The renowned Indian Railway Civil Engineer and Railway Track Consultant J.S. Mundrey worked on a new series of educational booklets “KNOW YOUR RAILS”, “KNOW YOUR RAIL FASTENINGS” and “KNOW YOUR TRACK TOOL AND MACHINES”. For certain circumstances his last work “KNOW YOUR TRACK TOOLS AND MACHINES” remained uncompleted. His German friend, Dr. F.A. Wingler, author of several publications on Indian Railway related matters – see http://www.drwingler.com – has elaborated a revision of J.S. Mundrey`s drafts for Chapter 1-3 and supplemented the work by a Chapter 4 with a KALEIDOSCOPE of Heavy Duty  On-Track Machine Pictures. With the consent of Mr. J.S. Mundrey this booklet is now published on PDF platform for free download on the above mentioned website.

Chapter 1 describes the essential characteristics of the ballasted Railway Track and its maintenance needs. Manual methods of Track Maintenance using traditional tools, adopted at the inception of Railway Track and still followed in many developing countries, are briefly discussed. The tools used, both in Beater Packing and Measured Showel Packing, are illustrated. The limitations of the Manual Methods of Track Maintenance are brought out, with the evolution of various types of Track Machines, that have emerged over the scene. Various types of Track Maintenance and Management Systems adopted on Indian Railways are indicated.

Chapter 2 deals with the various types of Hand-held Track Machines being used for carrying out various Track Maintenance Operations. The chapter also deals with the light On-Track Tamping Machines, which are deployed on locations where heavy On- Track Tamping Machines cannot be brought on logistics or economic considerations.

Chapter 3 discusses the evolution of Heavy Duty On-Track Tamping Machines, which the world over, have become the main stay of the Track Maintenance Operation of the Tracks consisting of Concrete Sleepers and Long Welded Rails, carrying ever increasing volume of heavy and high-speed traffic. Major manufacturers are: Plasser & Theurer (Austria), Plasser American (USA), Plasser India (India), Matisa Matériel Industriel SA (Switzerland), Banbury Amey (UK), Balfour Beatty (UK), Harsco (USA), and CHZ Podbijecka (Slovakia).

Chapter 4 is a supplement with a Kaleidoscope of pictures with Heavy Duty On-Track Machines for Track-Laying, -Renewal and -Maintenance.

Mr. Surrender Kaul, retired Adviser Indian Railway Board, commended: “Outstanding, invaluable and essential document. Speaks volumes of the class of the master author. The P. Way community of IR shall always remain indebted.”

For more information download the PDF:KNOW YOUR TRACK TOOLS AND MACHINES e-Edition (1)

Swiss SBB and Pandrol Procedures

By F.A. Wingler, April 2022

Booted Rail-Support Block technology for Non-Ballasted Tracks (NBT) is of interest in India for the new Katra-Banihal Line of the USBRL Project. The demand has been for a system with straight and as well curved Non-Ballasted Track (NBT), which allows adjusting, repairing and retrofitting of tracks. The NBT technology with rubber booted single rail support blocks fulfils those demands. Swiss Federal Railway, SBB, and as well Pandrol have developed procedures to retrofit booted block NBT with concrete blocks. Swiss SBB has given its heavy used Zurich Airport Line a second life with its procedure. For retrofitting the Barcelona, Spain, Metro, Line 5, the Pandrol procedure has been used. Both procedures are described in the following PDF paper, which can be free downloaded:NEW LIFE FOR BÖTZBER-STEDEF, LVT, SONNEVILLE NBT

The origin for LIGHT RAIL TRANSIT or “METRO-LITE” is based on electric City Trams,

that started worldwide at the end of the last but one century. Light Rail Transit is becoming a further mainstay for urban and suburban public transport in India under the term “METRO-LITE” . In India, we find a City Tram relic of the last century in Kolkata:

LIGHT RAIL TRANSITS, LRT, including City Trams, experience worldwide a renaissance. LRT is currently the fastest-growing passenger rail mode, employing a full range of technologies and operational practices. Around the globe, light rail systems, or LRT, have become increasingly popular in recent years due to their lower capital costs and increased reliability compared with heavy rail systems.

In Central European countries, LRT/city trams remained operating since hundred years uninterrupted as the backbone for urban, suburban interurban and regional public transport.

Be it the tram in the classical sense or the suburban and interurban railways, which combine features of underground railways and trams, the global future of urban transport is on the rail with Light Rail Transits. While the construction and running of underground or elevated systems incur huge costs, tram and light rail transit systems can be constructed and integrated into the city-scape at a comparatively lower cost.

The Light Rail Systems can share their ways with road traffic, blending in the surrounding road surface, and as well use their own dedicated tracks on reserved corridors.

The conventional way of track laying had been to lay the rail grids with gauge distance bars bolted to the web without support of cross-ties (sleepers) direct on a aligned and resilient planum, consisting of compacted gravel, metal, bitumen, asphalt, cement, mortar or concrete, or nowadays on elastic noise and vibration attenuation mats. Normally, height adjustment of such tracks takes place by insertion of wedges, and by pouring compounds under the track panel.

