An electric turnout heating (ETH) system is an essential technical and economic issue. Uninterrupted operation of the turnouts is crucial to maintaining railway transport safety. The classic heating system is characterized by high energy consumption. The usage of it is extremely expensive, so the need to optimize the current system becomes more and more critical. At the same time, the progress in the contactless heating method has become a promising alternative. The paper presents the results of tests performed for electric turnout heating systems for two types of heaters. In the first place, the analysis of heat distribution was performed using the ANSYS Fluent v.16. The temperature fields in the turnout models filled with a model of semi-melting snow were analyzed. Thanks to cooperation with the Railway Institute inWarsaw the second stage of the research was possible to be completed.

In this part, the models were implemented in the real world using the 49E1 railway turnout. The numerical solutions were validated by the experiments. The verification showed a high level of agreement among the results. The obtained results indicate the need for further tests of heating systems, to validate an optimal method of turnout heating. It was found that in the classic ETH, the working space area consumes a tremendous amount of energy. To ensure a higher efficiency of the heating process, the contactless heater is proposed as an alternative.

Observations from 1978—81, 1983 and 1985 collected at the Polish Polar Arctowski Station (King George Island, South Shetland Islands) were used to calculate frequencies of wind directions in 30° sectors and mean air temperatures observed at each wind direction. Results reveal that all over the year the warmest air masses flow onto the South Shetland Islands from the northwest while the coolest ones from the southeast and east.