Manganese Rails

20 DISCUSSION ON STEEL RAILS.
[Minutes of
Discussion.
hfr.Ellson. Mr. GEORGEELLSON remarked that the last Paper on the subject
presented to The Institution was that by Professor Dalby, read in
1928.1 He himself had made a few remarks on that Paper, and
had stated that hedid not think that the manufacture of steel
had kept progress with the demands made upon it. At that time
the SouthernRailway had had a very large increase in its electrified
lines and of its train mileage. The wear of steel rails traversed by
electrified stock was different from that produced by steam loco-
motives. That might be due to the rapid acceleration and decelera-
tion of the electric trains (which property was, of course, very
valuable) and also to theunsprung loads on the wheels of the power
units and the smaller diameters of such wheels as compared with
the diameters of the driving wheels of locomotives. In any case,
the extension of the electrification in the EasternArea of the Southern
Railway resulted in grcntly increased wear of the steel rails then in
use, and the economic aspect of the matter was rather serious. He
therefore formed a small committee of the divisional engineers
concerned, and a series of careful tests was made on all types of steel
which came to their notice. Means were available for testing quickly
the qualityof the steel underactual wear and tear, and the committee
took very careful measurements and reported the results about
every three months. Profiles were taken and the rails were weighed
before being put into, and again when taken out of, the track. The
specimens tested included low- and high-carbon steels, chrome-steel,
medium-manganese steel, medium-chrome steel, bimetallic rails,
heat-t,reated ordinary steels and the well-known manganese-steel.
He could not go into very much detail, but he would like to say that
the general results were decidedly in favour of theheat-treated
sorbitic steel, which had been developed by Nessrs. Sandberg. They
had also devised the oven-cooling process, which was very valuable.
Last year he had tried regulated sorbitic steel, a development of the
heat-treated steel in which the method of treating had been im-
proved. The first consignment of that steel was subjected to very
careful tests ; andthe resultsobtained were very remarkable.
The yield-point was about 44 tons per square inch, the breaking
strength about 60 tons per square inch, the elongation 16 per cent.,
and the reduction of area 35 per cent. Such results as those had
Minutes of Proceedings Inst. C.E., vol. 227, p. 25.
Downloaded by [] on [02/02/22]. Copyright © ICE Publishing, all rights reserved.

Proceedings.] DISCUSSION ON STEEL RAILS. 21
never before been obtainedwith rail-steel. He regretted that heW. E h n .
could not give a detailed metallurgical description, but he had
mentioned the principal mechanical aspects of the rail. Some rails
of that steel had been tested in the track a t Peckham Rye, where
approximately 200 t'rains a day were passing. A length of ordinary
medium-manganese untreated steel was put in, a length of ordinary
sorbitic steel next to it, and a length of the regulated sorbitic steel
nexttothat.Attheend of 10 weeks, theordinary medium-
manganese untreated steel was worn bright all over the upper surface
of the rails by passing traffic. The ordinary sorbiticsteel was
worn bright at the sides of the top surface and slightly worn in the
middle of the width of the table. The regulated sorbitic steel was
worn bright for only about 2 inch on each side of the table, and
the middle inch or so was almost untouched. It was obvious that
the wearing qualities of the regulated sorbitic rail were considerably
better than those of either of the other two rails with which it was
being compared. There was, of course, a very important economic
aspect of the matter which had to be takeninto consideration.
With the manganese-steel to which he had previously referred it
was possible to get a life from four to six times as great as with
ordinary &eels, or even more ; but unfortunately that steel was
rather expensive for ordinary use, and it had the further drawback
that it could not be used extensively in electrified track where the
running rails were used for the return current, as on the Southern
Railway, It could only be used piecemeal in lengths of track over
which the trains could coast.Theregulatedsorbitic rail, on the
other hand, was no more costly than the ordinary sorbitic rail, and
only slightly more expensive than the ordinary rail, but it gave a
very much increased life. He had not got its ultimate figures, but
he had the ultimatefigures for several thousand tonsof the ordinary
sorbitic rail, and he was quite certain from the indications available
that theregulated sorbitic would be much better.
The Authors referred to the welding of points and crossings, but
he himself had never heard of any points which had been welded.
Many thousands of crossings, of course, had been welded, and that
work had been carried out extensively on the Southern Railway.
It was, as the Authorssaid, most important that thewelding should
be carefully carried out, and great attention had been paid to the
training of welders forsuch work. Before they went on to the
running roads they had to weld crossings for sidings, and there was
a proper welding school for training them. The Southern Railway
had been carrying out the practice of welding crossings for 5 years,
and during t,hat period the number of breakages on the whole of the
railway had slight,ly decreased. The Authors referred to t,he investi-

22 DISCUSSION ON STEEL RAILS. [Minutes of
IvIr. E b n . gation of the failure of a built-up wing-rail which showed, they said,
that the failure was attributable beyond doubt to faulty welding,
" cracks which originated in the weld-metal having spread through
the parent metal." He thought itwas quite possible that a fracture

could be caused by faulty welding, but he believed it was more than
possible that the crack originated in the parentmetal and was then
covcrcd over by the weld metal. That had to be carefully guarded
against.When a wing rail had been in the roadfor some time,
minute cross-cracks appeared, and before any welding was done
it was very important that any such deteriorated surface should be
most carefully ground out and that no welding should be done on
anything except the solid metal itsclf. He did not know of any
welding having been done on alloy steels, nor did he know to which
steels the Authors intendedrefer to ;but, for instance, he did
not know
of any process by which manganese-steel could be successfully welded
a t present.
bh. Cooper. Mr. A. R. COOPERsaid the subject of the Paper was of considerable
interest and import'ance to railway-engineers, bearing in mind the
large expenditure which was incurred inthe purchase of rails.
It seemed to him that rail requirements could be divided into a t
least two classes. Firstly, there were the rails which were required
for what he might call ordinary conditions, such as on straight track
and ordinary curves. In that case the railway-engineer looked for
some improvement in methods of manufacture and some variation
of chemical content,butnot for anything which involved any
appreciable increase of cost. The other class of requirement, with
which the London railways were mainly concerned, and to which
Mr. Ellson had referrcd, was forrailssuitable for withstanding
abnormal conditions, such as the heavy wear and tear which electric
traction imposed, andtheir use on sharp curves. In that case
there was fulljustification for paying an appreciable additional
cost, which allowed for the employment of more careful manufac-
turing conditions and also for the uae of alloys. Many experiments
had been carried out on the London railways during the last25 years.
Reference was made in the Paper to the silicon-steel rail. About
25 years ago those rails were installed on the London railways, and
they gave satisfactory results ; their life was longer, the factor of
safety was increased, and the additional cost was quite small, being
about 5percent. That class of rail had been extensively used.
Sorbitic rails were h s t installed in 1919 ; they were found to have
very much better wearing qualities than any rails which had pre-
viously been used, and at thesame time the factorof safety showed
some improvement. Their cost was about 15 to 20 per cent. more
than B.S. rail at that time. In 1926 a series of experimentswas

Proreedings.]RAILS.
STEEL
DISCUSSION
ON 23
conducted on chrome-steel rails. The first tests were made withnrr. Cooper.
rails containing 1 per cent. of chromium, 0.7 per cent. of manganese,
and about 0.55 per cent. of carbon. Those rails gave exceptionally
good wearing results, as good as any rails which had been tried with
the exception of Messrs. Hadfield’s high-manganese rails, which were
in a class by themselves. They cost about 25 per cent. more than
B.S. rail a t t h a ttime. While the tup tests on those rails were quite
satisfactory, it was feltthat perhaps there was some degree of
brittlenesspresent, and therefore inthenext experiment the
chromium content was brought down to 0.45 per cent., and then,
on the advice of their consulting metallurgist, Mr. Samuel Whyte,
the manganese content was raised to 1 per cent. ; the carbon was
kept about 0.5 percent. Those rails were satisfactory, but they
had not the wearing qualities that were obtained with the use of
1 per cent. chromium. Other chrome contents were tried, generally
of about, 0.6 per cent., keeping the manganese a t 0.9 per cent. and
the carbon a little lower a t 0.45 per cent. ; some rails with chrome
content sorbitized had also been tried. All thoserailsgavevery
good results, particularly with regard to toughness. In the case of
some of the t q tests the rail was reversed five times and then did
not break, so that it was felt quite safe to put those rails into the
tzaclr. In 1930 medium-manganese rails were put in, the manganese
being about 1.1 per cent. and the carbon content normal. Whilst
the results were satisfactory, their wear-resisting qualities were not
comparable with those of the chrome and the sorbitic rails which
he had mentioned. With reference to high-manganese steel, the
London railways had used it in crossings for 30 years, and later they
had used rolled high-manganese rails, either built up intocrossings or
for exceptional places in the track. It was the ideal material, and
the only thing against it, as Mr. Ellson had said, was the price.
Reference was made on p. 15 to thequestion of cooling in themanu-
facture of chrome rails. Special attention was given to that point
in the case of all the chrome rails which he had mentioned, the rails
being taken from the rolls to the hot bank, and kept under cover,
tarpaulins and other means being used to prevent ill-effects from
adverseclimatic conditions. It was to some extent comparable
in effect to theoven which Mr. C. P. Sandbcrg had devised ; railway-
engineers were much indebted to Mr. Sandberg for the attention he
had long given to rail-steels, and particularly of late with regard to
theirheat-treatment.Hehad given only a rough idea of the
wearing qualities and had refrained from attempting to give any
figures, as they were apt to be most misleading. The Authors had
referred to thechanges in relevant fact,ors which took place betweeu
one test of rails and mother, and was it necessary to take the average

Mr. Cooper. of a number of resuks. Whether the wear was taken by profiles or
by weighing, there always seemed to be some factor which prevented
any accuratecomparison being made. There was one peculiar feature
with regard to the measurement of wear on rails. If the amount of
wear measured was quite small it was very often entirely misleading
as to the rate of further wear to be expected, because many of the
manufacturing processes formed a skin or hard layer on the surfwe
which had exceedingly good wear-resisting qualities. Expectations
based on the results obtained after a short period of time were not
realized under extended use. On p. 8 the Authors referred to defects
in rails. More could often be learned from defects than from any
other factor ; he had therefore summarized the causes of defects
and rail-fractures during the last few years, and he was interested
and considerably surprised to find that as far as the London railways
were concerned the chief cause was lapping. About half the rail-
fractures reported to the Ministry of Transport were due to laps.
The other half were due to a number of causes, and a good many of
them could have been avoided by increased cropping. A lap seemed
to have no very serious effectunless it actually came to thesurface.
For instance, one rail had fractured after it had been in the track
for some 20 years, owing to a rolling lap which had come to the
surface, the lap having been well down in the head when the rail
had been putintothetrack. Reference had been made inthe
Paper to the desirability of pooling results ; he quite agreed with that,
but would point out that railway-engineers did already co-operate
very closely in that way. Theidealrail would appear to be the
compound rail, in which the head, or the top portion of the head,
was composed of a material which could be made as hard as was
desirable, while the base, web, and bottom of the head were of a
material which gave all the strength andcarrying capacity required.
The way in which that was achieved by separation in the ingot was
interesting, and during the rolling the men could tell by the colour
exactly where the two metals were. Some 3 years ago, when he
was in Germany, he found that on the Berlin Underground and in
Hamburg those rails were being used, and they were quite satisfied
with the results; but personally he hadnotfeltquite confident
enough to adopt therail, and t,he London railways had not tried it,.
Nr. Carpmael. Mr. RAYNOND CARPllrAEL remarked that on theGreat Western
Railway he had not the special problems due to very intense traffic
which confronted Mr. Ellson and Mr. Cooper, but his difficulties
were of what might be called the ordinary kind, which the Authors
indicated as increased axle-loads, greater volume of material handled,
and greater speeds of all traffic, which, they said, had seriously
increased the wear on rails. That was true to a certain extent, but

