At the end of 2023, Železničná spoločnosť Slovensko, a. s. (ZSSK) launched a new technical and hygienic train maintenance centre in the Slovak town of Nové Zámky. The new service centre will ensure the top-class maintenance, cleanliness and safety of trains and has been implemented as a pilot project, serving as a template for the Slovak national carrier for similar service centres being built in other Slovak cities. The entire maintenance hall complex of this centre was supplied by LLENTAB.
Železničná spoločnosť Slovensko, a. s. is the largest passenger railway carrier in Slovakia, operating 1,763 trains daily, including 269 long-distance trains and 1,486 regional and suburban trains. Their trains service 721 stations and stops and operate on 2,935 kilometres of railway lines in all regions of Slovakia. The new maintenance centre in Nové Zámky will provide cleaning of both the exterior and interior of the trains, as well as maintenance (minor repairs, technical inspections, and operational readiness). At the same time, the comfort of work for employees will increase. Construction began in September 2021 and the centre was handed over for use at the end of November 2023.
Modern facilities for technical and hygienic maintenance will guarantee the timely performance of necessary activities and at the same time increase the work comfort of railway employees
Up to now, the service work was done at multiple sites, and has also been largely limited by weather conditions, as it involved either open spaces or locations that were a direct part of the track, while some necessary activities had to be postponed repeatedly. Thanks to the construction of a new maintenance hall, rail car wash, toilet cleaning tracks, new utility lines, as well as the necessary new technologies for maintenance and cleaning, all these activities can now take place within a single location.
The precise and fast assembly of the LLENTAB steel structures was also positively evaluated by the project’s chief engineer
According to Ing. Gabriel Šimon, Chief Project Engineer from REMING CONSULT, a. s., the general designer of the centre, the project documentation for the Nové Zámky centre was created in 2014, also since the centre represented a pilot project for the investing Železničná spoločnosť Slovensko, a. s. Even before the design work had started, i.e. while preparing the project documentation for the purpose of acquiring the construction permits, the general designer considered the use of standardized steel halls. The fact that they can be assembled very fast and with high precision was the main reason why they were considered for the project in the first place. The project documentation was prepared in several stages up to the project documentation for the construction itself, during which the team of LLENTAB Slovakia received extensive support from the general designer of the centre and everyone involved worked in close cooperation.
Project preparation included coordinating the modifications to the original design for effective use of the LLENTAB steel structures. It was necessary to select the appropriate type of cladding to meet the fire protection project’s requirements and the requirements for the thermal-technical parameters of the roof and wall cladding. The maintenance hall for the operational treatment of trains includes service gangways and semi-portal cranes along the entire length of the hall. These will allow the necessary service work on trainsets to be carried out while assuring compliance with the required OHS regulations.
“Our task was to build a maintenance shop consisting of four buildings to provide the operational treatment of trainsets, a track for cleaning trains, a bindery and administration, and finish our work as scheduled. All the buildings are interconnected and form a single unit with an area of 7,500 m2. In addition, we also assembled a fixed washer hall (700 m2) with utility rooms (180 m2) in Nové Zámky.”
