The wear and fatigue damage characteristics between four kinds of wheels with different carbon content matched with PD3 hot-rolled steel rail were investigated in a MMS-2A wheel/rail rolling wear testing apparatus.The results show that the hardness of wheel steel is increased with increasing of carbon content,which results in decreasing of the wear volume of wheel specimen.Furthermore,total wear volume of wheel/rail system is firstly decreased and then decreased.With the increasing of carbon content,the plastic deformation thickness of wheel specimen is decreased,and the wheel specimen has better resistance to fatigue damage.The surface damage of wheel specimen is transformed from serious spalling damage to slight delaminating，with some degree of adhesion.The primary damage mechanism of rail specimen is surface spalling.