THE concept behind Water-Trak is simple: a wet rail provides better adhesion than a damp one. It is a phenomenon that was discovered by British Rail Research in the 1970s – but, although BR looked into developing a trackside sprinkler system, the idea of an on board system was not followed up.
That is until Water-Trak’s founders John Cooke and Simon Barnard were commissioned by the RSSB in 2015 to find new solutions to low adhesion in the rail industry. They first used small-scale and full-scale rig testing at the University of Sheffield to show that adding water to a low adhesion railhead can give step-change improvement in traction.