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A Life-Cycle Cost Analysis of Railway Turnouts Exposed to Climate

Uncertainties
To cite this article: Mehmet Zahid Hamarat et al 2019 IOP Conf. Ser.: Mater. Sci. Eng. 471 062026

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WMCAUS 2018 IOP Publishing
IOP Conf. Series: Materials Science and Engineering 471 (2019) 062026 doi:10.1088/1757-899X/471/6/062026

A Life-Cycle Cost Analysis of Railway Turnouts Exposed to

Climate Uncertainties

Mehmet Zahid Hamarat 1, Sakdirat Kaewunruen 1, Mayorkinos Papaelias 2

1
Birmingham Centre for Railway Research and Education, Gisbert Kapp Building,
The University of Birmingham, B15 2TT, United Kingdom
2
School of Metallurgy and Materials, The University of Birmingham, B15 2TT,
United Kingdom

[email protected]

Abstract. Turnouts are the critical components of modern railway tracks where the vehicle
movement is transferred between two continuing tracks, inevitably resulting in high dynamic
forces on the turnout system which eventually cause the turnout failures. Consequently, the
turnouts have imposed operational restrictions such as operational limits for speed, axle load and
headway, and high maintenance works on the system. Numerous studies have been carried out
to find a mitigation method for turnout failures. Nonetheless, most of the studies consider the
physical phenomena. Hence, it is believed that it would be beneficial to investigate the problem
from the economic aspect. For this purpose, a life-cycle cost analysis is done for turnouts,
particularly crossing nose in this study. Life-cycle cost analysis is a total cost estimate of a system
or a component from acquisition to disposal, to find a cost-effective solution. It could be a simple
analysis based on an expert’s judgement to evaluate the feasibility or complex analysis using
statistical theories covering the uncertainties to decide the budget. In this study, the life-cycle
cost analysis relies on the breakdown work structure based on the reports published by the
biggest Infrastructure Manager in the United Kingdom. Additionally, the effects of extreme
weathers are also concerned while calculating the life-cycle cost. The results indicate that
crossing renewal and tamping activities have high costs similar to miscellaneous maintenance
costs. Another interesting result is that maintenance costs could be as high as acquisition costs.
Finally, crossing nose renewal and maintenance costs seem to occupy high shares in the
maintenance budget.

1. Introduction
Infrastructure Managers (IMs) in the Euro Zone have replied to the question “What infrastructure
characteristics may increase the complexity of your network and impact performance”. IMs indicated
that Switches & Crossings (namely, turnouts) is the top concern[1]. Turnouts are special track systems
designed to change the railway traffic from one route to another route since the railways are naturally
guided systems where the track is continuous. At this section of the track, the dynamic behaviour of the
vehicle transforms from relatively simple to complex and becomes more sensitive to environmental
factors. Therefore, IMs take serious precautions to keep the safety standards high, which increase their
costs. Furthermore, the turnouts restrict the operational speed and increase the possibility of derailment
[2, 3]. As a result, numerous studies have been conducted to deal with the issue. In general, the studies
focus on the physical phenomena such as material properties, dynamic characteristics of the vehicle, the

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WMCAUS 2018 IOP Publishing
IOP Conf. Series: Materials Science and Engineering 471 (2019) 062026 doi:10.1088/1757-899X/471/6/062026

wheel-rail interaction and environmental effects [4-8] or management strategies such as maintenance
scheduling [9]. Although most of the studies have mentioned the importance of capital expenditure for
switches and crossings, only a few studies consider the economic aspect [10-12]; however, none of them
considers the extreme weather events affecting the system resilience.
Different methods are in use to evaluate the performance of a system from the economic aspect. Life-
Cycle Cost (LCC) analysis is the common one to estimate the total cost originating from different stages
of a long-term investment and to compare alternative systems. Switches & Crossings are expected to
serve at least 30 years and manufactured with many variations, thereby being suitable for an LCC
analysis. In this paper, it is aimed to carry out a life-cycle cost analysis to evaluate turnouts exposed to
climate change from the economic aspect, which may help the Infrastructure Managers to focus on the
specific areas affecting their maintenance and climate change adaptation policies.