i t must be remembered that speeds, as a whole had not increased ;Mr. Carpmael.
only the speeds of the heavier loads had really done so. Moreover,
it did not necessarily follow that because axle-loads were increased
the effects on the rails wouldbe correspondingly increased ; the
reverse was sometimes the case, as had been said a t a recent dis-
cussion on bridge impact.1 There might be an actual decrease in
the hammer-blow effect of engines with a heavier axle-load, and it
behoved civil and mechanical engineers to work hand in hand and
ensure that the combination of locomotive and rail produced the
hest possible economic results. He had taken outsome information
with regard to the increases in axle-loading and rail weights on the
Great Western Railway. Between 1870 and 1922 the weight of the
rail had been increased from 80 lbs. to 95 lbs. per yard, and at the
same time the axle-loads had increased by 32.2 per cent. It did not
necessarily follow that the increase in the weight of the rail gave a
direct indication of the gain in strength. He was very interested
in the Authors’ remarks on p. 4 about the composition of early rails,
and he had taken out some particulars of Great Western and other
rails from 1878 onwards. Theinformation he had been able to
obtain fully corroborated what the Authors had said. In the case
of six rails of D.H. section, weighing 80 lbs. per yard, introduced
about 1870, and of which particulars were taken in1878, the average
composition was as follows : carbon, 0.42 ; silicon, 0.12 ; manganese,
0.53 ; sulphur, 0.08 ; and phosphorus, 0.10 per cent.The next
series of rails was of the 68D sect,ion, bull-head, weighing 86 lbs.
per yardand introduced about 1882. The following pa.rticulars,
taken in 1893, were the average of tests on thirteen rails : carbon,
0.45 ; silicon, 0.06 ; manganese, 1.08 ; sulphur, 0.11 ; and phos-
phorus, 0.066 per cent. The average tensile strength was 43 tons
per square inch and the elongation 19 per cent. The next section
was 92 lbs. per yard, introduced in 1894 ; the particulars covered a
period of years from that date to1900, and were the average of tests
on fourteen rails : carbon, 0.4 ; silicon 0.01 ; manganese, 1.07 ;
sulphur, 0.07 ; and phosphorus, 0.08 per cent. The average tensile
strength was 49 tons per square inch, individualresultsranging
between 39 and 55 tons per square inch, and the elongation ranged
from 9 to 28 per cent., with average value of 20 per cent. There
was thus a considerable variation. The next section was 95 lbs.
per yard, adopted in 1897 ; the average of tests on fourteen rails
was : carbon, 0.39 ; silicon, 0.049 ; manganese, 1.06 ; sulphur,
0.07 ; and phosphorus, 0.039 per cent. Thetensile strength was
41 tons per square inch and the elongation 22 per cent.
1 Minutes of Proceedings Inst. C.E., vol. 237, p. 369.

26 DLSCUSSSON ON STEEL RAILS. [Minutee of
Mr. Carpmael. The first reduction inthe manganese content was made inthe
" DD " section introduced by the lateSir James Inglis, Past President
Inst. C.E., in 1900, and weighing 974 lbs. per yard. Its composition
was : carbon, 0.38 ; silicon, 0.08 ; manganese, 0.8 ; sulphur,
0.05 ; and phosphorus, 0.06 percent. Those rails marked the
beginning of the increase in the silicon content, which wns rather
important, as well as the reduction in manganese. They had an
average tensilestrength of 41-7 tons per square inch and anelongation
of 23 per cent. I n 1929 tests on the British Standard 95 rail,
weighing 95 lbs. per yard and introduced about 1923, showed a
further reduct,ion in the manganese content down to 0.68 per cent.,
wit,h an increase in thecarbon up to0.56 per cent., a further increase
in the silicon to 0.12 per cent., very small sulphur content of 0-027
percent., and phosphorus content of 0.024 per cent. Those rails
had a tensile strength of 48 tons per square inch and an average
elongation of 13.8 per cent. It was felt by many users of the British
Standard 95 section that the rail of best wear-resisting qualities had
not been secured, and as a result the medium-manganese rail was
produced, in which there was a reversion to 1.03 per cent. of man-
ganese, with, in anaverage of ten rails : carbon, 0.54 ; silicon, 0.138 ;
sulphur, 0.028 ; and phosphorus, 0.029 per cent. There was again
an increase in the silicon content, which seemed to be continuous
and uniform. Those rails had a tensile strength of 51 tonsper
square inch andan elongation of 14.3percent. Various other
specifications had been tried out, and a typical analysis of medium-
manganese rails now being ordered for the Great Western Railway
wa.s as follows : carbon, 0.45 to 0.55 ; silicon, 0.1 to 0.25 ;
manganese, 0.9 to 1.10 ; sulphur, 0.06 maximum ; and phosphorus,
0.06 maximum per cent. The following was the average composition
of twenty-five casts rolled into rails for the Great Western in the
last twelve months : carbon, 0.5 ; silicon, 0.16 ; manganese, 1-01;
sulphur, 0.034; and phosphorus, 0.030 per cent. The tensile strength
was 51.3 tons per square inch and the elongation 12 per cent., and
there again the increase in the silicon content wouldbe noted.
Heveral references had been made to the class of rail with 12 per
cent. of manganese as being one which Stood by itself, and which
was used for special purposes where really serious wear and abrasion
had to be guarded against. He also felt that it was a pity it was
so expensive, and he agreed with the Authors that the results were
not satisfactory if the proportion of manganese was too low.
On p. 10 the Authors referred to two cases of the development of
waves intrack. It would be very interesting to havefurther
details of that trouble and of its explanation. He had only small
personal experience of temperature-control in rail-manufacture,

but he expected soon to test a small sample of the product,, andMr. CarpmseI.
hoped that it would give satisfactory results. The necessity for
temperature-control arose from the two considerations of safety and
of resistance to wear. In the very large unbalanced sections of
flanged rails up to 156 lbs. per yard used in America, there
must be some very severe stresses set up in cooling, and it seemed
to him that it was essential for safety to employ some method of
temperature-control, but, speaking forthc momentpurelyfrom
the point of view of safety, withthe better-balanced bull-head section
used in Great Britain it would not appear to be so important. To
test that idea, he had taken out the returns on the Great Western
Railway of the average number of rails broken in service in the
running passenger and goods lines from the year 1905 to the year
1933, both inclusive. Over that period, on an average track mileage
of 5,532, there were twenty-three breakages per annum, which was
equivalent to one per year in 240 miles of track. That seemed to
him t o be too high, so he had made further inquiries, and found that
the records in 1905 included a number of old flange rails in branch
lines which apparently found the heavier traffic too much for them.
He therefore took out the returns for the last 6 years, the number
of rails broken falling to fourteen per annum, or one in 436 miles of
track. The question of the wear of the rails was quite a different
problem, and there seemed to be no doubt that,, as an attempt was
made to get harder rails, using the different alloy-steels, it became
more and more necessary to have some form of temperature-control.
He had not had any greatexperience of t,hose rails, but as far as he
could see the medium-manganese rail, with 1 per cent. manganese,
definitely gave better wearing results than rails rolled to the present
British Standard.Hehadtriedout some chromium rails, with
chromium contents of 0.49 per cent. and 0.93 per cent., and both
those appeared to be of good wearing quality, but he did not think
the experience he had had of them was long enough to come to any
definite conclusion. He would like to emphasize what Mr. Cooper
had said, that in giving figures of the wear of rails the greatest
accuracy was necessary for the avoidance of false conclusions, and
it was almost impossible of attainment unless the period of years
taken was considerable. For that reason he preferred not to give
figures. Copper-steel rails of 0.25 per cent. copper content had also
been tried on the Great Western Railwayfor use in tunnels, a t water-
troughs and so on. As far ascould be seen a t present they appeared
to be satisfactory. The Authors said that titanium-steel rails had
dropped out of use and become ancient history ; the Great Western
Railway had tried a sample of, he believed, 100 tons a few years a,go,
but it was likely that those also would suffer the same fate. He

Mr. Carpmael. would like t.0 refer to the building-up of crossings by welding. Mr.
Ellson had had the most extensive experience of all the engineers in
the group companies on that, but the Great Western Railway had
had, andwere gaining, considerable experience on the subject, covering
hundreds of crossings welded without a failure. He could assure
t.he Authors that an endeavour was made to use the most suitable
electrodes for the various classes of steel, and that trained and
intelligent welders were cmployed. On p. 18 the Authors said :
“ It is by no means uncommon to hear tworailway-engineers express-
ing diametrically opposed views on the same class of rails, without

being able to ascertain the particular conditions under which t,he
rails in question were satisfactory or otherwise.” Was that just a
matter of opinion, or could it be backed by some definite information ‘2
His own experience agreed with Mr. Cooper’s remarks that railway-
engineers were in veryclose touch witheach other, and, though they
did not always agree, he did not think they were so much a t variance
as the Authors suggested. He would like t.0 emphasize the Authors’
remarks about the value of pooling and publication of the work
carried out.
Bfr. Sandberg. Mr. C. P. SANDBERG, referring to the Authors’ proposal that a
maximum of up to 0.68 per cent. of carbon would be entirely satis-
factory, suggested that such a figure was in fact too high, and that
it would be far better to reduce that segregating element and to
increase the manganese to a minimum of 0.9 per cent. The British
Standard Specification did not at the moment permitwhat was
now called a medium-manganese steel, and he had known that to
lead to considerable confusion among important foreign railway-
engineers whowere contemplating placing orders in this country.
When the question of the manganese-content was raised, and his
firm suggested that from 0.9 to 1.1 percent. of manganese was
desirable, they replied : “ Yes, but theBritish Standard Specification
does not allow such a thing.’’ He therefore thought the time was
overdue for the British Standard Specification to include, a t any
rateasanalternative,that higher manganese content.Further,
he thought that a minimum of manganese should be specified. At
present the Specification provided for a maximum of 0.9 or 0.8 per
cent. as the case might be, and under it the railways might get the
type of rails which, with their present experience, they ‘did not
want, with a manganese content thatmight be as low as 0.6 per cent.
if the manufacturers could roll that quality. He would therefore
like to crnphasize once more the desirability of increasing the
manganese but decreasing that objectionable element carbon, which
had caused so much trouble in the world, especially on the other side
of the Atlantic. He believed t,hat rail-makers, who had been

Proceedings.] DISCUSSION O N STEEL RAILS. 29
gradually increasing the amount of carbon during the last 20 years, Mr. Smdberg.
knew that with the bigger ingots, unless they discarded more than
was commercially desirable, they would get segregation which was
undesirable and which would seriously perturb the railways, if they
knew of it. The Aut,hors made a veryinteresting reference to
heat-treatment, and he would like to suggest that the futuresolution
of the rail problem would be found rather in thedirection of a heat-
treated rail than in themere alteration of the chemical composition.
By thathe did not mean to say that thepossibilities of using various
alloys, some of which had not even yet been tried, should not be
explored, but if it were admitted that alloy-steels were going to be
useful it must be remembered that their full benefits would not be
obtained unless they were heat-treated.With regard to welding,
it was verysatisfactory to know that the railways which were
employing it were using every possible care, and that the results,
almost to the surprise of many steel-makers and metallurgists, had
been extraordinarily promising. That did not mean, however,
that the railway-engineer would not welcome the collaboration of
the metallurgist in connection with perfecting the technique of
welding ; on the contrary, he would be only too glad to improve
that technique if the metallurgist would be quite open-minded and
admit that the railways had obtainedextraordinarilyinteresting
results from welding, both from the technical and financial standpoint.
He would like to thank theAuthors, also Mr. Ellson and Mr. Cooper,
for the very kind remarks t,heyhad made about thework of his firm.
Lastly, he would like to mention that it was exactly two-thirdsof a
century since his father read a Paper before The Institution on
“ Manufacture and wear of rails,” 1 havingcarried out hisfirst
experiments on the London & North Western Railway a t Crewe.
The rail problem was st,ill alive, and he thought it would continue
for another generation or two.
Professor G. V. LOMONOSSOFF was in entire agreement with the Profaor
Authors’ conclusions. New wine needed new skins, and newLomonossoff.
conditions of traffic required new rails. The main trouble was that
engineers themselves did not know yet exactly what was demanded
of new rails. That could be determined only by thorough research.
For that purpose, as the Authors had justly pointed out., the con-
struction of an experimental track was desirable. Such tracks
existed in Germany and Russia. On the other hand, recent American
investigations, and especially tests made by Messrs. S. P. Timoshenko
and B. P. Langer,z showed that many experiments of great practical
1 Minutes of Proceedings Inst. C.E., vol. xxv (1868), p. 320.

