No-slit hot rolling of railroad rails

A method of recycling a one-piece elongated rail having a base portion and a head portion spaced from each other by a web portion, the rail having a length in a direction of elongation of the rail, a width perpendicular to the length in a direction of the spacing of the head portion from the base portion by the web portion, and a height of each of the head portion, the base portion and the web portion in a direction perpendicular to both the length and the width, the method comprising the following steps:

• heating the rail to a plastic state,
• feeding the heated rail in a direction of the length through a first reduction pass to form a bar having a former head portion, a web and a former base portion in which the height of the head portion and the height of the base portion are reduced without slitting the rail or the bar,
• feeding the bar through a second reduction pass in which the height of the former head portion and the height of the former base portion are reduced such that the height of the former head portion, the height of the former base portion, and the web portion are substantially equal to each other,
• slitting the bar along the web portion into two substantially identical pieces, one piece containing the former head portion and one piece containing the former base portion, as the bar leaves the second reduction pass,
• rolling the two pieces of the bar through a series of reduction passes to produce a desired final cross section of the pieces, whereby both bars are passed through identical shaped rollers to produce substantially identical shaped bar pieces.