Mixed traffic places particularly diverse demands on equipment – including turnouts. Sven Rinder, system expert for Mixed Traffic, voestalpine Railway Systems GmbH in Zeltweg, shows how the company optimally combines these versatile, state-of-the-art all-rounders into an overall system.
Being a system provider enables us to supply our customers with our complete product portfolio from a single source. From rails and turnouts to signaling and monitoring technologies, an expert acts as a central contact person who always keeps track of all products and services for the customer.
On the one hand, the one-face-to-the-customer approach significantly reduces the communication and coordination effort for our customers – both in day-to-day business and in project management. On the other hand, perfect system integration and a reduction in interfaces lead to smoother processes without compatibility and integration problems. Similar to building a house with a general contractor, overall responsibility for the project lies with a single point of contact.
Digital condition monitoring and increasingly intelligent turnouts are becoming more and more important. For example, they can be used to derive ideal maintenance recommendations, which significantly reduce the workload for railway operators and their employees, especially in view of the shortage of skilled personnel. The condition of various critical and safety-relevant components, such as switches and crossings, can also be retrieved.
In contrast to other areas of application, which have high but consistent requirements, turnouts in mixed traffic must cover a wide variety of different demands. From heavy freight trains to slow passenger trains to express trains, all types of traffic must be able to run on the tracks. The turnout must be able to cope with changing axle loads, speeds, and requirements. Among other things, we work with adapted and reinforced components, harder rail grades, and other fastenings to design a suitable, versatile, and resilient overall system.
Digital solutions in asset and maintenance management, such as those offered by zentrak, help to further optimize availability in the face of ever-shorter maintenance windows. For example, the digital twin of the turnout stored in the system can be used to derive maintenance measures in advance, create parts lists, and order parts. Special sensors can also analyze actual conditions to derive predictive maintenance recommendations and provide advance warning of where damage could occur in the future.
We are seeing that maintenance windows are becoming smaller and smaller, while at the same time there is an increasing shortage of skilled personnel. Spare parts inventory should be minimized with faster availability of parts, which is why there will be a lot of activity in the future in terms of spare parts standardization. RAMS – reliability, availability, maintainability, and safety – are and will remain a crucial issue. With our expertise, we are therefore constantly optimizing our engineering, customization, and implementation in order to further improve the service life and durability of our products. Even today, our turnouts have been in use on the tracks for 20 years or more, while remaining compatible and interchangeable.
In addition to our innovative digital solutions from a single source, personal contact is essential for us to provide our customers with the best possible support. We are often in direct contact through trade fairs, training courses, and on-site visits. This enables us to respond individually to our customers and their specific requirements.
Sven Rinder is system expert in the area of Mixed Traffic at voestalpine Railway Systems in Zeltweg and has been working for voestalpine for over 30 years. The mechanical engineer discovered his interest in the railway sector and its dynamics at an early age. The combination of durability, sustainability, and innovation, which constantly provides opportunities for new developments and optimization, continues to make his work exciting to this day.