Keywords: stabilising geocomposite, railway track quality, long-term measurement, rail geometric parameters, ballast bed fouling, track recording car, load-bearing capacity, interlocking.

A trial track section of 350 m in length, situated on an operated single-track railway line with high traffic volumes, was established in the Czech Republic in 2008 to verify in practice the effectiveness of the application of a geocomposite below the rail bed as a novel method for fast and economical enhancement of the railway track quality. The geocomposite was placed at points with frequent defects of the track geometric parameters. The long-term monitoring programme of the geocomposite effectiveness included periodic checks of rail geometric parameters performed by a track recording car, the measurement of the load-bearing capacity of the rail bed and the track bed by means of static and impact load tests, and checks of the degradation of the geocomposite user qualities by laboratory testing of geocomposite specimens sampled from test pits. All this was complemented by rail deflection measurements during the passage of trains. This paper presents the up-to-now findings resulting from over four years of the operational verification of the geocomposite effectiveness. The selected application proved to be an efficient solution even under very demanding geotechnical conditions.

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