Life-cycle assessment of aged turnouts: A fusion of economic and technical considerations

Turnouts form an essential part of railway's permanent way. Due to technical complexity, operational importance, and special safety focus, turnouts are expensive infrastructure assets. With increasing asset age, the main components ballast, sleepers, and metal parts need intensive maintenance. These end-of-life maintenance tasks are costly and thus lead to rising total life cycle cost. Aiming for the most economical solution – further maintenance or renewal – maintenance actions need to be forecasted in order to calculate the financial option well ahead a possibly strived reinvestment. Component-specific and in-depth analysis of measuring data combined with appropriate quality indices enables for predicting major turnout maintenance. Depending on the type and cost of the determined maintenance, life cycle cost analyses enable for a sound decision making within asset management.