Abstract
The railway track maintenance work is to inspect railway track and to maintain various abnormalities that occur on the railway track everyday. Moreover, a safe, comfortable railway driving doesn't work out without track maintenance. Track maintenance has been changed by an increase of the traffic volume, improvement of the speed, change of machines and materials, effect of railway accident and war. Then, in this paper, we clarify the history of the track maintenance from the railway establishment in 1872 to division and privatization of Japanese National Railways, from the viewpoint of regulations that become standards and keep being enacted when railway was established. The subjects of this study are government railways, Japanese National Railways and JR without the private railways. At first, we described the outline about regulations and the important event that affected track maintenance. And, the history of track maintenance separately for work, rail, tie, track bed and railroad switch was clarified.
