Abstract
Rail welding technologies are essential for high speed tracks and heavy haul tracks, to
achieve safety of their transportation service, and highly reliable rail welds are required for
the safety of railways. In this report, we gave an outline of the four welding methods used
for rails presently in the world, such as (1) flash-butt welding, (2) gas-pressure welding, (3)
thermite welding, and (4) enclosed-arc welding. Further, we described a few quality issues
seen in rail welds in overseas heavy-haul freight railways. In the last chapter, we introduced
our new flash-butt welder, which we recently installed, in order to discuss the issues