This year’s Railway Division Technical Tour took in upgrade projects, museums, maintenance facilities, metros and more across The Netherlands (Amsterdam, Rotterdam, Utrecht and Amersfoort), Germany (Munich, Stuttgart, Siegen and Wuppertal) and France (Lille and Coquelles) from 16 to 24 May, with a total of 43 people taking part.
A three-hour walking tour of the “amazing” construction site at Stuttgart station was a particular highlight, according to Felix Schmid, division chair from 2020-21, who started organising the technical tours in 2016.
“It was a major node in the German network, with a terminal station and huge area of railway outside,” he told Professional Engineering. “While people talk about it as a railway project, it’s really an urban renewal project, where they decided to reuse this huge area of land used for railway sidings for developing the city.
“The corridor was really breaking the city into three parts essentially, so [they are] building a new central station underground, which linked several of the lines going into Stuttgart.”
Stuttgart 21, as the project is known, will replace the 16-track terminus with an eight-track through station. Such an approach could have been sensible for the UK’s HS2 project, Schmid suggested. “We are building a terminus station for HS2 in London and in Birmingham, and really it does not make sense. You can see on the continent, everybody is trying to build through stations because the capacity is much greater, and the land take is much smaller.”
Techniques used at SNCF workshops in Lille Hellemmes could also have been useful for HS2, Schmid said. The modern facility uses remote-control electric platforms to carry one or two carriages between workstations.
“It gives the workshop more flexibility, because conventionally in our workshops a carriage… is pushed in on rails, lifted where it is and then put on to stands, a little bit like jacking your car and putting it on axle stands,” said fellow organiser Andrew Skinner, immediate past-chair of the division and Head of Engineering for Great Western Railway.
“What we saw essentially allows the facility to become a production line – the vehicles can easily be moved between the stations, rather than all the people, tools, material having to be brought to it.”
HS2 “missed an opportunity” by not using a similar approach at its large new workshop outside Birmingham in Washwood Heath, Schmid said.
A more positive lesson came at a visit to Prorail and Delft University in Amersfoort, where the group saw a leading-edge track monitoring sensor system. The approach used service trains for track monitoring, something which has also been deployed in the UK. “That's almost a confirmation that we are doing the right thing,” Schmid said.
A ride on the monorail-like Wuppertaler Schwebebahn suspension railway was another highlight, offering a rare opportunity to travel on a unique mode of transport in a space-constrained environment.
“From a technical perspective, the most interesting thing is that they use ETCS (European Train Control System), which is the European standard signalling system for new railways, so that gives you a very close separation between the trains and is very safe,” said Schmid.
Not all of the German leg was as impressive – the Nightjet failed to make it to Munich train station, instead arriving three hours late to Munich-Pasing in the west of the city, extending the overnight trip from Amersfoort and cancelling the visit to brake manufacturer Knorr Bremse. “That's always a good lesson, because you learn more about railways when they go wrong than when they work well,” said Schmid.
Other visits included the Amsterdam Centraal upgrade project, the Alstom bogie plant in Siegen, the rubber-tyred metro in Lille and the Eurotunnel maintenance facilities in Calais.
A special effort by division chair Iain Rae helped ensure that half of the tour group was less than 30-years-old, giving younger engineers a valuable opportunity to mix with senior colleagues in a relaxed setting.
“We always try and take as many young people with us as we can,” said Skinner. “It’s opening up the railway as a system within the world, beyond their current work boundaries, so they see different ways of doing things and have that opportunity to talk not only to us, but of course to network between themselves.”
The group included a “massive, diverse range of people”, said Alexander Stark, a rail engineer degree apprentice at London North Eastern Railway. “You met people in your industry, spoke to them about what they do, and also learnt a lot from the more experienced members,” he said.
One of best aspects of the tour was behind-the-scenes access to facilities that would otherwise be closed to individuals, he added.
The tour was sponsored by Angel Trains, Clive Cashin, Eversholt Leasing, Malcolm Dobell, Eurotunnel, Jon Leigh, Manchester Rail Consultancy, Porterbrook, Prorail and SNCF.
Want the best engineering stories delivered straight to your inbox? The Professional Engineering newsletter gives you vital updates on the most cutting-edge engineering and exciting new job opportunities. To sign up, click here.
Content published by Professional Engineering does not necessarily represent the views of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers.