RAIL FAILURE STATISTICS FOR 1920 BY M. H. WICKHORST This report deals with the statistics of rail failures collected for the year ending October 31, 1920, furnished by the railroads of the United States and Canada, in response to a circular sent out by the American Railway Association. The information furnished by each railroad showed the number of tons of each year's rolling from each mill, the equivalent number of track miles, and the total number of failures that occurred in each year's. rolling from the date laid until October 31, 1920. They were reported by the railroads on American Railway Engineering Association form 408 as revised in 1915. (See Manual for 1915, page 104.) The report covers rollings for 1915 and succeeding years and the ages of the rolling would average in track about the years shown below: 1915-5 years 1916 4 years 1917-3 years 1918-2 years The tonnages and track miles of rail represented by the statistics in In previous years the detail results as given by the railroads have been presented, arranged and classified by the mills that made the rails, and for the last two years they were also classified by the railroads that used them. In the present report, however, on account of a desire to save the expense of preparing the detail statements and to reduce the amount of printing, only the general average results are presented. Lots of less than 1,000 tons (that is, less than 1,000 tons in any one year's rolling for a railroad) were excluded from the tabulations, as they would not materially change the group totals and averages and would unnecessarily extend the tables and increase the work. The method of compiling the statistics was to make blueprints of the reports submitted by the different railroads after checking the calculations and seeing that all the lines were fully filled out, and then cutting the prints along the horizontal lines. The strips constituted the units in the tables, and were sorted and collected into the desired groups for which the totals and averages were calculated. The average results of all the rails reported on are shown in Table 1, together with the results taken from previous reports including both bessemer and open-hearth rails. The measure of the performance of a lot of rails as regards failures is taken as the failures per hundred track miles for five years' service and it will be noted that there was a continuous decrease in the failures from the rails rolled in 1908 with a record of 398.1 to those rolled in 1914 with a record of 74.0. The rails rolled in 1915 showed an increase to 82.4 failures per 100 track miles for five years' service and a study of the records for lesser periods of service indicates, that the rails rolled in 1916 and 1917 will show successively increased numbers of failures. This unfortunate performance is probably to be regarded as a by-product of the war and the manufacturing conditions that prevailed during the war and for a while thereafter. Under-maintenance during the same period probably contributed to increase the general failure records, but it is to be noted that the 1914 rails, which have given the best record, also went through the same period of under-maintenance. The general average results for the whole country are presented diagrammatically in Fig. 1. Here again will be noted how the failure curve showed continuous decrease in failures until the present year which shows an increase. The curve will acquire an ugly hump which we hope will reach its peak in the record of the 1917 rails. The same information for each of the mills is shown in Fig. 2. A summary from eight years' reports showing the track miles and total failures in addition to the failures per 100 track miles shown in Table 1, are presented in Table 2. The average results of the rails from each of the mills for the rollings since 1908 are given in Table 3. These tables are the records for open hearth rails, except that for the last two years, the few bessemer rails that were made are also included. It will be noted that the rails from most of the mills showed a progressive decrease in failures since the records were started, although in recent years some poor showings are made in a few cases. The failures in the rollings from each of the mills from 1915 to 1919 inclusive are shown diagrammatically in Figure 3. Another summary sheet is presented in Table 4 which shows the performance of the rails rolled at each of the mills in recent years. The special feature of this table is that the failures per 100 track miles are also shown per year of service and an average shown for the rollings from 1915 to 1919 inclusive for each mill. These average results are presented diagrammatically in Figure 4. On this basis the lowest failure per 100 track miles per year were from the Colorado rails with a figure of 11.15 and the next lowest were from the Carnegie rails with 12.28. Lastly, as interesting information, the average weight of the rails rolled at each of the mills is presented in Table 5. In conclusion it may be remarked that the failures had been showing a gratifying decrease from year to year until the World War came on. The "war-time" rollings, however, and particularly the rails rolled in 1917, are not showing up so well, due probably to the unfavorable manufacturing conditions that prevailed when they were made and also to the lack of the usual care in the track that the railroads were able to give them during the same period. That the unfavorable manufacturing conditions were the more important factor is indicated by the good performance of the 1914 rails, which is the best so far attained in spite of the fact that these rails also were subject to the same conditions of under-maintenance. It should now be the aim and effort of all concerned to again bring about a continued reduction in the rail failures. Although we will have a bad failure record for a few years in the immediate future as one of the many unwelcome heritages of the war, still it is entirely practicable and feasible to reduce the rail failures below the best performance so far attained, while at the same time getting an increased resistance to wear and thus lengthening the life of rails. |