Institution news
Now in its ninth successive year, the Railway Challenge tasks teams of students, apprentices and young professionals to follow a system engineering process to develop, build and test a railway locomotive that meets specific competition objectives. This year saw 15 teams enter the competition, with overseas participants coming from Poland and Germany.
They competed for the Design, Innovation, Business Proposition and Technical Poster awards although with the cancellation of the live event, an overall winner was not found this year. The winners of these awards were announced in an online awards ceremony held on 26 June 2020, with the opening remarks given by the Institution's President, Terry Spall.
“The online Railway Challenge will provide teams with the opportunity to present their work to a panel of leading experts from industry and receive feedback which will be useful in their further studies or career” commented Simon Iwnicki, Chair, Railway Challenge Organising Committee.
This year saw the University of Huddersfield secure the coveted Design Award. “Their report was highly professional and well up to the usual Huddersfield standard which is consistently in the top three for this challenge” explained Malcolm Dobell, Railway Challenge Deputy Head Judge. “It was readable and packed with relevant information. The calculations were exhaustive and well explained. The compliance matrix was comprehensive which the judges always appreciate.”
Extract from the HudRail Railway Challenge 2020 Team’s Innovation paper
The University of Huddersfield’s HudRail team also walked away with the Innovation and Best Technical Poster Awards this year. Judge Rebeka Sellick from SellickRail congratulated the team, saying that they won “with a novel combination of mechanical spring and super-capacitors for energy recovery, making their case with robust references and good arguments setting out the carbon and cost benefit.”
Members of the Network Rail Railway Challenge 2020 Team
The Business Proposition category was jointly won by teams from Poznań University of Technology and Network Rail. Both teams delivered a Dragon’s Den-style presentation to pitch their business case for their railway locomotive.
The Institution congratulates all teams who took part this year and hope you enjoyed the challenge. We look forward to seeing everyone again when the process starts in September for the 2021 Railway Challenge.