Rail traffic has increased manifold during the last decade. This development and the need for shift transportation from road to rail to decrease CO2 emission, creates a challenge for the railway industry to improve capacity in the network. The challenge is to do more effective inspection and maintenance in less time. An EU project ‘AUTOMAIN’ was initiated to optimize and automate maintenance and inspection activities with introduction of new planning and scheduling tools and methodologies. The project looked into reducing the maintenance possession time by around 40%. The project aim was to; adopt best practices from other industries in maintenance optimization, developing novel track inspection approaches for freight routes. The scope was for in-train measuring and self-inspecting switch, researching and assessing innovations that can improve the effectiveness and efficiency of large scale inspection and maintenance processes with a scope on track and switch maintenance, track inspection; developing key technologies that will drive the development of modular infrastructure design, and developing a new maintenance planning and scheduling tool to optimize the maintenance activities, taking account of the benefits brought about by other improvements in this project.The Consortium composition covers the railway maintenance and inspection field like; infrastructure managers, contractors, train operating companies, railway component industry, research organizations, small and medium enterprises (SMEs) and railway industry related organizations. In this paper, the authors have tried to summarize the methodology and results achieved in this project and how it has achieved the reduced maintenance possession time for higher railway traffic movements.