Innovation Award for Pandrol Vanguard
08 April 2002
INNOVATION AWARD FOR PANDROL’S VANGUARD TRACK SUPPORT SYSTEM
The PANDROL VANGUARD track support system for the reduction of noise and vibration from railway tracks has been awarded the Bombardier Transportation Award for Innovation in Technology 2002, at the annual Railway Industry Innovation awards hosted by the Railway Forum and Modern Railways Magazine.
VANGUARD was described by the judges as “a highly innovative solution for rail fixings in particularly challenging circumstances, achieving significant rail noise suppression without raising the height of the rail head” and “a solution that showed evidence of considerable technical innovation applied to a challenging problem”.
VANGUARD has been designed and developed by Pandrol Ltd to bridge the performance gap between floating slab track and resiliently mounted baseplates for railway engineers faced with the problem of controlling noise and vibration from railway tracks. In the VANGUARD assembly, the rail is supported under the head and in the web with large rubber wedges, leaving the foot of the rail suspended. The rubber wedges are held in place by cast iron side brackets which are in turn fastened either to a shoulder cast into a concrete sleeper or block, or to a baseplate fixed to the track base using either bolts or screwspikes.
The assembly allows very large vertical movement of the rail, whilst at the same time restricting lateral movement. Typically this provides effective isolation down to about 20Hz, as opposed to resiliently mounted baseplates, which can only isolate vibration down to 40-50Hz.
Of the installations made to date, the reduction in vibration transmission has been remarkable. The vibration at street level above the trial site on London Undergrounds Victoria Line was reduced by about 7dB (linear 10-200Hz), whilst the sound level directly under a steel bridge structure on Thameslink was reduced by 10dBA.
