587 system platforms in 25 years: modula® celebrates its birthday

How it all began

HERING received an inquiry from the headquarters of DB AG Station&Service AG in Frankfurt in 1997 asking whether it would be possible to plan and build a modular temporary platform in Berlin-Charlottenburg. That was new territory for HERING – but with a competent and experienced team, the company eventually came up with a concept for prefabricated platforms that allowed the platform components to be manufactured at HERING’s prefabrication plant. That gave rise to the birth of our modula®system platform.

Not everything went smoothly during the development of the platform, of course, and doubts arouse whether it made sense to produce conventional platforms as a complex prefabricated system. But those doubts have long since gone: It does make sense! The benefits associated with the prefabrication of platforms outweigh the disadvantages – and the first model in Berlin-Charlottenburg still exists to this day!

modula®system platform on YouTube

Durability

HERING has been able to develop many other system types over the years. The small family of products now includes Pi slabs as well as temporary, light and flex models. Even the version installed in Berlin at that time is still being made today – with minor optimisations.

The patented platform systems were granted type and design approvals from the Eisenbahnbundesamt (EBA – German Federal Railway Organisation) and later from DB AG Station&Service AG, which are still being extended by DB AG to this day. Several framework contracts with DB AG have meant that our modula® series has been able to establish itself increasingly on the German market and, as early as 2002, we were awarded the ‘Qualitätspreis Gleisbau’ (‘Track Construction Quality Award’) by the Überwachungsgemeinschaft Gleisbau e.V. (ÜGG – Registered Association for Track-Bound Transport Systems) for it.

But system platforms made by HERING soon came to be known in other countries beyond Germany as well: In London, for example, we’ve been able to carry out work at the famous ‘Tower Gateway’ and ’Baker Street’ stations, among others. More and more inquiries also arrived from Denmark, Austria and Luxembourg.
It’s 25 years since and we’re able to look back on a sound basic utilisation of the capacities at our prefabrication plant for steel-reinforced concrete components used in the realisation of system platforms because HERING’s prefabrication plant keeps demonstrating its top quality to its customers right up to this day – and we intend to maintain this reputation over the next 25 years too!

Look out number crunchers: The length of all platforms realised using HERING’s steel- and fibre-reinforced concrete had totalled a remarkable 75,000 metres with an effective area of 210,000 square metres by the end of 2020.