1 Trans. Am. Soc. Mech.E., 1932, APM-54-26, pp. 277-293.

Professor importance could be conducted withrails in laboratories. These

Lomonossoff.
tests also showed that the problem under consideration could not
be solved by metallurgical methods only. The shape of the rail still
required attention. Timoshenko and Langer showed that in some
cases the decrease of the cross section produced under the same
loading an observable decrease of stresses.
Unfortunately in all tests with rails, and in all theoretical investi-
gations made so far, a rail had been regarded only as a beam. That
was not correct. The rail was not only a beam ; it was also a link
in the mechanism for propelling trains. Regarding the rail as a
beam, onlyvertical andlateral forces were considered. On the
contrary, from thestandpoint of train motion the longitudinal
reactions between driving wheels and rails, namely, the forces of
friction, were of the greatest importance. A t the same time, those
were the forces which were chiefly responsible for wear of rails. That
wear could be reduced by hardening the working surface of the rail,
but thatcaused reduction of adhesion and therefore of the maximum
tractive effort .of all locomotives. Accidentally 2 miles of a 1 per
cent. grade on the Tashkent Railway had been laid with such rails,
after which it was found necessary to use banking locomotives. As
he had tried toprove in his book 1 and ina recent article,z adhesion,
and therefore the wear of rails, depended not only on the wheel
loading and on the elastic properties of rails and tires, but also on
the acceleration and retardation of trains.
That was not the only case when problems of the mechanics of a
train and those of the dynamics .of the rail and wheel overlapped ;
they were both closely connected with the phenomena taking place
in the area of contact between the rail and wheel. It was therefore
advisable t,o carry out tests on rails together with those on loco-
motives. According t,o his experience that not only saved time and
money, but increased the value of the results.
Mr. mite. Mr. B. G. WHITEproposed to refer to two or three points connected
withthe electrification of railways. Both Mr. Ellson and Mr.
Cooper had very wide experience of rails on electrified lines, and the
meeting had had the advantage of hearing their views ; but personally
he could not help thinking there was a general feeling that the wear
of rails with electrified services was greater than was actually the
case. When dealing with the question of rails for an electrified
section, he had attempted to obtainsome idea of the probable wear,
and he had found what he regarded as a most useful Paper 3 which
1 Introduction to Railway Mechanics,” pp. 28-30, Oxford, 1933.
“
a The Railway Engineer,” p. 54, 1934.

“
W. Gurney, “Wear of Rails in the Bombay Electrified Area,”Railway

Board of India Quarterly Technical Bulletin, Vol. 111, NO.26 (July, 1932), p. 13.

had been contributed on that subject, and which described rail&. White.
wear experiments carried out on the Great Indian Peninsula Railway
in Bombay. Mr. Cooper, Mr. Ellson and other speakers had referred
to the difficulties of recording rail wear, but the Paper mentioned
set out the particulars very clearly, and s n intercsting feature was
that it showed graphically over aperiod of 6 years the wear on 100-lbs.
higher-carbon rails laid in the Bombay electrified area. The first
year was for steam service. Imrnediately the electrified service
started there was an appreciable drop in the curve, showing very
excessive wear, but after 18 months or 2 years the wear became
normalagain.Thewriter of that valuable Paper did not reach
any conclusion as to the cause of the excessive wear in the early
stages, but he remarked that theonly possible explanation appeared
to be that new wheels for some reason wore the rails. Mr. White
thoughtthat was the explanation. The tirefitted on ordinary
rolling stock, although reasonably well finished in the lathe,still
had a sufficiently abrasivesurface to wear the rail appreciably.
When the tire and the rail were worn smooth the ideal conditions
were obtained. He had benefited by that conception, and in the
case of electric rolling stock he had thenew tires finished by grinding
so as to avoid the initial wear. The results justified the small extra
cost. Another point which had been touched on was the electrical
conductivity of running rails. Hethoughtthe Authorsmight
throw some further lighton that question, because the chemical
composition of rails affected it largely. Large suburban systems
such as that of the Southern Railway were concerned; no doubt
they had to study conductivity, but in some places there were a
great number of tracks which could be bonded together and used to
improve the conductivity of the return circuit. He was thinking
more of lines abroad which might be electrified, where there was a
single track and therunning rails formed part of the circuit, so that
their conductivity was of importance. Unfortunately carbon,
manganese, and other constituents increased the electrical resistance
of rails, so that conductivity and wear-resistance were opposed.
He suggested that another matter which should be considered was
the section of the rail employed. If the problem were considered
on an economic basis of cost of rails and copper and of traffic carried,
he thought it would be found that a heavier section of rail would
provide the solution. Mr. Cooper had mentioned that the special
ra,ils, being very expensive, should be used only where they were
really required. Mr. White thought thatpoint should be emphasized,
as there was a tendency to employ all kinds of speciaI and expensive
railseven on straighttracks where there was hardlyany wear.
He would suggest that it was not correct to settle the section and

32 DISCUSSION ON STEEL RAILS. [nlinutea of
W. m i t e . composition of rail to be adopted for a whole line on the basis of

the worst few points on the line, but rather to introduce the special
and more costly rails only on the outer curves of track, in station
limits where acceleration and deceleration took place, and so on.
MC.Norria. Mr. J. W. NORRISremarked that the rail problem, as Mr. Sandberg
had said, was still very much alive. It was desirable now to consider
it from first principles. Engineers wanted to know the factors on
which the wear-resisting properties of a rail depended, and he had
hoped that the Paper would provide some guidance in thatdirection ;
but unfortunately it did not ; it was a masterly exposition of the
pitfalls into which the engineer could fall, but it did not give any
description of the ladder which might be used for climbing out of
them. He had every hope, however, that now that the matter was
being fully discussed i t would be found possible to arrive at some
conclusion. The quality which appeared to be most desirable in a
rail was the work-hardening property referred to on p. 5. Could
the Authors define the conditions under which that work-hardening
was produced, and could theysay why some rails possessed it
and some apparently did not ? That led to the further question of
whether it would not be possible to work-harden rails before putting
them down inthetrack. The property of work-hardening was
apparently very well evidenced in the acid Bessemer rails to which
the Authors referred on p. 4, and engineers frequently came across
such rails, 30 to 40 years old. Mr. Carpmael had given details of
a number of old rails which were still giving satisfactory service,
and it would naturally be asked why such rails could not be made
to-day. He was afraid that those old rails must be regarded merely
as historical specimens, because they were produced under conditions
which could not be repeated to-day, on account of the increased
output now required. Their good wearing propertiesmight have
been due not so much to their analysis, but more probably t o the
fact that in their manufacture very much more work was done on
the steel. When theopen-hearth furnaces were introduced,with
their very much greater capacity, the size and draught of cogging
mills had to be increased, and the number of passcs reduced to keep
up with the output of the steelworks. Further, the section of the
rail had gradually increased with the heavier traffic, and for those
reasons very much less work was now done on the steel. Moreover,
there was a tendency of late years for the steelworks to be run as a
separate concern from the rolling mill, and in consequence a greater
percentage of rejections was sometimes necessary from the rails
rolled on a Monday than during the rest of the week, because the
ingots which had been produced by the steelworks over the week-
end had had to be reheated. The question of " wash-heating,'' to

Fig. 1.
4973

which the Authorsreferred, was also involved. The Authors pointed&. Norria
out bhe benefit of the lower finishing temperature in the manufacture
of those old rails, but unfortunately it was not possible to maintain
that lower rolling temperature to-day,as the higher-carbon steel was
not sufficiently plastic. Incidentally, the use of a low finishing
temperature with the higher-carbon rails was one of the causes of
the so-called lap to which the Authors referred on p. 8, and which
Mr. Cooper had also mentioned. That defect, for the detection of
which the impact test was introduced into the British Standard
Specification, was a definite distortion of the flow-lines of the metal
at the root of. the web, caused by trying to force metal which was
insufficiently plastic throughtoo small a hole. The Authors had
said that the defect was produced in thefinishing pass, but although
that might be strictly true, he maintained that the conditions giving
rise to the defect occurred in the squabbing pass, for the distortion
always occurred in exactly the same position in the rail, at the
junct,ion of t,hc web with the root radius, on one side of the rail only
and always on t,he same side at any one mill, on the top or brand
side in one and on the bottomor unbranded side in another,according
to the number of finishing passes. That proved that the trouble
started before the bar reached the finishing pass, and he had definitely
and deliberately produced the defect in a mill where it had never
previously been in evidence merely by moving over the guides to
the squabbing pass so that thecobble did not enter thehole centrally,
making one flange longer than the other. In the finishing pass the
pinching-up of that long flange produced distortion of the flow-lines
when the metal was not sufficiently plastic. An actual lap might
be produced, but the weakness arose even though no actual lap was
formed. Fig. l showed a case of that distortion of the flow-lines in
which no lap could be detected even by etching. The weakness in
such a rail was phenomenal. If l-inch sections were cut and held
in a vice they generally snapped like a carrot if hit with a hand
hammer so that the area concerned was put in tension. If undetected
such rails broke during handling if submitted to any shock. If the
defect occurred, it would be in the tail-end of the bar where the
metal was coldest, which was the opposite end to that from which
tests were usually cut. He had taken those points into consideration
when devising the impact test which had been accepted by the
Brit,ish Standards Institution. It seemed evident that theproperties
required in a rail-steel were not determined by the analysis alone or
by anyone single property, butwere due toa combination of various
circumstances. Owing to the trouble which had been experienced,
the position nowadays resembled a see-saw, with the steelmaker a t
one end, the railway-engineer at the other, and the metallurgist in
[TEE INST. C.E. VOL. 238.1 3
34 DISCUSSION
ON STEEL RAILS. [Minutes of
~lfr.~ o r r i a . the centre trying to keep the balance between the two. The engineer
found thathis rails were not wearing well, and when next he ordered
rails he said to the steelmaker, " I think that in the next batchwe
will have a little more carbon," or perhaps a little more manganese
or a little more or less of something else. At the risk of being
accused of heresy, he submitted that the railway-engineer was not
concerned with the materialfrom which his rails were made, provided
they did their job. He was sure that if railway-engineers could be
certain of gett,ing 30 years' safe life out of a rail they would not
mind what it was made of. It was in a way unreasonable that the
purchaser, the engineer, should be in a position to dictate to the
steelmakers how they were to do their job. On the ot,her hand,
the engineer must be in a position to define exactly what properties
he wanted in the finished product. The steelmaker was the more
experienced of the two in manufacturing steel for a certain object,
provided that he could be told exactly what properties it was required
to have ; yet therailway-engineer was authorized to specify the steel.
In the British StandardSpecification t,he analysis of the steel to be
used was very fully laid down, with only those allowances necessary
for exigencies of manufacture. It was true that the specification
had been drawn up by railway-engineer
the and thesteel-manufacturer
in consultation, but he submitted thatit had been done on the basis
of the preconceived notion that a complet'e analysis was inevitable.
That presupposed certain things, kstly, that the railway-engineer
was a skilled metallurgist ; and, secondly, that if it were possible
to produce steel rails of identical analysis in half-a-dozen British
steelworks they would have identical properties. (That second
supposition was very important, buthe did not suppose that anyone
present would be prepared to endorse it.) With regard to the first
supposition, the Authors, so far as the limitations of their Paper
permitted, had given an excellent review of the effects produced on
rail-steel bytheintroduction of certain elements. To his mind,
however, they emphasized the fact that a little knowledge was a
dangerous thing.When in America the carbon-content of rails
had been greatly increased thousands of breakages due to brittleness
had occurred ; the manganese had then been increased to make the
steel tougher, but he thought the last statewas worse than the first.
With regard to thesecond supposition, the Authors had pointed out
the very wide differences that could be obtained in the qualities of
the stccl, even within the limits of the specification and the specified
analysis. He submitted that the province of t,he railway-engineer
was to judge the rails on performance, leaving the steelmaker a free
hand to produce the results in whatevermanner he found best.
The British Standard Specification, unfortunately, was of little or

