In 1905 the Engineering Standards Committee (now BSI Group) defined rail design in one of the earliest British Standards, consolidating the existing 75 rail weights/profiles into five standard bullhead profiles.

Following nationalisation in 1948, further standardisation produced two flat-bottomed rail designs which continued to be developed into the 1990s. Today the adoption of European UIC60 (60kgm-1) is on-going throughout UK main lines (Craig, 2012).

As a result of this dynamism, the variety in stock across the UK is high. Through British Rail and subsequently Network Rail’s adoption of rail cascading, the nature and type of rail across the British mainline network is complicated, with a range of ages spanning across a century.

Owing to the inherited nature of most heritage lines, stock tends to either be incumbent or transferred from elsewhere on the national network, and so this variability is reflected in the quantity of rail types in use on heritage railway lines.

The industry survey aims to construct a better idea of the types of rail used across Britain, and as a result apply more relevant guidelines to the measure of wear on these rail types.