Track Systems supplement 2013

• Under Sleeper Pads in Track – the UIC project
  Florian Auer, Past Project Manager for ‘USPs in Track’ / Rodolphe Potvin, Head of Track Laboratories, SNCF / Paul Godart, Deputy Director of Infrastructure at Infrabel and Chairman of the UIC Track Expert Group / Laurent Schmitt, Infrastructure Senior Advisor, UIC
  After gathering positive results from several railway companies, the UIC decided to launch a second project on the topic of Under Sleeper Pads (USPs). Between 2010 and 2012, members from 12 countries all over Europe and Japan worked on one of the biggest projects seen in recent years carried out by the UIC. Measurements in the laboratory and theoretical studies complemented the intensive on-site measurements on various test tracks in Europe. The project name – ‘Under Sleeper Pads in Track’ or ‘USPs in Track’ – aimed to develop a new track model to understand why tracks with USPs give a better performance…
• In-service track monitoring
  Clive Roberts, Professor of Railway Systems at the University of Birmingham and Director for Railway Research, Birmingham Centre for Railway Research and Education / Paul Weston, Research Fellow, Birmingham Centre for Railway Research and Education
  In the drive to reduce the cost of railway maintenance, research at the University of Birmingham’s Centre for Railway Research and Education has been developing track monitoring systems that are able to detect and diagnose track geometry faults from in-service vehicles. This work is being undertaken in the UK as part of the EPSRC funded Track 21 project and in Germany in collaboration with Deutsche Bahn as part of the European FP7 AUTOMAIN project…