Proceedings.] DISCUSSION ON
RAILS.
STEEL 35
no service to the railway-engineer so far as performance tests wereMr. NO&.
concerned, andnaturallythe railway-engineer wished t o satisfy
himself, before accepting delivery, that he had got what he wanted.
He had, therefore, in present conditions, to fall back on analysis.
The only tests included in the Specification were the drop test to
determine that the steel was ductile and not brittle under shock,
the impact-test to detect faults in rolling, distortion of flow-lines,
and so forth, and the tensile test, which was of very little actual
value (unless the yield-point was taken) except to demonstrate that
the steel had been carefully manufactured and that thevarious casts
were comparatively regular. A high tensile strength was no criterion
of good wearing properties ; it had been definitely proved that a
rail of low tensile strength could have very much better wearing
properties than one of considerably higher tensile strength. He'
would like to see a specification in which no analysis was mentioned,
except perhaps the limitation of certain detrimental conetituents,
theproduct having to be judgedentirely by testa, made before
delivery, which would givea positive indication of the probable
performance of the rails in service, graded, perhaps, to suit different
conditions of service. Unfortunately, as the Authors pointed ont,
there was no test yet available which would indicate to the steel-
makers exactly what was required of them. Until such a test was
devised, there would probably be an available range of rails and rail-
steels even greater than at present. One school of experimenters
was increasing the manganese, having been disappointed with
the results of an increase in the carbon ; another school was using
alloy-steels, introducing chromium and so on ; another school, on
the Continent and also in Great Britain, was using heat-treatment ;
and Mr. Cooper had referred to the German duplex rail with two
distinct metals, the harder in the head and the softer in the web
and flange of the rail. It was obvious that the subject was being
approached from many different aspects. It was not possible to tell
what the result would be until the rails had actually been tried out
in service ; that was, so far, the only test. On the Continent various
tests had been made on the wearing properties of rails by using
abrasion machines such as the Spindel andthe Amsler. Hefelt
that practicalresults were not likely to beobtainedfromthose
tests, because the abrasion was not of the same nature as that to
which rails were subjected under service conditions, and in anycase
the figure obtained was merely comparative. It seemed to him that
as a possible way of arriving a t a measure of the wearing properties
of a rail it would be better toconsider the productof the yield-point
of the steel and the elongation, because, after all, wear consisted of
pulling pieces of steel off the surface and depositing them by the

Mr. side of thetrack, so thatthe yield-point and elongation were two

very important factors. It might be possible by investigation to
determine a range of values within which the product of the yield-
point and the elongation of the steel should fall, and it might be
possible to ascertain from that that certain rails would undoubtedly
have good wearing properties. There was obviously a wide field
for investigation, and he warmly endorsed the Authors’ suggestion
that all the results should be pooled and that a joint experimental
track should be used, as had been done by the motor-tire manu-
facturers. The object of the experimentsshouldbe to develop a
simple test which could be applied to the rails at the steelworks in
the normal course of inspection before delivery. Withthatend
in view, when rails were found that gave good results every con-
ceivable physical test should be applied to them todetermine which
combination of their characteristics was definitely related to their
wearing properties. It had been thought that theBrine11 test might
give some such indication, but, as the Authors pointed out, it gave
none. The matter was of such great importance that he felt he
would like to go further than the Authors and suggest, for the
consideration of the Council, that the matter would justify the
appointment of a special committee of investigation.
Sir Rob& Sir ROBERTHADFIELD congratulated the Authors on their pre-
Hadfield* sentation of a most interesting Paper,not only dealing with work
already done, but also very suggestive for bringing about improved
practice in the production of steel rails. In view of the references to
manganese-steel made in the Paper and by previous speakers, he
hoped that some comments with regard to that material, based on
experience, might be of interest and service to those who were not
makers but users of various types of steel for special purposes.
Manganese-steel had been referred to by previous speakers as
being the ideal material for rails, though not, it must be admitted,
ideal in first cost, because it was expensive. He had to admit that
soft impeachment, but at the same time high quality could not be
obtained without extra cost, and the cost of the high percentage of
manganese requisite was in itself considerable. He thought there
could be no doubt, however, that suchhigh-quality rails were
economical in the long run for curves and where extra-severe work
was experienced. There were naturally some disadvantages, for no
material was perfect ; but speaking for himself, and with the con-
firmation of numerous reports from some of the leading railway and
tramway engineers, he believed that in thelong run the use of that
steel for special purposes was highly economical, and it was probably
the bestmaterial yet produced on account of itsextraordinary
durability and toughness.

Proaeedings.]RAILS.
STEEL
DISCUSSION
ON 37
He would like to strike a personal note. It was in 1888, 46 ycarssir Robert

ago, when in a Paper read before The Institution he first announced Hadfield.
the discovery of manganese-steel. The long discussion which
followed the Paper was of immense value, and he was therefore
deeply indebted to The Institut,ion for having given him the oppor-
tunity of reading that Paper. Alloy steels were thenbutlittle
known, so that that Papermight be described as the beginning of a
new era of alloy steels. The late Professor Osmond, an eminent
French metallurgist, described the invention of manganese-steel as
“ not only the discovery of a new alloy, curious, of great scientific
value and yet useful, but in the history of the metallurgy of iron
it ranked as a discovery cqual in importance to that of thc effect of
quenching carbon-steel and was the only one of the same order which
it hasbeen reservcd for our age to make.” Professor Car1 Benedicks,
of t,he Metallografiska Institutet, Stockholm, said bhat “ Hadfield
has taught humanity to use y iron, while previous a.ges had only
used the a iron.” He quoted those remarks because in part they
explained why manganese-steel wore so well. It was notthe
intrinsic hardness of this steel which conferred the desired properties,
for in itself it was very little harder than ordinary steel ; the reasons
were quite different, and could be explained as follows. It was well
known that if metals were strained their hardness was increased.
Manganese-steel, both in the cast and in the forged forms, happily
possessed that quality of hardening by deformation to an extra-
ordinary degree, greater than that of any other material, ferrous or
non-ferrous. The initial hardness of manganese-steel was about
170 to 200 Brinell, but when strained thathardness rapidlyincreased,
and in certain cases he had been able to obtainas high as 570 Brinell,
not far from the glass-scratching quality of hardened steel, which was
about 630 and upwards. Whena rolled manganese-steel rail was
put to work and became ‘‘ strained ” on the surface, its hardness
rapidly increased until in a comparatively short time, after a certain
amount of tonnage had passed over the rail, it reached from 400 to
500 Brinell. That hard layer was,of course, worn away in time,
but immediately underneath a new hard layer was formed, and so
this went on slowly but surely until the rail section was so much
worn away as to be considered unfit for further use. Hehad
previously given 1 descriptions of the hardening process, which it
was unnecessary to repeat. I n metallographic terms, the austenitic
structure of the water-quenched and wonderfully tough manganese-
Sir R. Hadfield, Discussion on the Report of the Hardness Tests Research
Committee : Proc. Inst. Mech. Eng., Oct.-Dec., 1916, p. 724. Sir R. Hadfield
and S. A. Main, “ Brinell and Scratch Testa for Steel,” Proc. Inst. Mech. Eng.,
Oct.-Dec., 1919, p. 581.

Sir Robed steel of comparatively low Brinell hardness became changed into a
Badfield* structure of deformed crystals possessing hardnessranging from 400
to 550. It was that remarkable change which gave manganese-steel
its extraordinarily high tenacity of 60 and even 70 tons per square
inch with 60 t o 70 per cent. elongation measured on an 8-inch length.
It was interesting to note from the scientific point of view that the
nonmagnetic condition peculiar to manganese-steel, which in itself
for the particularpurpose under discussion had no special value, was
still maintained, although the austeniticgrains were much deformed.
It was true that after a tensile test-bar had been pulled apart a
trace of magnetic quality existed, but it was so small that it was
hardly measurable.
Pig. 2 showed the section of thc head of a manganese-steel rail,
weighing 95 lbs. per yard, aftcr 121, years’ hard service. He thought
it spoke well for the material.Thediagrambrought outthe
extraordinary wearing properties, showing how, solely under
pressure, the surface of the rail became hardened up to as high as
even 500 Brinell, being renewed automatically as the material was
abraded away. There was no necessity to harden manganese-steel ;
it hardened itself, and thus saved a great deal of trouble. The rail
shown was supplied to the Great Eastern Railway in 1915, and was
situated on a curve of 12 chains radius in the track at Bethnal Green
from January, 1916, t o August, 1928. The maximum number of
trains per hour duringits period of service was twenty-four. Turning
now to other considerations, and with reference to the Authors’
remark on p. 4, there was no doubt that better results would be
obtained from small ingots, a point which was often overlooked.
On the other hand, the call in the past, especially in America, for
large outputs, in some cases many thousands of tons of rails per
week from one mill, had prevented such ingots being used in practice.
In fact thepresent tendency, a t any rate inAmerica, was to employ
bigger and bigger ingots.Undoubtedly that was not conducive
to the highest quality. He considered that a small quantity of rails
produced from smaller, well-fed ingots might very well be tested for
durability, freedom from fracture and other qualities. That would
not be acostlyexperiment, and he considered it would bewell
worth the while of some of the railways to make it. In the United
States of America failure of rails was frequent. He well remembered
a railroad journey from New York to New Orleans, many years ago.
American railroad practice had improved considerably since then,
of course, but on that journey he had travelled at the end of the
observation car, in the open, and had chatted with the resident
inspector of a section of the track, who had revealed t,hat he was
there to find out how many defective or broken rails existed

between the different wayside stopping-places After hearing that, Sir Robert
he had feltinclined to get outat the next station! On p. 6 reference Haclfield*
was made to the use of the element silicon. Although not wishing
to underestimate the high value of the work of the late Mr. C. P.
Sandberg, M. Inst. C.E., whom he had had the pleasure of knowing
well, he would like t o point out that for that advance the world was
largely indebted to the Terre-Noire Company of France, who in
1875 were among the first to use the element silicon in small per-
centages on a large scale for producing sound steel. It had previously
been thought that even 0.1 per cent. of silicon was harmful, and
specifications expressly excluded its introduction. Silicon was also
employed by himself and his Company a t their works in Sheffield a t