In modern ground borne noise vibration mitigating and electric stray current insulating systems the polymer encapsulated rails are laid in prefabricated concrete grooves. In some towns the rails are fixed on sleepers embedded in ballast-less track structures.

To learn more, download PDF:Road embedded Rail Tracks for City Tram, Light Rail Transit and Metro-Lite

The bearing ribbed base-plate for rail fastenings had been designed in Germany by the engineer Döhlert and introduced on German Railway in 1926. It is the most successful base-plate for indirect rail fastenings on wooden-, steel-, concrete-, composite-, polymer sleepers and ballast-less slab tracks around the globe. The KPO fastening from 1926 on wooden sleepers superseded the direct and indirect dog-, cut- and screw-spike fastenings and had become the conventional rail-fastening in most Central and East European countries, in Central Asia and as well in Turkey for wooden sleepers. Together with an epsilon shaped elastic tension clamp, SKl (“Spann Klemme”, patented 1967 by the German Engineer Professor Hermann Meier at the TU Munich and manufactured for the world market by Vossloh, Germany) it entered also India as a standard elastic fastening for Metro Rail on concrete plinth tracks and for modern turnouts.

Indirect elastic SKl Rail Fastening of Bangalore Metro with canted Ribbed Base-Plate on Plinth Track; System Vossloh

To learn more, download the PDF: RIBBED BASE PLATE RAIL FASTENINGS 20. 03. 21

With advanced Turnouts, Metro Rail, Ballast-less Rail Tracks, Regional Rapid Transits and High-Speed Line new impetus has been given to the Indian rail fasting market and applications. The spectrum of advanced rail fastening assemblies has become wider.

The promotion of indigenous manufacture of advanced rail fastening components under “Make in India” will give an impetus to the Aatmanirbhar Bharat Initiative under the self reliant Indian campaign making better use of the domestic economy and industries.

To know more about advanced Rail Fastenings download the PDF:Advanced Rail Fastenings 2

Rail Fastening on concrete sleepers with the RDSO designed MARK III Elastic Rail Clip, ERC, has become standard in India.

The self-tensioning or self-stressing elastic Pandrol-type rail clips are manufactured by giving a spatial bend to Silicon-Manganese alloy spring-steel rods. Their advantage is the simple installation parallel to the rail. The ERCs are pushed with their leg from right to left parallel to the rail into the tunnel/housing of the shoulder plate/insert with the help of a standard hammer or a puller device. When inserted the clip deflects and develops a clamping force fixing the rail foot:

The rod-end structural element, which is pushed into the tunnel/housing of the shoulder plate, is called “CENTRE LEG”. The other structural rod-end element is called “TOE”. The “HEEL” is the middle structural element between the “FRONT ARCH” and the “REAR ARCH”.

The rail clip panted in 1957 was invented by Per Pande-Rolfsen, an employee of the Norwegian State Railway, and the person from whom the Pandrol clip draws its name.

Worldwide there are two types of self-tensioning Pandrol Clips in use:

2. The original PR Clip with an anti-clock-wise bended geometry, shaped as the letter “e” and
3. The e-Series Clip with a clock-wise bended geometry, shaped as the letter “G”.

For more information download the PDF:Classification of ERC`s

Metro/Tram-Trains are Multi-Talents or Chameleons, that operate locally on the City Rail Networks and as well inter-regional or between cities on Main-Line Railway networks, bringing commuters from one City Center to the next City Center without changing the transport mode. Metro/Tram-Trains operate seamless with one-and-the-same Rail Vehicle on Lines of Metros, Subways, Street Cars, Street Trams, suburban Commuter Rail, Intercity Regional Rapid Transits and Main Line Railways. The system should be unigaue, otherwise dual-gauge or gauntlet tracks are needed. Metro/Tram-Trains  combine Urban Rail with Regional Rail Transport.

The most advanced modern Tram-Train system in the world operates currently in the Karlsruhe Region, Germany, on a rail network of 533 km, using 354 km railway lines together with the infrastructures of the German Federal Railway. Further modern Tram-Train Networks can be found in the regions of Cologne, Bonn, Saarbrücken, Stuttgart (Neckar-Alb), Chemnitz, Nordhorn in Germany, Cadiz in Spain, Mulhouse and  Nantes in France, Linz and Salzburg in Austria, Copenhagen in Denmark and Szeged in Hungary. Cases for combined Metro and Railway systems in India are the Nagpur and Dehradun-Rishikesh-Haridwar Regions.

Modern Thyristor Technology enables nowadays the seamless operation under different electric feeding systems: 650/750/1000 V DC, 15 kV, 16 2/3 Hz AC and 25 kV, 50 Hz AC.

For a combined and intermodal City-Tram/Metro and Regional Railway operation the track gauge should be the same, either both systems in Meter Gauge, Standard Gauge or Broad Gauge.

With the introduction of Metro Rail and High-Speed Rail operating on Standard Gauge, India had to leave its Unigauge Strategy with Broad-Gauge only. The history and dilemma of Indian Broad Gauge is discussed in the PDF below,  for free download COMBINED TRAM METRO TRAIN AND RAILWAY TRAINS