Every year, an average of 500 turnouts need to be replaced in Austria—and currently up to 1,500 on the German market. The conventional method often involves transporting the individual turnout components to the assembly site, where they are then put together. However, this often takes place under difficult conditions. In order to guarantee longer usability of the tracks and enable shorter turnout closures, voestalpine Railway Systems has completely switched to pre-assembled turnouts.

What are the advantages of pre-assembling turnouts?

In contrast to conventional methods, all safety-relevant components of a turnout are assembled directly in the factory. This has the following advantages for customers:

• Shorter cut-off times thanks to delivery in ready-to-use condition.
• Fewer accidents on the construction site due to the elimination of dangerous assembly processes.
• Highest installation quality and lower costs over the entire life cycle due to precisely fitting sizes.
• Optimization of revenue through increased usability of the tracks.
• Extended warranty.
• Particularly low maintenance costs.
• Take-back of pre-assembled old turnouts.

The additional integration of insulating joints means that fewer welds are required. This optimizes quality and thus the return on investment for operators.

Sustainable added value for operators

In addition to the production and installation of turnouts, the topic of turnout recycling is also becoming increasingly important at voestalpine Railway Systems. The return of old turnouts has made a significant contribution to the circular economy. This means that old turnouts are taken back, specially processed, and reused. This saves costs and CO2. In addition, voestalpine Railway Systems produces solar power: with a 1-megawatt peak photovoltaic system, the company can cover a large part of its energy requirements with locally generated renewable energy. In this way, we are making a decisive contribution to green technology and sustainability.

This article was originally published by voestalpine.

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