The transportation of ore can be made more cost efficient by use of bigger and heavier trains. An increased load on the track gives higher demands on both vehicle and infrastructure performance in order to limit the maintenance cost. At Malmbanan/Ofotbanen in Sweden and Norway there are many tight curves along the track experiencing high wear. One criterion for allowing a higher axle load is therefore to reduce the lateral track forces compared to the level of today. To evaluate the effect of an increased axle load, instrumented wheelset measurements were performed on different test vehicles of three-piece type. The measurements show essential variations in lateral force levels depending not only on curve radius and coefficient of friction in the wheel-rail contact, but greatly on the actual individual curve. This effect is studied in this work. The curving performance of one of the vehicles when running through curves with different rail profiles have been simulated. Both simulations and experimental results show large lateral forces for the typical situation on the studied track. The importance of matching wheel and rail profiles in order to get low contact forces and, as a consequence, less wear is shown.