NZR Track

Introduction to NZR Track

Track is the fundamental component of a railway that makes it unique among transport systems. The steel rails, firmly fixed to sleepers which are bedded into a crushed stone base, provides a guide path for flanged wheels to follow. Steel wheels rolling on steel rails provides a system with one of the lowest rolling resistances of any traditional transport mode. One of its design features is that the track remains flexible during its working life, and while this can be seen as a negative in that trains can 'push' the track 'out of line'it is actually a positive in that it is very straightforward to adjust its position and get it back to smooth alignment.

There are some key components that make up the railway track. The obvious ones are rails and sleepers, but a full track system includes fishplates and bolts (to join rails together) bedplates and screws or dogspikes to fix the rails to the sleepers, and ballast to hold the sleepers in position. Each of these components will be dealt with under their own sections.