Development of Low-Cost Paved Track for Revenue Line
Masanobu KOZEKI, Katsutoshi ANDO, Hiroo KOYAMA, Toshiyuki KONISHI
Transition to a system that can sustain the required quality of track at minimum
cost with limited manpower is now an urgent problem facing Japanese Railway Companies.
Particularly, in urban areas, a strong demand is voiced for implementation of a
low-maintenance track for the purpose of drastic solution to the problem. Results of
testing dynamic performance of paved track type E which was developed as a low-maintenance
tack for the revenue line are reported in this paper. We found that the performance
was just what we had expected, but that there is still room for reduction of construction
cost. As it was out aim to simplify the track structure and reduce the construction
cost, we designed a more economical type paved track with a smaller prestressed concrete
sleeper and a simpler ballast bed reinforcement and laid it for trial on a test line.
The tests gave us good prospects that it performs as well as the conventional paved
track with the construction cost reduced to about 2/3 of that of the convetional one.