S&C Design Calculators

[Alex Neia]

Hi all

I have been working on the pway as a contractor for a little over a year now & have decided that I need to move on.

As a result I have been trying to teach myself track design, as this is an area that I really enjoy.

The problem I am having is designing through S&C and I was wondering if anyone in the community had any S&C design calculators that they could email me.

I have made one in excel for plain line where you enter radius, speed etc and the calculator tells you if you have exceeded the critical values. However I am struggling with S&C.

Any help with will greatly appreciated.

Email address is unomo@hotmail.com

 

[civ-eng-jim]

The Permanent Way Institution has some excellent textbooks on track design.

https://www.thepwi.org/shop/list_products?category=1

Tables B2.2 and B2.3 in Network Rail's Track Design Handbook give the limiting values for cant, cant deficiency and rates of change of cant/cant deficiency. London Underground will have similar (If not identical) limiting values.

There are many many factors in determining turnout speeds and I don't think an online forum is the best place for teaching safety-critical engineering design.

If you believe your career is in permanent-way design then it would best if you joined a design team, either a consultancy or an in-house design group within a contractor. You'll be surrounded by professional engineers who will teach you the principles of track design as well as provide you with the tools and techniques to design track alignments. It's not a one-man-band job.

I'm constantly hounded by parasitic recruitment agencies regarding jobs in p-way design so there is a massive demand out there.

 

[Joseph_Locke]

To add to Jim's excellent advice, these days most design is done in specialist CAD software such as Bentley Rail Track and Microstation, so basic CAD skills should also be on your list.

I suspect that virtually no practicing designer is self-taught solely from a book; the quickest (and best, I think) way of learning is to do what Jim says and work in a design office (though your site experience will be worth its weight as it gives you an edge over other candidates; my 8 years on site is still very hand nearly 20 years later).

If designing is what you want to do and you aren't in a company that does design, then I'd strongly recommend Network Rail's StarTrack programme for track design apprentices, or put out a realistic CV to the recruitment agencies and see who bites. Some companies (like mine) also take on design apprentices through the ICE scheme.

You've picked a good time: the industry is short of staff!