Wheel idling is an extreme sliding contact scenario that accelerates rail failure. Using temperature-dependent elastoplastic materials, a peridynamic (PD) model for wheel-rail contact was developed to investigate the thermomechanical damage behavior of rails during wheel idling. Numerical simulations of loading and unloading during wheel idling under different loads were performed, and the results of contact stress, temperature, plastic deformation, and material damage were obtained and analyzed. During loading, the temperature of the rail surface increases rapidly to over 1200 °C, which is well above the austenitization temperature. The intense thermal softening caused by high temperatures deteriorates the wheel-rail contact relationship and leads to a surge in plastic deformation. The softened surface material was continuously removed by the contact load, leading to severe wear damage, and the wear depth increased significantly with the load and idling time. The wear coefficients for the Archard wear model were derived using the wear results from the PD model. During unloading, the surface material cools rapidly at a rate of 1400°C/s through heat transfer into the rail, undergoing martensitic transformation and forming a brittle and hard white etching layer. The thickness of the WEL decreases as the wear depth increases.