Abstract: Two high-speed wheel steels with the same carbon content and different alloy contents were matched with rail steels and the friction coefficient and wear rate of these frictional pairs were measured on a Rolling Sliding wear test machine. The effects of microstructures, hardness and strain hardening on the rolling contact wear of wheel steels were investigated. The results show that the wear resistance of conventional high-speed wheel steel was improved by increasing silicon and manganese content and decreasing chromium content to some extent. The wheel steel with higher hardness may not necessarily possess the better wear resistance, while the wear resistance of wheel steel was affected by microstructures significantly. The surface crack initiation primarily occurred along highly strained pro-eutectoid ferrite. The effect of the hardness increasing induced by strain hardening on the wear of wheel steel was not distinct.