WORKSHOPS, DEPOTS AND MANUFACTURING
Sleeper service
Network Rail requires up to a million concrete sleepers a year, but after the closure of one of the country’s two production facilities, it decided to seek a new contractor. RTM reports from the opening of the new sleeper factory at Doncaster, opened by transport secretary Patrick McLoughlin MP, and hears more from factory manager Peter Heubeck.
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etwork Rail’s new sleeper factory at Doncaster, managed by Trackwork Moll, can deliver 400,000 sleepers a year – and the indications so far are that they’ll defi nitely be needed.
The scale of Network Rail’s maintenance, renewals and enhancements programmes are such that its demand for high-quality concrete sleepers continues to rise, and in the coming years is likely to be anything from 700,000 up to a million annually.
While Network Rail also makes use of softwood, hardwood and metal sleepers on secondary and minor routes, its policy is to concentrate track renewals spend on the major inter-urban routes and on the best-quality concrete sleepers.
Trackwork Moll, the new joint venture of Trackwork of Doncaster and Leonhard Moll Betonwerke of Munich, which operates the facility on behalf of site owner Network Rail, is still in the testing and approvals process,
70 | rail technology magazine Dec/Jan 14
but will begin supplying sleepers for the network by February.
The gleaming factory itself is ready, however, and was marked offi cially open by transport secretary Patrick McLoughlin MP at a short ceremony on 9 December.
‘Tremendous pressure’
After discussing the huge growth in passenger numbers on the railway in recent years, and in freight tonnage, McLoughlin told the assembled factory workers, offi cials and journalists: “The only trouble with growth like that is it does put tremendous pressure on the railways, on the rail operators, and on Network Rail.”
He spoke of a site visit to Belper early last year to see Network Rail’s high output ‘factory train’ Track Relaying System in action (RTM’s own detailed article and site visit to see the TRS2 system working can be found in our Dec 2012 / Jan 2013 edition, p28-29) and the
huge amount of sleepers it needs to do its job.
TRACK TECHNOLOGY TRACK TECHNOLOGY
In an inter- view with RTM after the cer- emony, McLough- lin said: “It’s very impressive and it’s just another sign of the investment that’s going on into the railways.
on rails
In the October/November edition of RTM, we spoke to Network Rail’s head of track delivery Steve Featherstone about the benefits its High Output Plant is bringing. Soon after that article went to press, RTM’s Adam Hewitt joined the team operating TRS2 on a November night, heading north from Derby up to Chesterfield, and got an insight into how it all works from Ben Brooks, Network Rail’s head of track delivery for LNE and East Midlands.
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etwork Rail’s two track re-laying machines, TRS2 and TRS4, plus its three
sophisticated BCS ballast cleaning systems, make up its High Output Plant service – which gets an amazing amount of work done in relatively little time and makes best use of overnight possession windows.
The machine is really more of a factory, and is 800 metres long when the sleeper wagons and auto-ballasters that accompany it are taken into account, weighing 415 tonnes.
With a midweek delivery record of 864 metres (four rail lengths) in seven hours, it is not just high output but fast output, automating and mechanising processes that take teams of men far longer.
High output vs conventional renewals
Of course, there is a big cost attached, but as Network Rail’s track delivery manager Ben Brooks told RTM on our Thursday night site visit to see TRS2 in action: “The unit cost of track renewal via high output – a combination of ballast cleaning and track re-laying – is now the same, in effect, as conventional renewals. So if I came along and renewed this stretch in 30-hour blocks using conventional methods, it would cost me the same as running this factory operation mid-week.
“But we wouldn’t be able to physically get the amount of weekend access to be able to do the work conventionally. One of the big reasons we need the high output capability is because the railway can’t sustain the amount of weekend
28 | rail technology magazine Dec/Jan 13
access we need to deliver this volume of renewals. It’s a no-brainer: we have to have a way of doing this midweek.
“Our conventional programme tends to target smaller locations with more immediate problems, whereas our high output programme is a bigger, more strategic approach.”
Plain line only
The method does have some limitations – it is currently only appropriate for simple stretches of plain line, for example: no S&C, no platformed sections, no tunnels or viaducts. “Any structural clearance issues automatically take us to a conventional renewal,” Brooks said.
Similarly, with the ballast cleaning high ouput machines, anywhere that requires any underlying formation treatment will be done conventionally, such as where deeper digging is required or geo-textile is being put in under the track.
The number of workers required on site is “broadly similar” to conventional renewals, Brooks suggested: 40-50 people on the core site when RTM visited, with around 30 spread further out on other tasks.
The Amey Colas joint venture won the £250m contract to provide the high output service in 2009, until October 2014.
