Engineering news
Held in the verdant surroundings of Stapleford Miniature Railway in Leicestershire from June 30 to July 2, the competition assessed the teams’ miniature locomotives in series of challenges designed to test aspects such as speed, ride, design and efficiency. The locomotives are designed to work on 10¼” gauge railway line and must be powerful enough to transport a 600kg load – including one of the Railway Challenge judges.
“We are delighted that we’ve been able to retain the crown as Overall Winners,” said David Westcough, leader of the nine-person SNC Lavalin team which had previously won the competition in 2012, and again in 2016. “Our hard work has paid off and we are particularly pleased with our performance in the Reliability, Noise, Ride Comfort and Design Challenges. Taking part in the Railway Challenge has allowed us to put our imagination and resourcefulness to the test and given us the hands-on experience of what’s needed to make a locomotive from start to finish.”
It didn’t go quite as smoothly for all the teams. Manchester Metropolitan University entered the competition but failed to make it to the final competition, while other teams broke down on track. “We had an unfortunate blip where there was an air bubble in our fuel line,” said Douglas Surridge, who was project manager on TFL’s team of graduate and apprentice engineers.
However, the judges were impressed by the creative approaches taken by the teams, particularly in the Energy Storage and Energy Efficiency challenges. “These are two big issues currently 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 Challenge’s organising committee.
The competition is aimed at getting more young people interesting in a career in railway engineering. "The industry has a real skills shortage," Iwnicki told PE. "We really need more engineers to join the railway industry, of all types.”
IMechE president Carolyn Griffiths was in attendance at 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.
That sentiment was echoed by many of the team members across the competition, including the first ever international entry, from Germany’s FH Aachen University of Applied Science.
"From an academic point of view it's a fantastic way of being able to show students a real life engineering problem,” said Iwnicki, who teaches at the University of Huddersfield. “We give them lectures on fluid dynamics and thermodynamics, but until they actually work on something like this they don't really apply it."
Griffiths agreed. “One of the things I'm concerned about is that people only get exposure to academic learning and then suddenly it's like a cliff edge,” she said.
The final results were:
1: SNC-Lavalin Rail & Transit (Overall Winners and winners of the Ride Comfort Challenge, Noise Challenge, joint winners of the Design Challenge sponsored by Wabtec and joint winners of the Reliability Challenge)
2: University of Birmingham and AEGIS Engineering Systems (winners of the Innovation Challenge sponsored by RSSB, the Energy Storage Challenge and joint winners of the Reliability Challenge)
3: University of Huddersfield (joint winners of the Design Challenge sponsored by Wabtec and joint winners of the Reliability Challenge)
4: University of Sheffield (winners of the Maintainability Challenge)
5: Transport for London (joint winners of the Design Challenge - sponsored by Wabtec)
6: University of Southampton and Siemens Mobility (winners of the Traction Challenge)
7: University of Warwick
8: Alstom UK & Ireland (winners of the Business Case Challenge sponsored by RIA)
9: FH Aachen University of Applied Sciences (winners of the Judges' Award for Outstanding Initiative from a new team.)
10: Bombardier Transportation and University of Derby
11. Brunel University (winners of the Judges' Award for Most Interesting Locomotive Design.)