The assessment of system maintenance and design conditions on railway crossing performance

A series of numerical simulation tools have been developed to predict the kinematic motion of a railway wheelset at a crossing and derive the dynamic vertical force occurring as a result of the wheel load transfer between the wing rail and the crossing nose. The tool has been used to show that for new crossing and a large representative range of worn wheels, the peak dynamic force is strongly influenced by the state of wear of the wheel and its lateral position (higher force occurs as the wheel moves towards flange contact on the crossing nose). Arguably, as the crossing wears to conform to the shape of the wheels travelling over it, this tendency may reduce over time. It is suggested that such a tool may be a powerful and fast way of optimising crossing geometry so that damage arising from dynamic impact loads are minimised at the early stage of a crossing life cycle. It may also be envisaged that a crossing may be optimised based on the type and age the traffic running on the specific line it is installed.