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An improvement over fishplate rail connectors is directly bonding rails together using thermite or flash butt welding. In 1967, the Hither Green rail crash occurred on the Southern Region of British Railways when a rail fractured at its fishplate joint. The crash accelerated welded rail connections, with strict procedures on concrete and wooden ...
A rail fastening system is a means of fixing rails to railroad ties (North America) or sleepers (British Isles, Australasia, and Africa). The terms rail anchors, tie plates, chairs and track fasteners are used to refer to parts or all of a rail fastening system. The components of a rail fastening system may also be known collectively as other ...
A railroad tie, crosstie (American English), railway tie (Canadian English) or railway sleeper (Australian and British English) is a rectangular support for the rails in railroad tracks. Usually laid perpendicular to the rails, ties transfer loads to the track ballast and subgrade, hold the rails upright and keep them spaced to the correct gauge.
Contents. Railway coupling. For other uses, see Coupling (disambiguation). A coupling or coupler is a mechanism, typically located at each end of a rail vehicle, that connects them together to form a train. The equipment that connects the couplers to the vehicles is the draft gear or draw gear, which must absorb the stresses of the coupling and ...
Major Eli Janney, a Confederate veteran of the American Civil War, invented the semi-automatic knuckle coupler in 1868. It automatically locks the couplers on cars or locomotives together without a rail worker having to get between the cars, and replaced the link and pin coupler, which was a major cause of railroad worker injuries and deaths.
Cross-sections of present-day flat-bottomed rail and (no longer installed) bullhead rail. Early rails in US. Section of the Translohr guidance rail (during the Clermont-Ferrand installation in 2006) The rail profile is the cross sectional shape of a railway rail, perpendicular to its length. Early rails were made of wood, cast iron or wrought iron.
The railway track or permanent way is the elements of railway lines: generally the pairs of rails typically laid on the sleepers or ties embedded in ballast, intended to carry the ordinary trains of a railway. It is described as a permanent way because, in the earlier days of railway construction, contractors often laid a temporary track to ...
A rail repair dutchman is typically a 4–6-inch (100–150 mm) long piece of rail that is cut in advance for the purpose and carried by a section crew. If the gang finds a rail with a chipped or broken end, they remove the connector plates (fishplates), cut out the damaged section, replace it with the dutchman, and bolt the connectors back in ...