Starting in 2003 the European Union has funded three consecutive research projects dealing with maintenance, life length, capacity and repair/strengthening of railway bridges. The main results are that many bridges are capable of carrying increased loads and can have an increased service life if up to date technologies are used for assessment, monitoring, maintenance and strengthening. In order to obtain good value for the money spent in the projects, it is important to plan, coordinate and manage the projects in an efficient way. Long range projects of four years seem to be more effective than shorter projects of two and three years.

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<p>Innovative Intelligent Railways, In2Rail, is a European Horizon 2020 Project with the objective to enhance capacity, increase reliability and reduce Life Cycle Costs of European Railways. Bridges and Tunnels is the main focus in Work Package 4. The aim is to study, benchmark and further develop new Inspection Technologies in order to create more proactive maintenance procedures. In this paper some preliminary results are presented.</p>