Improved Joint for Railway Rails.
Year: 1897

page_text: Date of Application, 7th Sept., 1897-Accepted, 6th Nov., 1897
Improved Joint for Railway Rails.
We, FEDOR BARON NICOLICS, of Wesselenyi utcza 66, Budapest, Hungary,
Member of the Reichstag and Privy Councillor, and OTTO ARNDT KUNERT, of
Korosbanya, Hungary, Director, do hereby declare the nature of this invention
and in what manner the same is to be performed to be particularly described and
ascertained in and by the following statement:-
This invention relates to a joint for railway rails which has for its object to
obviate the jolts and vibrations that are experienced with the joints usually
employed, and is very simple and cheap.
In order to obviate the jolting which is unavoidable with the usual butt joints
it has been proposed to make the rails overlap at the joint. Thus arrangements
have been employed in which only the webs of the rails overlapped, whilst in other
arrangements the web was suitably thickened and made to bear upon an extension
of the foot of the other rail.
It has however been found that these arrangements do not prevent vertical
vibration of the ends of the rails, because the feet of the rails cannot be held
down effectively upon the sleepers at the joint.
In order to obviate this drawback it has been recently proposed not only to
make the webs of the rails overlap but also at the same time to press up the rail
foot to half of its extent by the amount equal to the thickness of the foot, and
to bend out the other half of the rail foot, so as to enable the feet of the rails to
cover one another throughout their entire width.
But these arrangements have not succeeded in providing a secure and non-
vibrating rail-joint, and the reason of this is probably that the causes which
produce the jolting are not properly understood.
This jolting is not caused by the vertical movements which the ends of the rails
make relatively to each other, but by the movements which the ends of the rails
(singly or together) make with reference to the sleeper.
It is clear that when a portion of a rail is passed over at a point situated between
the joint sleeper and the sleeper in front of it, there is exerted upon the end of
this portion of the rail a lever action the leverage of which is equal to the distance
of the said point from the joint. If now this end of a rail is fixed to the end of
the next rail at the joint (by means of fish plates -for instance) the vertical move-
ments of the one end will be communicated to the other end, so that both rail
ends will be raised simultaneously from the sleeper and then depressed again
simultaneously at the moment when the vehicle passes over the joint. This how-
ever does not avoid the jolting of the vehicle which is passing over the joint.
Now the present invention relates to a rail joint in which the aforesaid draw-
backs are obviated in a very simple manner, as I shall describe referring to the
accompanying drawings.
Figure 1 is a perspective view of the rail joint.
Figures 2 and 3 are perspective views of the parts of the rails which are con-
nected together.
T

page_text: Figure 5 is a cross section of the same.
The rails S and S which are to be connected together, are cut away at their
ends to half their thickness for a length equal to the distance between two sleepers,
in such a manner that throughout that lengths, each rail has only half of
its normal cross section. The rails thus shaped are then placed and arranged
together in such a manner that one end of the one rail bears upon the sleeper a,
whilst the end e¹ of the other rail bears upon the sleeper a¹. The rail portions
thus arranged and fixed upon the sleepers are then connected together in any
desired manner.
The advantages of this construction, as compared with the rail joints hitherto
proposed, may be readily appreciated on inspection of the perspective elevation
in Fig. 1.
It will be seen that the wheel of a vehicle running in the direction of the arrow
on the full rail S, cannot exert any lever action upon the reduced portions of
that rail, and cannot therefore raise it because these actions are transmitted solely
to the sleeper a¹ by reason of the attachment of the rail to the sleeper a¹, so that
the reduced portions of the rail is not subjected to any bending strain, so long as
the rolling wheel is not actually travelling over it.
The passing of the wheel from this rail portion on to the other rail portion
which is also not loaded, takes place therefore without the drawback which accom-
panies the constructions hitherto proposed, that is to say, without lifting and
depressing the joint. Consequently the vehicle cannot experience any jolting and
vibration.
For the reasons above set forth, there can be no tendency for the joint fastening
to become loose.
It is to be understood that the shape of the cut away portions of the rail ends & s¹
and also the shape of the rail ends e e, may be varied, thus the ends may be made
round or polygonal.
If there is a fear of weakening the rail web in consequence of the division of
the rail, the web may be made thicker throughout the length of the joint
connection.
Having now particularly described and ascertained the nature of this inven-
tion and in what manner the same is to be performed, we declare that what we
claim is:-
A rail joint connection wherein the parts s s¹ of the rails to be connected together
are fixed upon two sleepers a and a¹ being reduced to half their thickness through-
out the distance between these sleepers.
Dated this 7th day of Santamber 1897