I spent the weekend with a couple of guys who spent most or all of their lives so far working on rail systems. Add to their input the input I have gotten from other sources and I am totally confused. One guy says that railroad rail IS 1075. Another guy says that railroad rail IS 1035, and can't be hardened beyond Rc 45. One guy says that the spikes all have to be pretty soft, or they'd work harden and break. Another guy says the HC spikes are "Hi carbon". He implies that they'd make good knives, up around .60 carbon. Another gu says that the hardest of the spikes can NOT be even 1035, because, in his 45 years, he has seen that the rail base cuts into the spike gvien enough time, not the other way around. That guy also says that: " Any initials you see on spikes are only to identify the maker.
Out of all that, I know nothing.
Could it be that they are all correct? Could it be that different railroad systems use (or used) different materials and that the are no world wide or country wide standards for materials? Or that the standards or materials changed a lot over time?
I understood that they had a manganese content that made the top surface of the rail work harden and wear resistant, but left the underlying steel tough.
Wonderful! So the HC standing for "High Carbon" is just a blacksmithing myth?
Well, I was wondering about some of these things recently as well. And as it happens, I just picked up a foot long section of track at an iron in the hat just for the fun it this past weekend which made me think some about these questions as well
Someone was just asking me about railroad spikes and I told them the HC myth about only the ones marked "HC" were high carbon. Then we got into a discussion about why some spikes would be different. Why wouldn't they all be roughly the same since they developed this technology something like 100 years ago.
One of my "roundtoit" projects is making anvils from railroad rail, despite what the detractors have to say about them.
I have 8 or 10 pieces of track that are cut into anvil sized lengths. So far, I have torched a couple of them to the approx. shape I want and have milled the top face on one and added hardy and pritchel holes. On one, I used the Bernhard Heer design and on the other I used the Wegers design.
Not sure why I am doing this. The older I get, the shorter my attention span, I guess. Can't stay focused on any one thing. Always asking: "I wonder what would happen if ------".
Last summer I did use one of these for a couple of days of demonstrating to the public. Using 1/2" sq. and smaller stock to make stuff, I didn't see much of a problem.
Next thing is to decide whether to grind the horn to shape on the one I milled or to heat and forge the horn. If I forge the horn, I will be able to save more material and have a stronger, larger surface there. I am not interested in adding to it by welding. I probably won't put cutting tables on any of these.
Rail is sized by pounds per yard, I quess.
I have mostly 88 pound rail, I think. Some 112 pound. I wish I could find some of the bigger, modern main line rail, that is up around 120 to
150 pound.
I like to make these things about 20 inches in total length.
Interesting. How do I find out what the piece I got is? Any basic dimensions to use as a guide?
I guess if those are actual weight per yard numbers, I could weigh my piece and calculate the weight per yard.
One of our Guild members has a little rail anvil he made as his first anvil. He welded a plate on top of it to create the face - which also creates the natural step down to the horn to emulate the cutting table feature. It was a stupid looking little thing in my eyes, but it worked for what it was.
Size wise it would no doubt be good for a little portable demo anvil. But I would be embarrassed to use it in public! :)
I've talked with some people about the idea of using a small anvil on the forge near the fire when trying to forge weld small stock (like 1/8" rod). The idea is to minimize the time from pulling it out of the fire until you hit it. Using rail stock to make a little forge anvil like that sounds like an interesting experiment.
That's probably about the length of what I have. Hum, think I should go look at it...
Here's probably more than any of us needs to know about such things:
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Yes, that's a good idea. I have seen Tom Latane' do this. Actually, one wouldn't even need an anvil shape, just enough weight so it would stay still. I guess one could even heat it up at the edge of the fire to keep the temp up at the weld joint.
Mine is 15" long (plus a little more becuase one edge is rough cut with a torch and they left about 1" of webbing sticking out. It weights 56.5 lbs. That's about 130 lbs per yard. So I guess I have a short piece of the heaver stuff.
One side of the top rail is mushroomed out and down. I assume that's the inside edge of the tack and the deforming was just what happens after years of trains running over it. The outer edge is mushroomed a little bit as well.
