Getting You there Safely: The Significance of Our Work behind the Scenes

On the way to work in the morning: headphones in your ears, listening to your favourite song, tuning out the daily grind for a moment. Or maybe quickly checking the latest news on your smartphone. There are many things to think about while travelling on rail-based public transport. But there’s one thing passengers usually don’t give a lot of thought to and that is the high level of safety integrity with which they are carried day in and day out – in particular when the trams drive over HANNING & KAHL point machines.    By Jan Rehburg

Ensuring that a point machine operates safely and reliably over its entire service life requires careful planning and strong partners. We perform general overhauls at our factory in Oerlinghausen in order to guarantee such high safety integrity. According to the specifications of BOStrab and the operating manual, the prescribed interval between general overhauls (GO) is five years. GO at HANNING & KAHL entails dismantling the point machine: replacing wear parts like screws, replacing bushes and springs, and carefully chemically stripping, cleaning or sandblasting reusable components.

Our aim is to return an overhauled point machine of the same standard as a new point machine. To do so, all inspected parts are coated in accordance with the latest HANNING & KAHL standards and protected against the strains of everyday operations. The result? A point machine which hardly differs either visually or functionally from a new one. After general overhaul, the point machine is deemed technically as good as new, and it fulfils the required safety standards.

Continuous observation of prevailing safety requirements

Over time, safety standards and requirements of point machines change. For this reason, we check the latest safety and technical updates applicable for each point machine before starting overhaul. Necessary improvements are integrated into the new parts list and taken into consideration when reconditioning.

2024 was a particularly successful year: in our factory in Oerlinghausen, we reconditioned around 220 point machines from all over the world. Each and every one of these point machines thus contributes to smooth operation so that passengers can travel safely and carefreely.