Analysis of the main trends in the development of rail production in Russia and abroad

Abstract

The present analysis reveals the main directions in the development of rail production in the world: the transition to rolling of rail sections using continuous group of universal stands, increase of the rails length, application of differentiated hardening of rails in different media. It is shown that the technological gap between the Russian metallurgical industry and the world's leading rail manufactures of the last decades was closed in 2013 -2014 when the new universal rolling mills at JSC “EVRAZ Consolidated West Siberian Metallurgical Plant” (“EVRAZ ZSMK”) and OJSC “Chelyabinsk Metallurgical Plant” (company “Mechel”) were launched. Currently, these steel enterprises provide complete import substitution of long rails with increased wear resistance for the construction of high-speed networks.