Either we talk about railways for long-distance transport, urban rail infrastructure, high-speed railways or freight dedicated railways, we cannot but acknowledge the advantages of developing this significant market segment of transport.
More and more railways are built and some of them are built close to or even inside the cities. Keeping in mind the economic and environmental aspects, as well as comfort quality and safety, the advantages of railways are numerous.
However, there are some disadvantages, acknowledged not only by the cities’ residents, but also by the profile industry! Rail-generated noise and vibrations are clearly disadvantages with negative effects on the people that live in the cities and on neighbouring buildings.
But it is the profile industry itself that came up with solutions to approach these disadvantages!
Austrian Group Getzner has developed a series of products for protection against rail-generated shocks and vibrations. For this purpose, Getzner manufactures vibration isolation materials. Two of them, Sylomer® and Sylodyn®, are used for rail superstructure.
The materials developed by the Austrian company introduce more elasticity into the rail superstructure. This leads to less wear of superstructure components, such as tracks, sleepers and ballasts. Consequently, rail operators may notice that maintenance costs are considerably reduced, as well as the life cycle costs of railways. Getzner solutions have been designed to face all axle loads and different traffic speeds.
Sylomer® – Intelligent elastic solutions used for crushed stone rail superstructure
The manufacturing process includes introducing inside the concrete sleeper base of a polyurethane band (elastomers) that is about 1 cm thick. The advantages of this measure include:
-the reduction (damping) of vibrations generated to the crushed stone bed and implicitly the extension of its life cycle.
-the increase of the contact surface between the crushed stone and the sleeper to about 28% compared to 3% in the variant where no elastomers are used. Pressure on the crushed stone is thus reduced by at least 70%;
-the reduction of infrastructure maintenance costs by increasing the interval between sleeper packings.
Sylodyn® – Elastic under-ballast mat
Such an elastic mat, about 2-cm thick, is applied under the ballast, usually, around rail culverts. The measure is aimed to increase elasticity and reduce the deformation of the rail track. Different said, maintenance costs are also reduced.
In Austria, for Austrian Railways projects (ÖBB) and in Germany, for the projects developed by Deutsche Bahn, this technology is standardised and used as such.
For example, for Vienna’s new central station (Wien Hauptbahnhof), railways are mounted at the first-floor level on such an elastic mat and, therefore, vibrations are not generated at the inferior floor, dedicated to shops, when trains pass by.
The materials used by Getzner can be easily used in urban rail transport, regional rail transport, high-speed rail transport and heavy freight rail transport. 
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