At present, ultrasonic testing is widely used in rail crack detection. However, in the process of rail crack detection, there is a certain blind spot in this method, and cracks on both sides of the rail foot are not detected. Aiming at these shortcomings, an infrared thermal wave nondestructive testing platform for detecting cracks on the rail foot is proposed in this paper. Infrared thermal wave nondestructive testing for rail cracks is a new research area in the field of infrared nondestructive testing, and the establishment of the experimental platform mainly includes three parts: the selection of the thermal excitation source, the construction of the experimental platform, and the extraction of the infrared images. The technology is used to heat the surface of the rail foot through a thermal excitation source. According to the wave theory of the heat transfer from the surface to the inside of the rail foot, the transfer process can be affected by the rail’s physical characteristics and internal structure. If there are defects inside the rail, the distribution of the temperature on the rail surface will be affected according to the type of defect. The location of the internal defects of the rail can be determined according to the distribution of the surface temperature information of the rail, thereby achieving the goal of crack detection in the rail. Experimental results show that the surface temperature of the rail foot corresponding to the crack is higher than the corresponding rail foot surface temperature without cracks, proving that infrared thermal wave NDT(non-destructive testing) is feasible for rail crack detection.