The manner in which wear in rails is measured, and by what process a given rail wear is determined to be unsafe will be investigated as part of this project’s industry survey.

In order to begin to form a centralised collection of the knowledge base of the heritage railway sector, the discursive nature of the survey will be exploited. Through discussions of the two main headings ("What is the nature of the line?" and "How is permanent way assessed?") it is hoped that a much wider appraisal of the knowledge of enthusiasts, engineers, managers and inspectors will be compiled.

Under these headings, the variables that will be immediately considered include the frequency of rail inspection, considerations made during inspection such as the state of the substrate, sleepers and fastenings, the point at which a rail is considered to be beyond serviceable use, whether joints are assessed for safety, techniques used during inspection and observations made during inspections, such as rail wear concentrations on corners, under bridges, at rail ends, between sleepers and so on.

As the interpretation of that data gets underway, this page will be updated with a summary of the results found.