nd like I said for the last year its 39 Foot NOT 50 or 60. Since the the beginning of rail service in America stick rail has been and always will be 39 feet. All do to the length of the standard cars in the beginning 40ft.
I wonder why starting in, say the 1970s when quantities of used 66ft mill gondolas started getting downgraded to MOW service, that the railroads didn't start ordering 60/62ft lengths of rail for replacement usage when updating/rebuilding sidings, spurs, secondaries? Was it because they had large stocks of 39ft reclaimed from abandoned sidings and spurs? Was it because they needed to ship by truck trailer (limited to 40ft/45ft in that era IIRC). If rolling mills of the era could churn out 1000ft ribbon rail, then surely they could crank out 62ft lengths, and apparently (according to
wiki...yeah, I know) they do -
Jointed track is made using lengths of rail, usually around 20 m (66ft) long (in the UK) and 39 or 78ft (12 or 24 m) long (in North America), bolted together using perforated steel plates known as fishplates (UK) or joint bars (North America).
78ft stick rail would likely use flush-deck 89ft flat cars (in the 70s likely downgraded former TOFC flats -
hmm, TOFC is a rather small percentage of intermodal nowadays in North America, and has been for years - shame cause it did look cool).
Well anyway, they could have switched decades ago, probably save themselves some hassle, so why didn't they?