Our fleet of vehicles and machinery works hard all year round.
Its work includes infrastructure monitoring, maintaining and renewing tracks, and inspecting and clearing drainage. All to keep the railway running safely and reliably for you and freight.
A railhead treatment train, new measurement vehicle and multi-purpose vehicle
Here are five things you didn’t know about our fleet:
- We own more than 1,000 wagons and lease thousands more. These mainly carry aggregates such as ballast and remove waste from work sites. They’re typically hauled by locomotives owned by freight operating companies, but some are part of High Output convoys. Among our wagons, there are box wagons to remove waste. We also have autoballaster wagons with ‘trap doors’ at the base release ballast directly onto the track, and tilting wagons to position switches and crossings during track renewal work.
- Not all our fleet teams use machines that run on rails. Our Air Operations team uses two helicopters and unmanned aircraft vehicles, or drones. We also have on-track plant that can travel on the roads as well as the railway. Examples include diggers, vehicles to inspect and clear drainage, mobile flashbutt welders (to weld the rails), track movers (which pick up and move track), and some of the vehicles we use to inspect and renew overhead wires.
- Our national fleet of 9,700 cars and vans help our track teams travel by road where needed. We’re gradually converting these to electric as part of our effort to be greener in the way we work. A fully electric road fleet will lower our carbon emissions by about 47,000 tonnes each year.
- Our fleet isn’t just used on our railway. We sometimes loan our machines and vehicles to heritage railways to help them maintain their sites. For example, we provided Swanage Railway in Dorset with one of our multi-purpose vehicles. Swanage Railway used the vehicle to treat and kill weeds growing along the five and a half miles of line, keeping it running reliably for the thousands of visitors to enjoy each year.
- Our fleet teams have 24/7, 365-day access to a helpline. This supports them in moving around the network, helps when incidents occur and gives our teams a way to report the critical information directly across the railway including each Route Operating Control.
