Andy Vickerstaff
London Underground
Abstract:
A Holistic Approach to WRI Management on London Underground
London Underground is now running up to 36 trains per hour on certain lines with tonnages approaching those of the mainline railway in order to meet the demand of 4.2 million passenger journeys per day. This is being carried out on an infrastructure which is still mainly Victorian in construction with access to upgrade and maintain it limited to a 3 hour night window. The introduction of Night Tube will further limit the time availalable for access as we will be running a 24/7 service at the weekends.
This presents unique challenges to maintaining the wheel-rail interface where curvatures of less than 200m radius are regularly encountered and conventional grinding techniques are limited by the lack of ventilation available in deep tube lines. This paper will show how London Underground has setup a team specifically to address the managment of the wheel-rail interaction. This team consists of both track and rolling stock engineers who carry out Vampire vehicle dynamic modelling simulations to look at the effects of changes to the wheel-rail interface system.
This team is responsible for setting the wheel-rail interface strategy that encompasses wheel turning periodicities, rail re-profiling frequencies, rolling contact fatigue monitoring and adhesion manaagement. This paper will talk about the history of the team's formation and the changing nature of managing rails and wheels as modern trains have been introduced.
The paper will present a number of case studies to demonstrate areas where the team have been able to explain failures, identify the contribution of various factors to those failures and how as part of a wider business change programme we are now looking to move wheel-rail interface management to a Predict and Prevent approach.
This paper will also address how the challenges come from both the engineering requirements and the cultural barriers which are required to be overcome to produce an holistic approach to wheel-rail interface management.