Sir Robed aboutthe same time for the manufacture of soundsteel castings
and for sound, properly-fed ingots, which they used for all kinds of
rolled and forged materials. I n 1889 he read a Paper 1 on silicon
steel ; he remembered that one of his samples was a low-carbon steel
containing 0.80 per cent. of silicon, and that it gave when annealed
about 30 tons tenacity with an elongation of from 25 to 43 per cent.
and a reduction in area of from 42 to 66 per cent. He mentioned
that to show that silicon, in itself and with low carbon, was not in
any way detrimental or dangerous. His firm, too, had produced
many thousands of tons of steel for a variety of purposes with 040
to 0.50 per cent. of carbon, 0.30 to 0.50 per cent. of silicon and 0.75
to 1.00 per cent. of manganese. Such steel had been used, among
other things, for the axles of mining wagons, and they had always
had a particularly good name for freedom from breakages.
With regard to American rails, between the years 1912 and 1915
he had written a series of Papers on the question of sound steel,
which attracted much attention in America. Eventually the
Pennsylvania R,ailroad asked him to send over about a hundred tons
of ingots, which were supplied, of the following composition :-
0.59 per cent. of carbon, 0.23 per cent. of silicon, and about l per
cent. of manganese. Those ingots were cast large end upwards
and properly fed, and each ingot was very carefully examined and
records taken of its qualities. Several of them were cut open in
section by his friend the late Dr. George Burgess, who considered
them the soundest ingots he had ever seen.2 They were rolled into
rails and put into service, and he was glad to say no breakage had
ever occurred with them. American service conditions were so
severe that it was somewhat difficult to know what was the best
composition of materialandtreatmentto use, especially when
regard was had to the exceedingly heavy locomotives often used,
some weighing 400 tons, to the large freight cars employed, and to
the heavy railroad service generally.
Lastly, he would like to mention one important pointtouched
upon by the Authors.Regarding flakes or “ shatter cracks,” an
exceedingly important and interestingarticle 3 had been written
by the well-known Italian metallurgist, Dr. Pederico Giolitti. His
conclusions were that flakes were born after forging, but he did not
think that they occurred immediately after forging and simply as a
consequence of intercrystalline cooling stresses, without being
Alloys of Iron and Silicon,” Iron and Steel Inst., 1889.
“
2Technologic Papers of the Bureau of Standards No. 178 : “ Steel Rails

from Sink-head and Ordinary Rail Ingots” ; by Dr. George K. Burgess,
Physicist, Bureau of Standards, December 16, 1920, p. G .
Metal Pfogfesa, January, 1934, pp. 38-39.

influenced by impurities in the steel. Dr. Giolitti, on the contrary, Sir Robert
considered that the intercrystalline stresses, originated, he said, by
allotropic changes during cooling, did not cause such internal cracks
when the impurities in thesteel were below a certain low limit. Only
in impure steels could the cracks develop immediately after forging
by the simple effect of cooling. Even then it was well known that
some impuritiesmight be caused to diffuse during properhent-

treatment. Discussing the origin of transverse fissures, the Authors
suggested that actual rupture might not be caused during manu-
facture, but that there remained in the rail stresses which would
develop actual fissures under service conditions. It had been shown
that it was quite possible to determine bysuitable methods the
existence of such stresses, and their amount. The method consisted
of dividing the head of a rail into sections, and determining the

42 DISCUSSION
STEELON RAILS. [Minutes of
Sir Robert contraction or expansion in length of the separate sections on their

Hadfield* release from the restraint; of the adjoining sections. That method
had been appiied inthe Hadfield Research Laboratories tothe
head of an American rail made some years ago, with the results
shown in Fig. 3. The results obtained did not give any indication
of an internal zone of especially high stress, such as might lead to
internal fissures under the bending stresses occurring in service.
The stresses shown were arrived a t from the expansion or contraction
and the degree of bending of the sections cut from the rails in
question. The usual figure of 30 million lbs. per square inch for the
modulus of elasticity was employed. That useful method was that,
adopted by Dr. John Johnston, head of the Research Department
of the United States Steel Corporat'ion.
Mr. bnyte. Mr. SAMUEL WHYTEremarked that he had come across fissures
but hadno experimentaldata which would throw lighton their cause.
He held the view, however, that they were due to internal stresses
set up inside the head by unequal cooling, coupled with the change
from one phase to the other. When in America two years ago he
had discussed the question withengineers of the Bureau of Standards
in Washington, who had been concentratsingon the problem for some
years, and he found that in their opinion the fissures were formed
while the steel was passing through the critical range rather than
later on. The Authors mentioned that observations carried out on
rails oven-treatedandnotoven-treated showed that the fissures
were in the latter and not in the former. It occurred to him that
the following point might be worth consideration. Some years ago,
he carried out tests on the difference in the rate of cooling between
the outside and the inside of the head of a rail. Two pprometer
stems were used with one indicator, one stem being embedded in the
middle of the head and the other just under the surface, the rail
being nested between others, as on the hot bank. The time to cool
down to 600" C., taking the temperatureon the outside of the head,
was about 15 minutes, which was about the normal time of cooling
in steelworks practice. When the outside of the head was a t
600" C. the inside was still a t 710" C., and he would like to ask the
Authors whether, on the occasion to which they referred, the rails
were put in the oven when the outside had reached 600' C., as i t
was only stated in the Paper that they were below the critical range.
In any case, he wae in favour of oven treatment to help to reduce
fissures. The Authors suggested that a chrome-manganese steel
should give good results, chromium being added for resistance to
wear and manganese for toughness,and thatsuch a rail should receive
careful heat-treatment a t all stages of manufacture to ensure the
best results.Personally,hethoroughlyagreed, and 4 years a.go,

P r o d i n g s .J DISCUSSION ON STEEL RAILS. 43
as consultant to the Underground Railways, he had suggested a Mr. Whyte.

trial-cast with 1 per cent. manganese, 0.5 per cent. chromium and
0.55 percent.carbon. Those rails were rolled in 1930, and Mr.
Cooper had referred to them earlier in the discussion and had also
mentioned subsequent tests with higher amounts of chromium. He
realized that, as the Authors said, steels containing chromium were
particularly sensitive to heat-treatment on account of the hardening
effect of the chromium, also that the rate of cooling through the
critical range, 700" C . to 650" C., had a very marked effect on the
structure of those steels, and that therewas a possibility of excessive
hardness being produced in the thinner partsof the rail-section due
to their more rapid cooling. The Authors suggested as a safeguard
that t,he carbon should not exceed 0.5 per cent. with 1.0 per cent. of
chromium, and in his opinion that was necessary where t,here was
no control of the cooling rate through the critical range. On the
other hand, he felt that thatwas a limitation on composition which
should not be necessary with proper cont,rol, and therefore 3 years
agoheintroduced a process ofslow cooling through the critical
range with that type of steel, so that the effect of the chromium
could be controlled, which would allow greater freedom so far as the
composition of the steel was concerned. For example, a rail with
1 percent. chromium, 1 percent. manganese and 0.55 per cent.
carbon might be too brittle when cooled in the normal way, and
that brittleness might be stillfurther emphasized by theintroduction
of further alloying elements such as silicon, or by increasing the
alloys already present. Although those additions would give better
resistance t,o wear, they increased tho air-hardening properties of
the steel, and it became necessary to find a treatment to counteract
t,he brittleness. One method was to have astraightforward heat-
treat'ment such as hardening by water-spray, steam or oil, or even
air-hardening, followed by a bempering operat'ion ; the other was
to regulate the air-hardening effect by retarded. cooling through the
criticalrange.Themethod of hardening and tempering would
necessarily be the more costly, but would give a finer grain and
therefore greater toughness to the steel. On the other hand, with
elements suchas chromium and manganese present the grain-growth
during cooling was not so rapid ; also they would be more liable to
crack or fissure than the plain carbon steels, so that the less drastic
the hardening treatment the better. Any rapid hardening treatment
of such steels, even though followed by a tempering operation, must
introduce that element of risk. Additional toughness of a finer
grain had not so far been an important factor with the chrome-
manganese st.eels treated by slow cooling through the critical range,
because, as Mr. Cooper pointed out, t'he toughness shown by the tup

Mr. whyte. test had been outstanding. In some cases the rails had withstood
over fourteen blows a t 20 feet without breaking, and it had taken
six or seven blows a t 30 feet to break them. The process of con-
trolling the rate of cooling through the critical range was not to be
confused with the oven treatment mentioned by the Authors, which
came into operation below the criticalrange and which, as they
clearly pointed out, had no effect on the structure of the steel or
on its physical or mechanical properties, but was solely a means of
equalizing the t'emperature between the interior and exterior of the
section so that internal stresses and strains might be reduced to a
minimum. Neither should i t be confused with the annealing or
normalizing process mentioned on p. 16, which was, after all, a slow
and comparatively costly process and which, as the Authors said,
t'ended to leave the rails too soft. That was especially so with
steels to the British Standard Specifications, which did not contain
elements giving air-hardening properties. Hethought, therefore,
that annealing was not of practical utility, except possibly for steels
of high alloy-content. Where, in order to control the effect of
chromium, the rate of cooling was slowed down by his process, so
that a rail took between 30 and 40 minutes t o reach 600" C., the
difference in temperature between the outside and inside of the head
of the rail was never as much as 50" C., and in his opinion that low
difference in temperature through the critical range must help to
reduce the tendency of fissuring. If the rails were subsequently
put through the Sandberg oven below the critical range, the difference
in temperaturebetween the outside and inside of the head couldnever
reach more than 50" C. after leaving the finishing rolls, and it was
difficult to imagine how fissures could arise under those conditions.
With regard to the building-up of crossings by welding, he had
examined a number of welds and was afraid he could not be so
enthusiastic about them as Mr. Ellson. Most of the welds contained
cracks, which were peculiar in that they almost invariably occurred
in the same position; they were in the weld-metal and started a t
the junction,extendingupwards throughabout half the section
of the weld-metal and not appearing on the surface. His experience,
from the examination of broken or cracked rails, was that cracks
or defects not exposed on the running surface did not extend and
produce a fracture ; in fact, he had seen a rail with a large cavity
in the head from piping which had been in the road for many years
and, although that cavity was within 8 inch of the surface, it was
only after wear had taken place and a small slag seam from the
cavity had become exposed on the surface that the crack started to
develop. His experience with rolling laps was the same ; those laps
often ran parallel with the head and about &-inchunder t,he surface,

coming out on the edge, and it was only after wear had exposed theMr. Whyte.
laps on the running edge that the cracks had started to develop.
He thought, therefore, that with the welded crossings there might
be cracks under the surface, but until theybecame exposed by wear
they did not develop. After they became exposed, however, he
was quite certain that they were bound to extend. Mr. Ellson had
mentioned a case where he thought thecrack had developed from an
original crack in therail material, and he agreed that if welding were
done on a worn rail, which had surface cracks due to hammering,
thosecracks would probably open upduring welding.All such
surface cracks, therefore, should be removed before welding began.
Although he had said that most of the welds which he had examined
showed those cracks fromthe base of the weld-metal, he had recently
seen some excellent welds done by a new method, and he was con-
fident that thedifficulties of cracking would eventually be overcome.
Mr. V. A. M. ROBERTSON said that theAuthors, and also previous Mr. Robertson.
speakers in the discussion, had referred to work-hardening on rails
and the effect that such a process had had in the paston the life of
rails. From his personal experience he could confirm the statements
made. Some years ago, whilst with the old Great Eastern Railway,
he had in his district some 30-foot rails which had been in the main
line, carryingheavy axle-loads, for 30 years. Those rails showed
little or no sign of wear, except that the joints were somewhat
battered owing to the use of an inferior ballast. He was quite
convinced that the surface of those rails had, owing to the passage
of millions of tons of traffic, become work-hardened and in fact
developed an extremely tough structure, whose abrasion resistance
was probably from 30 to 50 per cent. superior to thatof the original
structure. He considered that if those old rails, which were of 80 lbs.
per yard section, had been rolled to the present-day cross-sectional
area, say95 Ibs. per yard, they might still have been in service. The
question naturally arose of how such exceptional results could be
repeated. He had been hopeful of hearing from the Authors their
decided opinion on the problem, and reference had been made in
the Paper to the various avenues which had been explored to obtain
hard-wearingsteel, buthe failed to find any fresh suggestions
therein. The problem had been attacked in American practice by
increasing the carbon-content to 0-8 per cent., which in his judgment
was definitely dangerous on account of the brittleness, and was also
unwise because such a high carbon-content mustof necessity reduce to
a minimum the elements of sulphur and phosphorus, and above all
manganese, which had in practice been proved to be the most
toughening constituent.Atthe moment it appeared that one of
the best rail-steels for heavytraffic was produced by a well-considered

