What kind of steel are the rails made from?

Trains Magazine General Discussion
1

What kind of steel is used to make the rails?

I have a chance to legally obtain some, from an abandoned right of way that the local city condemned and then tore up for a hike and bike trail.

2

Judging from your picture on your avatar, you shouldn’t have to worry about an iron deficiency if you have that rail for a snack. As to the presence of other essential minerals, I’ll let an expert tell us.

3

Depends on the age of the rail. A light section rolled in the 1970s will be something like this:

  1. 0.67-0.80% Carbon
  2. 0.70-1.00% Manganese
  3. 0.035% Phosphorus
  4. 0.040% Sulfur
  5. 0.10%-0.35% Silicon

It would have a yield strength of about 70 kips. It’s much tougher than ordinary mild steel and not as brittle as high-strength steel.

RWM

4

Sounds just right to melt down and recast as an anvil. [:)]

Thanks! [bow]

5

See also the article on “Rail” in the “Railroad Reference - ABCs of Railroading” section here at:

http://www.trains.com/trn/default.aspx?c=a&id=235

Note that the metallurgy of your rail may well be different from any of that listed above or in that article - depends on when and where the rail was cast and rolled, the state of the art in that mill then, and the specifications of the purchasing railroad at that time, etc. - note the fairly wide ranges and tolerances for some of those elements. All of those may be different from today’s or even the 1970s specifications esp. if the rail is from early in the 20th century, as is much rail from abandoned lines.

Further, I recommend that you think twice about not melting it down and recasting it as an anvil - if you’re actually serious about that - for several reasons:

  1. It’ll take an awful lot of heat (energy) - unless you’ve got access to a foundry or equivalent, and are experienced with such processes ? Temperatures will have to be somewhere in the 1500+degree Fahrenheit range, and containing and handling that safely is not for amateurs. As just one example, if your mold has the least bit of moisture in it, that will flash to steam and explode molten steel out of it;

  2. Metallurgically, unless you’re careful the anvil may well end up being pretty brittle or have other included defects. Rail steel used to be control cooled to eliminate bad gasses (hydrogen) - now vacuum de-gassed - and annealed to temper it for better impact resistance. Are you going to do that with your anvil ? You’ll also need to control the carbon content to keep it from reverting back to being just iron a

6

Interesting, I see I need to do some further exploring.

I have been doing small scale foundry, as a hobby since the mid 80’s ( when I learned it in high school ), so it’s nothing new.

Understood.

[quote]

  1. Practically - short pieces of rail make a better anvil “as is”, esp. if you can get the ends with the bolt holes still in. I have several pieces of various 130-lb. (per yard) weight type rails like that, which range in length from about 1 ft. to 3 ft.
7

Geez, you really are serious about this !

Well, it looks like you know what you’re about. Good luck with it - let us know how it turns out. But I’d still recommend that you save a few of the end pieces - they’re just so darned useful. (And I need to “get a life”, too, I suppose . . . [swg] )

  • PDN.
8

It will be my first big cast, and I need to build a furnace, big enough for a single pour - I may try a few 50 lb castings first to get the feel for it.

9

Hows this for a response… A relly hard meatal…[:D]

10

Another urban myth starting out there? Cities can’t condemn.(The STB would love to hear that one.)

11

shrug -

Right of Eminent Domain to obtain the right of way, and the term used is " condemnation " when that proceeding occures.

12

Why bother to melt it ? Just have a piece of rail cut to size. Voila , an anvil !

My neighbor was a blacksmith and he had an anvil cut from rail.

13

So far, the largest piece I have recovered, has a face of about 8 sqr inches - fine for small work, but I need a larger face for dishing as well as the flat work.

14

I am looking through my copy of The Making Shaping And Treating Of Steel, which is the definitive treatise on steel… The chapter on rails is quit complete and complex. There are may types of steel, based upon their chemical makeup (the chart shows 16 different chemical compositions). The best answer I can give you is Brinell Hardness of steel rail varies from 248 (Standard Hardness) to 388 (High Strength Rail). If you have any specific questions please email me and I will be gald to answer then.