2. Methodology
Life cycle cost is an estimate that considers the costs of acquisition, operation, maintenance and disposal
of a system or component. LCC analysis could be used to evaluate the expected economic performance
of a whole system or to compare different systems to achieve the best solution for a problem. Moreover,
LCC analysis could be preliminary to assess the feasibility or elaborate to be used in a bid tender. The
accuracy of LCC analysis relies on the collected historical data and expertise owned by analysts. Higher
accuracy is aimed for tender level works and lower accuracy is acceptable for preliminary works. Due
to the lack of collecting actual and accurate data, a preliminary LCC analysis is preferred in the scope
of this study.
Acquisition, replacement, and maintenance costs are considered in this study. The disposal cost is
included in the maintenance costs since it has relatively low value[12]. All direct costs are assumed as
fixed costs. On the other hand, non-direct costs (i.e. operational delay…) are ignored. Regarding the
nature of the track operation where every case is exclusive, learning ratio is low and so, learning costs
are ignored[13]. Average inflation and labour rates are applied depending on the data published by
Office of National Statistics (Table 1). The advised discount rate of 3.5% is used in order to calculate
Net Presented Value (NVP)[14]. Life-cycle is expected as 30 years[15]. Costs are divided into two
groups such as labour and materials. Estimated costs are presented in (Table 1). All the values estimated
from public reports or the literature [10, 16-22] including labour hours, labour cost per hour and material
costs. The uncertainties are included in the discount rate [14].

Table 1. Assumptions for Life-cycle Cost Analysis

Estimated Estimated Estimated
Advised
Inflation Labour Acquisition Replacement Maintenance
Discount
Ratio [23] Rates [23] Cost (2018) Cost(2018) Cost(2018)
Rate [14]
[16, 18, 19] [20] [17]

2% 2% 3.5 80k-150k £ 15k £ 7.5k £

3. Results and Discussions

Switches & Crossings could be assumed as custom-tailored items. The acquisition costs show significant
variations depending on the region, field or province that the work is conducted [15, 16, 24]. Similar
behaviour is valid for maintenance costs since the different maintenance strategies could be adopted by
different companies [24]. Therefore, the data used for LCC analysis should be collected from a single
source as much as possible. In this study, the collected data is valid for the UK and the main data sources
are Office of Rail and Road, responsible for regulations of the monopoly and health and safety in the
UK railways, and Network Rail, the biggest IM in the UK. Other sources in the literature are also used
[10, 12, 22].

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WMCAUS 2018 IOP Publishing
IOP Conf. Series: Materials Science and Engineering 471 (2019) 062026 doi:10.1088/1757-899X/471/6/062026

The result shown in Figure 1 reveals that a significant difference between acquisition and
maintenance costs could be observed throughout the life-cycle. Even though the material costs are
estimated in a similar range (100-150k pounds), the difference is due to the higher labour share in the
maintenance activities which are based on mainly manpower. As a consequence, the cost mitigation
methods should focus on the labour-oriented costs.

Labour Material

250000

200000

150000

100000

50000

0
Acquisition Maintenance

Figure 1. LCC comparison of acquisition and maintenance

The maintenance activities could exhibit many variations related to IMs’ maintenance and data
collection policy. A breakdown structure based on the IMs’ experience, policy and database is effective
to do a better LCC analysis. Unfortunately, IMs in the UK are not volunteered to share their experience
and data with academia. For this reason, the breakdown structure and the cost estimation are based on
the public reports. The information of different parameters such as the total number of S&Cs, unit prices,
the estimated maintenance period has been extracted from several reports [15, 18-21].
Table 2. Assumptions for breakdown work structure
Train Switches Weld Rep. of Crossing
Stoneblowing Maintenance Inspection Tamping
Grinding Renew Repair bearers Renew
MUC(£) 1582.15 4099.45 8402.05 43.06 18.77 337.85 251.73 5546.90 15065.18
Period 5 years 20 years 20 years 15 days Monthly 2 years 2.5 years 5 years 40 years

