PLR Prüftechnik Linke und Rühe GmbH, a Goldschmidt company, has been awarded the final contract for the delivery of a rail inspection vehicle by the Berliner Verkehrsbetriebe (BVG) as general contractor. Berlin’s underground network has approximately 150 kilometres of lines, with nearly 400 kilometres of track, and carries approximately 1.5 million passengers a day.
In the future, the rail inspection vehicle will be used to reliably and completely record and evaluate the condition of the rails in the entire underground network to prove operational safety, and as a basis for planning corrective and preventive measures for rail maintenance. The vehicle will be equipped with an ultrasonic inspection system for the detection and evaluation of fractures, cracks, and other internal irregularities in the rail, an eddy current testing system for the evaluation of surface cracks, and a geometry measurement system for longitudinal profile, transverse profile, and track gauge, as well as a video inspection system for the detection of defects on sleepers or rail fastenings.
“The inspection vehicle for BVG will be the first vehicle of its kind for a local public transport company that records the condition of the infrastructure so comprehensively, all on just one single vehicle. Results are analysed with support of artificial intelligence and documented automatically. We are pleased that BVG, as a pioneer, is taking this step towards an integrated application of state-of-the-art inspection and measurement technology together with Goldschmidt,” says Goldschmidt Group head of business field inspection solutions Stefan Damm.
“We see this as proof of our strategy aiming at offering all systems from a single source and to integrate them on various vehicle sizes, depending on individual customer requirements,” adds Goldschmidt Group CEO Dr Georg Friberg.
The Goldschmidt Group is a leading provider for measuring and testing solutions and offers measuring and testing devices for each application area. Whether as a hand-held device or integrated in trolleys, track carts, road-rail vehicles, or inspection trains, state-of-the-art technologies provide precise measuring and testing results in a uniform format, making safety and quality tangible. This basis allows the development of maintenance strategies and the derivation of specific measures