Balfour Beatty high output down under

Balfour Beatty Rail Projects is helping deliver high output performance on the GBP87 million upgrade of an existing 800km rail link between Maitland, north of Sydney, and Brisbane in Australia.

Using Laing O'Rourke's innovative Pony Express resleepering machine (pictured), the team is replacing over 2,000 sleepers during each shift.

The project's best performance to date involved laying over 2,700 sleepers in just over eight hours.

The "Pony" removes and replaces old timber sleepers, levels and prepares the ballast, lays new sleepers and threads the rails back in, all in a single, high output operation.

By the end of 2007, it will have replaced around 250,000 sleepers on the contract for Australian Rail Track Corporation Limited, which is being carried out to achieve improved capacity, transit times and reliability on the line.

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