Stay in contact with the ground, even in the most challenging conditions

SBB (Die Schweizerischen Bundesbahnen) is the national railway company of Switzerland, based in the nation’s capital Bern. The company transports over 458 million passengers every year, and 175,000 tonnes of cargo per day. That makes SBB by far the largest passenger and cargo transport company in Switzerland.

The floors of the SBB production facility are extremely uneven due to the nature of the work which is done there. Workers frequently need to move heavy components over high thresholds.
The customer wanted to continue using an effective system based around Blickle‘s RD series. However, the narrow RD wheels would occasionally get stuck when crossing rails. Workers found that they had to pull trolleys out of the rails on a regular basis. This had even led to some minor accidents. SBB needed a reliable and cost-effective solution which kept their workers safe, particularly when crossing rails.

After discussing the matter and length and visiting the site to assess the situation, the wheel and caster specialists at Blickle’s Swiss branch designed a suitable solution in partnership with the train manufacturer. Blickle created a triple caster with an extended axle bolt. The customer requested a central wheel with a Blickle Softhane® polyurethane tread, providing a high load capacity and a low level of rolling resistance. The ALST series wheel is flanked by two tried and tested “Blickle Comfort” two-component solid rubber wheels of the RD series, which SBB was already using extensively. This setup provided the customer with a costeffective three-wheel version, removing the difficulty and danger of crossing rails.

The customer put some prototypes through extensive tests, and is more than happy with the new system. The rail company now only uses triple casters at this site. Because of the increased number of orders for this tailored solution, we are now able to provide it as a standard product available directly from Blickle’s main production facilities in Rosenfeld, Germany.