Renewing Railway Lines.

Pelorus Guardian and Miners' Advocate., Volume 29, Issue 40, 25 May 1917, Page 2

Renewing Railway Lines.

Many people think that railway libes hardly ever want renewing. A steel rail is in its old age, however, in its tenth year, though some on local lines last twice that amount of time. In the big railway junctions and termini ihe rails are continually being renewed. At points and on curves the lines wear out very much more quickly than on those sections which are straight. They also wear away ■ rapidly at stations, where the wheels are often locked by the brakes and tear off a thin coating from the rail top. When the surface of a rail on a main line is worn down too much for safe travelling, it is taken up and put on a siding. When it is beyond further use it is sold to steel and iron merchants, who melt it down and turn it into iron fencing, cheap iron rods, and indeed all the odds and ends of cheap iron and steel ware. It is no use going to a railway company and offering to buy a ton of rails, or even fifty tons. When rails are sold they go at the rate of thousands of tons at a time. An order for 10,000 tons of second-hand railway lines is nothing out of the common.