The improvement of the railway infrastructure-related activity is strictly linked to the infrastructure maintenance activity and the railway industry is challenged by different problems, such as the intensification of specific requirements, traffic boost, the need to improve safety, bottlenecks, improvement of sustainability and cost efficiency.
Augmented Usage of Track by Optimisation of Maintenance, Allocation and Inspection of railway Networks (AUTOMAIN) is led by PRORAIL, with the implication of representatives from the operators, the industry, the academic environment and having Deutsche Bahn as technical coordinator. The project execution, estimated at EUR 3.8 Million, began in February 2011 and it should be completed by January 2014.
“The Association of the European Rail Industry (UNIFE) participates in this specific research project meant to prove the possibilities for the improvement of the infrastructure capacity. From EUR 3.8 Million, the European Commission ensured a financing amounting to EUR 2.5 Million through FP7, a programme supported by the EC Research Department”, declared Nicolas Furio, Infrastructure and Electrification Manager, UNIFE, on the occasion of his participation in the Railway Days 2012 Summit.
The objectives of the Augmented Usage of Track by Optimisation of Maintenance, Allocation and Inspection of railway Networks (AUTOMAIN) project consist in developing the new methods for infrastructure inspection, both on freight-de-dicated routes, as well as on mixed traffic routes, improving the maintenance pro-cess efficiency and effectiveness and developing a new maintenance systematisation and planning instrument.
The key innovations proposed by the developers of the AUTOMAIN research project include methods with increased infrastructure inspection and maintenance speed, the development of new infrastructure components, as well as the improvement of the automated systematisation and planning systems.
The benefits of this research will consist in reducing the maintenance preparation time, increasing the speed of the specific activity, programming maintenance only when useful and necessary, but also having fewer routes to inspect.
The AUTOMAIN project proposes to adopt the best practices from other industries for the optimisation of inspection and maintenance activities (for example, motorways or the airspace industry). The project will prove the way in which the reference time allocated for key maintenance tasks where the activity on that specific infrastructure is stopped, can be reduced by up to 50%.
“The European Commission requires a more sustainable transport system and has therefore requested to the railway industry to facilitate the freight traffic modal shift from highways to railways through innovation”, declared Henry Olink, project manager, ProRail.
The AUTOMAIN project aims at increasing the maintenance of infrastructure under operating conditions. This can be accomplished by reducing the time taken to install and maintain infrastructure, which is achievable by identifying tasks that can be automated and then developing and introducing new appropriate technologies.
The clear objective of the AUTOMAIN is to transform the railway freight transport into a much more reliable transport than currently through availability and safety, by generating new capacities on the existing network.
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