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The paper is focused on the fracture mechanism of railway axles due tothe fatigue of material. The purpose is to numerically predict the number of cycles (orkilometres) to fracture in various theoretical conditions. The stresses in the axles werecalculated by finite element methods. The number of cycles to fracture was calculatedusing closed form solution of NASGRO equation for fatigue crack development startingfrom an initial crack detectable by means of non-destructive testing. In order todemonstrate the deep negative impact of forbidden thermal treatments and operationsapplied to railway axles, residual stresses of this treatments were calculated and newnumerical predictions of number of cycles to fracture were made.