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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. All modern rails are hot rolled steel with a cross section (profile) approximate to an I-beam, but asymmetric about a horizontal axis (however see grooved rail below).
Cast iron rails, 4 feet (1.2 m) long, began to be used in the 1790s and by 1820, 15-foot-long (4.6 m) wrought iron rails were in use. The first steel rails were made in 1857 and standard rail lengths increased over time from 30 to 60 feet (9.1–18.3 m). Rails were typically specified by units of weight per linear length and these also increased.
Europe. Australia. A railway track (British English and UIC terminology) or railroad track (American English), also known as a train track or permanent way (often " perway " [1] in Australia), is the structure on a railway or railroad consisting of the rails, fasteners, railroad ties (sleepers, British English) and ballast (or slab track), plus ...
The introduction of the Bessemer process, enabling steel to be made inexpensively, led to the era of great expansion of railways that began in the late 1860s. Steel rails lasted several times longer than iron. [24] [25] [26] Steel rails made heavier locomotives possible, allowing for longer trains and improving the productivity of railroads. [27]
Steel rails began to replace iron later in the 19th century. Several railroads imported steel rails from England in the 1860s, and the first commercially available steel rails in the U.S. were manufactured in 1867 at the Cambria Iron Works in Johnstown, Pennsylvania. By the mid-1880s U.S. railroads were using more steel rails than iron in ...
t. e. In rail transport, track gauge is the distance between the two rails of a railway track. All vehicles on a rail network must have wheelsets that are compatible with the track gauge. Since many different track gauges exist worldwide, gauge differences often present a barrier to wider operation on railway networks.
Rail transport. Rail transport (also known as train transport) is a means of transport using wheeled vehicles running in tracks, which usually consist of two parallel steel rails. [1] Rail transport is one of the two primary means of land transport, next to road transport. It is used for about 8% of passenger and freight transport globally, [2 ...
A fishplate joins two lengths of track. A fishplate, splice bar or joint bar is a metal connecting plate used to bolt the ends of two rails into a continuous track. The name is derived from fish, [1] a wooden reinforcement of a "built-up" ship's mast that helped round out its desired profile. [2] The top and bottom faces taper inwards along ...