Extension of the front rod is often conducted to decrease the gap between the toe of the tongue rail and the stock rail in case that the gap becomes large when finishing the switching operation. There is a possibility that the adjustment leads to the fatigue of the “hinged lug”, which is a part of the railroad switch components. In our previous study, it was shown that extension of the front rod alters the path of force transmission by using multi-body dynamics simulation. In this study, we validated the simulation results through the experimental measurement. The result shows that the extension of the front rod increases the force between front rod and tongue rail and decreases that between switch rod and tongue rail. The experimental result shows good agreement with the simulation results.