15

unless that is a backtrack with zero shippers (which would be a PUC issue), not true. Adverse abandonment, not condemnation - ask the knotheads in Creede.

16

Probably was - IIRC, I have been in the area since 88’ and the only thing that RoW was used for, was to deliver the occasional load of lumber to a lumber store, and when the lumber store went out of business, furniture to the furniture store that replaced it. After the furniture store moved a couple of yrs later, exempt signs quickly appeared on the signals and as street repairs were made they just riped out the track at the crossings. Trees have since grown up through the track, ever since and in a few places have actually displaced track.

Several months ago I was taking the road that parallels the RoW, and found that the city was pulling sections out, put a pedestrian underpass under one of the larger streets that crossed it right where the crossing used to be and paved a walkway over 2-3 miles of it. It was then that I made inquiries of the work crew, that the city had exorcised ED on it.

I wasn’t surprised, they have done things like that before, on track that no longer had any function. County did something like that with a 15-20 mile stretch that terminated in a housing development on both ends, where the RR had sold it’s rights to developers in those areas , but left the track and roadbed, in between.

17

If you find a piece big enough to make an anvil out of without melting and casting it is definitely worth it! I have made a few anvils out of rail, When I get down to the Ranch this weekend I will take photos of it to show you how I did it.

18

Yes - what RJ said.

A 1-ft. long piece of 141 RE section (heaviest/ largest T-rail now rolled at 141 lbs. per yard - might be able to find some in Colorado) will weight 47 lbs. if unworn (not likely). At $200 per short (2,000 lb.) ton for scrap steel = 10 cents per lb., so it’s worth about $5 max. as scrap (which is usually per gross (2,240 lbs.) ton). For new prices of $800 to $1,000 per short ton, that 1-ft. piece would be $20 to $25. Compared to the cost of you building a mold and supplying enough energy to heat enough steel to pour an anvil - this looks like a bargain ! Maybe some of the other Forum contributors out that way can direct you to a scrapyard or other business that is likely to have such pieces of rail - or, for an equivalent amount (including as a “gift” or gratuity), maybe some track crew that’s doing rail or crossing replacement work could leave you an otherwise clearly unusable piece . . . Good luck with it !

  • Paul North.
19

Thanks.

I’m still going to keep the idea in mind, I have already built a burner than can heat the furnace on waste oil and waste vegetable oil - so the energy to melt the metal is going to be low cost ( practically the expense of collecting it ).

I enjoy doing the foundry work - having the ability and power to melt metal and then manipulate it, into a form that you want is exciting, almost as much fun and shooting the main gun on a M1 Abrams [:-,]

I know a guy from another forum that is melting steel and iron to make a 1/8 scale Big Boy ( live steam ), and he’s giving me some real solid help.

20

Gotta admire your ambition and techniques. Sounds like you’re as much of an artist and blacksmith/ craftsman as a hobbyist.

You know, during Chinese Premier Mao Tse Tung’s [sp?] late 1960s “Great Leap Forward” economic and social plan and program, the peasants were encouraged to - and many did - build backyard iron foundries to smelt iron ore into pig iron for further processing by the big factories. Are you related to any of that ? [;)]

And, with the shaped-charge rounds, what the main gun on an M1 Abrams does is actually melt metal and manipulate it - not too much control over the form, though, other than “big rough-edged hole in thick steel plate”. (The hole usually looks like it was blown through the plate with a giant cutting torch.) The holes from the depleted uranium sabot rounds are a lot more like “punch-throughs”, if memory serves.

A Big Boy at 1/8 size = 1-1/2" per ft. ? The UP’s turntables were 135 ft. long to accomodate their wheelbase with a few inches to spare, so that would be . . . 17 to 18 ft. long ! Weight of the orignial was around 1 million lbs. IIRC, so that model would be . . . divided by scale factor = 8, cubed . . . around 2,000 lbs. That’ll compress the springs ! (Actually, I thought it would be a lot more.)

Good luck to you, anyhow !

  • Paul North.