Track Systems supplement

• From track data to asset management
  Due to cost pressure, infrastructure managers are forced to work sustainably and efficiently. Hence, track engineers face increasing difficulty to legitimate necessary measures. Often short-term cost reductions are achieved by reducing maintenance but the consequences are irreparable damages of track quality and a non-sustainable exploitation of service life. This danger can be avoided with reactive rather than preventive maintenance, which allows for a prediction of maintenance and track renewal amounts for upcoming years. Consequently, a proper condition-based budget for distribution planning can be established. This type of asset management is valuable for in-house as well as outsourced maintenance execution. In order to achieve these goals, the current conditions of the assets, as well as their development over time, have to be considered. Hence, one of the main challenges in railway asset management is to quantify measurement signals in order to implement a preventive, condition-based maintenance and renewal strategy. Matthias Landgraf, Scientific Research Associate at the Institute of Railway Engineering and Transport Economy at Graz University, explains further…
• Broken rails …broken record
  Chris Eady, Executive Director of the Institute of Rail Welding, takes a look at the topic of broken rails and rolling contact fatigue and, with quotes from Track Engineer Brian Whitney at Network Rail, explains why it is necessary to repeat the importance of rail integrity management.