Suite Rapide 2018-2024, France
Line Renewal: Suite Rapide 2018-2024, France
Winner of 2 of the three lots of the Suite Rapide 2018-2024 campaign, GCF, as lead partner of the “Transalp Renouvellement” consortium, deployed in France two of its powerful “mobile workshops”: convoys of trains and high-performance work machines capable of delivering 1 km of renewed line per day.
Each “Suite Rapide” lot involved opening 4 to 7 worksites per year in different areas of the French network. Each worksite engaged 250 GCF workers and staff, supported by 200 SNCF employees.
GCF-Transalp faced a considerable organisational and operational challenge: the expected output for each lot was to deliver, every year, 200 km of fully renewed railway line to the French railways.
Fast renewal with “Suite Rapide”
“Suite Rapide” is a mobile and modular factory – a convoy specifically assembled with the best and most efficient work machines. With its 450 staff members, the “Suite Rapide” – a high-tech train hundreds of metres long – moves along the line, mostly at night, handling tons of materials and delivering every morning a fully renewed section ready for immediate train operation.
Not only was the ballast replaced: old sleepers – often still wooden – were removed and replaced with concrete sleepers, and new rails were installed in track. At the same time, the Suite carried out tamping, leveling and stabilisation of the renewed section, and finally cleared the worksite of all leftover materials, which could be disposed of or recycled.
