Archaeometallurgical and Comparative Study of Material characterization and qualities of two profles of historical Argentine railways of diferent gauges and their fixing elements

Abstract

In the historical railway issue, few studies have been carried out, both nationally and internationally, to investigate the quality of railway material such as rails and fxings. The historical pieces of this research applied to the study of qualities of railway rail profles are two Vignole type rails: one is the P50 wide gauge rail (1520 mm of Russian origin) that is part of the Godoy Cruz Railway Museum (Mendoza province) and the other is a narrow gauge rail (750 mm) that belongs to the Museum of the Old Patagonian Express “La Trochita” (Chubut province), and they were donated for this research. It is proposed to make a comparison of these railway and historical elements in terms of raw material, hardness, chemical composition by means of argon plasma spectrometer, analysis of macrographs and microstructures by means of binocular stereomicroscope and metallographic microscope, respectively. Through the study of these railway rails, it is possible to know the characteristics of the quality of the material, rolling or forging lines, sinks, blowholes, dendritic structures