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Maintenance. From asset management to direct cost calculation.
A key issue for the future of the HS Railways System.

as they constituted a barrier to the entry of new operators to the market. Besides, new
criteria for the classification of lines are implemented

The tariff structure for the use of facilities is also modified. The classification criteria for
passenger transport stations are modified and expanded to take into account the economic
capacity of associated services to determine the amount of the fee.

As a conclusion, neither in the current structure of charges, nor in the one to come, costs
stemming from infrastructure maintenance are directly considered. In the current structure,
the tariff for running would cover maintenance costs, as well as other variable costs due to
the passage of trains.

3. Rail maintenance and asset management

3.1 Main railway maintenance activities

Spanish national standard UNE-EN 13306: 2011 defines maintenance as "the combination of
all technical, administrative and management actions during the life cycle of an element,
intended to preserve or return it to a state in which it can perform the function required”
(UNE-EN 13306:2011).

In any element, we can distinguish two main types of maintenance, according to the occurrence
of failures: preventive maintenance, when maintenance aims to avoid failure, and corrective
maintenance, which is done when the failure has already occurred. The standard defines
them as follows:
• Preventive maintenance: "maintenance that is performed at predetermined intervals or
according to established criteria, and is intended to reduce the probability of failure or
degradation of the functioning of an element".
• Corrective maintenance: "maintenance that is performed after the recognition of a fault
and that is destined to put an element in a state in which it can perform a required
function". That is to say, it is the one destined to correct or to repair the defects already
produced, with potential harm to the service.

Preventive maintenance operations aim to minimize the likelihood of a failure in the
elements, due to operating risks, and the higher cost that corrective maintenance entails.
Within preventive maintenance, we can distinguish predetermined maintenance, which is
performed according to established time intervals or operating units, and condition based
maintenance, where the condition of the element is monitored or inspected to determine the
actions to be undertaken.
In railway infrastructure, the different elements that integrate it have different associated
maintenance methodologies. In the track, preventive maintenance operations that are carried
out are based on the previous knowledge of the state of the elements, and, therefore, it is
mainly a condition based maintenance.
To determine the state of the track, different systems are used. The status of track elements
can be checked, or geometric quality of the track can be analysed. For this purpose, different
types of inspections can be used: walking tours on the infrastructure, cabin rides with
specialized staff, or train measurements, where we can distinguish several types: geometric,
dynamic, ultrasonic for the condition of the rails, etc.
The geometric quality of the track measures the deviations between the theoretical track
and the real track with a series of parameters. The definition of these parameters, and the

International Congress on High-speed Rail: Technologies and Long Term Impacts - Ciudad Real (Spain) - 25th anniversary Madrid-Sevilla corridor 255