OREANDA-NEWS. April 23, 2014. Valentin Gapanovich, Senior Vice President at Russian Railways, has taken part in a video conference, together with representatives from the Company's infrastructure division and the French railway company SNCF.

The conference was held at the Moscow Centre of Scientific and Technical Information and Libraries, a branch of Russian Railways.

The purpose of the conference was to exchange experiences on ongoing railway track maintenance, diagnosis and repair.

Valentin Gapanovich gave a presentation on the Company's latest innovative achievements to his French colleagues and noted that Russian Railways had successfully coped with the task of organising transport services at the Winter Olympic Games in Sochi, during which the Company carried 4.5 million passengers. Moreover, the train timetable was 99.65% fulfilled, the highest figure in the world.

Also, according to Gapanovich, on the eve of 10 April 2014, during the Day of Russia's Railways, Russian Railways' management received support from deputies in the State Duma for the development of high-speed communications. Gapanovich also expressed interest in sharing the Company's experience in this field with SNCF.

Frederic Parde, SNCF's Head of Projects in Russia and the CIS, highlighted the success of Russian Railways in using rail transport at the Winter Olympic Games in Sochi. According to Pardo, SNCF is continuing to improve its high-speed services and could cooperate with Russian Railways in various areas.

One of the important topics under discussion was the development of technology to lay continuously welded railway lines.

According to the SNCF, induction rail welding is actively used on high-speed railway lines in France, a technology which makes for greater reliability and high train speeds.

According to Vyacheslav Yermakov, Chief Engineer Office for Ways and Structures at Russian Railways, seamless track now accounts for 69% of the total length of the Company's main lines, a figure which continues to grow. The Company has therefore gained solid experience in the operation and maintenance of such tracks.

SNCF's expert on current track maintenance Dennis Atta told the conference about the extensive use of smart systems to monitor the current state of railway lines, which enables failures to be predicted and repairs planned in a timely manner. A portable device is now under development which will enable defects to be entered into the program remotely and monitor the current state of the upper way and repair problems.

As Valentin Gapanovich noted, Russian Railways is also actively implementing systems to monitor and forecast the state of railway lines, which will ensure a sufficiently high level of reliability and security in the transportation process.

According to the Company's Senior Vice President, a promising area for collaboration with our French colleagues would be to examine the problem of managing the cost of infrastructure facilities over their lifecycle.