Thermite welding is widely used for rail welding in the world. In the Japan Railway Company group, the application ratio of this method is approximately 40% every year. After this method was introduced into Japan from Germany in 1979, the thermite welding technique has been improved and developed. A wide gap method is one of the newly proposed thermite welding methods. The root gap adopted by this method is three times that of conventional method. Therefore, it is apprehended that welds produced by the wide gap method have a less fatigue strength than those by the conventional method. Because a welding heat input of wide gap methods is much larger than that of conventional method. In this investigation, a new process with rail head air-cooling is proposed in order to improve fatigue strength of wide gap thermite weld.

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