46 DIECUSSION ON STEEL RAILS. [Minutes of
Mr. Robertson. addition of alloys, a t some extra cost to the user. Results on the
Underground Railways went to prove that a chromium-content of
from 0.3 t o 0.5 per cent., already referred to by Mr. Cooper in the
earlier discussion, and which Mr. Robertson knew as the " Whyte
Specification ", had been very satisfactory ; rails containing up t'o
0.8 per cent. of chromium had also proved satisfactory in service.
Heat-treatment processes, which produced maximumhardness in
the rail to sustain abrasive wear, had made rapid strides of recent
years. The three best-known treatments now in use were the British
Sandberg process, the FrenchNeuves-Maison process and theGerman
Maximilianshiitte process. The two former produced asorbitic
st,ructurein the rail-head, andthe German process claimed to
produce t,he martensitic structure, though he thought it probable
that on completion of the process the head of the rail was composed
of a troostite structure, which was one lower in grade than the full
martensitic condition. The benefit of heat-treatment and controlled
cooling was, he believed, a t long last being realized in America,
where one important trunk railway now called for rails to be passed
through the Sandberg oven. The heat-treatment processes to which
he had referred did produce a rail capable of standing up to modern
traffic in a far better manner than many others produced of late
years ; in fact, theresults obtained fromthe use of Sandberg sorbitic
rails had been highly encouraging, both in this country and abroad.
Possibly he was too optimistic, but he stilI looked forward to the
metallurgist combining with the rail-maker to produce for the railway-
engineer in the near future a rail which might be a departure from
past practice, but which would nearly approximate to the work-
hardened rails to which he had referred earlier in his remarks.
Possibly the solution lay in the heat-treatment or regulated cooling
of a rail with a sensible chromium-content. He would like to add a
word of encouragement to therail-makers, who had, he knew, during
the pastdecade spent a large amount of time and money on research
and plant to assist in the improvement of rail-steel. The Authors
had given a very well-balanced Paper on an all-important subject,
based on their own personal experience of many years. The railway-
engineer, unless a specialist in rail-steel, must of necessity look to the
metallurgist, combined with the rail-maker, for a solution of the
problem of what was the best composition for.stee1 rails.
Dr. Lowe- Dr. W. L. LOWE-BROWN said that, although i t was 15 years since
Brown. he had held the position of Chief Engineer of a railway, it was
obvious from the extremely interesting Paper which the Authors
had presented and from the contributions of the experts who had
takenpartinthe discussion that there were pointsin common
between the experience of 15 or 20 years ago and that of to-day.

Yroceeding8.J DISCUSSION ON STEEL RAILS. 47
Some of the comparatively light rails that were laid at thebeginning Dr. LOW+
of thecentury undoubtedly wore betterthanthe heavier railsBmw"*
which had been introduced since that time ; they were somewhat
high in phosphorus-content and relatively high in manganese. He
believed that theywere rolled a t very much lower temperatures than
the present heavy rails, to which they were superior in almost every
way. Although the steel-manufacturers would no doubt dissent,
the most experienced railway-engineer of his acquaintance always
held that any rail exceeding about 90 Ibs. in weight could never get
the same work done on it and could never have the same resistance
to wear as the old 75-lb. to 85-lb. rails. Another point which was
emphasized by experience was the eminent superiority of the high-
manganese rail, but it,s high cost rendered it entirely uneconomical
except for points and crossings and in some very exceptional caaes
for curves. It was also found that very great increase of wear
occurred on an electrified section of line. A good deal had been
said about test,ing rails in the track, andit was necessary to see that
different types of rail were tested under similar conditions. Several
speakers had pointed out that the natureof the rolling stock and of
the motive power had a very marked effect, but the type of track-
structure, the weight and spacing of the sleepers and the nature
of the ballast were equally important, as they all influenced the
wear of the rail. In the Argentine, where only a small percentage
of the lines were stone-ballasted, there were perhaps exceptional
opportunities for studying that aspect of the problem. It seemed
to be well established that rail-wear was much less on a yielding
ballast,such as selected earth or clinker, than on stone ballast.
Further, with such aballast the running was very much more
comfortable and, strange thoughit might appear, everything seemed
to indicate that the stresses in the rails were not higher when there
was more " give " in the track-structure. He felt that something
could be done to reduce rail-wear by finding a less rigid track than
that with very heavy stone ballast, heavy rails and heavy sleepers.
Many engineers were of opinion that a lighter rail with, say, 2,400
sleepers t o the mile was very much better and less subject to wear
than a heavier rail with, say, 2,100 sleepers to the mile.
Mr. H. C. MUWERIDGEsaid that Mr. Cooper had mentioned that a M r .
number of his rail failures had been due to lap, and the Authors hadMuggeridge.
referred t o the pendulum impact test as being intermittent, so that
laps might escape detection. Did the Authors think that it would
be useful to employ a stationary Sperry detector, over which all rails
should be passed '1 It might not discover every distortion of flow-
lines and every tiny lap or fault, but at least it should prevent
seriously-defective rails from ever getting into the track. Mr. Ellson

48 DISCUSSION ON STEEL RAILS. [illinutes of
Mr. seemed to appreciate the value of the yield-point. The structural

Muggeridge.
engineer no longer, as formerly, considered merely the tensile strength
and elongation ; he now required and worked on the yield-point
combined with the elongation, andit seemed t,hatthe British
Standard Specification for rails should specify the yield-point and
elongation. The Authors suggested, in the case of the waves in the
rails which they had to investigate, that if a minimum had been
specified for manganese the purchaser would have been protected.
He thought that a specified yield-point would have been an added
protection. Mr. Norris had referred to the " cooking " of the steel ;
if two people were given the same ingredients and told to go and
make a pudding, one pudding might be edible and the other not ;
there was something in thc cooking. He would like to know how
far t'he human clement entered into the manufacture of steel. He
would also like to know where others thought that the line should
be drawn between the sizes of rail that should have the higher carbon-
cont,ent and those that should have thelower. The British Standard
Specification gave no help there. In India the 50-lb. rail was made
of the lower-carbon steel, while for 60-lb. and heavier rails the
higher-carbon steel was employcd. The Authors suggested 70 lbs.
as the lower limit for high-carbon rails, and it would be of interest
to know what limit was employed- - in Canada, South Africa, and
South America.
Mr. Allen Mr. CECIL J. ALLENsaid it seemed to be generally agreed that
during the past three decades rail wearing-capacity had notadvanced
pari passu with traffic conditions, but had become less rather than
greater. The Authors had suggested that the use of larger ingots,
heavier mills, wash-heat,ing and higher finishing temperatures were
among the causes of increased rail-wear. He could not agree with
Mr. Norris's statement that not much alteration of hishing tempera-
tures was possible in steelworks practice. Some promising experi-
ments had recently been made in that direction, finishing a t about
850" C. to 8'70" C . ; remarkable results had been obtained on tensile
test, such as 514 tons per square inch with 274 per cent. elongation,
56 tons with 21 per cent., and 58 to 584 tons with from 17 to 20 per
cent. in several heats. It was pertinent to recall that the develop-
ments in manufacture mentioned had so far been in the interestsof
the manufacturer and at the expense of the wear-resistance of the
rail, yet in defence of the manufacturer it must be remembered that
those developmentshad been quite justifiable because they hadcome
within the requirements of the British Standard Specification. On
theotherhand, if themanufacturershadtriedto improve the
wearing-quality of their rails by a superior composition, they would
have found themselves hampered immediately by the narrow limits

of analysis which the Specification laid down. H,e emphasized thatMr. Alien.
point, because when dealing with manganese inthePaperthe
Authors said : “ The beneficial effect of manganese on the resistance
t,o wear of rail-steels has notbeen fully appreciated by manufacturers
until comparatively recent years,and even to-day there are some who
stillfail to realize its advantages.” A leading steel-manufacturer
told him recently that when working to the British Standard Speci-
fication, with a manganese limit of 0.8 per cent., he had persistently
gone as near that limit as he dared, although in so doing he was
risking the rejection of casts of steel in which that limit was exceeded,
and in certain cases he had actually had casts rejected because the
manganese was between 0.8 and 0.9 per cent., even though all the
physical tests in the specification had been perfectly satisfied. On
the other hand, in 1920 the Great Eastern Railway were offered a
cast of 95 lb. rails which had accidentally been made with both
manganese and carbon contents (1.12 and 0.62 per cent. respectively)
far above the limits to which they were then working. The falling-
weight test was satisfied, but the tensile test was of course much
higher than the limits then in operation. The cast, however, was
accepted and was laid in the road, and it had just been removed,
having shown a life exactly 100 per cent. greater than 85 lb. rails of
the then normal composition. That gave the first indication of the
value of manganese so fa.r as the London 8: North Eastern Railway
were concerned, and had probably led to their present medium-
manganese analysis, with limits of from 0.9 t o 1.1 per cent. A
good deal had been said in the discussion about the cost of special
qualities of steel, but he would remark that medium-manganese
quality was obtained a t precisely the same price as the British
Standardquality,and,asfarasthe London & NorthEastern
Railway were concerned, their tests proved that it was giving them
from 25 to 33 per cent. longer life. He could not agree with the
view which had been expressed in the discussion that 1.1 per cent.
of manganese should not be exceeded. The Southern Area of the
L. & N. E. Railway had made some promising experiments with up
to 1.51 per cent. of manganese, and he thought that thepercentage
wouldbe carried even higher as more experience was gained. He
therefore agreed with the claim made by Mr. Norris that the manu-
facturer should have more freedom in the matter of analysis than
had yet been the case. It might be necessary for users to protect
themselves against excessive phosphorus, and it was desirable to
specify a minimum of silicon because of its value as a purifying agent
in the manufacture of the steel ; it was also very desirable to have
a lower limit of manganese, which he would not put as low as the
0.7 per cent,. suggested in the Paper; he thought it should not be
[THE INST. C.E. VOL. 238.1 4
Mr. Auen. lower than 0.9 per cent.He did feel, however, that if during the
last 20 years the manufacturers had been less narrowly limited in
the matter of analysis, the wearing-capacity of rails to-day would
in general be considerably superior to that of the rails which had
been supplied during that period, until the change to the medium-
manganese analysis was made. Again, the manufacturer had been
limited by the 55 tons per square inch maximum tensile test in the
British Standard Specification. When buying chrome rails or
sorbitic rails, some users would demand tensile strengths of 68 to
60 tons per square inch, or more ; but if the casts of ordinary rails
were offered with a higher tensile test figure than 55 tons, then, no
matter what extension percentage was obtained, some users would
refuse them on the ground thatthey didnot conform tothe
British Standard Specification.
It had been brought out in the Paper and discussion that there
was great difficulty in relating the physical tests to the potential
wear of the rails, and that some really conclusive abrasion test,
instead of the tedious business of having to wait for the results of
wear tests, was badly needed. The ultimate tensile strength was of
little value ; after all, the rails would hardly be stressed to the
ultimate point. Hethought, however, thatthe extension and
reduction of area in the tensile test did give some indication of the
probable wear of the rails. Within the past 5 years those who had
been testing regularly must have noticed the tendency of extension
percentages to rise in relation to tonnage, and it was a favourable
sign. He thought that it was largely due to the retarded cooling
in the Sandberg oven now employed a t most rolling-mills in this
country, which relieved the strains in the rail-head and gave a better
structure. For the past two decades a t least hardness of rails had
been sought after, butit now seemed that more consideration should
be given to toughness, provided, of course, that there was sufficient
resistance to deformation in the vertical plane. TheSandberg
regulated sorbitictreatment should be mentioned in that connection.
He had recently tested some rails treated for the Southern Area of
the L. k N. E. Railway by that method, in which the average tensile
strength was raised from 52.1 t o 64.1 tons per square inch. There
was a slight fall in the extension percentage (from 17.5 to 15.3 per
cent.), but the important point of those tests was that the elastic
limit, averaging 30.6 tons per square inch in the untreated rails,
had been raised to anaverage of 47.2 tons ; thus, while the ultimate
strength rose by 23 per cent. the elastic limit rose by 54 per cent.
In the case of one particular heat, a tensile strength of 50.0 tons
per square inch untreated rose to 63.6 tons treated, but the elastic
limit rose from 29.8 to 48.8 tons per square inch, or 77 per cent. of

