The assembly and maintenance of electrified railway systems is of vital importance for its correct operation. Contact wires are critical elements since the correct collection of energy from trains through pantographs depends on them. Periodical inspection of the state of these installations is essential. This task traditionally implies a heavy manual workload subject to errors. A new system that allows one to check the state (height and stagger) of contact and messenger wires is presented on this article blueA new method based on seven steps for identifying the contact wires and measuring their height and stagger from point clouds recorded by means of a LiDAR system is presented. This system can be used both in assembly and maintenance phases, as well as afterwards, allowing the analysis of point clouds previously recorded. The new method was evaluated in both test bench and real environments against the commonly used measurement method. Results with the comparison between this new system and the commonly used measurement method in both test bench and real railway environments are presented. Results of this comparison show differences of less than a centimetre on average and the amount of time spent for the measuring phase is significantly decreased and not prone to human errors.

Boñar Formation (Upper Cretaceous) is a mainly carbonate succession, which outcrops in the North of Duero Basin (Spain). According to the existing data, the Dolomitic Member of this formation appears to be the most suitable for geological storage of CO2. The main objective of this study is to find evidence to support, clarify and specify –at an initial level– the potential of the Dolomitic Member of the Boñar Formation as a geological reservoir. The study covers density, porosity and permeability tests on samples obtained from the outcrop of the succession near the village of Boñar (León). According to the analysis and interpretation of the mentioned petrophysical properties, the porosity of the Dolomitic Member is within the acceptable range for CO2 geological storage, but the permeability values are far too low. This minimizes the possibilities of the Dolomitic Member –and probably of the whole Boñar Formation– to become an appropriate CO2 reservoir.