The diffusion of brake-shoe system has made it necessary to study brake–wheel–rail interactions. This study aims to elucidate this topic with an innovative small-scale test rig, the ‘4-contact machine’. A test procedure is designed in which an ER7 steel wheel is coupled with a R260 steel rail and two different brake-shoe materials (cast iron and sintered material). The results show that the 4-contact machine reproduces the effects of wheel–rail–brake shoe contact and damage similar to those observed on a railway wheel at the end of its life, highlighting marked differences in behaviour between the two brake materials.

During service, shoe-braked railway wheel steels are often subjected to a severe thermal cycle. Therefore, understanding the evolution of the microstructure and the resulting changes in mechanical properties during service is fundamental in the choice of steel. In previous research, the effects of the thermal loading on the microstructure and mechanical properties of five different steels for railway wheels (ER7, HYPERLOS^®, Class B, SANDLOS^® and Class C) were investigated by hardness, tensile and toughness tests, in the as-supplied condition and after different heat treatments designed to replicate the modification of the microstructure due to braking. In this paper, the tensile work hardening behavior was studied by interpolating the tensile flow curves with the constitutive equation related to the dislocation density proposed by Voce, which correlates the Voce equation parameters with the microstructural features of metallic materials. The work hardening analysis revealed that there is a good correlation between the Voce parameters and the microstructure of the five steels in as-supplied condition and after heat treatments. An interesting correlation was found between Voce parameters and apparent fracture toughness. After heat treatments at 700 °C and 750 °C the properties of the steels decreased, which was consistent with the evolution of the microstructure. However, after exposure at 970 °C with subsequent cooling in air, Class C steel appears to have a microstructure similar to the original microstructure, with tensile and toughness properties very similar to the as-supplied condition, demonstrating better microstructural stability compared to steels ER7, HYPERLOS^®, Class B and SANDLOS^®.