APRIL 2019 VOL 137 PART 2 Permanent Way Institution The Institution for Rail Infrastructure Engineers PWI Practical Trackwork Challenge GREAT CENTRAL RAILWAY LEICESTERSHIRE Richard Spoors, Malcolm Pearce and Andy Packham TECHNICAL ARTICLE PAGE 12 CALIFORNIA: FROM DOUBLE AN EXPLORATIVE CASE STUDY INNOVATIVE APPLICATION OF RAIL TRACK TO TRIPLE TRACK COLLABORATIVE WORKING AND FASTENINGS FOR HS2 INTEGRATED DATA MANAGEMENT IN TRACK RENEWAL PROJECTS AS PUBLISHED IN Page 16 Page 22 Page 42 PWI Journal APR 2019.indd 1 25/04/2019 14:41 The Journal April 2019 Volume 137 Part 2 If you would like to reproduce this article, please contact: Kerrie Illsley JOURNAL PRODUCTION EDITOR Permanent Way Institution [email protected] PLEASE NOTE THE OPINIONS EXPRESSED IN THIS JOURNAL ARE NOT NECESSARILY THOSE OF THE EDITOR OR OF THE INSTITUTION AS A BODY. TECHNICAL AUTHOR: Phil Kirkland What in Head of Maintenance Delivery Nexus the world…? Tyne and Wear Metro PWI Vice President for England (North) An occasional look at some significant rail infrastructure developments overseas with the intention of ‘inspiring and exciting’ both today’s and tomorrow’s railway infrastructure engineers. The main aim of the programme is to make Priority routes will include: Russia and its passenger trains run quicker, whilst at the same time improving the quality, reliability and • St Petersburg– Helsinki (Finland) service of those passenger trains. • Moscow – Smolensk – Krasnoe high speed • Moscow – Nizhny Novgorod The main tasks of the programme are as • Moscow – Kursk follows: • Moscow – Voronezh • Moscow – Kaluga – Bryansk –Suzemka railways • The manufacture of a new generation of • Moscow – Yaroslavl The change of economic climate in Russia, the fast and high-speed rolling stock • Rostov– Krasnodar growth of freight traffic and the change in the • Deciding upon routes for fast and high- • Rostov– Mineralnye Vody types and routes of freight that have occurred speed trains • Krasnodar – Mineralnye Vody in recent years, provided momentum for the • Ensuring fast and high-speed travel on • Novosibirsk – Omsk, Tomsk, Kemerovo, programme to develop Fast and High-Speed the key priority routes in Russia Barnaul, Novokuznetsk Rail travel on Russia’s Railways towards 2030. • Creating the technical equipment to • Ekaterinburg – Chelyabinsk On 17 June 2008, Prime Minister Vladimir operate fast and high-speed trains • Samara – Saransk, Penza, Saratov Putin signed the Strategy for Developing Rail • Training staff to work with fast and high- • Saratov – Volgograd Transport towards 2030. One of the key tasks speed trains • Saratov – Michurinsk within this strategy was the development of fast (up to 160 km/hr) and high-speed (up 350 km/ Three sets of measures have been set out as 3. Building high-speed rail tracks where trains hr) passenger rail travel. part of the programme: can reach speeds of up to 350 km/hr: Introducing new technologies and fast 1. Increasing the speed of long-distance • St Petersburg – Moscow passenger trains on Russian railways will allow passenger trains on journeys of more than • Moscow – Adler for: 700km to 70-90km/hr. These routes will be served by passenger carriages with sleeping Fast passenger travel is regarded worldwide • Significant reduction in passenger journey areas. as the safest, most comfortable and most times ecologically friendly form of transport and • Improve journey conditions, increase 2. Creating fast rail services after the according to the 2030 strategy, over the next comfort, and thus boost passenger levels reconstruction of existing lines between major two decades, the amount of high-speed rail up to 30%, and on international routes, regional centres, where the journey time does track in Russia will multiply 17 times – from up to 37% not exceed 7 hours, using fast trains that travel the current 650km to 10,887km. Additionally, • Create jobs in manufacturing and between 160 km/hr and 200 km/hr. on a range of routes there are plans to build implementing new generation rail additional tracks to serve normal freight, technology at Russian factories passenger and suburban trains, leaving special • Raise technological processes in the lines that are dedicated to the high speed transport machine building sector to new train services. In order to ensure high speed levels of quality rail operation in Russia, special separate 12 TECHNICAL infrastructure will be created, and high speed systems, technical service systems and rolling JSC (Joint Stock Company) Russian Railways trains at up to 350km/hr will be introduced. By stock. This means that the development of has a near-monopoly on long-distance train 2030 the length of dedicated high-speed train fast and high-speed transport requires major travel in Russia, with a 90% market share. infrastructure should be up to 1,500km. technical and financial resources, renewal Russia’s railways are divided into seventeen and changes in rail infrastructure, creating regional railways, from the October Railway High-speed lines will link