Outdoor lighting on railway sleepers

[mccp]

We have a wall made from railway sleepers, alongside a gravel drive. We want to install mains fed LED bollard lights on top of the sleepers and I'm trying to figure out the best looking solution and I'd appreciate any helpful advice.

The sleepers are 6" high x 9" deep and the wall is two sleepers high, about 30 m long. Each bottom sleeper is anchored with two, 2 foot spikes into the hardcore base of the drive and the top sleepers are screwed on. It's at least as sturdy as an equivalent size brick wall - some idiot drove into it shortly after it was built and wedged the car on top of the wall. The bottom sleeper didn't move and the top one only moved an inch.

There will be 6 lights, each 9w.

One suggestion was to use 1.5mm SWA fixed with cleats to the side of the sleepers, terminated into galvanised 20mm conduit boxes at each lighting position (6A MCB and 30 mA RCD from a nearby DB). The back of the boxes then drilled to take a flex gland, with a corresponding clearance hole drilled into the sleeper with flex feeding the light. I guess we could do the same with steel conduit instead of SWA. Burying the SWA is going to be difficult without digging up the drive and we still need a neat way to terminate and feed the lights.

Any advice or alternatives?

 

[bernardgreen]

If these are re-claimed sleepers that were actually on the track then aware that they will be impregnated with wood preserver and this might affect plastics used in flex.

If one side retains bare earth then the cable could be attached to that side. If the screws are still removable then lift the top sleeper and chase out a slot and in the top of the bottom sleeper

 

[mccp]

Good point about using oil/solvent resistant flex. Lifting the top sleeper is going to be hard work - it would have been a good idea to chase a slot for the cable when we laid them a year ago though. There is no soil on either side, it's a drive one side and a path on the other.

I'm now thinking that galv conduit boxes filled with sealing gel will be the answer.

 

[Echo the husky]

The last time I did this the bollard lights had enough room to house a y conduit box and be able to terminate 2 1.5mm swa cables. I used a powerful angle drill and long auger bits to drill down at enough of an angle to get the cables out the bottom of the side of the sleeper wall. It's far easier to keep water out of connections above ground than below, the non exposed side of the wall hadn't been filled with soil yet so I had access to run the cables. If both your sides are exposed it would be possible to fix the cables along with cleats as you mention. Galvanised conduit can look neater than armoured cable, but it is a bit more conspicuous. Mineral cable would be the smallest and most discreet for surface wiring, and the cables should easily fit into the lights, doing away with conduit boxes at each position.