(Article from Journal 2022/07 Vol140 Pt3)

(Image 1 above: Slab track for HS2 (Image Poor Ltd).

I will continue with a focus on plain line in this Journal with areas that I have picked up on my rounds and involvement with technical stuff. The future is exciting with the Elizabeth line now open in London. I had many British Rail colleagues working on Crossrail (as it was originally called in the 1980-90’s) and it was always going to be an essential and much needed improvement in East-West travel across London. My congratulations go to all those involved, it does seem a long time since I went down onto the track at Canary Wharf with David Packer.

HS2 is the largest infrastructure project in Europe and is continuing with great progress and it is good to work with many engineers from both the client and the supplier’s organisations. The PWI is fortunate to be a conduit for knowledge in high speed rail construction thanks to Gherghe Nicoara, Head of Track Engineering, HS2 Ltd. It will not be long before we see track being installed.

The next subject for me is about a relatively new concept, intelligent tamping! We, as an industry, spend millions of pounds providing the most up to date machines and delivering a maintenance service with our experienced band of operators and technicians. We were pleased to welcome Bernhard Antony, Head of Technology Centre, Plasser & Theurer, Purkersdorf, in Austria to both the PWI Plant and Machinery Seminar in Newcastle last autumn and again at the PWI Technical Board in April. There is also a full article from him in this Journal on page 32.

I make no excuses for supporting the advances in tamping technology which produce higher quality through digitalisation and enhance our sustainability focus on ballasted track. Since the introduction of mechanised maintenance 70 years ago, there have been few strategic developments except for the recent use of alternative hybrid and all-electric propulsion systems for machines.

We now have the answer to the future of mechanised maintenance – the introduction of smart tamping machines. Digitalisation and advanced automation of machine operation will reduce human intervention. The system enables a tamping machine to undertake in-situ measurements of the track and ballast prior to any intervention. It was found that clean ballast required less force to be applied than dirty ballast, highlighting the need to treat them differently. The system can analyse the compaction effort required and also determine the ballast condition, before treating the track as required. Once completed, it is possible to provide a data log of the work undertaken including a visualisation of the area treated. There is also increased quality of the trackwork through dynamic compaction control, the ability to monitor the ballast condition and, therefore, predict the intervals required for cleaning.

I see this introduction complements well our plans for new PWI technical courses to enhance the knowledge of technicians, re-introduce absolute design tamping everywhere and do a proper job of maximising the life of ballast for cost efficiency and sustainability reasons.

TECHNICAL

This Journal offers a broad mixture of technical articles and it is good to acknowledge the excellent work of Mike Barlow again as PWI Technical Manager for collating the content. I mentioned “Lunch and Learn” last time and having had such a successful start we will continue this into the autumn and include some professional registration workshops.

The April Electrification Seminar in Glasgow was a highlight for me with as usual many outstanding contributions. I must have hit a nerve when I reminded delegates of the next round of courses for Overhead Line as we started the next OLE Module 1 at Derby with 22 delegates. It was great to see people from all over the country and from different backgrounds many who were engineers but especially those supervisors from Sandwell and Dudley OLE depot!

Our Practical Trackwork Challenge went ahead at Churnet valley and is reported upon in this Journal on page 12. This was an exceptional event and to make it real, we even had snow! Everyone had to travel to site by a rail staff transporter so here is a picture of a delegate enjoying the ride, (image 4).

REFLECTION

It comes as no surprise that a return to face-to-face events brings us to the core of the PWI activities and makes being a member so worthwhile. The “double act” where we ran courses concurrently for new Network Rail graduates in Track & Civils and Electrification & Plant was such an example and we could not have had a better open discussion session with them all than the kind attendance of David Godley and John Edgley.

However, the virtual Track Module 2 (design) with 30 Hong Kong MTR track engineers stands out as an experience for our trainers as well. Thanks go to Bob Langford for pulling this together. They approached us and said that they are now looking forward to Module 3… who knows, we could reinstate a vibrant PWI Section!

AND FINALLY…

In April, I included this picture which was an amazing landscape of iron (image 6) and asked for comments as to where it was located. Thanks go to the following for getting back to me: Sean McCarthy said “At the entrance to Zurich Hautbahnhof (Main station).” Chris Chitty said, “Zurich, as the loco appears to be Swiss and the signal numbers commence with a letter Z. The impressive line of double slips / crossovers also replicated in the background, would also indicate Zurich. I always enjoy the mystery pictures, so hope to see more in future Journals.” Roger Bastin said “Every Operators dream – a layout with full flexibility:- Zurich Hbf.” We’ll leave the final comment for debate with our trainers in track design!