Old rail length

[NYC_George]

I want to make some stacked piles of rail. The old single length rail was how long? I’m guessing 30 ft.

NYC_George

 

[mdcustom]

George, I believe that standard rail length is 39'.

 

[CBCNSfan]

Let's see. back in the 50's the Sydney Steel stopped making 30 ft rails in their rail mills. There was quite a kerfuffle over that as they couldn't get the same properties in the new rails which were 36 ft long. Seems an older gent, who had long since passed away wrote the process for tempering the 30 footers. The only change to the process was they lengthened the 30 ft cooling tanks to 36 ft, but to no avail could they produce the same quality.
My aunt at the time, was a nurse at the Steel Plant Hospital and I can still recall her story of amazement and puzzlement of the engineers (maybe they were and maybe they were not truly qualified engineers) who couldn't figure it out.

That's about all I can add

Willis

 

[NYC_George]

Did anyone ever figure it out?

 

[bnsf971]

The rails were 39 feet long to fit inside 40 foot freight cars of the period. Obviously, the rails started shorter, but grew in length as handling equipment and metallurgy allowed.

 

[kenw]

you would use the 39' length only if it's new or unbolted. Most of the time today, even bolted track is simply cut apart into 10-12' lengths. Flatbed bobtail trucks haul it to the scrapyard now.

 

[CBCNSfan]

Ah! maybe it was when the standard changed to 39 ft and not 36 as I posted, that makes sense.

Did anyone ever figure it out?

Have no idea, I didn't have any interest in it at the time. I remember it because it was hard to believe lengthening the tanks would change the quality. It was about that time I joined the RCAF and left the area for good (other than a rare visit).
It's easy to figure it out now, by lengthening the tanks and rail, they changed the rate of cooling therefore the tempering (hardness) of the rail, to either crystalline or too soft instead of being just right.
Dosco steel 30 ft rails were in great demand before that and the mills were flat out to fill the orders. After the change to 39 ft they had lots of time to fill their orders especially after the word go out.
Tried to find something on the net about it but no luck so far, lots about the plant from beginning to end, quite a bit on the mills but nothing about the change or loss of sales.

Willis

 

[UP2CSX]

It looks like 39' is the standard length of 100 pound rail and up according to this dealer at http://www.bhamrail.com/railproduct.asp#. One small correction, the rails were made to 39' lengths specifically to fit drop end gondolas.

 

[Rico]

When I contract to the railways to cut cast off CWR (continuous weld rail, or ribbon rail) we cut it into 39' lengths even tho the gondolas are larger than the old 40'rs.
As the crane operator mags it into gons he has to keep track of the size of rail and number of feet loaded to not overload the cars. For example, if the rail is 136# and there are 100 39' lengths he would have 176,800 lbs of steel. Gets tricky when there are shorter lengths and mixed sizes of rail.