Visiting facilities and public transport systems in Northern Ireland, the Republic of Ireland and France, the Railway Technical Tour 2026 will run from 1-10 May.
The IMechE Railway Division event will start in earnest on 2 May at the Irish Railway Preservation Society’s workshop in Whitehead, Country Antrim, where volunteers restore and build new steam locomotives. “It’s very much relevant for engineering skills,” said division chair Rebeka Sellick. “We can actually see things being made from first principles, which is really helpful for understanding.”
Fellow volunteer organising committee member Andrew Skinner added: “This is manufacture of steam locomotives almost to original design – but using modern technology and standards, where appropriate or required.”
The group will then return to Belfast for a visit to the new Adelaide rolling stock depot, which Sellick said will show “ways of getting excited about the technical side of train maintenance”, and a guided tour of Belfast Grand Central, the acclaimed new trans-modal hub.
Next on the provisional itinerary is a trip on the jointly operated Enterprise train from Belfast to Dublin, where attendees will hear from the chief engineer of Irish Rail about the operator’s new train procurement project.
Battery-electric multiple units (BEMUs) will be a big draw at Dublin’s Inchicore works, which will serve the expanded Dart+ commuter network. “There’s a huge amount of investment going on,” Sellick said. Freight is another significant focus, appearing the next day in the project to reopen the line from Limerick to Foynes.
The following day in Cork, the group will visit the first 25kV electrification project in Ireland. With only 3% of the network electrified, the country is “right at the beginning of an electrification journey,” according to Sellick. “That’s really, really positive, how transformative that will be in terms of delivering services, which will have a five- to 10-minute frequency all around the Cork commute area, absolutely transforming the commuting from car to train. There’s a huge amount of energy around that.”
After an overnight ferry to Roscoff, arriving on 7 May, the group will visit Rennes to see the Val Néo (Véhicule Automatique Léger), the latest version of a light metro system.
“The Val system is very different from your standard metro, tramway or mainline railway,” said organising committee member Felix Schmid. “It’s incredibly complicated. It has got significant advantages, but you pay quite a big premium for that in terms of the technology, and you don’t normally get to look at that in any detail, so we are hoping to see that in the depot.”
The next day, attendees will see Angers and its modern tramway system, which uses a power supply from the ground rather than an overhead line. The final visit will spotlight a tram-train system being manufactured in Tours.
The tour “isn’t just about travelling around and observing”, Skinner said. “More often than not, we manage to go behind the scenes… we’ve got backstage passes, if you will. It opens up non-public areas to the participants. Again, particularly young people that might not have experienced this before.”
The event is run “for the benefit of the Railway Division and other members, particularly young people, to give them the opportunity to see different cultures in the context of railways, different ways of doing things, opportunities to network, access to senior engineers – not quite 24/7, but for most of the day and some of the evening in a reasonably relaxed, informal atmosphere,” he added.
Even the journeys themselves will be an opportunity to “learn a lot”, Schmid said. “You look at all the stations, all the ticketing systems, and there are very significant differences.”
A previous tour was “an amazing opportunity to ask lots of questions and build relationships with the experts who both led and attended the tour”, said attendee Gillian Crisp, assistant electrification and plant maintenance engineer at Network Rail.
“It was a great experience and I enjoyed every bit of it – even the sleeper, when I look back – and the amount of organisation, dedication and prep work that went into it by the organisers was much appreciated and respected. It was an experience I will remember forever and I will recommend it to everyone I can, especially our new graduate intakes,” she said.
“The tour made me gain such an appreciation of every aspect of the railway, and technology and innovation that exists outwith the UK. We can definitely learn a lot more from European countries, which are so close to ourselves yet operate so differently.”
To express your interest or request further information, contact the IMechE volunteer organising team on railtechtour2026@gmail.com. Book your place on the Ffestiniog Travel web page.
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