How long do the rails in a subway last?
I came across Transit Toronto when googling about this question. No specific answers I don’t think, but lots of other great stuff. Mitheral, why braking and not acceleration? Also, from some of the links here I got the feeling that corners were an issue… Of course on a subway a pretty big percentage of the total track length is subjected to braking/acceleration very frequently… I noticed talk about track grinders in fred_ashmore’s link (which is awesome, Thanks!). On the torpic of fred_ashmore’s link, it sounds like all the track in New York has wooden or plastic ties, even in the tunnels. In Toronto the track in tunnels seems to be laid very differently – here is a picture. As I said earlier about the clips, I can remember them changing these steel pads and the clips and bolts that held the steel pads and track down. GuyZero, I expect that cleaning the old tr
It’s more the foundations that fail, not the rails themselves. The wooden ties rot. The foundation erodes. Things start shifting, the rail starts losing its support, and it has to be replaced. I’m sure there’s still 99+% of the original rail left when they’re replaced. Modern steel is extremely high quality. If you’ll notice in Toronto, the thing that causes street car tracks to be replaced is failure of the concrete around the rail, not the rail itself. The Toronto subway closes at night, and I assume most track work is done during the closure period – one section a night, or whatever. The NYC subway does not shut down at night, and often has weekend-long track closures (late Friday evening until early Monday morning) to replace a lengthy section of track.
