News

11.10.2011
8000 Getzner sleeper pads for the London Underground

In July and August 2011, the track of the London Underground District Line was completely renovated between Paddington and High Street Kensington stations in the city centre. Approximately 173 million passengers use this line every year. In addition to new ballast and new rails, the track section of this very busy Underground line was fitted with new sleepers incorporating Getzner pads. The operator, London Underground, installed around 8,000 sleeper pads for concrete and wooden sleepers. As well as protecting the track superstructure, the elastically mounted sleepers protect residential buildings from vibrations. This concerns the large number of residential buildings located directly adjacent to the tracks in central London.

Whilst the majority of maintenance work on the London Underground generally takes place during the night or at the weekend, this section of track was closed for an entire month to enable the renovation work to be carried out. The Cemex concrete sleeper works was partly responsible for pre-assembly of the Getzner sleeper pads, along with London Underground itself. The manufacture of concrete sleepers and pre-assembly of pads both to the ends and underside of the sleepers was carried out by Cemex Rail Products at their factory in Birmingham. Consequently, the sleepers had already been fitted with their pads before they arrived at the construction site, meaning that they could then be installed directly without any further work. As the section of the District Line that was renewed runs through narrow tunnels, the operator placed great importance on highly-efficient vibration insulation and in order to prevent sound propagation via the tunnel walls, elastic mountings were also used on the sides of the sleepers for the first time.