How Much Do You Know about the Characteristics of High Quality Railway Joints

Railway Joints, also called railway fish plate or splice bar, is a metal joints bar connected to the ends of two steel rails to bond them together. High quality rail joints can largely reduce the impact of train wheels to the jointing sections of the rail tracks and increase the continuity and steadiness of the train when passing through the jointing sections. High quality railway joint is a guarantee to railroad transportation safety no matter it’s light or heavy. In general, railway joint is typically a piece of flat steel with two holes drilled at each end. The holes correspond to ones that are drilled into the ends of the rails and are bolted between the two rails to connect and hold them together. Railway joints are installed at regular intervals to create signal blocks for detecting train positions and sometimes break in rails. Their lifetime may be significantly shorter than that of the rail. Failure may occur in the adhesive between the rail and the joint bars on the sides of the rail. In some sense, high quality railway joints concerns about the safety of rail transportation. While, how to judge the quality of railway joints? We cannot tell it just from the appearance. After years of production experience, we have summarized some basic characteristics of high-quality railway joints.

Characteristics of High-Quality Railway Joints

• Railway joint should hold the two ends of the rails as nearly as possible. The two ends should be at the same level and in the same straight line.
• Railway joint should have same strength and stiffness as rails which it joins.
• Joint should provide space for the expansion and contraction of rails.
• Joint should be such that any rail can be taken out easily or disconnected without disconnecting entire track.
• The contact surface of joint bar and rail track should wear gradually. Railway joints should be able to cope up with this adjustment.
• High quality railway joint should be cheap and economical for setting up and maintenance. It also should be durable.
• Railway joints should provide sufficient elasticity so that vibrations and shocks can be absorbed.
• Railway joints should provide resistance to longitudinal forces developed due to acceleration, deceleration to reduce creeping effect.
• Railway joints should be universal type so that they can be used for all type of sleepers.

Specifications of High Quality Railway Joints from AGICO

AGICO supply more than 30 types of rail joints, according to different standards:

• High quality railway joints for light rail: 8kg, 9kg, 12kg, 15kg, 18kg, 22kg, 24kg and 30kg
• High quality railway joints for heavy rail: 38kg, 43kg, 50kg and 60kg
• High quality railway joints for crane rail: QU70, QU80, QU100 and QU120