New 125-km Overhead Line for Frankenwaldbahn in Germany

Pressig, Germany: On August 25, 2008, construction for the renewal of the overhead lines along the railroad line between Ebensfeld and Probstzella officially began with the symbolic erection of the first new pole. In the presence of Hanz Pietz, the mayor of the town of Pressig, and district chief executive Oswald Marr, Peter Grimm, head of production implementation at the Nuremberg network of Deutsche Bahn, established the first new overhead line pole. Plans call for all existing overhead line poles, including contact wires and carrier cables, to be gradually replaced with approximately 1,500 new poles along 125 kilometers of railroad track. Scheduled to last until 2015, the project involves the use of a new assembly technology. Dr. Bernd-Wolfgang Zweig, head of assembly technology at Balfour Beatty Rail, discusses it in an interview.