But all steel has manganese in it and can be work hardened. :)
So, yeah he's right. :) The rail top work hardens from the carbon content too but would work harden with just about any alloying since it has to do with flaws in the lattice more than anything else.
Like the head of a cold chisel. :)
Cutting a rail with a hacksaw is like slicing a cold chisel starting with the work hardened top and working down. LOL :)
Anyway the rail is about as pure pearlite as they can get it. :) Ripe for work hardening. :)
The 1075 to 1080 numbers come from ASM and the carbon content of course varies with the batch. There has been a change in what percentage of carbon makes pure pearlite and so that can account for differences too. Was .83% then they dropped to .77% and can't remember the number in between that they stopped at for awile. ;)
Just spark test your spikes, danggit! :) And tell -us- what the carbon content is. :) BTDT but don't remember the number I came up with. :/
The Wiki article sounds like it was partially written by a limey. ;)
Besides that... We didn't call 'em "fish plates" we called 'em "angle bars" on the SP. And "broken rail" not "pull apart"... I found a -lot- of broken rails with my trusty meter! LOL :) I would count how many times I put the meter down (law of deminishing returns) and 6 was good and 8 was too many. ;) Almost all of them were found at night here in the desert, see? I learned not to walk farther than a "pole length" when narrowing it down because it took took much time.
Almost always it was cold weather too (hot days cold nights in the fall was perfect) and the guys in the track department (traqueros, Gandy Dancers) really appreciated me having a fire going when they got there, easier to find me for the Track Foreman too.
Helped changed out quite a few rails in a situation like that in the middle of the night and it'd just be me, the Track Foreman and one tracquero. :) Sometimes the rail ends were so far apart we couldn't dill holes and just "angle bar it" had to put in a hunk of rail and the minimum was 19foot 6inches at 136 pounds per yard. Using rail tongs. LOL :) The guy having to do both handles himself would be at the very end of the rail and me and another guy would put ours back from the end to lighten the single guy's load.
Weird stuff huh? LOL :)
All in the middle of the night out in the middle of nowhere and all being done in a big-ass hurry because the trains were stopped. :)
Mine is 7" high, by 6" base, by 3" head. There is no such thing listed. I've checked other tables as well and it's not listed in anything I can find.
I suspect the 6" and 3" are correct, but that the 7" is short becuase the track has shrunk after years of use since there are a few rails with a bit over 7" in height. Mine must be one of those, but I don't know which so I can't be sure how much it has shrunk if that is indeed the case.
Cool, hadn't thought about that in a long time. :) Never seen it done was just told about it by the old guys when I first hired out in the early 70's. :)
If I remember right, that's what they said they used to score the rail and there were lots of details that went with it but not having seen it done and the guys telling me were old Messcans so I'm not sure I understood anyway. LOL :)
The chisel edge is round, not straight like a hand held chisel is.
We later used those same chisels to remove Huck Bolt nuts. Would slice them open, then hammer the bolt through using a helved drift punch.
I was thinking, just a short while ago, that I could clear up some annoying little problem by going off to talk to one of the Old Geezers Who Know Everything. But I couldn't think of one of those Old Geezers who was still alive. Then it dawned on me: That *me* now. *I'm* one of the Old Geezers. Only I don't Know Everything yet. What happened? :-) Well, of course, some of those Old Geezers told me stuff that was totally, unambiguously wrong. I have that part down real good. ;-)
Too bad. I'm sure there *were* lots of details. I was hoping to find out what they were.
Just so.
I also have what I think is a rivet-setting tool. Six or 8 pounds, shaped like a slender sledge hammer, eye for a helve, hammer face on one end and a ca. 2" hemispherical cavity on the other. That doesn't seem right for a bucking tool so I suppose it's a hammer-struck header and takes two guys to head a large-diameter rivet.
New one on me. Had to look that up. A bolt which, when torqued correctly, swages either itself or a collar into the hole, ensuring the equivalent of an interference fit? Is that right? Google didn't turn up any clear explanation but there are a lot of guys who've fallen into a snit while tring to remove them.
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