TRACK EQUIPMENT & MAINTENANCE
John Rooke, a director of SRS Rail System Limited, describes the versatility and usefulness of heavy road rail commercial trucks.
“R
oad rail vehicles converted from standard trucks provided a versa-
tile and effective means of servicing a work site 400 miles long. The man basket allows work teams to adjust overhead lines in per- fect safety, using the on-board pantograph as necessary for checking wire position. Created to the project’s own bespoke re- quirements, some 53 are in use on an aver- age of seven hours a night, five or six nights a week.”
These are the words of John Osborne, pro- ject director for the renewal of 400 miles of overhead line infrastructure on the West Coast Main Line, written as it neared com- pletion in 2005. The description is equally true today and their uses cover most of the tasks carried out on railway track.
The typical SRS road rail lorry is a 17 or 25-tonne commercial Volvo truck. A power take off fitted to the main engine drives the road-rail gear and all mounted equipment hydrostatically. The vehicles mount the track at level crossings. A powered swivel- ling rear bogie engages the rails. It lifts the rear of the truck and its road wheels clear of the ground before pulling it along the track. The front road wheels are used to steer the front of the vehicle over the track.
The front rail wheels are then lowered, lifting the front road wheels clear and the vehicle is now fully mounted on the track. The operation takes less than five minutes.
Once on track, SRS vehicles behave as roll- ing stock, their steel rail wheels passing easily through points and crossings. This is preferred to achieving traction with rub- ber road tyres, using small guide wheels to keep the vehicle on track. The rubber tyres tend to wear and sometimes the width of the wheel base must be altered to achieve 1,435mm track gauge, affecting its per- formance on the road. Also, the vehicle is driven through its gear box throughout, limiting speed in reverse as it cannot turn around on rail, and traction is not so good on wet rails.
SRS vehicles do relatively low mileages on the road, and the main engine is not severely taxed when the vehicle is on the railway, so the vehicles have a very long life and the Volvo repair network is first class.
At about 3.30am on Saturday March 1, 2008, the SRS System Ltd duty manager at the Bolsover depot received a call from the Network Rail Rapid Response Team. The West Coast Main Line had been blocked by three 20-foot containers, which freak gusts of wind had blown from their wagons. One container had landed on its end in the 10 foot. Not only was it was blocking the two central tracks, but it was also supporting overhead line. At 7am, just 3 ½ hours later, an SRS articulated road-rail vehicle carry- ing a Palfinger PR750 crane arrived on site. A specialist crew had been mobilised and the crane had covered about 75 miles by road and a little by rail. It took about half an hour to lift each container and dump it in the cess.
Such rapid response, using the motorway network and travelling the final few miles on track, is typical. It can only be achieved with commercial road-going trucks that have been converted to road-rail.
Road-rail
vehicles are particularly use-
ful for tasks where track possessions are short. Material for the task can be loaded and carried to the nearest road-rail access point (RRAP) before the possession starts, whereas total access by rail can be difficult.
For the recent electrification work on the Airdrie to Bathgate line in Scotland, stan- chions were ready-loaded on SRS vehicles at RRAPs when possessions began. They were taken to pre-prepared foundations and lifted into position by the vehicle’s crane. Later, catenary and contact wires were erected from drum carriers on more SRS vehicles.
Be it spot re-railing, drilling in tunnels, lift- ing stanchions, running catenary and con- ductor wire, inspecting bridges, drilling for piles, cutting brushwood, spot re-sleeper- ing, inspecting tunnels, cleaning drains, or simply carrying men and material to site, road rail vehicles can do it.
Quoting John Osborne again: “Their abil- ity to work in awkward and otherwise inac- cessible locations has been invaluable, and some 53 of these priceless machines are in use. Reliability is also excellent: the vehi- cles are in use seven hours a night, five or six nights a week (actually on site and driv- ing to and from site) and have performed 368,000 hours since the project started.”
FOR MORE INFORMATION
T: 0208 367 7846 E:
john.rooke@
aardvarkrail.co.uk
rail technology magazine Dec/Jan 12 | 43
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