Proceedings.]RAILS.
STEELDISCUSSION
ON 51
the ultimate strength ; the extension percentage fell from 17.5 toMr. Allen.
16.5 per cent., yet the reduction of area increased from 27.6 to 40.6
per cent.-another very significant figure. Such physical tests
supported the claim that with that new development of the sorbitic
process a considerable improvement in wearing-capacity had been
achieved.
The Authors had sounded a warning note regarding the practice
of welding i n situ and the possibility of fracture occurring in rails
so treated. They had referred more to slight cracksin theweld itself,
but it was also possible that slight defects in the rail, which would
not have caused trouble during the ordinary life of the rail, might
become the nuclei of fractures after welding had been carried out.
An ordinary rail was the product of certain definite, well-controlled
thermal and mechanical processes, of which the results could be
checked by physical tests and analysis ; and it was reasonable to
assume that within limits the steel throughout any one cast was
homogeneous in character. I n welding, heat-treatment of a violent
description was applied, not only depositing very hard metal but
applying very high heat locally to the rail, which seemed to him to
result in a quenching effect because of the rapid conduction of that
heat down to the body of the rail. The condition of the metal in
the foot and web of the rail after welding was known, but com-
paratively little could be ascertained about the condition of the
metal in the top of the head, and still less in thedanger-zone between
the deposit of added metal and the body of the rail. It might be
asked whether such rails would withstand the falling-weight test
which had been laid down in the specification as the limit of safety.
The answer was probably in the negative ; if rails thus welded were
supplied new they would fail t o withstand that test and would there-
fore be rejected. That did not necessarily prove that the welding
was dangerous ; on the contrary, evidence had been adduced that
fractures of welded rails had notcaused the totalnumber of fractures
on any of the big systems to increase to any undue extent ; but it
might indicate that the British Standard falling-weight test was too
severe, which was a very important point.
The falling-weight test was the major controlling factor of the
manufacture of rails, and if in fact it was too severe then therailways
might have been losing potential wear-resistance for manyyears
owing to undue caution. It had been pointed out in the discussion
that theMaximilianshutte Co. of Rosenberg, Bavaria, were quenching
rail-heads in cold water, bringing the temperature from 800" C. to
200" C. in about a minute, and claimed to produce a layer of mar-
tensite, the hardest known structure of steel, on the head of the rail.
He believed he was right in saying that some such rails had been

Mr. Alien. tried under the British Standard falling-weight test and had failed ;
but there again, as such rails were laid in the road in .Germany to a
total of 18,000 tons, and apparently carried the traffic in safety, the
result of the British falling-weight test did not necessarily prove that
the treatment hadbeen dangerous or that theGerman falling-weight
test was unduly easy ; it might mean that the British falling-weight
test was too severe and that the whole question of the British
Standardtests, as well as the analysis andother points inthe
specification, needed to be completely overhauled. Further,it
seemed to him that if a rail-head could with reasonable safety be
quenched to t,he martensiticcondition and if, as he imagined,
something not far removed from martensite could safely be deposited
on the heads of rails by welding, then sucha treatment as the
Sandbergregulatedsorbitic treatment, withaccuratecontrol and
the safeguard of retarded cooling, could give an equally hard-wearing
head with perfect safety.
Finally, at the end of their Paper the Authors said that in the
evolution of the rail of the future the railway-engineer and the
metallurgist must work together. The unfortunate manufacturer,
who, earlier in the Paper, had been saddled with the responsibility
of having failed to appreciate the value of manganese, was not
mentioned ; but he could not help thinking that the manufacturer
should, and that probably the Authorsintended that he should,
be included on terms of equality in anysuch discussions. There was
a tendency to regard the manufacturer as a potential evildoer, and
that tendency was reflected in some rail-specifications ; but he had
always found the manufacturers ready to experiment, even though
the experiment were carried out a t cost to themselves, with a view
to producinga better article. It had been suggested thatthe
future development of the rail wouldbechiefly along the line of
heat-treatment. He thought it wouldbe firstly along the line of
improved analysis, then of better temperature-control in rolling
and of more work done on the steel, then of heat-treatment, and
possibly after that, as had been suggested, some cold work done on
the rail-head before the rail was laid. The bestresults would be
secured only if users, metallurgists and manufacturers gave due
weight to each other’s points ofview and then worked together in
the evolution of the ideal rail.
Mr. &niter. Mr. E. H. SANITER drew attentiontothe second paragraph on
p. 4, which in his opinion required amending. The acid Bessemer
process had been in continuous use for the making of rails since the
first steelrails were rolled. It was still in very considerable use,
the Workington Company having made 60,000 tons of rails by that
process last year, and being so confident in it that they were building

Proceedings.] DISCUSSION ON
RAILS.
STEEL 53
a new Bessemer shop. He thought, therefore, that the impressionMr. Smiter.
given in the Paper, no doubt unwittingly, that the acid Bessemer
process was practically wiped out should not be allowed to remain,
and he suggested that the paragraph in question should be amended
to read : “ Later they were produced, in addition, by the basic
Bessemer and basic open-hearth processes, . . . under present-day
conditions, practically the whole output of British rails is made in
basic open-hearthfurnaces alzd bythe acid Bessemer process.”
Although phosphorus was a hardening element it was also an em-
brittling element, and he agreed with the Authors that it should be
controlled as a t present. It should be pointed out, however, that
while acid Bessemer rails were somewhat higher in phosphorus than
basic open-hearth rails, they were made without difficulty to the
British Standard Specification. Hethoughtthatthe danger of
low phosphorus in basic open-hearth steel causing the steel to be
seriously over-oxidized had been much exaggerated, although that
might occur with the basic Bessemer process. On p. 5 the Authors
discussed the question of wash-heating and high finishing tempera-
tures. He did not know how many rail-makers wash-heated, but
a t Workington wash-heating was not resorted to, even in the case
of a 2-ton ingot. On the same page the hardening of the surface
of the rail under traffic was referred to, and Sir Robert Hadfield had
pointed out that thateffect was responsible for the manganese-steel
rail wearing so well. It might be of interest to state that thework-
hardening effect on acid Bessemer steel was considerably higher
than on basic open-hearth steel. Personally, he was a believer in
the higher-manganese rail, and he had been very pleased to hear
Mr. Allen say a word for the poor rail-manufacturer, because it was
the first he had heard that evening. The higher manganese content
had, to his knowledge, always been favoured by the manufacturer,
for the obvious reason that it assisted him in his own processes to
reduce the proportion of defective rails made, but he had not been
able to use as much manganese as he desired, and had suffered in
consequence. Mr. Saniter disagreed with the Authors’ statement
that 068 per cent. of carbon was not liable to become dangerous ;
if 1.1 per cent. of manganese was going to be put in, he would not
care to rideoverarail of that carboncontent.The addition of
0.6 per cent. chromiumor 0.15 per cent. silicon caused a considerable
increase in thepercentages of defective rails. While he was in general
agreement with the Authors’ remarks about fissures or snow-flakes,
it should be pointed out that well-manufactured rails made under
the present British Standard Specifications had not given trouble
from that cause. Thequestion of rapid wear-tests had been
mentioned. There were many wear-testing machines available, but

Mr. saniter. he believed that they were allfairly difficult to work, and it was
probable that none reproduced exactly the conditions on the railway.
He himself brought out a wear-testing machine about 20 years ago
which gave a very good gauge of the rolling friction. It consisted
of a test-piece running inside the inner ring of a ball bearing which
was loaded by means of a lever, and it gave good comparative wear-
tests. When hemadeanumber of tests for theInternational
Society for the Testing of Materials many years ago, he had included
samples of Sir Robert Hadfield’s manganese-steel, and he might say
that that steel headed the list. He would like to congratulate the
Authors on producing a very useful exposition on t,he subject of rails.
AS they had shown, a rail had to be and now was a high-quality
product.
Mr. Harbod. Mr. V E R N ~ HARBORD,
N inreply,remarked thatattentionhad
been drawn by Mr. Saniter to a statement in the Paper which, t,he
Authors admitted, might be misunderstood as suggesting that the
acid Bessemer process only produced a comparatively small tonnage
of rails. The Authors hadno intention of implying that the quantity
of such rails was negligible, but merely that theywere only produced
by one works in Great Britain.
Mr. Ellson had referred to the mention made in the Paper of the
welding of points and crossings. That was in fact a slip ; the
Authors realized that it was only crossings which were welded up.
In reply to his query as to thewelding of alloy-steel rails, the failure
referred to in the Paper was of a rail containing 1.0 per cent. of
chromium, and the Authorswere satisfied that t,he failure was to be
attributed entirely to the welding. They wished it to be clearly
understood that they had no intention of adversely criticizing the
practice of building-up rails by welding, but only of emphasizing
the risks that would be incurred unless most careful supervision
were exercised. They had in mind the fact that successful develop-
ments in Great Britain were quickly adopted in the Dominions and
Colonies, where skilled labourmight be difficult to obtain, and
meticulous supervision might be impossible.
Mr. Carpmael asked for more information in connection with the
rails which were referred to as developing waves in the track. The
defect was not due t o abrasion on the surface or table of the rail,
but the rails had sagged between the sleepers owing to lack of
elasticity. Other rails to the same specification had not given the
same trouble on the same length of track, so that it did not appear
to be due to conditions of loading ortrack construction. The
outstanding featureof the rails, as stated in the Paper, was that they
had a very low manganese content, and t,he Authors came to the
conclusion that that was the reason for the low elastic limit which
had caused the rails to fail.
Proceedings.] . DISCUSSION ON STEEL RAILS. 65
Mr. Carpmael had also asked whether oven control of the Sandberg Mr. Harbord.
type was as necessary for bullhead rails as for flange rails. In the
opinion ofhhe Authors it was. They agreed with Mr. Carpmael
that the cooling stresses were less in the more balanced section of a
bullhead rail than in the flange rail, but that applied only t.0 the
cambering of the rail on the rail-bank, whereas in their opinion the
cause of the snow-flake fissuring which the oven treatment was
designed to avoid was the difference of temperature between the
surface and the interior of t,he head of the rail, and that was likely
to be as great in bullhead as in flange rails. It was interesting to
learn from Mr. Carpmael that theaddition of 0.25 per cent. of copper
to thesteel for rails in tunnels and other places where corrosion was
serere was giving satisfactory results. It was not suggested that
the copper would have anyother effect than that of corrosion-
resistance.
He thoughtMr. Sandberg had not quite understood the suggestion
of the Authors with regard to carbon-content. I n the Paper they
said that the maximum carbon-content of 0.68 per cent. allowed by
the British Standard Specification was not in their opinion dangerous,
but Mr. Sandberg rather suggested that they were advocating that
percentage. The rest of the Paper, however, clearly showed that,
although they didnot consider 0.68 percent. to be dangerous,
they would not recommend it., and itwould seem from bhe discussion
that t,here was general agreement on that point. In any case, if,
as seemed to be generally agreed, the toughness of the rail was to be
increased by the addition of other alloying elements or by some
method of heat-treatment, it was essential that the carbon-content
should be reduced in order to avoid any risk of brittleness.
The Authors were pleased to note that Mr. Sandberg and other
speakers agreed with them that there should be a minimum fixed
for manganese in the British Standard Specification. They had given
the figure of 0.7 per cent. in the Papersimply because they considered
that no rail should have less than that proportion.
An interesting point was raised by Mr. B. G. White in connection
wit h the grinding of tire-treads instead of finish-machining, in order
to reduce the initial wear. TheAuthors hadhad no experience
bearing on that question, but considered i t would be valuable to
have the opinion of Mr. Ellson and Mr. Cooper, who had had the
great,est experience of electric traction. With regard tothe
conductivity of rails mentioned bythe same speaker, it was
unfortunate that thoseelements which conferred the property of
t,oughnesswere the very ones which increased the electrical resistance,
and the engineer had to decide for each particular case whether a
heavier section would be economically advantageous.

