PLANT AND EQUIPMENT
88
Rail Engineer • May 2016
Get a bit more ambitious, add a petrol engine and you can handle tree limbs up to around five inches (125mm in diameter). At this stage it is a chipper, not a shredder. Even larger ones, as used by professional tree surgeons and towed behind their vans to site, can take small trees and large branches up to 8” (200mm) diameter. But is that good enough for use on the rail network? No! The railways always do things bigger and better. QTS Group, one of the country’s leading providers of innovative rail vegetation management solutions, has just revealed the latest addition to its extensive fleet - the QTS Mega Chipper, the world’s biggest and only rubber tracked, rail mounted chipper. It can take whole trees, literally. With a capacity of a whopping 27” - that’s 685mm or two-thirds of a metre - the fully-automated Terex TAK790 (ARB77) chipper is remote controlled and can be towed on track by an RRV excavator. It even has a self-feeding conveyer, capable of operating free on wheels at 35º, and is powered by a seven litre, 300hp caterpillar engine.
Bigger than before QTS Group was founded in 1990 by managing director Alan McLeish. The company is a multidiscipline railway contractor providing specialist services in vegetation management, drainage service, fencing, training, civil engineering, earthworks, geotechnical services, industrial rope access and specialist plant fleet hire. The company already owns an eight-wheeled RRV Valmet Forwarder, which can chip vegetation and trees up to 24” diameter. Now it’s gone one better.
To handle the large trees that these chippers can consume needs yet more specialist machinery. The Forwarder has an integrated nine-metre crane fitted with a log handler. The new Mega Chipper is hauled into position by an RRV excavator which can also feed the conveyor, removing the need for operators to interface with what could be very dangerous pieces of kit. The QTS Mega Chipper works at an extremely fast rate and can take the place of several smaller machines, leaving aside the fact that only it can handle the really big stuff. It will dramatically reduce the man-hours worked on large-scale devegetation jobs and its multi-purpose tracking system allows it to work both lineside and on-track.
National contract QTS is one of seven successful suppliers who will deliver more than 1,000 maintenance, renewals and enhancements projects improving earthworks, bridges, tunnels, footbridges and station buildings as part of Network Rail’s £40 billion programme to build a bigger, better UK railway during the five-year period between 2014 and 2019. The company’s recognition as one of the best contractors on the UK rail infrastructure has led to an increase in its current frameworks and it landed a vast majority of the national vegetation contract
just a few months ago. This will see the company retain its responsibility for the de-vegetation of railway and surrounding areas nationally. The QTS group is also Scotland’s largest framework contractor in rail vegetation management, fencing and earthworks. Nationally, it is the largest rail fencing contractor and, through rapid expansion brought about by winning new and retaining existing frameworks from their clients, the company has ambitious plans to develop its national presence in other specialisms, with a view to becoming the market leader nationwide. With ten offices nationwide, the company has seen its national presence stretch further across the UK. The national headquarters remains in Strathaven in South Lanarkshire, Scotland, although it has its English HQ in Nottingham. QTS manages and owns the largest vegetation management fleet in operation on the UK Rail infrastructure, and it could be argued that it has one of the largest in Europe. The company provides specialist vegetation services such as stump treatment, crown reduction, tree cutting, rock cutting, felling, pruning, weed control and even tree and shrub planting 24 hours a day, 365 days of the year. After all, that lineside vegetation just keeps on growing.