Now in its third year, the Railway Challenge, set up by the Institution of Mechanical Engineers, invites teams to design and manufacture the most efficient, reliable and quietest small-scale locomotive. The competition, which TfL entered for the first time this year, is held at Stapleford Miniature Railway near Melton Mowbray, Leicestershire.
The locomotives are designed to work on 10¼” gauge railway line and compete whilst hauling a 600kg load, which includes one of the Railway Challenge judges. TfL triumphed against teams from Derby’s Interfleet Technology Ltd (2nd), Birmingham University (3rd) and the 2013 winners, Huddersfield University (4th).
Group Captain Mark Hunt, President of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers, presented the victors with their award, and congratulated all teams for taking part:
“TfL did fantastically well, particularly being competition newcomers, to produce the most innovative and reliable locomotive.”
“The Railway Challenge presents a unique opportunity for these young engineers to convert their designs into practical applications. The competition is gruelling and runs along the lines of a real-life tendering process. The teams have to prepare a business case, safety case, financial plans and design, and have to build a locomotive from scratch. It is fantastic to see the ingenuity, ambition and team-work of these young engineers.”
Professor Simon Iwnicki BSc PhD CEng FIMechE is Director of the Institute of Railway Research, School of Computing and Engineering, at the University of Huddersfield, and is also Railway Division Chairman at the Institution. He commented:
“The Railway Challenge aims to show young people that careers in railway engineering are challenging, exciting and rewarding. The buzz at the final last weekend demonstrated that this aim is being achieved.”
Luke Foy AMIMechE, Team Leader for TfL said that many colleagues, as members of the Institution, were aware of competitions such as Formula Student, and were thrilled to hear that there was an event related to their industry that they could enter beyond university. He says:
“Taking part in this competition has helped us gain first-hand experience of the whole process of developing a locomotive, which will be hugely valuable to our future careers maintaining and developing London’s rail and underground network.”
He added,
“It sounded like a great opportunity to take part in some raw design and construction work, which is hard to get at graduate and apprentice level. Our placements are only three months at a time to provide maximum exposure to different areas of the company, so it is great to have a year-long project.”
Understanding the different technologies required – sometimes from scratch – presented many challenges. Luke continues:
“An example of this was our hydro-pneumatic energy storage system, about which we had no prior knowledge. We did calculations early on to determine what pressure the nitrogen accumulator would be, but when it came to building, so many things had changed that the nitrogen was at such a high pressure that it became incompressible from braking applications. It was a very iterative process: changing one aspect had a knock-on effect on others. We overcame issues such as this by using our sub-teams efficiently and agreeing pre-defined interfaces so that everyone knew what their end goal was and what they had to provide for the other sub-teams. One of the greatest challenges was simply managing our time spent on the Railway Challenge, and time spent doing our daily jobs.”
This year, a new competition element was introduced, focusing on noise. The other practical challenges were: energy storage, where teams need to ensure that the locomotive is able to store energy during braking and then use it to drive the locomotive forward again; traction; and ‘ride comfort’. The teams were also assessed on a business presentation and the design of the locomotive.
It was the energy storage part of the challenge, which set TfL apart so markedly from the rest. TfL managed to propel its loco forward almost 10 metres, compared to the next best, Interfleet, which moved it two metres. Interfleet won the traction challenge; Birmingham University won the noise challenge; and Huddersfield University had the best score for the business presentation.
Luke explains how his team’s energy storage system came about:
“We wanted to try something innovative, but that always comes with risks. We used a fully mechanical energy storage system as there would be less energy losses at low speeds if it worked correctly. We used the movement of the loco, whilst braking, to pump hydraulic oil from a hydraulic pump mounted on the bogie into an accumulator to compress nitrogen. This system is then locked off once the pump stops rotating. This can then be stored in the accumulator until we are ready to set off again. We then use the compressed nitrogen to force the hydraulic oil through a hydraulic motor mounted on the other bogie to move the loco forward. It is an unusual technology to be used on locos. We wanted to present something new in the competition, and also do something that we would never get to do in our jobs for London Underground. Compressed nitrogen in a confined tunnel is not particularly sought after!”
Simon Iwnicki adds that the competition was set up as part of a wide range of measures being initiated by the Institution and other industry stakeholders to tackle the growing skills shortage in the railway industry. As well as raising the profile of the rail industry through a fun competition, Simon stated:
“The challenge is particularly valuable to the participants as it provides experience of working in a team to solve real problems. It exposes team members to issues such as time management, delivering to a specification and solving problems under pressure and in the public eye. Teams also gain real experience of handling interfaces with clients, suppliers and competitors.”
He added:
“We are planning for incremental growth of the Railway Challenge, although managing large numbers of innovative prototype locomotives on a relatively small network is itself a challenge for the organisers and our hosts at the Stapleford Miniature Railway. We have had interest from several additional universities and we also hope to have one or two new industry teams in 2015.”
To enter a team for the 2015 Railway Challenge please email Rachel Pearson, Project Manager, at
r_pearson@imeche.org and include the following information: your University or company, Team Supervisor and your Team Leader (names, job titles where applicable, full postal address, email addresses, telephone and mobile numbers).