In preparation for the track construction, two articulated lorries with a total of 160 concrete sleepers were delivered on 8 September. These had to be unloaded and temporarily stored on the site within one hour.
On Monday, 04 October 2021, the company AGT arrived punctually at 7 a.m. with machines and tools and began the track construction, which was planned to last two weeks. On the same day, the rails and steel sleepers were delivered. In addition, mineral concrete for the ballast base layer was delivered at regular intervals, which always had to be placed immediately due to the cramped conditions in the construction area.
In the area towards the turntable, the dirty ballast was removed, the subgrade was compacted and work began on laying the sleepers.
Three steel sleepers are then followed by concrete sleepers until the end of the respective track. The construction work and the construction logistics were organised so efficiently that by the end of the working day all sleepers for the first track (track 9) had already been laid and the rails could be laid. In the same way, tracks 10 and 11 were built in the following days.
By the end of the first week of work, all three beam tracks had been laid. The rails were bolted down, then the tracks were tamped and aligned.
The second week began with the welding of the rails, which had previously been separated at right angles. An arc welding process was used for this. The weld seams were ground at the rail head and on the inside of the rail so that the joints are no longer visible. Subsequently, the affected sleeper compartments had to be filled and tamped by hand in order to bring the track into the final position at the welding point as well.
In addition, the spaces between the sleepers and the areas between the tracks were backfilled and compacted. This forms the subsoil for concreting the floor slab. Since a constant height had to be maintained within narrow limits and due to the cramped conditions on the construction site, manual labour was sometimes unavoidable.
The work was completed with the dowelling and grouting of so-called individual support points, which fix the track at the points where it crosses the foundations and where therefore no sleepers can be laid.
With the departure of the construction company, the immediate surroundings and the driveways were also levelled and made passable again.
In addition to the AGT employees, two club members were always on the construction site. In order to keep the costs for us as low as possible, it was agreed that we would be allowed to carry out auxiliary and ancillary work (transport of materials, etc.). In addition, it proved to be advantageous that a contact person was always directly available in order to be able to directly clarify any questions that arose regarding the determination of the track position or the execution of details.
We would like to thank the following companies for their support:
- Allgemeine Gleis- und Tiefbau-Bauunternehmung GmbH, Mainz, Darmstadt branch (execution of the track construction work)
- Betonwerke Moll, Biebesheim (delivery of the concrete sleepers)
