voestalpine BWG

Tongue rails are the most sensitive elements in turnouts and also are exposed to extreme strain. To protect them against wear the used steel has to be more robust than in the construction of other components.

Due to its special construction, the BWG tongue adapter ZAD 30 meets all demands in connection with long service life, easy maintenance and high profitability.

Design and Function

The design of the tramway tongue with clamping wedge consists of the following basic elements:

• Tramway tongue rail with 30° inclined joint and dovetail guide
• Standard rail with 30° inclined joint
• Tongue adapter with clamping wedge, linkage components and anti-creeper

The 30° inclined joint ensures low-wear and smooth running from the tongue to the standard rail. The dovetail guide with the screwed clamping wedges provides not only non-positive but also positive connection. The fitted anti-creeper represents another safety element against longitudinal movement of the tongue.

Application

Due to the narrow design of switch rails in tramway turnouts, smaller wheel contact surface areas occur resulting in surface pressures considerably higher than on rails in a normal trackway. Therefore, materials of higher strength against the rolling/sliding wear have to be used. This nearly always entails poor welding properties. To eliminate difficult and expensive welding and, nevertheless, to use materials of high resistance and adequate carbon and manganese contents in the area of the tongue, BWG developed the tongue adapter ZAD 30. The design is based on a positive and nonpositive, permanent bolted connection of the components.

This is a profitable way to achieve long service life, to minimize maintenance costs substantially and to perform repairs in the track within an extremely short period of time by replacing damaged parts.

Pluspunkte

• Combination of different materials
• Low-wear running area thanks to 30° inclined joints
• Safe non-positive and positive connections
• Short installation times
• Low maintenance
• High degree of availability
• Fast payback