The track bed or trackbed is the groundwork onto which a railway track is laid. Trackbeds of disused railways are sometimes used for recreational paths or new light rail links.
According to Network Rail, the trackbed is the layers of ballast and sub-ballast above a prepared subgrade/formation (see diagram). It is designed primarily to reduce the stress on the subgrade.
Other definitions include the surface of the ballast on which the track is laid, the area left after a track has been dismantled and the ballast removed or the track formation beneath the ballast and above the natural ground.
The trackbed can significantly influence the performance of the track, especially ride quality of passenger services.
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Famous quotes containing the words track and/or bed:
“It is remarkable how easily and insensibly we fall into a particular route, and make a beaten track for ourselves. I had not lived there a week before my feet wore a path from my door to the pond-side; and though it is five or six years since I trod it, it is still quite distinct. It is true, I fear, that others may have fallen into it, and so helped to keep it open.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“It is comforting when one has a sorrow to lie in the warmth of one’s bed and there, abandoning all effort and all resistance, to bury even one’s head under the cover, giving one’s self up to it completely, moaning like branches in the autumn wind. But there is still a better bed, full of divine odors. It is our sweet, our profound, our impenetrable friendship.”
—Marcel Proust (1871–1922)