The ceremony was attended by the mayor of Schwandorf, Mr Andreas Fellner, deputy district administrator of Schwandorf County, Mr Jakob Scharf, Rail.One Schwandorf managing director, Ms Jana Petzka, DB Network head of supply and plants, Mr Michael Wuth, DB Network head of sleeper plant Schwandorf, Mr Christian Suhren, and partners and service providers in the planning and construction phase. Rail.One Schwandorf, a subsidiary of Rail.One Group, will construct and operate the plant to fulfil a contract awarded by DB Network in 2017. The completion of the production hall, office building and storage areas and the installation of the plant is scheduled for mid-2019. Rail.One will also build a new access road and employee parking spaces on DB Network’s site until the plant is completed. Rail.One will carry out a trial production run to obtain approval from the Federal Railway Authority (EBA) and DB’s quality inspection service before production begins. The site will manufacture up to 180,000m of end-anchored pre-stressed concrete turnout sleepers for use on the German network. “In future, we will deliver the concrete sleepers to the construction site in combination with the turnout components already manufactured at our site, thereby optimising our logistics,” Suhren says.