The NZ railway track and structures infrastructure is managed by the New Zealand Railways Corporation (trading as ONTRACK). The civil asset consists of 4161 km of mainline track, 6.45 million sleepers, 1582 rail bridges, 149 tunnels with a cumulative length of 87 km, and 12 900 culverts. There are a number of infrastructure challenges faced by ONTRACK due to the asset age and condition combined with changing expectations of the level of service required of the asset and increasing demand. These challenges are significantly influencing the short to medium term asset management strategies currently being devised. A selection of brief case studies on the rail sector are presented in the paper, demonstrating how lessons can be reinforced or learned by the wider transportation profession. Case studies include railway approaches to risk management; deterioration modelling of treated pinus radiata sleepers; culvert risk analysis; strength rating of timber bridges and innovative design solutions to replace large numbers of timber bridges. The case studies use a mixture of empirical physical examples and also present the results of engineering analysis and modelling. (a).
Abstract