Keywords: switches and crossings, dual gauge turnout, dual gauge track, train-track interaction, track monitoring, condition monitoring.

In recent years, a three-rail, dual gauge track system for speeds up to 160 km/h has put into service in some railway lines in Spain. This pretends to solve the historical interoperability handicap caused by the adoption of the Iberian track gauge (1,668 mm) instead of the standard gauge of 1,435 mm in the conventional rail network. The solution includes a novel design of dual gauge switches and crossings (S&C), so there is little experience regarding its behaviour under real operating conditions. For this purpose, this paper presents a monitoring setup for registering vertical displacements and accelerations at different S&C cross-sections under the passing of different types of train traffics. Main results show that the common rail side shows sleeper vertical displacements 2 to 3 times higher than the dedicated rail side. In addition, there are relevant displacement variations along the different analysed sections in both sides and in both track gauges. The gathered data helps understanding and improving the performance of this new track system, which may be exported to other some other countries with different track gauges.

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