in a curving railtrack for highspeed trains, is the inner rail or the lower rail higher?

Question

PLEASE HELP!!!

Answer 1

The Inner is lower, this is called Superelevation and is also known as Cant, strange because my teacher told me there is no such word as Cant.
For any speed there is a correct amount of cant to balance out the centrifugal forces, on high speed lines, none of which exist in the UK, this can be be designed so the Cant balances the forces at line speed, however if extreme Cant is used there is a danger that the train may fall off the rails to the inside of the bend if it slows, In the UK all lines must be Slow freight compatible so less Cant is applied than high speed trains need but far more than optimum for freights, this leads to stress in the inner rail from freights and the outer from high speed trains, remember the GNER crash when the rails failed.
The difference between the amount of Cant needed for high speed trains and that applied is called Cant deficiency, to compensate tilting trains such as Pendolinos are sometimes used.

Answer 2

The inner rail is lower than the outer rail. The law of centrifugal force dictates that any object traveling in an arc will be pushed outward from the radius of that arc, so the inner rail is lowered to make the train "lean in" to the turn. If the outer rail was lower, the train would fall off the track every time it hit that curve.

Answer 3

The outer rail is higher, and the inner rail lower. This is called a camber. Forces the vehicle to lean in onitself and not topple over

Answer 4

The inner rail is lower. This is called super-elevation in the UK. Because the majority of routes in the UK carry both passenger and freight traffic, it is neigh-on impossible to utilise super-elevation for the benefit of travellers only, due to the uncomfortable effect of sitting on say, a Super-Elevated P-way at 20 mph and falling inwards.

Answer 5

The inner rail is lower. The term for this is "super elevation", where the outside rail is higher. This does the same thing as banked turns on stock-car racing tracks.

It is usually employed on higher speed railroad freight operations as well.