Long-Term Behavior and Performance of Ballastless Track Superstructure on China’s Suining-Chongqing Railway Line

This paper briefly shows the experimental ballastless track section of Suining-Chongqing railway line in southwest China, which was designed by China Railway Eryuan Engineering Group Co. Ltd (CREEC) and was put into operation in 2007. The design speed of the experimental section amounts to 200 km/h for passenger trains and 120 km/h for freight trains, which is the first railway line built with such speed in southwest of China. The long-term observations of the performance of the ballastless track superstructures were implemented in the past three years, which are introduced in details in this paper, such as the performance of reinforced concrete slab with lattice two-block sleepers, coupled or uncoupled prefabricated slab-superstructure etc. Ballastless track superstructures’ damages are summarized and classified. In addition, causes of damaged cracks on track superstructure are discussed.