RAILWAY AGE, MAY 2022 ISSUE: Extending life for the industry’s foundation—steel rail—is a challenge for railroads and suppliers, as longer, heavier trains dominate.

With freight and passenger railroad traffic returning to pre-pandemic levels, Railway Age asked rail grinding, milling and welding suppliers to address research and development as well as the market outlook for rail maintenance. What’s on the horizon? “Smart” products that not only boost safety and sustainability, but also reduce track time, which is at a premium today.

Demand for rail welding is high across the board, EVP of Business Development Russ Gehl tells Railway Age. “This is partially due to lingering delays brought on by the pandemic on the transit and project side,” he says. “When it comes to maintenance welding, the labor squeeze that all industries are experiencing has caused a shortage of skilled thermite welders, making flash-butt welding more frequently requested. We have a very user-friendly control system and can train up quickly while keeping quality high due to automation and our existing teams’ expertise.”

Gehl points out that Holland can provide railroads the gang performance data they need to make decisions around scheduling, crew size and defect density management—all leading to increased productivity. 

The company is currently working on rail installation, capital expansion, defect remediation and rail maintenance for Class I railroads. Additionally, its MobileWelders are at work on Florida’s Brightline, and it is providing welding service for Kansas City Street Car, Toronto Transit Commission and Amtrak, and gearing up for welding on Mexico’s Tren Maya. 

Holland debuted the HAMR—Holland Automated Manganese Refurbishment—for frogs and crossing diamonds a few years ago and continues to invest in the technology and process. On the flash-butt welding side, the company is improving its short plug welding method that addresses defect remediation, which has less waste, allows for a smaller gang, and is a quicker process overall, Gehl says.

“We believe that rail milling will play a bigger role in the future than it does today in North America,” Senior Sales Manager Elvis Kozica says. “Energy prices are permanently rising, especially now, fired by the Ukraine crisis. Therefore, we believe that there will be more transportation, public and freight, switched from road to rail to save costs and protect the environment. Due to higher frequency on rail, railways will need to adopt their maintenance strategies accordingly. … On busy networks, we see the growth of RCF (rolling contact fatigue) as well as head checks, which rail grinding is not able anymore to manage cost-effectively and sustainably, and this is where rail milling comes into play. This scenario is already present in Europe and Asia. With rail milling technology, customers are able to ‘reset the clock’ for replacing rail.”

Customers today are seeking plain line and switches and crossing rail milling work, Kozica tells Railway Age. 

Last year, Linsinger introduced its first rail maintenance machine with hydrogen zero-emission propulsion technology that will help “railways to achieve their carbon footprint goals,” he adds.

At Loram Maintenance of Way, Inc., “we are always looking to improve safety and find ways to make our machines ‘smarter’ to keep staff off the ground and out of harm’s way,” Product Manager-Rail Chris Lidberg tells Railway Age. 

Such machine automation, he says, also helps increase efficiency and reduce track time. For example, Loram’s Rail Pro Infinity software—introduced last year for use on the RG400 series grinding machines—“allows us, in essence, to have an infinite amount of patterns, so we remove the right amount of metal on a given rail segment,” Lidberg explains.

Looking ahead, the company is exploring battery and hydrogen power as part of its de-carbonization plan, and is optimistic about a boost in projects due to the recently signed Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act. “IIJA will benefit the industry as a whole and in particular the Northeast Corridor, as it will provide significant support for our customers,” Lidberg says.

Pandrol North America is working to bring welding from “the stone ages to the modern ages,” according to Dave Manoleff, Manager of ATW. One way to do this is to speed the thermite welding process—a customer request. “Currently it takes about an hour to do one from start to finish, and track time is a premium,” Manoleff says. “If we can develop something that’s a little bit quicker, safer and more user friendly, it’s a win for everyone.” For safety and ergonomic reasons, the company would like to have welders stand to do the work and not be on top of the rail, he says. Additionally, a product that is easier to use—especially with declining talent in the welding field—would be a benefit. 

Currently in the U.S., railroads mainly use the company’s QP (Quick Preheat) plus CJ (Crucible One-Use) product. 

While the welding projects have decreased as Class I railroads have installed continuous welded rail—which at 1,800-foot lengths have fewer joints than traditional 40- to 50-foot rail sections—training is on the rise, says Manoleff, who started as a welder at a Class I. “Everybody is having trouble finding people,” he points out, and looking to suppliers like Pandrol for help. “Track welding is a fairly simple process, but there’s a lot of steps to take to do it to make sure it lasts in the track,” he notes. 

