GUWAHATI, April 20 - Maligaon-headquartered Northeast Frontier Railway (NFR) has converted 90 per cent of the track located within the zone to Long Welded Rail (LWR).
�With the fitting of 648 kilometres of its tracks with LWR in 2017-18, NFR has converted 90 per cent of its track length to LWR,� said Pranav Jyoti Sharma, Chief Public Relations Officer of NFR.
Long welded rails are tracks where there are no fish plated joints.
�Since rail joints are a potential source of jerk, LWRs give a much smoother ride and are also very safe as possibility of joint failure is eliminated altogether. LWRs are actually made by end-to-end welding of single piece rail, each of 13 metres length. The rails are rolled under very strict conditions to comply with exact standards in the factories of SAIL. Thereafter, the rails are welded together end- to-end by a process known as flash butt welding. This can be done either in plants or at the site of fixing,� said Sharma.
NFR has set up flash butt welding plants and commissioned mobile flash butt welding plants which carry out in-situ welding.
�LWR has been provided over important bridges, through tunnels and even on the platform lines in the railway stations. Since the length of rails run into several kilometres, there is a great amount of expansion and contraction in the rails which is taken care of by switch expansion joints (SEJs). Conversion of fish plated track into LWR is an important prerequisite for improvement of riding quality, and for the introduction of higher speed and improved rolling stock or coaches,� said the NFR CPRO.
