NEW RAILROAD RAILS

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume LXIV, Issue 19340, 2 June 1937, Page 12

NEW RAILROAD RAILS

MADE OVER A MIEE LONGNEW YORK, March 19Stupendous new railroad rails, each more than a mile long, the beginning of a new phase in railroading, wore announced as successful by the American Society of Civil Engineers. The usual rails are 39ft. long. The “endless” rails provide smoother riding and longer life. Track maintenance cost is less, and wear is reduced on rolling stock. Rails each BCOOft.. or a mile and a half long, have been laid at River Valley, J’a.. by tlie Bessemer and Lake .Eric Railroad. Others, each exceeding a mile by about 700 ft., were laid near Mechnnicsville, N.Y.j by the Delaware and Hudson Railroad. They are made by welding ordinary rails together. Tho mile-long rails were laid on a string of flatcars. In transportation thev took the curves as readily as so much cable. Tho rails have had two winters and one summer in regular use. The result, tho society announces, is to bury a hundred-year-old belief that rails have to he short to allow for dangerous expansion and contraction. The principle was explained at the engineering society’s proceedings by Mr. Alfred Africano, a New York engineer, who said engineers had been at a loss to explain why the ends of the, longest rails moved, in contraction or expansion, not much more than common oSst. lengths.