How much do you know steel rail weight and length

Steel Rail Track Weight:

Due to the heavy transportation, axle load on rail increase and higher speeder, steel rails of 60kg/m, 65kg/m, 70kg/m and 75kg/m are adopted by many more countries. According to introduction of German railway, in rail track sections of small diameter, heavy axle load and transportation weight exceed 80000 tons per day, steel rail work life is very short, even for strength level of 883 Mpa steel rail. So heavy rail or steel rails of larger strength shall be used to solve this problem.

In western countries, transportation load 250 million tons/km, axle load 22-23ton, France-Paris, high speed railway speed is 200 km/h, America- New york to Washington railway speed is160km/h, Tokyo to Osaka 250km/h, Russia transportation load is 1.7 billion tons/km, speed is 100-200 km/h, all these railway lines has adopted steel rails of 60kg/m, 65kg/m, 70kg/m and 75kg/m, according to railway record, use 65 kg/m instead of 56 kg/m could save maintenance fee by almost 16.8%, which means 1kg/m saves about 1.8% of maintenance fee, for heavier axle load will increase more weight on rail sections, so use steel rails of larger section size will increase its work life and insure railway line safety. Also larger axle load and higher speed requires higher abrasion resistance and strength. Larger section size steel rails contains higher carbon content to increase its abrasion resistance. So Larger steel rail section is the trend and future.

Steel Rail Length Change:

The length of steel rails has been increasing year by year, according to rail standards of western countries, Germany standard steel rail is 30m, British is 18.3m, Japan is 25m, Russia is 25m, only America and Canada is 11.9m, but steel mills has been supplying steel rails of 25m,  and its standard changed to 25m later.

One steel mill in Japan is capable of manufacturing steel rails of 50m, while it claimed to be able to produce 100 m steel rail. Manufacturing long steel rails is limited by many factors: span of factory house, cooling zone length, crane lifting ability, etc. Application of long steel rails could bring following advantages: less rail joints, less maintenance work, reduce compact to steel wheels, less welding joint on seamless railway lines. In America and Canada 75% of railway lines are welded, and welding technology has developed now, steel rails can be welded to any length with high welding quality.