A company has come up with a device to improve rail safety (particularly at the points), increase reliability and minimise delays. At the same time it is expected to reduce rail maintenance costs.

Each time a train runs over the rails it causes them to move under the train's weight compressing the ballast in the track-bed. Where there are points and if the movement exceeds tolerances, the resulting vibration is transferred to the point machine, eventually causing it to fail, initiating an emergency maintenance exercise and delaying trains.
At present, rail movement is checked by eye, an inaccurate and time-consuming process, because it involves an inspector regularly visiting every point machine (there are about 20 000 in the rail network).
Product Innovation Ltd and Gentech International were approached by the University of Birmingham School of Engineering to jointly develop a continuous, non-manual method of measuring rail movement at points. The University is working with Railtrack and rail maintenance contractor Carillion Rail to provide a whole new fault detection monitoring system for installation on the UK network. The first two prototype Point Void Meters were installed at a major junction on the Birmingham to Bristol line. Two more prototypes have just been installed at Leominster, Herefordshire. m