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The event, held in June at Stapleford Miniature Railway in Leicestershire, pitted 11 teams of students and graduates against each other in a series of challenges. There was, for the first time, even an international entry – from Germany’s FH Aachen University of Applied Sciences.
SNC-Lavalin took the overall prize – which is determined by challenges relating to design, performance and reliability – for the second year in a row, ahead of the University of Birmingham.
Brunel University’s entry finished last in the overall competition, but its unique compressed-air propulsion system won the Judges’ Award for Most Interesting Locomotive Design.
“It has quite a lot of potential for things like thermal efficiency because you can heat the air going into the cylinders to get more expansion,” explained Brunel team member Ben Hoskins, who is in his fifth year of study. “It’s also quite good for giving really high amounts of torque, so you can pull quite a lot of stuff with it without much issue.”
The Transport for London (TfL) team, comprised of young engineers from its graduate scheme, employed a similar approach for the energy storage part of the challenge. The teams had to harvest energy during each run, and then use it to go as far as possible from a standing start.
“We’ve got a hydraulic accumulator,” explained Douglas Surridge, the TfL team’s project manager. “We’ve got a pump at the front and a motor at the back, so as you brake it pumps fluid into the tank. The tank has a nitrogen bladder in it that compresses, and then as you release the bladder it pushes the oil back round.”
The varied approaches to the energy storage and energy efficiency aspects of the competition particularly impressed. “These are two big issues being faced by manufacturers and so solving these challenges could mean that these young engineers could help to revolutionise our modern railways,” said Simon Iwnicki, chair of the Railway Challenge organising committee.
The competition is aimed at getting more young people interesting in careers in railway engineering. “The industry has a real skills shortage,” said Iwnicki. “We need more engineers, of all types, to join the railway industry.”
IMechE president Carolyn Griffiths attended the Railway Challenge for the first time, and she told PE that it was a “fantastic hands-on learning experience”.
“I’m living proof that having practical experience at a very early stage of your career is a really good thing to do,” she said.
This piece appears in the July/ August print issue of Professional Engineering.