muddstopper
Veteran Member
A railroad rail is always under tremendous stresses of expansion and contraction during periods of hot and cold weather. Wintertime is when we see most of broken rails. The cold weather makes the rails contract and they will often just pull apart or break whereever there is a weak spot. The gap created by this break can be several inches wide, which prevent just drilling the rail and adding joint bars for a temporary fix. The fuel soaked rope is stretched out and laid against the web of the rail in each direction from the break. It is then set on fire and the heat warms up the rail causing it to expand and the crack to "run" back together so the rail can then be jointed. Now days, most major railroad used Continuously welded rails on all their heavy tonnage tracks. When you have miles and miles of a single ribbon of metal, the amount of expansion and contraction during temperature fluctuation can be pretty significant. Summer time you will see bucked, or misaligned track due to expansion, and in winter times, broken or pulled apart rails.
