Ricardo Rail on winning the IMechE Railway Challenge

Ricardo Rail was the winning team at this year’s Institution of Mechanical Engineers Railway Challenge, where teams were challenged to build miniature locomotives to face a number of challenges across the competition weekend.

Martin Elliott, who supervised the Ricardo team, said the challenge was something that he wanted to enter because of the practical experience it grants to competitors.

“This is something I have always wanted our graduates to do, but until now we had never had enough graduates to enter a team,” he said. “It is a great opportunity for the graduates to do something practical. They usually go off on placements and do lots of general consultancy work, but to actually get to design and build something is what the Railway Challenge is all about, and that's why Ricardo wanted to enter.

“When Ricardo took over Lloyds Register it meant we were a much bigger organisation. So the team of nine we entered had six railway engineers, but also three from the automotive part of Ricardo.”

Benjamin Morley, who was a member of the winning team, said the challenge taught him a lot, and to end up winning was testament to the hard work the team put in under the Ricardo Rail banner.

“I learnt a lot about interpersonal skills, and having the right people in your team is very important,” he said. “I was responsible for the suspension side of the design, and I learnt a lot from the technical side of the challenge as well.

“We were so surprised to win and know it was very close. We were representing our company so we wanted to give our absolute best, and it was great to end up winning.”

What made Ricardo Rail’s victory even more rewarding was the fact that it was the first year the company had entered the challenge, meaning it had to start the design from scratch instead of improving on existing designs from previous years.

“It's hard to describe how proud I am and how proud we are as a company at what the graduates have achieved,” Martin said. “This was our first year of entry and it has exceeded our wildest dreams. We were hoping they would come up with a loco that would take part and be competitive at all the challenges, but to actually win was just great.<

“We are already talking about our entry for next year and I hope this is something our graduates will do every year as an integral part of their graduate training programme.