Author : Sulejman Meta Ibrahim Cunaku and Shinasi Zendeli

All the railway tracks on the territory of Kosovo and Macedonia were in general built five-six and more decades ago, and wooden sleepers were built as a supporting part of the rails. With the breakup of Yugoslavia, there were divisions of companies that maintained the tracks on the whole territory of the former state. In the new circumstances, new territorial companies have been established that were administered based on different principles of organization and work. The occurred changes led to breakdown in communication, in particular with respect to railway transport. The inherited track installations have been poorly maintained and reconstructed which led to almost complete depreciation, especially of wooden sleepers, which were largely destroyed. The paper presents the results of the research on determining the quality of wooden sleepers on the territory of Kosovo and North-West Macedonia. The results obtained with the research conducted on six locations indicate that there is a decrease in quality of the sleepers depending on the location and the year of production. The greatest decrease in quality was noted on the Skopje-Tetovo section 49%, then Tetovo-Gostivar 38%, Skopje- Kačanik 32%, Gostivar-Kičevo 28%, Kačanik-Uroševac 26%,, and the lowest on the Uroševac-Kosovo Polje section 22%. At the end of the paper, recommendations are provided on how to improve the situation.

Keywords: Wooden thresholds, wood durability, quality thresholds

Article published in International Journal of Current Engineering and Technology, Vol.7, No.5 (Sept/Oct 2017)