London Banter - View Single Post

[email protected] · October 18th 03, 07:47 AM posted to uk.transport.london

In article ,
(Spyke) wrote:

"According to sources at the crash site the incident was caused by a
broken rail, and a member of the rail staff who saw the rail said it
was
"rusted" before it fractured."

Out of curiosity (and I accept there may be a perfectly good answer to
this), how can you tell a rail is rusted just by looking at it? Being
steel there's always going to be a fair bit of corrosion on the
outside, with only the tops being polished clean by passing trains.
--
Spyke (Whose own tube tracks are thankfully made out of aluminium!)
Address is valid, but messages are treated as junk. The opinions I
express do
not necessarily reflect those of the educational institution from which
I post.

I wondered that, but from this mornings BBC updated site, it appears that
it was indeed a broken rail and that the rust was showing in the broken
end of the rail. Presumably cracked for ages and hence the rust. The rust
wouldn't have been seen from above.

"A rail worker at the scene told BBC News the steel rail was rusted three
quarters of the way through.

If correct, this would suggest it had been cracked for a considerable time
before it finally snapped under the weight of a train."

Roger