About a month ago my son and I explored a section of the CSX line (ex B&O) thru Southern Indiana near Tunnelton. There was ribbon rail laid out to be installed. The rail was really rusty, not only on the top of the rail, but on the sides. Much more rusty than the existing rail in place.
Ok, so why is the rail not is use so rusty (on the sides) while the rail in use is not? Does the constant vibration of the rail in use knock the rust off?
ed
Probably not so much the vibration as the flexing under the weight of trains. Also, the rain may be carrying some of the oxidation to flat surfaces and evaporating–you couldn’t see whether there was rust on the underside of the un-installed rail; I doubt that there was.
It doesn’t take long for rust to build up on surfaces exposed to moisture–I’ve seen it happen in the half-hour or so that we weren’t using a particular hump lead.
In addition to vibration from trains, the rail will also expand and contract which will cause some rust to fall off. The top of the rail head (where the action is) will be burnished clean by the wheels of a train. The rail won’t rust through because the corrosion is only on the surface of the base or sides. It would take a lot of time and moisture to damage a rail enough to require it to be replaced. BTW: Is it possible that you saw a rail that had been removed and was going to be recovered later by a rail train?
makes sense…i knew it had something to do with train movements.
ed
I have actually seen a rail rusted through the web. The rail was from the original Houston to Columbia line. The railroad ran out of money and never bridged the Brazos River. After that line went broke, some of the rails were lost in the river during a flood and then recovered about 100 years later.
dd
No, according to a friendly supervisor, the rail had been removed from another mainline and transported to this location for use. The rail had been placed here quite some time ago and had collected considerable rust. Interestingly, the “new” rail was placed between the two rails in place as the adjacent ROW was built up and there was really no place for the rail…it might have rolled down the embankment.
ed
Less grease and grime from passing locomotives and freight cars to inhibit water from reaching the steel.
[:)]
Now, I’m really curious. I always thought that the light brown coating on rails and other steel parts of track in use was a mixture (or maybe even a chemical compound) of rust and the oil, grease, and dust that fly around from the passage of trains, as implied in the post above.
But the second post above says that the new rail is located on the track between the rails in use. I would expect that the new rail should look just like the rail in use after some time. If it does not, then there may be some other factor contributing to the light brown coating.
Bears watching.
[:)] [:)]
The stresses in both the rails and wheels causes miniscule but sufficient relative motion (a.k.a. deflection) between the two surfaces to keep both surfaces shiny. I grew up in Southwest Philly, PA where there were a few trolley lines near my house. I can recall the shiny rails rusting whenever there was a PTC (Philadelphia Transit Company) strike that lasted more than a few days.