Gantrex, the world leader in rail fixation technology, has been designing and manufacturing rail fasteners, also known as clips, for over 50 years. For many years we have been interested in developing a method to analyse the effect of side thrust from the lateral load of a crane or other specialty track wheel on the rail clip.

In keeping with our position as Research and Development leader, we are pleased to announce the recent completion of our first test campaign on a new rail clip testing device called, “Single Clip Test Bench”.

Tested and evaluated following the guidelines of “Eurocode 0: Basis of structural design EN 1990:2002+A1, Annex D: Design assisted by testing”, we are now releasing the results of our inaugural test campaign. We tested 200 clip samples in this first round of testing and drafted preliminary conclusions. We analysed weldable rail clips by Gantrex and by several other leading suppliers.

Using a hydraulic actuator, we were able to simulate the effect of the lateral load, expressed through the rail and on to the rail clip to study the behaviour of various clip designs under their rated load and plot the data to analyse each clip performance.

To learn more about the methodology and the results : Request access to MyGantrex