19.09.16
Four-year track renewal programme completed in Yorkshire
A four-year programme to renew track in Yorkshire has been successfully completed using a specialist train.
The train renewal system (TRS) completed its final shift, on the East Coast Main Line between York and Doncaster, on 17 September.
The train, which is over a third of a mile long and cost £40m, has renewed 250 miles of track at a rate of around half a mile per shift as part of the Rail Upgrade Plan. Since the programme began in 2012, the distance of track replaced is equivalent to building a new railway from Kings Cross to Durham, according to Network Rail.
It completed five shifts a week, operating at night in order to minimise the disruption to passengers.
Ben Brooks, TRS project director for Network Rail, said: “We hope railway users will feel the full benefit of the programme, as many may have been unaware that this work was being carried out.”
The track relaying system carries out the following in a continuous process:
- Unclips the old sleeper fastenings and removes them from the track, with a magnetic drum, for disposal
- Removes the old rail from the sleeper housings
- Removes the old sleepers from the track and transports them to the sleeper carrying wagons using gantry cranes and pallet style containers
- Levels off the ballast bed and displaces the material to the side of the track
- Places the new sleepers on the prepared ballast bed and spaces them correctly
- Positions the new rail onto the new sleepers
- Fastens the new rail to the new sleepers
- Collects the old ballast and distributes it back to the newly installed track, ready for final geometry correction with a tamping machine
Source: Network Rail
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