I was following the topic on the NYC tank car and Ron Goldfeder mentioned the comment about how someone asked how long the rails were when the golden spike was driven in 1869.

This got me wondering, for most of us when we think of rail lengths the 39ft. length figure often comes to mind as one would assume that was the standard length to fit in a 40ft. gondola for transporting rail in the railroading era that most of us think about before the ribbon rail came about.

So what was the length of early RR rail before the 39ft. lengths came in to being when 40ft. freight cars were built? I have a bit of interest in early RR rail and rail chairs as i often find and dig some of the stuff up along old abandoned RR's. Over the years i have found a few short pcs. of early strap rail and strap rail spikes from the Mad River & Lake Erie RR and the Sandusky, Mansfield & Newark RR. wich both used strap rail. Anyone know what the full length was on a section of strap rail used way back then? I don't! as i havn't found a full pc. with the male and female ends at opposite ends.

Moving on to the 1850's when iron pear rail was being imported from England and used on some of the early US RR's was there a standard length for rail then? I have found several shorter pcs. of iron pear rail some being different sizes that were broken and discarded and have also seen some ends of pcs. driven into river banks for pilings, but trying to find a full length pc. of that or any with mill markings is really hard. I stumbled on a burried pc. a few years back that still had the H plate looking rail chair attached at the end where the rail is notched for the spikes to be driven thru the chair to make the rail joint. I paced off the length of the burried iron pair rail/and used my detector and a probe to find the other end and it was about 20ft. long. That iron pear rail i believe was 1850's rail that was used second hand on a old LS&MS 1870's quarry spur when it was built.

What was or was there a standard rail length used when the golden spike was driven? What about when rolling mills first started making rail here in the US was there a standard length for rail made back in the 1860's or 1870's? What was the first rolling mill built in the US to make RR rail? Some of the early iron rail chairs used at the rail joints are pretty interesting before the 2 and 4 bolt flat bar fish plates came about. You never know what your going to dig up or find!

Fritz -

I believe before the 39' length was adopted, the standard length was 33'. I'm not sure when that changed.


Les

Because 33' fits nicely in the 34' or 36' gons and boxcars that were common at the turn of the last century. Before that I believe 28' rail was common, for the same reason.

You are on the right track, if you ignore the pun. The length being used was generally a foot shorter than the cars available to haul them. According to the Central Pacific historic web site they used 30 foot rails as a general standard, but some of the early ones they ordered had to be shorter due to the size of the holds in the ships that carried them. If you look at the length of flat cars for various periods you will see the trend in the length of the rails they carried. Once the UP & CP met the rails for California could move by rail, as the ones on the UP had.

Iron rails rolled at Danville, Pa., reported to be the first T-rails rolled in the United States circa 1845, were 25 feet long and were shipped by canal boat. The Central Iron mill in Danville later shipped rail by ship to San Francisco for use by the Central Pacific.

At the WW&F Railway Museum in Maine, 30, 33, 40, 45, 50, 56 and 60 pound rails have been used. The smaller sections are generally 30 feet long, while some but not all of the 60-pound material is 33 feet long.

Going the other direction, 78' "double length" rails were also available;popular for use in highway crossings, to keep rail joints from being buried in the roadway. Of course, with the advent of welded rail, this isn't really an issue any more.

Regarding the question asked in the first post "What was or was there a standard rail length used when the golden spike was driven?".

Rail shipped to Sacramento via ship around the horn was 24 feet long. There were occasional shipments of 30 feet but until the rail connection was made at Promontory the lengths were dependent upon the ability to handle the material on and off the ships and 24 feet was dominate.

Here is info on shorter rail from 1852. Two 18’ long lengths of iron rail at the Museum of Transportation are from the first batch used on the Pacific Railroad of Missouri (later renamed the Missouri Pacific), ordered in London in 1851 and shipped across the Atlantic and up the Mississippi in 1852. They then became part of the first railroad built and put into operation with the intension of reaching the Pacific Coast.

In 1851 Adolphus Meier negotiated a contract for the production and delivery of 4400 tons of wrought iron rail for the Pacific Railroad of Missouri while he was in London. This contract with the Ebbw Vale Iron Works in Wales was for rail weighing 60 pounds to the yard, the normal method of determining rail size, to be delivered in New Orleans the following year. This rail was shipped from Liverpool and began arriving in New Orleans in August 1852. It cost $32 per ton delivered to the dock in New Orleans, not counting the customs duty of 30%. From there it was loaded on river steamers for delivery to St. Louis at the cost of about $4.50 per ton. There was an additional charge for drayage from the landing in St. Louis to the end of the line at 14th Street.

