Werdohler Vossloh wins contracts with Deutsche Bahn

Vosloo has won contracts worth over 100 million euros from Deutsche Bahn. The agreements relate to the maintenance of the railway network. Using Vosloo technology, the railways hope to improve punctuality and availability.

Verdol – You can now talk about Deutsche Bahn's “total maintenance provider”: The local company Vossloh has announced that it has received contracts worth more than 100 million euros from Deutsche Bahn.

This will further expand the “long-standing and successful cooperation” between Vossloo and DB InfraGo AG, a subsidiary of Deutsche Bahn responsible for rail infrastructure. The two companies have concluded multi-year framework agreements with a total turnover of more than EUR 100 million.

These agreements covered both corrective maintenance (rail milling) and preventive rail care (high-speed milling). These are the core technologies for the maintenance of the Deutsche Bahn railway network, which in the future will make a decisive contribution to extending the service life and increasing the availability of the railway line.

“Grinding removes rail defects and restores the rail to its ideal condition. With our world-class high-speed grinding technology, which operates in the train timetable, we maintain this condition,” explains Oliver Schuster, Managing Director of Vossloh AG.

The railways hope that these contracts will also address the most pressing issue facing the company: punctuality and train availability. “With these framework agreements, we are bringing the latest technology to our network, which will help significantly improve the quality of our infrastructure,” explains Heike Jung-Latz, Member of the Board of Management, Facilities Management and Maintenance at DB InfraGo AG.

The duration of the High Speed ​​Milling Framework Agreement is two years and can be extended twice for one year each.

No need to close the road

The HSG technology developed by Vossloh itself is unique in the world. It is a form of preventive maintenance that corrects minor rail defects at an early stage and thus prevents serious faults. With a working speed of up to 80 km/h, the machine can operate in freight traffic at night. This makes track closures necessary for other procedures unnecessary.

The work will be carried out on at least 13,000 kilometres per year, primarily on Germany’s most frequented roads, the so-called Deutsche Bahn high-performance network. Advanced digital measurement and analysis technologies will be used, which not only record the grinding performance, but also collect and evaluate basic condition data during the crossing. The relevant information will be extracted from this using highly sophisticated algorithms, visualized via a web application and presented in the form of concrete recommendations for action.

The second framework agreement for rail milling and switchgear runs for four years, with a one-time two-year extension option. This concerns rail milling. It is used for rail defects of greater depth that can no longer be economically corrected by milling.

Grinding allows for the efficient removal of such serious rail defects and at the same time the precise reshaping of the rail head. Railroad grinding is the most attractive logistical and economical alternative to replacing defective rail track. In addition to significantly reducing costs and significantly reducing track closure time, grinding also saves natural resources by expanding the use of installed rails compared to rail replacement.

Vossloh has a wide range of grinding technologies consisting of large grinding trains for mainline railways, flexible bi-directional grinding trucks and the newly developed VTM-compact grinding machine for use on short-distance roads and switches as well as in tunnels. The VTM-compact has recently received user approval from Deutsche Bahn and is now being used as a globally applicable point-of-contact grinding machine for railway and switching fault correction on the Deutsche Bahn network.