Made me laugh!

[Tecchan]

 

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Next time, please use your brain! ;-)

[KenS]

And the railhead is polished, so it's an active line.  I imagine that didn't last long.  One way or another...

 

I can't find that on failblog.  Do you have a link to the original post?

[Tecchan]

There you go: http://failblog.org/2011/04/07/epic-fail-photos-fire-department-cordon-fail/

 

I didn't pay attention if the tracks were used or not but if they aren't, the installation is useless anyway.

[KenS]

Thanks for the link.

 

The railhead (top of the rail) looks silver, not rust-brown.  Given how damp the environment looks, that means a train came down it within the last week, probably within a couple of days. Exposed steel rail rusts quickly. 

 

The side of the rail is brown, rather than gray, so it's probably not in heavy use, although that may depend on the kind of steel used in the rails as much as anything.  My experience is that mainlines with lots of traffic have less rust on the sides, and what's there is more solidly part of the rail (likely the loose stuff gets vibrated off), so heavily used rail tends to be gray, where lightly used or unused rail is browner on the sides. But those tracks also get replaced more often, and may have different (newer) formulas of steel.  I've seen rail dating to the 1920's on some of the lightly-used branch lines around where I live.