PW products for use in the construction of railways
Products: PW1 - trackbed separator, PW2 - trackbed robust separator, PW4-LA - trackbed separator/reinforcement
Terram Geosynthetics provide solutions for permanent way applications where loss of rail track alignment caused by sub-grade erosion leads to costly maintenance and the complication caused by having to plan and temporarily close the track for its renewal.
The traditional solution has been to use a sub-ballast and/or a graded-sand layer to prevent the upward movement of fine sub-grade particles. Some 25 years ago, the use of a simple geotextile was adopted to maintain separation between the adjacent sand/ballast layers – Terram PW1 geotextile.
Since then further geosynthetics have been developed for permanent way applications and employed to deal with related issues:
- Terram PW2 geocomposite- a robust separator/filter incorporating a stiff net between two textile filter layers
- Terram PW4-LA geocomposite- a composite of PW1 and a geogrid to provide the reinforcement function over low-load-bearing soils.
The choice of Terram PW grade will depend on the sub-grade type & its strength.






