Plant life keeps growing

Rail plant comes in a bewildering variety of shapes and sizes. There are ‘rail’ versions of most large machines that can be seen on building sites all over the country. There are specialist pieces of kit that apply only to railway engineering. And then there are all the peripheral hand tools, access equipment, surveying instruments, protective clothing, power supplies and welfare cabins. And portable loos of course. The list seems endless.

Network Rail has a group of specialist plant engineers whose role is to keep tabs on everything that’s available and make sure the best equipment is used at all times. It would be a waste of resources if a particular project team struggled to complete a task when, unknown to them, a specialist piece of kit would have done the job for them in a fraction of the time.

But how best to keep up-to-date with the latest developments and inform all the engineers in the field? One way is to organise a plant demonstration day so that manufacturers and hire companies can show off their wares. This year the rail engineer has visited three such events, the third annual show at Thingley and two first-timers, at Tuebrook in Liverpool and Paddock Wood in Kent. The volume of machinery there was truly staggering and a review of every piece would turn this into a plant catalogue! However it is worth recording some of the most memorable items.

Great and smallSeveral companies had fleets of road-rail machines which, as the demonstrations were on sites with several sidings, were able to rush up and down making noise and clouds of dust (except at Paddock Wood where it was raining). SRS displayed some of the largest such machines with full-size Volvo lorries, while Quattro’s little vans were some of the smallest. TRAC had variety – a crew bus, a Unimog and a ‘farm’ tractor – while companies such as Readypower, Keltbray and A P Webb showed more conventional diggers and excavators.

Balfour Beatty, more frequently seen in these pages as a main contractor to Network Rail, also has a plant side. At Paddock Wood it had a tracked excavator alongside an interesting metal box which, like a lot of railway engineering, turned out to be a lot more complex than it seemed at first glance. It was actually a ballast spreader, designed to dispense fresh ballast evenly along a section of track. Towed behind a road-rail machine, which also uses its bucket arm to keep the spreader filled, ballast falls through slots in the bottom onto the trackbed. Adjustable plates, and the overall height of the spreader above the rails, control the thickness of ballast and even the contour of the shoulders over the ends of the sleepers. It’s simple and ingenious. Designed by Balfour Beatty for its own use, Hydrex also had one as part of its display.

The tallest vehicle there was Ainscough’s massive mobile crane. Brand new and radio controlled, the operator delighted in hiding out of sight while putting the crane through its paces. He liked to see the look on people’s faces when they first noticed the operator’s cab was empty!

The “smallest item for most money” award could well go to BOC’s hydrogen-powered fuel cell. At first glance the shoebox-sized generator wouldn’t seem to be worth its £1,200 price tag but considering it will push out 300W of mains power, last up to 300 hours on one fuel tank depending on usage and is completely silent – with the only waste product being water vapour – then it seems like a bargain. Uses are power supplies inside temporary offices, lighting in unsafe atmospheres where a spark cannot be risked and long-term but temporary illumination. And there is a higher-output version on the drawing board.

Tales of the unexpectedThe safety of trackside workers is always high on anyone’s priority list. Vortok’s telescopic safety fence is well known but the version that can be remotely clipped to an open line from the safety of the cess was new. Geismar’s solution was to lock their workers up! They had a mobile ‘play-pen’ that can be pushed along a track from the inside, with engineers and their tools safely contained, for use in awkward locations such as the middle line between two open ones.

Stobart Rail was another unexpected exhibitor. Sister company to the well-known green lorries, the renamed W A Developments had some orange machines that made a change from the more usual yellow.

QTS build their own equipment or at least have it built for them by specialist TFI. Road-rail concrete mixers, vactor units, the country’s largest tree chipper, an 18-metre long-reach excavator and other specialist items help them to undertake tasks that no-one else can.

On a similar tack, Hydrex had a tree cutter as part of its display. It grabs the tree, holds it upright, cuts it off just above ground level and then carries it away.

Another neat idea came from Dorset-based OnGrade. Modern machine-control systems have transducers attached to an excavator’s bucket and every segment of the arm. This means that every system is hard-wired to the machine and when it is used for rough work such as demolition they tend to get knocked off. OnGrade’s system uses Bluetooth technology to pass signals between sensors that now only have to be clipped in place. It is therefore possible to move control systems between machines, reducing cost by improving versatility, and remove them completely if necessary.

Less is moreOne article can not really do justice to these displays. There were access stairs from Kwik-Step, weld markers from Hilti, a very smart crew/comfort van from Nixon Hire, LED lights from NightSearcher and Ritelite, surveying equipment from Korec and many more. Apologies to anyone not mentioned – there was just too much for one issue.

Thanks to Ronnie Kayll and his team at Tuebrook and Andrew Reynolds and Les Radcliffe for their invitation to Paddock Wood. Congratulations too to Malla Rail for the best and most concise safety briefing for a long time!