The Aberdeen to Inverness enhancement project is a Scottish Government-funded project to upgrade the railway infrastructure to improve connectivity, support more services and improve journey times.
As part of the project Network Rail had to secure a section of the railway with a road vehicle incursion solution as the tracks ran next to a warehouse and the car park/storage yard. The railway had basic demarcation fencing in place between the tracks and the yard. This posed a significant threat of a road vehicle accidental obstructing the track. The Department for Transport made this Network Rails responsibility in their white paper ‘Managing accidental rail obstructions by road vehicles’.
The initial design was to install a VRS barrier in front of the fence line, but the Network Rail Project Manager looked for a more efficient way of providing a safe and reliable boundary and vehicle restraint system that minimized disruption to the business owner and their clients.
Barkers StronGuard™RCS achieved all of these objectives for the client and the business owner. It is a cost-effective solution, installed quickly on the original demarcation fencing boundary and provides a single solution for both trespass and road vehicle incursions.
Martin McFadyen, Scheme Project Manager for Network Rail said “Big thanks to Russell Ridgway & Barkers Fencing for their help with this project. StronGuard™RCS is a safe reliable and efficient system that protects against the risk of road vehicle incursion on the rail infrastructure.
By challenging the original design, I realised a significant time and cost-saving to the project, along with a very happy business owner. “