Absolute coordinates for tack engineering work - A Railway Geodesy approach

Summary UIC Leaflet 728 is intended primarily for track design, layout, construction and maintenance experts as well as IT professionals specialised in the development of track work support tools. Some railways have already made the transition to absolute coordinate-based track definition. The objective of the leaflet is twofold, to provide recommendations for railways wishing to introduce absolute coordinates and to provide advice for railways in the process of updating their system of coordinates. The minimum basic rules to be observed to gain maximum benefit from this working method are connected to:

• Technology:Invariant track position during track life cycle, stable geodetic track marks, straightforward inspection and reconstruction of track position, no long-wave track geometry errors;
• Safety: Minimal restrictions due to track temperature changes;
• Interdisciplinarity: e.g. catenary line positioning after track work;
• Optimisation due to integral support of the working processes by fully interoperable, coordinate based track data.

In short, lower costs for improved track quality.

Author	UIC
ISBN	978-2-7461-1459-3
Pages	15