Project Case Study

Menghua Railway, China

Customer

Mengxi-Huazhong / Shanxi Jingshen

Date

2018

Sector

Heavy Haul

Track Length
km

The Customer Challenge

The Menghua Railway is planned to be China’s largest heavy haul railway. It will cover a wide geographical area, with two crossings of the Yangtze River and one crossing of the Yellow River, across the Qinling, Zhongtiao and other mountain ranges with complex geological conditions. The Menghua railway line will connect the coal mining areas in northern China with the industrial hub in the South, starting from Inner Mongolia in the North and ending in Jiangxi Province. As a heavy haul-only line, it has a planned annual capacity of more than 200 million tonnes and is scheduled to open at the end of 2019.

Pandrol is involved with two projects to supply fastening systems for this iconic railway project. The first, known as Menghua is with the Mengxi-Huazhong Railway Co, is to supply fastenings for 586,000 sleeper sets that will stretch from the towns of Xiang Yang to Yue Yang – a distance of 370km. The other contract, which is with Shanxi Jingshen Railway Company Ltd is known as Jing-Shen, it connects Jingbian with Shenmu, a distance of 275 km.

The Pandrol Solution

Pandrol’s Fastclip FC-16 fastening system was chosen, to be used on over one million sleeper sets. The rail clips will be manufactured at Pandrol’s new factory in Wuhan, China, with the insulators and rail pads for the fastening system also locally produced.

The Pandrol Fastclip FC-16 fastening is designed for use on ballasted track and is engineered to allow for easy maintenance. With Pandrol Fastclip, all components are delivered to site pre-assembled on the sleeper. This provides huge labour savings, as well as reduced distribution and handling costs during track laying, stressing and rail changing.

The project has involved training and technical support from the Pandrol team in the UK and China. Pandrol’s product support team provided training exercises to the track building contractors – familiarising them with hand tools, machinery and other ancillary equipment which complements the Fastclip FC system. The team also worked closely with the sleeper manufacturers to provide technical details on the manufacture of the sleeper and on correct production of the relevant tooling. Technical product support is also being provided on this project.

Fastclip

“With Pandrol Fastclip, all components are delivered to site pre-assembled on the sleeper.”

Fastclip

The Result

Pandrol was able to offer pre-assembly, mechanised installation and auto inspection.

The CD200 is a walk-behind high-performance clipping installation machine, which can be used to install both Pandrol Fastclip FC and Fastclip FE. Available in two different configurations, it has an in-built in sleeper lift with a hydraulic lifting capacity of 50mm. The CD200 can be utilized by a single operator and can easily be carried off the track. Excellent lighting is a feature of the machine which helps to improve visibility for work at night.

Use of the CD200 clipping machine in combination with the Fastclip system provides a quick and effective installation method for fastenings and enables lower installation and maintenance costs.

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