Look up Sherman’s neckties. They heated rails over a fire then bent them around trees
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It depends on what weight of rail is laid and therefore what weight of loading the track can bear.
Steel can vary tremendously in quality. Or be cut in strategic areas. Or suffer thermal expansion pushing it out of guage.
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but don’t they leave gaps between the tracks to ensure that doesn’t happen? Or does the rail track differ from country to country as in contiguous in one (say Siberia) and the with gaps in the track (say Belarus).
So was soviet steel different from German Steel in terms of quality?
… probably. The Russians weren’t as precise in the carbon makeup. But actually I meant that when you’re looking at a rail, you don’t know how much traffic has run over it; if it has micro cracks already, and will fail soon. You just don’t know. Starting with ‘good’ steel will make for fewer repairs later.
How does one bend a rail? Hit it till it changes shape?
Well, that’s one way. The Union troops in the US civil war would just heat up the middle, grab each end (with tongs, or (gloved) hands), and shove. That way the steel doesn’t fracture, just becomes bent. I would presume in WWII it’d be the same. The steel would become malleable easily in a coal fire. Just run a rail in to the fire, let the middle become soft, run the rail out quickly, bendy-bendy, next rail. Some sort of mobile kiln would be simple to have handy for troops who specialize in this sort of vandalism.
Here’s an image of a US civil war “Sherman’s necktie” – a bent rail.
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