Portec Rail Products, Inc.
Portec Rail Products, Inc. is an American company that supplies accessory parts to railways. The corporate headquarters are in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Subsidiaries and branches of the company exist in Canada and in Europe.
Rail and flange lubricator
Reducing friction between the rails and the train wheels reduces the abrasion of both. An automated lubricator is commonly employed. Grease that is applied by the lubricators to the rails is transported by the wheels of rail cars to curves and bends in the tracks where it is deposited. Grease deposited at curves and bends by the wheels reduces friction between the wheels and the rails when railway cars pass through those curves and bends. When a train enters a curve in a railway, the wheel flanges rub against the outer rail of a curve, forcing the rail cars to change their direction of travel. Wheel flanges on each rail car contact the outer rail and keep the rail cars on the tracks, otherwise, a derailment would occur. The outer rail in a bend is affected by metal fatigue that results from physical stress created by the impinging rail cars as their direction of travel along the rail changes.