The Technical University of Graz, Austria, on Thursday announced the inauguration of a railway testing laboratory which it says is unique in Europe.
The Railway and Infrastructure Laboratory (RaIL) will be able to test rail wear over their service life, among other criteria. The lab is the latest major investment of the university’s Institute for Railway Infrastructure Design. The institute’s research complements the activities of Austrian steelmaker voestalpine, which produces rails and other railway components.
One of the institute’s current research projects focuses on lighter steels for trains, Kallanish learns from Austria’s chamber of commerce, Wirtschaftskammer Österreich (WKÖ). Graz is developing harder steels with less weight. While harder steels are more difficult to weld, the institute is also developing corresponding welding technology in parallel, WKÖ explains on its website.
As an example, the chamber refers to locomotives of type Taurus, which have a weight of around 86 tonnes, and the Austrian railway operator ÖBB runs a fleet of 384 units.