On RTM’s visit on a Thursday in November, we saw TRS2 in action: the original track relaying system that came to the UK in 2004 after being
purpose-built for our network and gauge by Matisa in Switzerland.
It and its cousin, TRS4, will between them lay more than half of the new sleepers in the country this year, Brooks said.
Maximising track availability
A vital advantage of the TRS trains is that they allow working with the adjacent line open (ALO). The working gauge clearance is further assisted by the sleepers being positioned longitudinally on the wagons, allowing both the wagons themselves and the gantries that move them into position to be narrower.
Brooks said: “Typical conventional renewal, of course, will replace the rail by bringing trains alongside on the other line, then loading materials to and from. With high output, we’ve got this unique operation in that we’re self- contained on the line we’re renewing.”
Safety is always the number one priority for Network Rail, but when working ALO, it is especially important. Brooks said: “There’s a massive emphasis on safety, given that we’re working with the adjacent line open every night.”
We saw this on our site visit – an East Midlands Trains Class 222 heading south came past on the adjacent line. A combination of instruction from site safety officials, loud blaring alarms, and the standard protocols when working next to an operational railway alleviated any risk from the passing train.
The process
Ahead of the TRS itself comes a Quattro RRV, digging holes for ballast from under a short section of track around four sleepers long to be moved into. This short section, with sleepers hanging in the air, is where the TRS starts its real work, after the clips have been knocked out.
With the new rail lying next to the track, the old rail is cut, and the new rail picked up by the machinery and ‘threaded’ over the old rail into place, as rotating ‘forks’ scoop the old sleepers out of the ground and away, replacing them with new ones delivered via high-speed gantry cranes from the wagons. At the joint the new rail is joined to the existing track – laid the previous night – using temporary clamps at first, and welded properly later.
While TRS2 depends on a road-rail vehicle behind it to move the old rail and drop it into the cess, TRS4 – which has only been in use for two years – has its own rail manipulator rollers/arms underneath, which automatically feed the old rail into the cess.
“We’re looking at those modifications to TRS2 to see if it’s worthwhile,” Brooks said.
Other teams and machines finish the process – welders, a tamper and a regulator. Network Rail has a fleet of eight tampers and five regulators, which work with the five pieces of high output plant.
The final job is re-connecting signalling and
other trackside equipment. 80mph handback
A big advantage of the high output plant and the tamping method is that the track delivery team can hand back the line at 80mph, instead of 30/50.
Brooks explained: “None of our conventional contractors are certified to use the 80mph clamping mechanism that Amey Colas uses: that’s a function of the fact that these guys are full-time professionals and we have a lot of confidence in their ability.”
A second pass of the Plasser and Theurer tamper the following night, with its Dynamic Track Stabilisation technology, brings the line speed back up to its maximum – 110mph in this case.
Resilience and recovery Planning ahead
As with any engineering operation depending on multiple pieces of heavy machinery working simultaneously in busy environments, often at night, problems do arise. But the high output plant is a reliable renewal method, Brooks said, especially since recovery after a fault is so much easier.
He explained: “Our ability to recover if we have a problem on this site is far better than having a 500-yard hole when we are renewing conventionally, if for example the crane that was due to install all the sleepers had failed. You’d then have a massive problem. This is a
While the high output team is part of Infrastructure Projects under Simon Kirby, Brooks and his three counterparts on other routes also have a ‘dotted line’ report directly into the route managing directors, highlighting how devolution is working in practice.
As Brooks put it: “I’m as much a part of the LNE and East Midlands route teams, under Phil Verster and Martin Frobisher, as I am part of Steve Featherstone’s track team.”
Cont Overleaf > rail technology magazine Dec/Jan 13 | 29 much more reliable renewal method.
“The risk on this piece of kit, in terms of failure and the impact on passengers, is minimal, because if this kit broke down now, we’d just stop work, take it out of the ground, move it out of the way, and then we’d only have a five-yard piece of railway without sleepers in it.”
Much of the work during overnight possession windows is in preparing and exiting the site – the machine itself is only running for a few hours, around two and a half the night RTM visited.
It has a ‘planned operating speed’ of 350 metres per hour, and a peak speed of 550 metres per hour, but that’s limited by the speed of the P2RL turntable gantry and the Fastclipper device, Network Rail says. Each sleeper wagon, carrying five pallets of 24 sleepers each, has enough to lay 78 metres of track.
“It is good news. The important thing is to make sure the sleepers we’re getting are up to a high standard and specifi cation, and quality. This is very welcome indeed. I’m very pleased to be here at Doncaster to see this new plant.”
He praised the factory workers and Network Rail
itself, saying the general public
sometimes forget how important the railway infrastructure is to the running of trains.
The track ‘factory’
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