Moscow and St automatic control systems and broadening serving the St. Petersburg region to the Far Petersburg, Nizhny Novgorod, Smolensk and the centralised control rooms and associated Eastern Railway serving Vladivostok, to Krasnoe. Choosing options for the construction systems. the free-standing Kaliningrad and Sakhalin of the high-speed lines between Moscow and Railways on either end. Nizhny Novgorod and Moscow-Smolensk- Rail transport in Russia operates on one of the Krasnoe (Western border) will be determined biggest railway networks in the world. Russian The regional railways were closely coordinated on the dynamic of the prevailing socio- railways are the third longest by length and by the Ministry of the Means of Communication economic development of the country. third by volume of freight hauled, after the until 2003, and the Joint Stock Company Worldwide experience of high speed railways of the United States and China. Rail Russian Railways since then – including the operations in countries such as France, transport in Russia has been described as one pooling and redistribution of revenues. This China, Japan and Germany shows that they of the economic wonders of the 19th, 20th, and has been crucial to two long-standing policies require the permanent way to be in exceptional 21st centuries. Russia’s railways remain a key of cross-subsidisation: to passenger operations condition, with high demands from energy strategic focus for the nation. from freight revenues, and to coal shipments from other freight. The majority of Russia’s rail network uses the 1,520mm Russian gauge, which includes all metro systems and the majority of tram networks in the country. The Sakhalin Railway, on Sakhalin Island used 1,067mm Cape gauge, however tracks on island are now undergoing conversion to Russian gauge. A section from the Poland–Russia border to Kaliningrad, uses the 1,435mm Standard gauge. Kaliningrad’s tram network also uses metre-gauge tracks at 1,000mm, as does Stavropol krai’s Pyatigorsk network. Current high speed operations: Moscow–Saint Petersburg is Russia’s highest speed railway with a top speed of 250 km/h (155 mph). Two experimental high-speed train sets which were built as long ago as 1974 and designed for 200 km/h (120 mph) operation A Siemens Velaro ‘Sapsan’ Russian high speed train departs Moscow were initially introduced. But it wasn’t until Dec Rail map main routes - Russia 13 TECHNICAL (RPM) / Plasser and Theurer Automatic S&C Tamping Machine PMA Photo courtesy: LJ Plasser and Theurer Unimat 08-475/4S with ballast brush Photo courtesy: LJ 14 TECHNICAL Early ER-200 RVR High speed train Photo courtesy: Ilya Semyonoff High speed, self-propelled universal track-measuring and flaw detection car Photo courtesy: LJ 15 TECHNICAL Tracklayer PB-3M with clamped lifting beam - designed for installation or dismantling of 25metre wood or concrete panels, here on the Sakhalin Island Railway, installing dual gauge 1,067mm and 1520mm concrete sleepers. Photo courtesy: SIR Elsewhere a Tracklayer PB-3M team gets it badly wrong! (We’ve all similarly been there done that too!) Photo courtesy: RZD 16 TECHNICAL aims to improve cargo transportation between Beijing and Moscow. China has shown its interest in taking part in the project as part of the construction of the high-speed rail network between Moscow and Beijing. One of the main conditions from the Chinese side was to use their technology and equipment for construction. Due to underdeveloped local capability and lack of access to Western technologies, the Russian counterparts agreed to these conditions. Russian Railways plans to operate 300m-long bullet trains on the route. The trains will have an operating speed of 360km/h and a maximum speed of 440km/h. Image courtesy: AGICO Rail, China Moscow–Rostov line: A new line with the capacity for high speed rail was approved due to the old line passing through Ukraine 2009 that the Sapsan service on the Moscow increases of Afrosiyob in Uzbekistan, the line and was completed in 2018; but whether it will – St Petersburg railway came into service. The is technically not full HSR speed; the line has actually be used for high-speed trains, remains first upgraded 250 km/h service using Russian been undergoing upgrades in 2018.Russia also unknown. The bypass route was constructed high speed trains Sapsan went into service on has the following lines under consideration: given the political dissent between Russia December 26, 2009. and Ukraine, and now means Russian trains Moscow–Kazan High-Speed Rail Project: do not have to pass through Ukraine at all. Interestingly, the Russian Military built this Helsinki–St. Petersburg: 200 km/h (124 mph) The call to build this 770 kilometres, 2018 high-speed service using Karelian Trains Class completed rail line that would connect Kazan railway in its entirety. Sm6 (Allegro) trains started on December 12, and Moscow was first announced by President 2010, reducing travel time from 5.5 hours to 3.5 Vladimir Putin in the Economic Forum at St.