Network Rail has taken another significant step in its drive to improve the way it carries out engineering and maintenance works by ordering a new ballast cleaning system. Built by Austrian rail engineering firm Plasser and Theurer, the 800 metre, 3,200 tonne High Output Ballast Cleaner works on the tracks' ballast foundation and will significantly reduce the time it takes to renew ballast. It will be the third such system to operate on the network.

The huge yellow machine slashes the time it takes to clean and replace track ballast, and is capable of cleaning around 600 hundred yards of track ballast during a typical midweek eight-hour night-shift. Ballast cleaning is essential for the safe running of the railway as it helps drainage and maintains correct track levels and alignment making journeys smoother for passengers.

The £41.7m order forms part of a major £101m investment programme to bring more new engineering technologies to the railway in Britain. This will allow Network Rail to be more efficient in maintaining, renewing and enhancing the network.

As part of the programme, Network Rail will also soon be ordering another high output track re-laying train to speed up the time it takes to carry out track renewals.

Network Rail’s Director, Infrastructure Investment, Simon Kirby, said: “This major investment in new technology will reduce the time it takes to carry out important ballast cleaning work. It forms part of an exciting programme which will bring more innovative engineering equipment and ways of working to our network. We are always looking for ways to carry out maintenance and engineering work quicker, smarter and more efficiently and keep any disruption to passenger and freight services to a minimum.”

* The ballast cleaning train works by excavating ballast from beneath the track while holding the track in its correct position. The machine passes the excavated material through large vibrating sieves, removing damaged ballast, or ‘fines’, to specialist wagons in the train, before returning the larger pieces of ballast to the track. Finally, the machine then adds new ballast from wagons to make up for the ‘fines’ removed.

The new equipment will be used to clean ballast on the West Coast and East Coast main lines as well as in Scotland. The total system comprises of one ballast cleaner, two power wagons, 44 MFS wagons, one compaction machine and one consolidation machine.

Network Rail's other High Output Ballast Cleaners operate on the western and eastern routes.