Railway Maintenance Procedures

Pre-Tamping Preparations

• Heaping up of ballast in the tamping zone to ensure effective packing
• Making up of low cess
• Cleaning of pumping joints and providing additional clean ballast, where necessary
• Attention to hogged joints before tamping
• Tightening of all fittings and fastenings like fish bolts and elastic fastenings, and replacement of worn out fittings
• Renewing broken and damaged sleepers
• Squaring of sleepers and spacing adjustment; re-gauging to be done as necessary
• Adjusting creep and expansion gap in rails
• Examination of rails for cracks, sleepers, and fastenings
• Survey for realignment of curves, which are badly out of alignment
• Clearing of ballast on sleepers to make them visible to the operator

Attention during Tamping

• The tamping depth (gap between the top edge of the tamping blade and the bottom edge of the sleeper in closed position of the tamping tool) should be adjusted to 15 mm to 20 mm
• Care should be taken to ensure that tamping tools are inserted centrally between the sleepers into the ballast to avoid any damage to the sleepers
• Free rails should be supported at least at four points, evenly along their length
• Welded rail panels should be spread on cess as to rest evenly along their entire length on supports spaced at 4-meter center to center to prevent formation of kinks
• Each stack of the rail should be of the same section and class

Inspection of Rails in Service

• Detection of rail flaws is done by visual examination of the rail and by ultra-sonic flaw detection (USFD) of rails
• Visual examination of rails includes examining rail ends for cracks during lubrication of rail joints by cleaning the surface of the rail by wire brush and using a magnifying glass
• USFD testing of service rails should be done regularly, and no rail untested by USFD should be laid in the track
• JE/SSE/P.Way carrying out the ultra-sonic testing of rails should be trained by RDSO

Causes of Rail Deterioration

• Corrosion and rusting are caused by acid gases dissolved in the film of moisture, which frequently coats the rails

Casual Renewal of Concrete Sleepers

• Precautions indicated in Para 623 (4) should be observed during casual renewal of concrete sleepers
• Special care should be taken to consolidate the shoulders of the ballast section after renewal of the sleepers

Corrosion of Steel in Concrete Sleepers

• Both ends of concrete sleepers should be painted with an approved type of anti-corrosive paint at the concrete sleeper manufacturing plant to prevent corrosion of the exposed ends of pre-stressing wires

Maintenance of Concrete Sleeper Fastenings

• Elastic Rail clips should be checked by the Keyman during his daily petrol to ensure correct driving of the clip
• Rubber Pads should be in correct position, and those that have developed a permanent set should be renewed

Checking Work of Gangs by JE/SSE/P.Way

• The work done by a gang should be examined for alignment, surfacing, and boxing throughout
• The JE/SSE/P.Way should inspect rails and sleepers and their fastenings and check cross levels, gauge, squareness of sleepers, packing, joint maintenance, profile of ballast, and depths of cess below rail level

Deep Screening of Ballast

• Deep screening of ballast is essential to restore the resilience and elasticity of the ballast bed, resulting in improved running quality of track
• Screening should be carried out periodically, especially in situations where the track is poorly drained due to bad formation, ballast attrition, excessive rainfall, and dropping of fines and ore