For control case, it is assumed that the maintenance interval has been determined by the division of
total S&Cs by yearly maintenance capacity. In other words, there is no corrective maintenance and no
delayed maintenance. Maintenance Unit Cost (MUC) and maintenance period are presented in Table 3.
As can be seen from the table, the period for crossing renewal is higher than the S&C life-cycle, which
means that an S&C is likely to complete its life without any crossing replacements in contrast to
switches. A significant difference between switches and crossings failures as regards the frequencies of
occurrence has been observed[25]. Nonetheless, for the control case, the S&C is assumed to be subjected
to at least one replacement since they occupy a significant amount of money in the maintenance budget.
Under these assumptions, a life-cycle cost analysis based on the breakdown work structure is presented
below.

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WMCAUS 2018 IOP Publishing
IOP Conf. Series: Materials Science and Engineering 471 (2019) 062026 doi:10.1088/1757-899X/471/6/062026

25000

20000

15000

10000

5000

Figure 2. LCC analysis based on the breakdown work structure

As can be seen from Figure 2, three activities are dominant in the LCC analysis: miscellaneous
maintenance, tamping and crossing renewal. Maintenance and tamping are regular activities to provide
a safe operation. On the other hand, crossing renewal is a low probability activity. As a result, the
contribution of crossing nose is more compelling with respect to the others.
As previously mentioned, maintenance strategies exhibit important differences from one company
to another company or one case to another case. For this purpose, five different scenarios are produced
to test the different maintenance strategies. The scenarios and the reasons are presented in Table 4.

Table 3. Estimated maintenance scenarios

Train Stone Switches Weld Rep. of Crossing
Maintenance Inspection Tamping
Grinding blowing Renew Repair bearers Renew
Sc1 6 1 1 720 360 15 12 6 1
Sc2 6 1 1 720 360 15 12 6 0
Sc3 6 0 0 720 360 15 12 6 0
Sc4 6 0 1 720 360 15 12 15 1
Sc5 6 1 2 720 360 15 12 30 2
Sc1: Estimated from Network Rail's published data.
Sc2: Replacement of crossing is a low-frequency activity in S&C maintenance. It is disregarded in this scenario.
Sc3: Stone-blowing and Renew half set of switches are relatively low-frequency activities. All low-frequency activities are
disregarded. Assumed as "Best Scenario".
Sc4: According to [22, 26], It seems that tamping activity is 2-year periodic activity. Stone-blowing is disregarded since it
serves a similar purpose.
Sc5: Based on [27], this scenario is produced. Comparing with other scenarios, this scenario is accepted as "Worst Scenario"

In Figure 3 below, an LCC analysis for different scenarios is presented. Even though small changes
have been applied to the scenarios, significant deviations are visible. It seems that crossing and switch
replacements have a large contribution to the total cost but the LCC is more sensitive to tamping
activities.

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WMCAUS 2018 IOP Publishing
IOP Conf. Series: Materials Science and Engineering 471 (2019) 062026 doi:10.1088/1757-899X/471/6/062026

200000
180000
160000
140000
120000
100000
80000
60000
40000
20000
0
Sc1 Sc2 Sc3 Sc4 Sc5

