In just one measuring shift, our EM120VT track inspection vehicle delivers all the data for a new double-track railway line in Hungary that is around 80 km long. The recorded point cloud data and video data provide both the basis for the building assessment and for more efficient planning of maintenance work in future.
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Length of surveyed line section
Expansion project
The 341 km Budapest-Belgrade railway line, so far mostly single-track, is an important link between Central and South-Eastern Europe. It was in poor condition for a long time. The Hungarian section is around 160 km long, with modernization and expansion by a Hungarian-Chinese joint venture since 2021. The entire line will be double-tracked, electrified, and the maximum permitted speed will be increased to 160 kilometres per hour.
In future, it will be possible to travel the Budapest-Belgrade line by train in 2 hours and 40 minutes. However, its main significance is not in passenger transport, but in the freight business. The expansion will create a high-quality link for freight transport between the Far East and Western Europe via ports in Greece.
Constructing new lines with Plasser & Theurer machines
The work is being carried out by V-Híd, a large Hungarian construction company. In addition to road and building construction, the modernization of railway infrastructure is one of its main tasks. The construction company has been relying on a continuous-action SMD-80/UVP 2002 track renewal machine specifically for this purpose since 2020 and received a new Plasser AssemblyLiner in 2025. V-Híd also operates a 09-3X plain-line tamping machine, a Unimat 08-475/4S universal tamping machine, and an SSP-series ballast profiling machine from Plasser & Theurer.
At the beginning of 2025, the construction of the new track (ballast, sleepers, rails) was largely complete, although the overhead contact line and safety systems had not yet been installed.
Condition recording of the new railway line – construction phase handover
A complete track diagnosis of the line section between Soltszentimre (approx. 80 km south of Budapest) and Kelebia, near the Serbian border, was required for the planned construction phase handover.
Our experts from the Technology Centre Purkersdorf used the EM120VT track inspection vehicle to record the entire data sequence of the track geometry as well as the condition of the rails, sleepers, and the ballast bed. Vasútlabor Kft, a Hungarian railway materials laboratory and consulting provider, subsequently processed a digital twin of the line.
In January 2025, 80 km of track – a total of 160 km – were recorded in one measuring shift. In the meantime, the sudden onset of heavy snowfall forced a short break. As the new track was not yet equipped with the necessary safety devices and signals, the speed limit was 60 km/h.
Recording the track geometry for more efficient planning of future maintenance work
The absolute position of the track was not determined here by measuring reference points, but georeferenced using the GNSS/GPS position. This entails about half the amount of work of fixed-point measurement.
The EM120VT, one of the most modern track inspection vehicles, is equipped with a variety of measuring systems: georadar, a rail-profile measuring system, and video data capture (driver’s view and track component video) in addition to measuring the relative track position using an IMU. This makes it possible to create a virtual image of the existing infrastructure for BIM-compliant planning. Around 35 GB of data is supplied per kilometre of track, which amounts to a total of around 5.6 TB for this operation.
With the latest technology of the EM120VT, V-Híd obtained track diagnostic measurements and digital data of the completed railway line. The solution used here could make a significant contribution to the modernization of Hungary's nearly 5,000-kilometre-long core railway network.
Project data
| Project description | Line digitalization |
| Infrastructure manager | MÁV |
| Machines in operation | EM120VT |
| Length of surveyed line section | 160 km (approx. 80 km double-track) |
| Measuring speed | around 60 km/h |
