You are on your way to Schiphol Airport to catch a very important flight. Perhaps you are running late, or you are nervous for the meeting abroad. In any case, your nerves affect your stomach. So just before station Sloterdijk, you quickly dive into the train toilet for some stress relief. Happily resuming your journey, you may be unaware of the effect of your toilet visit on the station tracks that you left behind. Station track locations are clearly more vulnerable to damage by drainage waste from train toilets than other areas in the rail infrastructure.
This is probably not the most tasteful subject to talk about. But in all fairness, human waste contains all sorts of substances that are quite disadvantageous for the rail infrastructure. Acids and salts corrode the rail base and web, a process so harmful that it results in rail replacement taking place well before it was originally planned. A considerably shorter lifespan of the track is particularly a problem around railway station areas. ProRail decided it was time to find a solution for this not so tasteful problem.
ProRail came into contact with us. A well-known approach, same application for a new problem: rubber coated rails. In this case, the rubber coating is used only on those parts of the rails that need additional protection. Such as corrosion problems or other deterioration issues like moisture at level crossings or in tunnels.
We recently delivered the first rubber coated rails for one of our contractors (VolkerRail) for the Sloterdijk railway station area. These rails were blasted and coated in our very own coating production line. This process takes place under conditioned circumstances in order to achieve the best quality. The 36 meters of rails were then transported to Amsterdam via our Regs wagons. This was done with the utmost care, since all forms of coating are susceptible to damage. Once arrived at their destination, the contractor lifted the rails effortlessly into the rail trajectory, after which the rails wass welded to the existing track.
Rubbercoated rails was also installed in the Eurotunnel, which lies in between France and Great Britain. The salty and humid climate in this railway tunnel had a similarly negative effect on the quality of the rails. As a result, the rails required quite a lot of maintenance on a regular basis. Rubber coating protects the rails and considerably prolongs their lifespan, tremendously decreasing the time spent on maintenance. |