Each piece of rail measured 18 feet in length, 3 ¼” in height, and 3 7/8” wide at the base. The rail head was pear shaped and the web was 7/8” thick at its narrowest point. Later orders were for rail that was 22’ long, making identification of the original rails possible.

According to a 1904 era trade journal write-up about the Los Angeles Railway streetcar system, the company was obtaining rail in 60' length for street installation.

78 foot rails are a relatively recent innovation. 80 and 82 feet (the latter equal to 25 meters) are also now common. 60 foot rails were somewhat common in street railway work; less so for steam railroads. Pennsylvania Trolley Museum's line has several hundred feet of 70 ASCE rail in 60 foot lengths.

Production of 60 foot rails was constrained by the introduction of controlled cooling of rails circa 1937. Bethlehem Steel's plant in Steelton PA only had only one controlled cooling box for 60-foot rails versus dozens of boxes for 39-foot rail. The introduction of vacuum degassing of the molten steel eliminated the need for controlled cooling of the finished rails, making production of longer rails in large quantities possible. The fairly new Steel Dynamics rolling mill in Indiana now rolls rails in lengths up to 400 feet.

Anticipating the next question: The reason that rails were control cooled was for the elimination of free hydrogen in the steel. Hydrogen in steel is not your friend. Hydrogen atoms are very small. (You remember don't you? Only one proton and one electron? ) They can fit in teeny tiny places between the much larger iron and carbon atoms in the steel, weakening the bond between them, and hence making the steel brittle. Controlled cooling - allowing the newly-rolled rails to cool v--e--r--y s--l--o--w--l--y inside an insulated box - gave the hydrogen time to escape while the rail was still hot and there was still a relatively large amount of space between the other atoms. But controlled cooling was also a huge constraint on the production line. Sucking the hydrogen out of the molten steel before casting the continuous strand is much more efficient.

/s/ Larry
Lawrence G. Lovejoy, P.E.

We found three lengths of pear shaped rail buried along the right of way of the Liberty & Vienna Railroad that ran from Girard, OH to the coal mines in Liberty township. All three are about 20 feet long. This line was abandoned by the 1880s or so.

It appears from all the anecdotal evidence presented here that there was no standard length as there was no standard organization making the standards. Each sale of rails was custom based upon the capacities of the mill, of transportation and the wants of the railroad.

Remember back when iron rails were first being rolled the sections were manhandled at the rolling mill, so a length could only be as long as what the men could reasonably handle.

The Kentucky & Tennessee Ry / Big South Fork Ry in Stearns, KY has 33' rail. Early description of the road, built beginning in 1902, states that it is built "heavy" with 80lb rail. Today the line is still predominatly 80lb and mixed 90lb rail, in 33' lengths.

I looked at a few books last night and in Early American Railroads by von Gerstner, reporting on the period 1842 - 43, he found that the earliest use of T rail in the US was on the Camden and Amboy, which used 16 foot lengths. That construction began in late 1830 using stone blocks to support the rails, which weighed 42 pounds per yard. A 15 foot length was later more common, used on the Long Island, Boston & Lowell, Boston & Providence, and Boston & Worcester. Weights of these rails ranged from 38 1/2 to 58 pounds per yard.

As earlier posted the Pacific Railroad of Missouri started with 18 foot rails in 1852, followed by ones 22 feet long.

On April 28, 1869, when the Central Pacific laid more than 10 miles of track in a day, the stated length of these rails was 30 feet. And the CP used shorter lengths as well, as already mentioned.

Looking at the relationship between freight car lengths and rails, with the rails usually being a foot shorter than the cars, the 1879 Car Builder's Dictionary showed cars were 29 feet long, giving rails a length of 28 feet. The 1888 edition had cars just over 31 feet long, making rails 30 feet long. And the 1906 edition had 40 foot cars, giving us the familiar 39 foot length we know. I'm sure there were many variations beyond these.

Not exactly on topic here, but I have understood that the 39-foot rail length was not just because of the cars that hauled the rail, but also to avoid the possibility of harmonic vibrations if the rail lengths and the 40-foot car lengths of a train were the same. Am I wrong?

I think what you are referring to was that if the truck centers and the rail lengths were the same, it could result in excess rocking.