With a massive pipeline for rail and rollingstock in Australia and New Zealand, suppliers must be keenly aware of what’s on offer in the global market for modern materials desired by operators and track owners.
A growing push towards European standards for materials in rail supply has created a greater need for a range of specific, modern solutions.
Steven Creed and Nicholas Farrell from Dotmar Engineering Plastic Products (Dotmar EPP) tell Rail Express this trend has driven the need in Australia for a wider knowledge base, and a range of modern materials.
“We’re noticing a change in the level of specification for plastics in particular,” explains Creed, Dotmar EPP’s Business Development Manager. “Now the industry [in Australia] is following the trend of specifications out of Europe, particularly for passenger trains, we’re seeing rail manufacturers and maintenance suppliers grapple with those changes, and we’re seeing more of a very technical knowledge requirement in this space.”
Examples of heightened levels of specifications include toxicity and flammability measures. “There’s a lot of interest in specialist plastics for certain toxicity and smoke characteristics, especially for rollingstock going through tunnels and things like that,” Creed notes.
Farrell, the company’s Victorian sales representative, says the trend towards more stringent specifications has made Dotmar EPP more of an overall solutions provider, rather than just a supplier of specialised material.
“We are well set up to assist with technical knowledge and implement the right solution using the right material for an application,” Farrell says. “We’re able to assist rail companies within the manufacturing and maintenance spaces, helping them establish what polymers are best for certain applications, and then providing a solution based on client requirements through utilisation of our manufacturing capabilities, which include things like plastic routing, turning, milling and so on.
“We’ll take an inquiry from a company – a set of drawings and such to work with – and we can machine a part from there,” he says.
“If a customer doesn’t quite understand what exactly it is they require for a certain aspect of their maintenance or manufacturing program, we can help them out with finding the right material and solution, and then providing them with our machining capability.”
An importer, distributor, fabricator and machinist of a range of plastic products, Dotmar EPP within the rail sector supplies parts and solutions for manufacturing and maintenance operations, both for rollingstock and fixed rail infrastructure.
On the fixed infrastructure side of things, Dotmar EPP has provided clients with a range of products, including track pads and parts for signalling infrastructure. Dotmar EPP looks to provide track owners with a high level of customisation: “Some of the signal parts we’ve provided in the past have had specs going back to the 1920s,” Creed notes.
For the rollingstock side of things, Dotmar EPP not only supplies cutting edge parts for new trains, but also replacement parts for older rollingstock, and products like bushings and bearings.
Material offered by Dotmar for rail applications includes, but is not limited to Ertalyte (PETP), Ertalon (Nylon), Ertacetal (Acetal), Polystone P7000 (UHMWPE), Polystone P300 (HDPE), Palsun (Polycarbonate) and Ketron PEEK for applications such as bushings, centre bowl liners, wear pads, washers, track spacers, side guides and electrical insulators. The company is ISO 9001 accredited, and has a dedicated quality assessment facility and quality assessment process to ensure all goods that go out to customers are within their specs.