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RTR 4/2010 22 One of the key facilities in DB Regio’s München-Pasing depot is the maintenance shed for the passenger stock used on the company’s network in Upper Bavaria (Oberbayern). It also undertakes contract maintenance work on behalf of other railway operators. This facility includes storage tanks and filling equipment, a washing unit and a lathe unit for wheel sets. Several level crossings are needed inside the depot for handling deliveries made by road vehicles, for transport movements as part of the depot’s operations and also for the emergency access of fire-fighting vehicles. There are thus four routes through the depot on which road vehicles can reach the ten-track maintenance shed. 1 Choice of system The factor that triggered the need for the modernisation of the tracks crossed by road vehicles was the requirement to create a new bypass for the fire brigade to use. It was decided to combine this action with rearranging the possibilities for road vehicles to be able to drive along some of the tracks as well as crossing over them. It is rather difficult to compare the loads to which the level crossings are subjected inside the railway depot with those of normal level crossings. It is true that road vehicles basically only ever move slowly on the depot premises, but this is offset by the fact that they often have to transport heavy loads. A particular problem is the need to turn sharply within confined spaces on the level crossings, which is encountered, in particular, by laden fork-lift trucks manoeuvring out of the shed or back into it. The new crossings over the tracks have to be suitable for carrying these heavy loads. At the same time, their maintenance ought to be kept as low as possible. To cope with these multiple constraints, the system chosen was the Stelfundo® one from the “edilon)(sedra GmbH” company of Munich. This system of support slabs is used primarily on level crossings and enjoys an excellent reputation on Deutsche Bahn’s network. Stelfundo is best understood as a synergetic combination of the high load-bearing, continuously elastic “Edilon Corkelast®Embedded Rail System (ERS)” of rail fastenings plus special support slabs (Fig. 1). The rails are aligned in situ on a prefabricated concrete slab and are fastened firmly in place by casting the Edilon Corkelast®twocomponent filling material into the groove in the concrete slab. In this way, this levelcrossing system offers the ideal combination of a rigid contact surface for road traffic and an elastic support for railway traffic. Thanks to its monolithic structure, it is able to withstand even extremely high loads over a long period of time (90-tonne axle loads of road vehicles, heavy goods vehicles making tight turns, etc.), since the very design dispenses, for instance, with any form of covering slabs, which might run the risk Concrete support slabs for tracks in a Deutsche Bahn depot In 2008, the approach tracks on both sides of the maintenance shed in the depot operated by DB Regio in Pasing (just outside of Munich) were renewed. The new tracks were laid on Stelfundo®, slabs, which form par t of a system intended for level crossings. Sales division edilon)(sedra GmbH, Munich h.gall@edilonsedra.com Dipl.-Ing. Heinrich Gall Fig. 1: Schematic diagram of the Stelfundo system All types of rail (such as S54) Armour-plated edge Edilon Corkelast Insert (such as empty pipe) Cushioning mat of slipping or breaking. One characteristic particularly worth highlighting is that there is no need for any form of maintenance or repair work for periods of time in excess of twenty years. The Stelfundo system has been granted a design type approval by the German Federal Railway Authority (EBA, Eisenbahn-Bundesamt) and is used on Deutsche Bahn’s network on tracks with maximum permitted speeds of up to 160 km/h. Its high loadbearing capacity makes it extremely economical to use not only on classical railway lines but also on industrial premises. ThyssenKrupp in Duisburg and BASF in Ludwigshafen are two examples of industrial sites that now incorporate numerous such heavyduty level crossings. The planning for remodelling DB Regio’s depot site in München-Pasing started originally with just the intended bypass for the fire brigade but was finally extended to all the sections of track within the depot where it was possible for road vehicles to go. Given the large number of crossings over tracks within the depot, it was considered that it would make little sense to employ various different designs within such a limited space. It was finally the prospect of being more or less able to do without maintenance altogether that was the decisive trigger for modernising the whole installation with just one system throughout, namely the Stelfundo one.

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