"Rail traffic has increased much in the last decade. This development and the need for model shift from road to rail to decrease CO2 emission, creates a challenge for the railway industry to improve capacity in the network while the need of capacity for maintenance also increases.The challenge of the project is to do more effective inspection and maintenance in less time.Therefore the project focus is to optimise and automate maintenance & inspection where possible, also to introduce new planning & scheduling tools and methodology. The project aims to reduce the possession time around 40%.To achieve this five objectives are set:1: adopting best practice from other industries in maintenance optimisation (e.g. highways, aerospace).2: developing novel track inspection approaches for freight routes with a scope on in-train measuring and self inspecting switch. 3: researching and assessing innovations that can improve the effectiveness and efficiency of large scale inspection & maintenance processes with a scope on track and switch maintenance, track inspection; 4: further developing of key technologies that will drive the development of modular infrastructure design. 5: developing a new maintenance planning and scheduling tool that is able to optimise the maintenance activities, taking account of the benefits brought about by other improvements in this project.To achieve these objectives, the project will be organised into 8 Work Packages (WP): WP1: benchmark & evaluation criteria; WP2: improvement specifications for WP3 : improve inspection; WP4:improve maintenance; WP5:improve planning & scheduling and WP6: demonstration. WP7 manages dissemination, exploitation and training. WP8 manages the project.The Consortiums’ composition covers the whole railway maintenance and inspection field: infrastructure managers, contractors, train operating companies, railway component industry, research organisations, SME’s and railway industry interest organisations."