Railway maintenance is challenging due to the costs and time required. It is important for ensuring reliable railway services and assets. Different maintenance approaches include corrective, preventive, and predictive maintenance. Corrective maintenance repairs equipment after failure. Preventive maintenance monitors equipment status to reduce failures through early action. Predictive maintenance determines equipment condition to highly accurately forecast failures.

1. Corrective, Preventive and
Predictive maintenance for railway
applications

2. • Railway maintenance is one of the most challenging tasks to be
carried out by all the railway infrastructure managers worldwide
located, because of the high effort required in terms of time and
costs.
• A railway service or asset needs to be highly reliable, therefore the
equipment must be kept in good working conditions and regular
railway maintenance is essential in order to achieve this goal.
• For these reasons, innovative maintenance solutions for railway
systems, as well as integration of maintenance into operation, are
constantly studied and developed in order to ensure a better
management of the railways and rolling stocks.
• Railway maintenance is defined as the process of preserving a
condition or the state of being preserved, along the track or related
to vehicles, but there are actually different approach to maintain a
railway asset or service:

3. 1. Corrective Railway Maintenance
• It is a task performed to identify, isolate and
resolve a fault so that a failed equipment can
be replaced or restored to an operational
condition within the tolerances or limits
established for in-service operations. With this
approach, no actions are taken in order to
prevent a fault, since the only way to detect it
is waiting for an equipment to fail.

4. 2. Preventive Railway Maintenance
• It is a task regurarly performed to monitor the
status or the conditions of a railway
equipment, in order to lessen the likelihood of
its fail. An approach like this allows the
infrastructure managers to recognise a bad
health of an asset, thefore a preventive action
can be taken before a fail, ensuring a better
reliability of the whole system.

5. 3. Predictive Railway Maintenance
• Predictive maintenance techniques
are designed to help determine the condition
of in-service equipment in order to
predict when it is going to fail, therefore it is
not a matter of likelihood, but a highly
detailed forecast is ensured. This approach
promises cost savings over routine or time-
based, because tasks are performed only
when warranted.