Topic summary
Rail track
Extracted from the Wikipedia article Railway track.
Traditional track structure
Most modern railroads with heavy traffic use continuously welded rails that are attached to the sleepers with base plates that spread the load. When concrete sleepers are used, a plastic or rubber pad is usually placed between the rail and the tie plate. Rail is usually attached to the sleeper with resilient fastenings, although cut spikes are widely used in North America. For much of the 20th century, rail tracks used softwood timber sleepers and jointed rails, and a considerable amount of this track remains on secondary and tertiary routes.