MC. Harbord. Mr. Norris referred to the smaller amount of work done on modern
steel. The essential fact was, not that it had less work, but that it
had less work a t lower temperatures. The actual reduction of
modern large ingots was more with heavier draughts, but the old
method of rolling down and finishing a t lower temperatures with
lighter mills gave more surface-working on the finished rail. He
did not agree with Mr. Norris’s remarks about the ingots made a t
the week-end being reheatedfor rolling on Monday. In no steel-
works with which he had had anything to do did they make steel
beyond about midday on Saturday, so that all the steel made could
be rolled off before the week’s work closed. The steelworks then
restarted inorder to have ingots ready for the mills to roll on Monday.
It was true that there were a certain number of ingots always in
stock, some of which might go into the pits while the pits were
reheating on Sunday, but to suggest that the faults and rejections
on Monday morning’s rolling were due to the ingots having been
reheated was not, he thought, substantiated.
Mr. Norris also suggested that steel could not be finished at the
lower temperatures, as was desirable for the production of a hard
surface, owing to the danger of laps. In order to prevent possible
misunderstanding, it was well to mention that the Authors, and
probably Mr. Norris, when referring to laps were not so much
considering the question of surface lapson the head of the rail,
such as other speakers had had in mind, but rather the lap which
was sometimes found at the junction of the flange and web, which
might cause the head and web to drop away from the flange. It was
for the detection of that fault that the pendulum test mentioned by
Mr. Norris was used. Its occurrence, which was clearly illustrated
in Mr. Norris’s photograph (Pig. l ) ,was first brought to theAuthors’
notice by the failure of some rails in Nigeria in 1926, and they gave
their opinion of the nature and origin of the defect. Their views,
however, were not accepted by the manufacturers, and it was only
when a similar defect made its appearance in localities as far apart
as India, Australia and Egypt that it attracted serious attention.
The case in India was not investigated directly by the Authors, but
from conversations with the Metallurgical Inspector for the Govern-
ment of India there was no doubt that it was the same defect. An
exhaustive examination was carried out by the Authors a t one of the
steelworks and theorigin of the defect established to thesatisfaction
of allparties. I n short, it originated from the partly-formedrail
being subjected a t one pass to too greata reduction in the length of
the flange, and could only therefore occur in a closed pass of the
rolls. It might be due to insufficient plasticity of the steel, asa
result of too low a temperature in the flange at that stage for the

Proceedings.1 DISCUSSION ON STEEL RAILS. 57
particular composition of the steel, or to incorrect roll-design. TheMr. ~ ~ ~ h d
better remedy, and that which was generally adopted in practice,
was to modify the design of the finishing passes. At the instigation
of Sir James Carmichael, of the Crown Agents for the Colonies, and of
Mr. P. M. Tottenham, Chief Inspecting Engineer for the Egyptian
Government, a committee of the British Standards Institution was
formed to investigate the matter with a view to ensuring immunity
in the future. A sub-committee withone of the Authors as chairman
was appointed to devise a suitable test for the detection of that type
of defect, and the pendulum impact test was adopted. Mr. Norris
calculated the energy which sound rails of varying sections should
absorb without fracture ; his figures were accepted by theCommittee
and manufacturers, and the test was incorporated in the British
Standards InstitutionSpecification for flat-bottom rails.
The Authors could not agree with Mr. Norris that those laps were
formed in the squabbing pass. They were definitely formed in one
of the finishing passes towards the end of the rolling operation.
The squabbing pass in any mill was an open box pass receiving the
half-formed squab, and sometimes as a result of that pass a lap
could be formed ; but that lap would always occur high up in the
web, and was not similar tothefaultin question. The fact
mentioned by Mr. Norris of distortion inthe flow-lines causing
fracture without anactuallap being evident was, he thought,
clearly explained by the fact that themetal in the formation of the
fault had not been rolled over, as in the case of a lap, so much as
crushed up together, and was under very intense stress. He thought
that could be clearly demonstratedexperimentally by annealing
a faulty section of rail before testing it.
The origin of internal fissures had been discussed by Mr. Samuel
Whyte. The Authors'investigation definitely supported the view
that such fissures occurred a t temperatures well below the critical
range. The oven-treatedrails referred to on p. 42 did notenter
the oven a t a temperature above 550" C. Further experiments had
been carried out, arranged deliberately to produce fissures, and a
microphone had been fitted to therail. Actual ruptures were heard,
and theirpresence confirmed later ; they took place when the external
temperature of the rails was between 300" and 400" C. Reference
had been made to flaws such as overlaps on the side of the rail not
being dangerous until wear brought them to the surface, and they
agreed that that was generally true with internal flaws. Transverse
fissures, however, were an exception to that rule, as on account of
theirinternal stresses they developed outwards untilfracture
occurred. The use of the Sperry detector car had been mentioned
by Mr. Muggeridge ; that apparatus had been widely used in the

Mr. Harbord. United States of America for the detection of transverse fissures
inthepermanent way. It could not, however, be used for the
detection of the faultfor which the pendulum test had been devised.
Criticisms had been made by Mr. Norris and Mr. Allen of existing
rail specifications. The suggestion that insufficient scope was given
to manufacturers was, inthe Authors' opinion, unfounded, as
sufficiently wide limits were given in all specifications to allow
manufact.urers certain
a amount of discretion. Furthermore,
railway-engineers had always shown thatthey were sufficiently
broad-minded, not only to discuss any possible improvements with
the manufacturers, but to encourage and assist in any experimental
work with that object in view. The Authors could not support the
further suggestion t,hatthe British Standard falling-weight test
was unnecessarily severe, as it was doubtful whether built-up rails
would stand it, though they did not fail in service. Although the
question of good wearing properties was of great concern to railway-
engineers, t.hat of safety had always held first place, and i t was
believed that the continuance of that test, had been responsible
for the reput,ation held by British railways of being t'lle safest in
the world. Various speakers had referred to the import,ance of the
yield-point as regards testsing of steel, and the Authors were in full
agreement with that view.
The question as to themaximum percentage of manganese which
should be permitted in the medium-manganese rail had been raised,
and Mr. Allen suggested that itwas safe to allow up to 1.5 per cent.
The Authors considered that appreciable increases over 1.1 per cent.
should only be permitted after extensive trials, and that any such
increases should aut,omatically coincide wit,h a decrease in carbon-
content.
As t,here appeared to be some misunderstanding on t,he effect of
the Sandberg oven treatment, the Aut,hors wished t.0 reiterate that
that controlled cooling did not in anyway affect the structureof the
rail, nor increase the tensile strength or elongation of the steel, as it
onlyprevented thesetting-up of excessive stresses which might
otherwise be dangerous. As the result of that prevention of stresses,
rail-compositions which might ot'herwisebe dangerous could be safely
used. Such increases in yield-point and elongation to which reference
had been made were in the Aut,hors' opinion t,o he attributed to
improvements in thetechnique of rail manufacture.
Mr.Law. Mr. E. F. LAWremarked that his co-Author and he had felt that
there was a good deal of information on rails which was lying scattered
about, so to speak, rather like the pieces of a jigsaw puzzle, and they
thought it ought t'obe collected so that something of the completed
picture might be seen. They had therefore endeavoured t o collect

what he might call the metallurgical pieces, in the hope that theMr ~ a ~ .
engineers and the steelmakers would collaborate and collect their
own pieces. The Authors wished to thank them all most sincerely
for the way in which they had responded and given the meeting the
benefit of their experience. If it was not invidious to mention
anyone specially, he would like to refer in particular to the con-
tributions of Mr. Ellson and Mr. Cooper,who had had so much
experience of therapid wear of rails. Their remarks were very
valuable.
It had been said that a proper view of the present required some
study of the past. As a result of all that hadbeen said that evening,
he would like to make a little excursion into the past. It was just
a hundred years since cast-iron railswere being replaced, not without
considerable opposition, by Mr. Birkenshaw’s malleable-iron rails.
Most people said they would corrode and wear away very rapidly,
but asa matter of fact they did not ; they hadlasted extraordinarily
well, so much so that one user said that the results were so excellent
thatthey left scarcely anything more perfect to be desired. It
was interesting t,onote that theexplanation he gaveof the excellent
wear of those malleable-iron rails was theircapacityfor work-
hardening ; and that, it shouldbe remembered, was ahundred
years ago. Then came the age of steel. Metallurgists began t o
learn something about the relationship between carbon and iron,
and t,heythought theycould get any property they liked by arranging
the carbon and iron ; carbon became the one and only god.
The alloy-steel period came next, and curiously enough it was an
alloy-steel which again focussed attention on work-hardening, that
alloy being Sir Robert Hadfield’s manganese-steel, which provided
the most wonderful example of work-hardening. Engineers had
t,hus completed the circle and come back to work-hardening ; but,
if they had travelled in circles, and sometimes left the path, he
thought on t,he whole they had made progress.
There was one other mattert.0 which he would like to refer, because
it was not mentioned in the Paper, namely, the duplex or bime-
tallic rail. That again was a very old idea, and was probably one
of the offspring of the old compound armour-plate. It presented
difficulties in manufacture and use. If a duplex railwere to be used,
it would be better not to concentrate on a hard surface ; the essential
factor was toughness.

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20 DISCUSSION ON STEEL RAILS.

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the parent metal." He thought itwas quite possible that a fracture

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1 Minutes of Proceedings Inst. C.E., vol. 237, p. 369.

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ing diametrically opposed views on the same class of rails, without

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1 Minutes of Proceedings Inst. C.E., vol. xxv (1868), p. 320.

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Professor importance could be conducted withrails in laboratories. These

a The Railway Engineer,” p. 54, 1934.

W. Gurney, “Wear of Rails in the Bombay Electrified Area,”Railway

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W. m i t e . composition of rail to be adopted for a whole line on the basis of

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Mr. side of thetrack, so thatthe yield-point and elongation were two

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He would like to strike a personal note. It was in 1888, 46 ycarssir Robert

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2Technologic Papers of the Bureau of Standards No. 178 : “ Steel Rails

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some impuritiesmight be caused to diffuse during properhent-

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Sir Robert contraction or expansion in length of the separate sections on their

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as consultant to the Underground Railways, he had suggested a Mr. Whyte.

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Mr. seemed to appreciate the value of the yield-point. The structural

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