A thermite weld can last anywhere from one year up to 20 years in track, depending on traffic level, track subgrade and current rail life. “If all procedures are followed, a thermite weld will last the life of the rail,” Manoleff says.

Despite rail grinding being a well-established and proven technology, rail degradation has accelerated “in many railway networks beyond the capabilities of grinding technology,” according to Richard Stock, Global Head of Rail Solutions. “To prevent premature rail exchange, rail milling can provide regenerative rail maintenance solutions—creat[ing] an ‘as new’ rail condition by removing all defects and restoring the rail profile according to target profile,” he says. “But rail milling has application scenarios beyond regenerative maintenance. It is a spark- and dust-free process that is perfectly suited for application in tunnels, in stations, on bridges or elevated track; in fire sensitive/fire ban areas; and in general urban environments.”

Plasser, he says, is currently focusing on North American transit systems for milling, and will be offering services with the ROMILL Urban 3 E3 rail milling train—designed and built by Schweerbau International (SBI) and Robel in Germany—starting in third-quarter 2022. “This train was designed to fit into smallest tunnel clearance envelopes and to provide efficient and reliable rail milling technology tailored for the needs of urban networks,” Stock says. 

Plasser customers are looking for more “eco friendly” equipment, Stock tells Railway Age. “Consequently, our milling machine includes a hybrid-drive system that allows for a total of three hours of pure electric battery operation. … To operate beyond [that], the machine is equipped with a Tier 4 final diesel engine range extender that also provides quick charging capability. Of course, the machine can also be recharged through an external power source.”

Progress Rail operates two flash-butt welding plants in North America and supplies mobile welding equipment to contractors, railroads and transit customers worldwide. “Demand for fixed-plant welding has been consistent so far in 2022,” the company reports. “The international requirement for flash-butt welding equipment has also been stable this year, with large railway expansion and rehabilitation projects contributing to demand.” This includes All Terrain Mobile Welders (ATMW) and fully containerized welding systems equipped with de-stressing weld-heads with integrated shears or the K1045 narrow head for welding turnouts.  

“Working with strategic suppliers, Progress Rail has developed a narrow-head welder for our mobile units,” the company says. “This head can be used with extended boom trucks or ATMWs when welding turnouts and in tight confines. The Narrow-Head Flash Butt Welder is tall and narrow, requiring only 8.5 inches of clearance from the adjacent rail or fixed object. This allows for completing a flash-butt weld inside a turnout in transit areas, where flash-butt welds were impossible in the past, and even thermite welds were difficult. Progress Rail has also been rehabilitating several ATMWs that will support contractors working in Australia.”

On the R&D side, the company is exploring “automating historically manual processes related to flash-butt welding and increasing welder uptime by using remote diagnostics to optimize safety, quality and efficiency.”

RailWorks customers are looking for turnkey projects, says Vice President R.T. Swindall. “That’s one of the reasons we bought our flash-butt welding business so we could come in and do an entire project from start to finish. Flash-butt welding fits perfectly into our portfolio of service offerings as we look to continue strengthening our customer partnerships.”

Among the company’s current projects are maintenance grinding—including pre- and post-grinding inspections—and joint elimination for a large transit company and a freight railroad, respectively. 

A growing number of request for proposals are for undercutting to improve the subgrade, Swindall adds. “Over the past five years, undercutting had slowed down, but more recently we’ve seen a 50%-75% increase for it as well as for our switch and crossing grinding operations,” he says.

Customers are moving from a corrective to preventative maintenance approach to minimize life-cycle costs, according to Director of Operations Tobias Guenther. Vossloh Rail Services North America’s VTM-compact milling machine, for instance, “can preserve rails with deep cracks/defects or severe cross-profile changes, instead of having to replace them far too early and at significantly higher cost,” he says. “Removing up to 2 mm of material per pass with no fire or dust hazard at all, the machine is ideal for fire-restricted areas.”

Guenther tells Railway Age that the company’s high-speed grinding technology can eliminate rolling contact fatigue at an early stage at operating speeds of more than 40 mph—without closing or preparing the track, which is an advantage with track time tightening. Equipped with the company’s newest “SMART technology,” it measures the longitudinal and cross profile and allows customers to plan maintenance and move toward a predictive maintenance approach, he says.

Since turnouts are “among our customers’ most expensive assets, Vossloh has brought the Flexis system to North America,” Guenther says. “Flexis combines highly accurate measuring techniques with technically versatile hand-guided machines, which allows rail maintenance of complete turnouts and common crossing assemblies, including the frog and switch blade.

“In addition, Vossloh offers further measurement services to ensure that our customers are offered the tool that is best suited to their specific problems.” 

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