How Are The Rails Of A Railroad Track Bent To Make The Track Curve?

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14 Answers

Daniel Bunker Profile
Daniel Bunker answered
I have personally put railroad down at a steel plant in the midwest. All we did to make it curve is push it in the direction we needed it to go with a tractor then spike it down. The other rail was then set and forced into place while maintaining the proper guage or distance and spiked down too. No heat used at all.
Dorian Twyman Profile
Dorian Twyman answered
One way to get pretty accurate curves is to draw each rail on a piece of paper to the desired radius. You can do this using strings of the correct length with loops at either end. Stick a tack into the floor through one loop and use the other to trap the point of a pencil to draw the curve. Bending the rail to match the drawn lines should be a relatively easy task. Fine adjustments can be done by hand. Rails needn't be perfectly bent--the ties will hold them to gauge. If you are building your railroad indoors, you might get away with bending already-assembled track, but I wouldn't recommend it. Outdoors, it's a definite no-no. The track will always try to unbend and with sun, weather, and frost heave aiding and abetting it, it will eventually succeed.

Anonymous Profile
Anonymous answered

Heat is not necessary, only appropriate pressure. In early railroad engineering, the curve was made by supporting the ends of a rail, using a lever in the center to force a bend in it, then hammering it so the iron rail retained its shape. Modern steel rail can be bent using a hydraulic bender, similar to a pipe bender, deforming the straight rail into the desired amount of curvature.

Anime Rocks Profile
Anime Rocks answered
I am visulaizing, They have a special carving machine wich first kinds of burns it to make it melt, Somehow made out of charcoal or metal.
Simply,We all know its made from the factory but your main point is "How"
There are special types of patterns, And a railroad track is known as very dificult to make. It needs to stay strong on a soft surface, So the train can come and go easily without any accidents. If a nut or bolt is not pushed in propally, Then that is what causes the train to stop. Like Learning To Learn said, There are special panks of wood wich don't get made with the track. They are actually inserted first, And there for, The raildroad rails can be inserted on.
nettie Profile
nettie answered
Some are heated and bent into shape, some are bent right at the scene, knew some guys that did this for the rail road companies etc...the best to you
thanked the writer.
nettie
nettie commented
Visiting a steel plant is amazing and educational to see how steel heated to a certain teperture can become as a liquid, but don't think we have those in our country anymore how sad we have to mostly buy from other countries, when we had these things ourselves.....
Oddman
Oddman commented
Thanks. I noticed the other day that the "piecewise linear" aspect of that section of track has moderated into a smooth curve. It seems that the rail tends to relieve its own stress somehow over time.
Joseph Michael Wasik
No doubt they had a pre-configured jig with pneumatic or hydraulic pressure combined with a heat source to bend these. What do you think?
Mark Mottian Profile
Mark Mottian answered
Carbon Dioxide lasers! Lasers play an instrumental role in the in the production of such products. Just like with heat, they heat the track and bend it using a pipe - bender - e.g
joan saviour Profile
joan saviour answered
I think they first take the angle of the curve , then measurements are send to the factory ,

heard that they use some kind of rail bender machine which bends the heated rails and it can bend rails up to 180* or something like that
Learning To Learn Profile
The people that construct and build it model with some type of metal (Firstly Wet Sort Of Thing) and they structure to the size and shape even curves they want.
As You can see by the picture here there are planks of wood at a certain ammount of centimetre or degree angle.Theese pieces of planked wood help them to stop them from shaking and envolving passangers on the train or tram to get injured, hurt etc
.
John Profile
John answered
I'm going with formed at the foundry while still hot from the forge/extruder when ordered for a repair/replacement. Then shipped to the site for placement.this is my guess.
Mandy Clark Profile
Mandy Clark answered
Have you heard of Lobachevsky? A.K.A. The mad Russian? He proved that every straight line is part of a curve. He was sitting and looking out at the sea below the horizon when he noticed the earth is curved (he already knew that though), but he realized if you take a section of a curve and enlarge it, it will get a little straighter. If you take a section of that piece and enlarge it, it will be even straighter. So Lobachevsky proved that there is no such thing as a straight line, that every line is part of a curve. That could be how the train tracks are bended:)

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