The planning and specification of rail grinding activities using measured rail profiles normally involves a comparison between the existing and desired rail profiles within a rail segment. In current practice, a somewhat subjective approach is used to select a measured profile – usually located near the midpoint of the segment – that represents the profiles throughout the rail segment. An automated procedure was developed to calculate a representative average (mean) rail profile for a rail segment using industry-standard rail profile data. The procedure was verified by comparing the calculated average to an expected profile. The procedure was then validated by comparing the calculated average profiles of 42 in-service rail segments (10 tangents and 32 curved segments) to the corresponding subjectively chosen median rail profiles for each segment. Overall, the validation results indicated that the coordinates comprising the mean and median profiles differed by less than one percent on average. As expected, stronger agreement was observed for tangent rail segments compared to curved rail segments. Thus, the validation demonstrated that the procedure produces comparable results to current practice while improving the objectivity and repeatability of the decisions that support rail-grinding activities. / February 2017