature can cook eggs; In winter, one has to bear the cold wind and ice and snow; On rainy days, the accumulated water in the ballast is like a mixture of water and fire. Not to mention columns of steel giants weighing tens of tons, crazily rubbing against them at speeds of over 100 kilometers per hour.
If it were ordinary wood, it would have collapsed and cracked in this high-pressure environment long ago. But oil immersed sleepers are not afraid. Those oils that penetrate deep into the interior isolate moisture and air, making it difficult for insects to bite and fungi to find a breeding ground. Even if the surface wood fibers are slightly fuzzy due to wind and sun exposure, the interior below 13mm is still as strong as before. They lay firmly on the gravel bed, absorbing the vibrations brought by the train with great resilience, holding up two steel rails extending into the distance without saying a word.
The sound of the wheels rolling over the seams and roaring loudly is not only the noise of steel, but also the glory of the times. In this long and intense vibration, the oil immersed sleepers didn't make a single extra sound. They sank so black into the gravel, digesting all the heavy pressure into the silence below 13 millimeters.
The most advanced form of lying flat in the world is probably like this: without speaking out, without taking credit, even the sense of existence is weakened into a black background. But as long as the railway tracks continue to extend forward, you have to admit that this seemingly greasy shell supports everything.
