One more achievement in the production of VAE Sofia

 

The Bulgarian-Austrian joint venture for the production of switches and components for switches and permanent way was established in 1997 and VAE GmbH Austria holds 51% and the Bulgarian railways (currently, NRIC) hold 49% of the shares. During the nearly nine years of its existence, we have annually been enhancing our production and have mastered the production of more and more complex switches and products. In the last two years, VAE Sofia has reached one of the highest peaks of its activity. At the beginning of 2006, Croatian railways placed an order for the production of a complex scissors crossover, consisting of three two-way cross switches of type 49,6 R215 m, one ordinary switch of type 49, 6 R200 m and a crossing for inter-axle spacing of 4.75 m. This crossover allows the connection of four tracks on the one side with three tracks on the other side. This most complex assembly was built in about three months.

 

Among our other products are:

-   insulated, glued joints, built in accordance with state-of-the-art European technology and using modern consumables. These demonstrated high availability and security during testing at the State laboratory for machine-building tests (TGM) in Vienna;

-   Multiflex rollers, which are mounted very simply and easily in the frog of a switch to help reduce significantly the effort for turning the point blades;

-   clamp point-lock VAE Tempflex, which is self-regulating and when the length of the frog varies because of ambient temperatures, the normal operation of the switch is not disturbed.

 

In the last 2-3 years VAE Sofia has been producing switches and railway components mainly for the railways of Austria, Germany, Greece, India, Spain, Latvia, Libya, Slovenia, Serbia, Turkey, Croatia, Montenegro, etc. The joint venture has acquired a number of internationally acknowledged certificates, such as: quality management system BSS EN ISO 9001:2000; welding methods under DIN EN 729-3; certificates of the welders under EN 287-1; certificate for the product “Insulated, glued joint”, issued by TGM Vienna.