Tamping Planning in Railway Maintenance

Optram is a computer software for evaluation of track geometry quality data, used as a decision support in planning and follow-up of tamping maintenance for Swedish railways. The software was introduced at the Swedish Transport Administration year 2009 but has not reached the intended number of users. The purpose with this thesis is to suggest how Optram can be improved as a decision support in the tamping maintenance process. Interviews have been held with maintenance planners to receive their impressions of Optram and identify problems in the process. The result has indicated that the transition from previous analogue evaluation of track geometry quality to digital evaluation with Optram is a threshold for maintenance planners. Further, a desire for an advising function in Optram is expressed. Identified problems in the process are e.g. lack of long-term tamping strategy and difficulties to acquire track possession time. Concluding recommendation for this thesis is to develop two new functions in Optram; a Tamping Recommendation Model suggesting tamping sections for short-term planning based on a target Q-value or a given budget, and a Track Geometry Quality Degradation Model predicting the long-term effects of different tamping strategies.