Young Curly Brunette Girl With High Heels Reveals Her Orange Top On The Bridge At The Railway Track

Jointed rails were used, at first because the technology did not offer any alternative. However the intrinsic weakness in resisting vertical loading results in the ballast support becoming depressed and a heavy maintenance workload is imposed to prevent unacceptable geometrical defects at the joints. The joints also required to be lubricated, and wear at the joint bar (fishplate) mating surfaces needed to be rectified by shimming. For this reason jointed track is not financially appropriate for heavily operated railroads.
Rail
Hot rolled steel in the profile (cross section) of an asymmetrical I-beam is usually used as the surface on which railway wheels run. Unlike some other uses of iron and steel, railway rails are subject to very high stresses and have to be made of very high quality steel alloy. It took many decades to improve the quality of the materials, including the change from iron to steel. The heavier the rails and the rest of the trackwork, the heavier and faster the trains the track can carry.