We are the world largest supplier of trolley short rail systems and able to tailor custom solutions depending on budgetary and operational constraints.

What are Trolley Rails and Short Rails?

Components of a ship-to-shore (STS) crane on which the crane’s trolley moves back and forth along the length of the crane’s boom and girder when loading or unloading cargo containers from a ship at quay. The trolley rail is typically made of A75 or A100 profile rails mounted on pads and attached to the crane’s boom and girder by means of clips and/or clamps. They are used to join the boom trolley rail to the girder trolley rail of a ship-to-shore (STS) crane. The short rail consists of two matching rail sections facing each other; with a section attached to the boom and connected to the boom trolley rail, and the other section attached to the girder and connected to the girder trolley rail. Short rails are usually made of high-quality steel and have a reinforced section designed to withstand the shock caused by the trolley’s passage from the boom to the girder and vice versa.

So, the Short Rail is the rail section located at the boom hinge joint of the crane where the boom and girder rails are separated to allow the crane to boom up. Different styles of rail joints are available for this area and majority require special machining.

Gantrex solutions range from inexpensive machined rails to the more innovative rails with vulcanized rubber insert including:

• Standard Short Rail
• Standard Short Rail with welded stiffener
• Full web short rail
• Gantrex HingeGuard™

The Gantrex HingeGuard™ Short Rail is a self-damping short rail solution designed to support the trolley track constraints, namely reduce vibration, shocks and rail wear, and to easily enable the boom opening at the hinge joint of the crane.

The unique characteristic of this patented innovative solution enables it to extend the soft mounting features used for all our fixing systems to the hinge.

A complete tailor-made system solution, it can be completely adapted to the needs of each individual installation. It fits all ship-to-shore cranes, can be installed with no additional impact on installation timing, shortening operational downtime, and delivers substantial noise reduction.

Tested under severe and rigorous conditions in laboratories, the Gantrex HingeGuard™ Short Rail has been developed with significant technical research and development support. With on-site analysis and measurements based on a first prototype, our teams have been able to gain unrivalled detail and understanding of the Short Rail headache, its impact and subsequent system challenges.

The Gantrex HingeGuard™ patent is filed under the following numbers across the world: US10227219B2, EP3019431B1, CN105263848B