  A new approach to the inverse-scattering technique of Alekseev is presented
which permits real-pole soliton solutions of the Ernst equations to be
considered. This is achieved by adopting distinct real poles in the scattering
matrix and its inverse. For the case in which the electromagnetic field
vanishes, some explicit solutions are given using a Minkowski seed metric. The
relation with the corresponding soliton solutions that can be constructed using
the Belinskii-Zakharov inverse-scattering technique is determined.
