A number of composite railway sleeper technologies have been developed but their applications in rail
tracks are still limited. This paper rigorously reviews the recent developments on composite sleepers
and identifies the critical barriers to their widespread acceptance and applications. Currently the composite
sleeper technologies that are available ranges from sleepers made with recycle plastic materials which
contains short or no fibre to the sleepers that containing high volume of fibres. While recycled plastic
sleepers are low cost, the major challenges of using this type of sleepers are their limited strength, stiffness
and dynamic properties which in most cases, are incompatible with those of timber. On the other
hand, the prohibitive cost of high fibre containing sleepers limit their widespread application.
Moreover, limited knowledge on the historical long-term performance of these new and alternative
materials restricts their application. Potential design approaches for overcoming the challenges in the
utilisation and acceptance of composite sleeper technologies are also presented in this paper.