Restoration of Railway Turnout Elements with Manual Metal Arc Welding and Flux-Cored Arc Welding

The paper describes the experiment during which to evaluate potential time and material economy railway turnout element, in particular stock rail, was restored using two different welding methods – manual metal arc welding (MMA) currently used by Latvian Railway and flux-cored arc welding (FCAW). For quality control restored stock rails were further examined with metallographic examination. Performed experiment revealed that, if restoration is performed strictly following technical procedures, the restored elements are of equally high quality; however, FCAW has considerable time and material economy, consequently also cost economy in comparison with MMA.