rail fastening

Pandrol is a British company that manufactures rail fastenings, which are used to fasten rails to railway sleepers.

Rail fastenings eventually converged onto a proprietary spring clip made by the Pandrol company which was the exclusive form of fastening in Britain for about 30 years.

Meanwhile, it was revealed that the Pandrol and Vossloh clips chosen for the rail fastenings were submitted to indoor tests only, omitting field tests, and the Pandrol clips saw no prior use on another high-speed line.

Moreover the elastic rail fastenings had little resistance to rail creep - the propensity of the rails to move gradually in the direction of traffic, and the workload of pulling back the rails to regulate the joints was surprisingly high.