china keeps building, page-9

I doubt the Chinese would use timber sleepers, more likely concrete or steel sleepers would be their product of choice.

Assuming they use pre-tensioned concrete sleepers, the dimensions are likely to be 16 cm. x 26 cm. x 2.6 m for a 1.46m standard rail gauge.

1,864 sleepers would be required for ea 1 km of rail line, or 66 million sleepers for the 35,398 km of proposed track. Each sleeper would require a minimum of 5 lengths of 3mm x 3-ply stranded High Tensile Steel wire.

All up, 858,000 km of 3mm x 3-ply stranded wire would be required - that's equivalent to 21 times the circumference of earth, or more than a round trip to the moon. You ask the Chinese - they're planning on going to the moon in 2010.