Application of grinding to reduce rail side wear in straight track

Two grinding strategies were developed that could reduce the number of damaging contacts. These were, grinding the gauge shoulder, and grinding the field side of the top of the rail. Calculations predicted that the largest improvement would result from combining both strategies. This approach was adopted to reduce the side wear on rail in straight track. It was found that the distribution of wheel/rail contact points on the rail surface agreed well with the calculation results, and the proposed grinding regime did reduce side wear.