Shortening the construction period
To speed up construction of a railway siding, some construction work (such as relocating utilities or building up the subgrade) can begin as soon as the technical conditions have been collected and the connection point chosen. In practice, running construction and design in parallel can shorten the overall construction period by up to six months.
However, this breaches current legislation, since the customer usually does not yet have a construction permit. A construction company can therefore only take on the work if the customer assumes responsibility for any penalties and for dealing with the supervisory authorities.
Construction within the railway right-of-way can officially begin without a construction permit once the design has been approved by the railway's chief engineer.
Reducing costs
Saving when obtaining technical conditions
Bear in mind that every approving party tries to include as many burdensome conditions as possible in order to strengthen its own facilities. As a result, the cost of construction can increase several times over. To counter this, approvals are best handled by someone with railway experience who understands which requirements are genuinely necessary and which can be done without. If your company has no such employee, it is better to hand over the collection and approval of technical conditions to a specialised organisation.
Saving when signing the construction contract
Contracts and material purchases are best made between December and March, when prices are at their lowest and fixed. The contract price can then be fixed for the entire construction period (if construction is completed within the year).
Saving on materials
To reduce construction costs for a railway siding and keep future operating costs down, we recommend using reclaimed (pre-sorted) reinforced concrete sleepers, reclaimed rails (groups one and two) and crushed stone with a strength grade below 1000 for the track superstructure.
For timber sleepers on curves with a radius below 300 m (where concrete sleepers cannot be used) and for turnouts, we always recommend new materials, since their service life is shorter than that of reclaimed rails and concrete sleepers. A track panel made of reclaimed rails and concrete sleepers can last 50 years or more with light traffic and low speeds, whereas new timber sleepers and bearers, as well as the metal parts of turnouts, last 15–20 years.