How much does a 12" length of railroad track weigh? Someone said it was 80 lbs.?

Question

How much does a 12" length of railroad track weigh? Someone said it was 80 lbs.?

Answer 1

Railroad rails are different weghits.  The heavier rail is used primarily on moder main line trackage, with lighter rail in spurs, sidings, yards, etc.

Most main line rail is 139 pound rail.  This means three feet of it weighs 139 lbs.  Divide by three and you will find that a 12" section weighs 45.33 lbs.  The same applies to 80 pound rail. 90 pound rail, etc.

So, you must know the rails "weight", as it was manufactured.

Most rail used in heavy curveature is carbon steel, and requires an oxy-acetelene torch or diamond saw to cut the stuff.  It is very expensive and very tough stuff.

If you have a piece of rail long enough, its weight, manufacturer and date of manufacture on the "web" of the rain, which is the thinner part of the rail under the rail's head, you can determine the rail's weight.  If you have a 12" section already, you will not see all of the information on it, as it takes much longer length to reveal this info. It's not in small print.

In addition, after the manufacturing date of the year produced, you will see "hash" marks, which is a number of verticle marks, numbering from one mark up to twelve marks.  These marks indicate the month of the year in which the rail was made.

If you go looking for something similar, be very aware of your surroundings and watch out for any rail traffic.  Any time you are aroung railroad cars or engines, you can expect it to move at any time, on any track, in either direction without warning.  BE SAFE.

Answer 2

I have about a 12 inch piece of rail holding my garage door closed and I imagine it weight about 30 lbs or so.

Answer 3

More like 25 lbs. Steel is nowhere near that dense.

Answer 4

EDIT Rail weights are in lb /yard length of rail  So your informant was probably out by a factor of 3 EDIT

It varies with the head design ,thickness of the neck or web  and the width of the flange.

Head size varies with expected wear and the type of reprofiling (rail grinding) that might be used to extend the life of the piece of rail -

Web thickness  -the thicker the web the stronger the rail - the heavier the trains that can be run - some early lines with little locos ran on 40lb rail (ie 13lb per foot length) . - Modern coal rail lines are laid in 109 lb in our area (ie 36 lb per foot length)

Flanges vary with how the rail is held down to the ties - Pandrol clips are the replacement for the older  dogspikes .

Modern methods mean that the art of the "gandy-dancer" - the lads who use the bars to reposition the rails -is not practised - conntinuous welded - machine placed and pinned - concrete machine placed ties  etc etc- Rails are delivered and joined in long ribbons