Rail Lengths
Rails should be made as long as possible since joints between raillengths are a source of weakness. As manufacturing processes have improved, raillengths have increased. Long rails flex like snakes and there is no problem going around curves.
- (In order of date then length)
- 1830 15 feet (4.6 m) Liverpool and Manchester Railway
- 1850 39 feet (11.9 m) (to suit 40-foot or 12.2-metre gondola wagons)
- 1950 60 feet (18.3 m) (four times 15ft and two time 30ft)
- 2010 853 feet (260 m) Bhilai Steel Plant
Welding of rails into longer lengths was first introduced around 1893.
- 1895 Hans Goldschmidt
- 1935 Charles Cadwell, non-ferrous Thermit welding
Read more about this topic: Rail Profile
Famous quotes containing the words rail and/or lengths:
“If goodness were only a theory, it were a pity it should be lost to the world. There are a number of things, the idea of which is a clear gain to the mind. Let people, for instance, rail at friendship, genius, freedom, as long as they will—the very names of these despised qualities are better than anything else that could be substituted for them, and embalm even the most envenomed satire against them.”
—William Hazlitt (1778–1830)
“There seems to be no lengths to which humorless people will not go to analyze humor. It seems to worry them.”
—Robert Benchley (1889–1945)