Getting the on track experience

The ‘Practical Track Challenge’ run by the Permanent Way Institution (PWI) aims to give office-based professionals an understanding of the practicalities of track work. This year’s challenge was the seventh such event with the first one being held at the Didcot Railway Centre in 2017. Since then, the event has been hosted at various heritage railways to provide participants with a low risk, on-track, daylight environment. This year’s challenge took place in Scotland at the 8km long Bo’ness and Kinneil Railway.

Visitors to the railway may find it hard to imagine that the first two kilometres of this line, including Bo’ness station, were built on a brown field site between 1979 and 1985. This ‘new’ line runs along the foreshore of the Firth of Forth to the site of Kinneil colliery which closed in 1983. From there, the railway is the refurbished colliery branch line which climbs above the Forth before turning south to join the Edinburgh to Glasgow main line at Manuel.

Organising the challenge

The challenge was organised by Andy Steele, PWI’s technical manager, and Jim Watson of the PWI’s Glasgow branch. It was supported by various companies who provided their services free of charge. The principal designer was Systra and the principal contractor was Story Contracting which was supported by Vital Rail. Plant was provided by McCulloch Group, Railcare and Swietelsky Babcock Rail. Cloburn Quarry at Lanark also provided 350 tonnes of ballast free of charge.

The 38 participants at this two-day event came from a wide range of companies which included the Office of Road and Rail (ORR), HS2, Transport for London, the Rail Safety and Standards Board (RSSB), and Network Rail. The PWI offers this event free of charge to its corporate member’s employees. Participants were split into groups which each had the opportunity to visit four sites: Progress Rail: a reballasting site; a resleepering site; and various activities at the Bo’ness yard.

Four different experiences

Progress Rail’s South Queensferry foundry is 10km further east along the Forth from Bo’ness. Here, delegates had the opportunity to see how this factory produces cast manganese crossings for Network Rail’s S&C. This included seeing the two five-tonne electric arc furnaces used for steel production and the in-house pattern making.

The resleepering site was on the foreshore by Kinneil where the track crosses an oil pipeline from the North Sea to the nearby Grangemouth oil refinery. To do so, it has to cross the pipeline’s protective slab at an acute angle which requires a 200-metre-radius S-curve. The task here was spot resleepering 1 in 3 sleepers. This replaced about 60 obsolete F19 concrete sleepers that have Spring Hook Clip (SHC) fastenings with F23 sleepers having Pandrol clips as the SHC fastenings are not suitable for such sharp curves. The S-curve was then given a design tamp.

Reballasting was undertaken in a steep cutting, five kilometres from Bo’ness where the line has some drainage issues. Access to this site was made possible by steps provided by VPA. This location also had thin ballast which made it difficult to maintain the track level with good top alignment. For the track challenge, 10 track panels with a total length of 180-metres were reballasted. The track was lifted using McCulloch Panel Lifters, after which old ballast was removed and the track bed levelled. After the track panels were replaced, ballast to the site was delivered by a road rail excavator with two trollies that made several runs from lineside stockpile at Bo’ness. The excavator then positioned it ready for its design tamp.

At the Bo’ness station area, participants assisted the regauging of points which required baseplates to be removed and the replacement of rotten bearers. Baseplate holes were plugged with a DWG Spikefast resin. Slide chairs and fishplates had 40 years of black grease removed and were reoiled with Interflon and fitted with Staytite bolts. Participants then hand compacted new ballast utilising Robel vertical tampers supplied by Torrent Trackside.

At Bo’ness there were display stands provided by CIRAS, McCulloch Group, Staytite, Torrent Trackside, Pandrol, and Robel where battery powered tools were on display. This included a rail saw that can make 16 cuts on a single charge.

On-track plant

The use of a RailVac machine to extract ballast from S&C in the yard at Bo’ness was demonstrated. This on-track plant has a ballast vacuum extraction system to remove material between rails and sleepers without the need to remove them. The use of this machine avoids damage to other infrastructure such as cables and pipes. It is intended for use in areas where it is difficult to use standard excavators and can be quickly set up on site so operates efficiently in short possessions. Under its own power it can only travel at 20 km/h so it needs locomotive haulage during main line transits. The RailVac was built, and is operated by, Railcare AB which operates similar machines in Sweden.

Prior to its use at the resleepering and reballasting sites, a Swietelsky Babcock Rail 08-16 4X4C-RT tamper was on display at the Bo’ness station platform. This was built by Plasser and Theurer in 2000 and can tamp 440 metres/hr. It has four split head tamping units with a total of 16 tines. These units can be moved independently from each other which enables it to tamp most S&C units. Adjacent to the tamper unit is a track lifting frame with flanged rollers to grip the track.

On board the tamper there is the opportunity to sit in both operator positions, one in the driving cab and one above the tamping units. Network Rail’s Neil Wightman explained how the driving cab operator controls the movement of the machine whilst the other operator controls the tamping units. Neil explains how the tamper measures track line, cant, and level prior to tamping using trolleys at the front, centre, and rear of the machine. The tamper’s computer then determines how the track needs to be adjusted for the optimum alignment. This is maintenance tamping. An alternative approach is design tamping, when a previously developed track design is input to the tamper’s computer which then computes the difference between this design and the measured track.

Both the reballasting and resleepering sites had design tamps for which the track geometry files, as well as surveying services prior to the event, were prepared by a team led by Graham Hutchinson of Network Rail.

A win-win event

The PWI packed a wide variety of track experiences into this two-day track challenge and are to be congratulated for organising and funding such a worthwhile event. It is a great way of developing railway engineers who would otherwise not get the chance to get up-close to trackwork and its associated plant and equipment.

Participants came from a wide variety of backgrounds who, whatever their role, will no doubt benefit from their exposure to the practicalities of track engineering. The event also gave participants the opportunity to learn from each other and form networks with those who they would otherwise not meet. Your writer, who is not a track engineer, certainly learnt much from this event.

The many companies which freely supported this event deserve credit, as do the PWI members who provided support and guidance on site. The Bo’ness and Kinneil railway’s cafe also provided excellent hospitality and the opportunity to visit its impressive museum.

Last but not least, the event left the railway with some much-improved track. The track challenge is certainly a good opportunity to support the heritage rail community.

All in all, this challenge was a win-win event for all concerned.

Lead image credit: Hannah Pearson