Resumen
The requirements on the existing rail infrastructure, including bridges, need for higher speed as well as to accommodate the extremely growing traffic demand has brought major changes in different solution to railway track systems in last few decades. Since the beginning of the direct fastening system for railway bridges, probably Embedded Rail System (ERS) is one of the most interesting one. Especially, the low maintenance requirements together with the capability to refurbishment of existing bridges and low noise emission has given new possibilities to this system, contributing towards environmental and economic sustainability. The purpose of this paper is to analyze and describe the response of ERS system under different vertical and horizontal load, based on a small scale laboratory test. Second part of the paper describes the numerical analysis of the application of the ERS system on the Starý most in Bratislava, where the test results were used.