Figure 3. LCC analysis for different scenarios

It is well-known that the climate changes will have impacts on the systems in open environment such
as turnouts[2, 7]. At that moment, the operations, responsibilities and functions of the IMs will be
disturbed by climate changes.
Flood and High Temperatures are two major climate changes affecting the IM’s performance[28] but
the effects of these extreme events are different from each other. High temperatures generally influence
the performance of the staff and satisfaction of the customers, which is not included in the LCC analysis.
Apart from this, high temperatures are likely to cause track buckling. During hot weathers, the inspection
could be increased depending on the severity [29] to prevent the track buckling. Similarly, IMs in the
UK apply several safety measures such as increased inspection period and reduced train speed in
different levels. Network Rail applies ‘watchmen’ inspection criterion where the threshold temperature
(21o Celsius) is exceeded [30]. It is assumed here that 30-days in a year are above the threshold
temperature[30] and maintenance activities are increased during this period while calculating the LCC.
Although there are some studies [22] suggesting lower tamping periods during hot weather, it is not
considered in this study since Network Rail calls off maintenance schedules at high temperatures [30].
Flood could impair the S&C in two ways. It could cause line side equipment to fail or lead to
earthwork problems such as embankment scour, culvert washouts, and landslips. Flood is a low
probability event [7] since the tracks are designed with elevation and drainages are cleaned regularly.
Therefore, it is assumed in this study that the S&C could suffer from flood once in a life-cycle and
rectifying method is ballast and line side equipment renewals.
Figure 4 illustrates the LCC of the climate changes. Even though it is once in a lifetime, Flood has
the highest life-cycle cost. It increases the total maintenance cost by approximately 22%. On the other
hand, high temperature influences the total cost by approximately 15%. The estimated values are direct
costs of extreme events. On the other hand, it is possible that indirect costs such as cancellation or delay
costs will be higher than the direct costs [28, 31]. Specifically considering the frequency of the events,
the indirect cost of high temperatures is likely to have more impact on the LCC cost of turnouts.
Nevertheless, the calculation of indirect costs is extremely complicated and thus, it could be justified by
an expert’s opinion.

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WMCAUS 2018 IOP Publishing
IOP Conf. Series: Materials Science and Engineering 471 (2019) 062026 doi:10.1088/1757-899X/471/6/062026

100000
90000
80000
70000
60000
50000
40000
30000
20000
10000
0
Normal High Temperature Flood

Figure 4. LCC analysis for extreme weather conditions

Figure 2 has shown that the crossing replacement cost is significant. Hence, a particular LCC analysis
for crossing nose is also presented in Figure 5. Here, switch and closure panel failures or maintenances
are ignored. As can be seen from the figure below, acquisition costs have the highest share.

300000

250000

200000

150000

100000

50000

0
Minimum Maximum Average Average Min Max
Acquisition Replacement Maintenance Total

Figure 5. LCC analysis for turnout crossing nose

From the figure above, the costs of replacement and maintenance should be considered in the first
place while seeking the cost mitigation methods, as they could contribute to the total cost more than the
acquisition cost. In conclusion, it is crucial to understand the degradation process of a crossing nose (i.e.
crack initiation, propagation).

4. Conclusions
This study has covered the cost issues of switches & crossings as a preliminary cost analysis. For better
or detailed cost analysis, the historical and actual data and the field experience should be harmonised
with advanced cost analysis methods. This kind of work requires a high amount of time and resources.
The study shows that an LCC analysis could show significant variations as a consequence of different
economical parameters, environmental conditions and maintenance policies. Another outcome is that
the maintenance costs are expected to be higher than acquisition costs in the S&C. Besides, the
difference is not because of the material costs as they are in same range but results from labour costs.

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WMCAUS 2018 IOP Publishing
IOP Conf. Series: Materials Science and Engineering 471 (2019) 062026 doi:10.1088/1757-899X/471/6/062026

Depending on these results, it is recommended that IMs should focus on decreasing labour-oriented
costs, increasing tamping periods and measures for the flood. A final observation is that when
considering only crossing nose effect on the LCC cost, the replacement and maintenance costs have a
serious impact similar to acquisition cost. In conclusion, an investigation providing a better
understanding of the crossing nose degradation will considerably contribute to reducing the total cost.

Acknowledgment(s)
The first author would like to express his gratitude to the Ministry of National Education (MEB) and
ITU for the scholarship. The first author also thanks to Basaksoy Turnout Systems Inc. for sharing their
expertise. The authors sincerely appreciate the European Commission for the project H2020- “RISEN:
Rail Infrastructure Systems Engineering Network”, which provides a global research environment,
www.risen2rail.eu.

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