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Railway infrastructures are characterized by useful lives of more than 30 years. Such long useful lives make long-term maintenance strategies crucial. In this paper a simulation ap-proach for the whole useful life of ballasted tracks is presented. It relies on a stochastic model of the ageing and restoration process of railway track geometry and a heuristic algorithm for maintenance interventions planning. Its objective is the simu-lation, analysis and optimization of track geometry maintenance strategies during the whole service life of the track, under con-sideration of the ageing and restoration characteristics of each track sector and the resources available for maintenance. The results of a simulation are a list of all tamping interventions during the useful life of the track and the course of the track geometry deviation at each track sector during the simulated time. On the basis of this data, fundamental features of the track geometry quality during the whole track useful life can be assessed. After a description of the simulation procedure and the enumeration of the input and output data, the approach is validated by means of a case study basing on real data of a French TGV line. In the case study, the long-term effects of an adaptive intervention threshold are investigated. With this aim, two strategies are simulated, one with a constant and one with an adaptive intervention threshold. The advantages and drawbacks of each strategy are then analysed and compared. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]