To reduce the risk of unplanned unavailability, in addition to regular maintenance activities, extra measures have been taken in the past two years. This includes a specialized meeting (Eddy Current technique) to detect the quality of rail tracks for small hairline cracks. With this, ProRail is able to identify defects early on so that they can be addressed before being detected with ultrasonic measurement. In the case of an ultrasonic indication, a rail track with a defect can generally only be replaced.
The mobile workshop has been deployed several times to create additional capacity for replacing rail defects. This made it possible to address an additional quantity of rail defects alongside the standard weekend maintenance nights. Due to these measures, the number of rail defects has been reduced from 168 to 66 in the past two years. To continue proactively addressing rail defects (without replacing rails), milling campaigns will be conducted in 2024 and 2025.
