Designed to show the interesting and rewarding careers available in the sector, the IMechE Railway Division’s annual Railway Challenge returned to the Stapleford Miniature Railway, near Melton Mowbray in Leicestershire, from 26-29 June.
The event’s fourteenth year featured 12 full teams, including university students as well as apprentices and graduates already working in industry. Eight groups brought locomotives to the competition, which featured both static and dynamic challenges.
The team from Network Rail and Colas Rail came out on top overall, with victories in the energy storage, autocoupler and business case challenges. Two of the three international groups made up the rest of the podium, with Germany’s Nürnberg Institute of Technology Team Eagle in second and FH Aachen’s FH2Rail in third.
Amongst the new additions to the competition was the ride-on challenge, meaning teams could design their locomotives to accommodate drivers for the first time, instead of requiring them to sit on the first passenger carriage. Four took the opportunity, with Poznan University of Technology winning that component.
Smaller, lighter solutions
Set in gentle rural surroundings, parts of the 101⁄4 inch (260mm) gauge railway at Stapleford Park informed some of the challenges. The markers for the energy storage challenge, for example, were on a flat stretch of track next to the lake, which buzzed with dragonflies and butterflies in the hot June sun.
A sloping section, on the other hand, was used for the traction challenge, where the teams’ locomotives had to accelerate while pulling two coaches. “They learn then that it's not just about having a lot of power, because the wheels could slip,” explained Simon Iwnicki, chair of the challenge’s organising committee.
Other track events included the passenger comfort challenge, which measured acceleration, and the autocoupler challenge, automation of which is a focus for the industry. In the maintainability challenge, teams had to remove a powered wheelset from the locomotive as quickly as possible, then put them back and start moving again.
“We’re throwing them real-life problems… to see what sort of novel ideas they can come up with,” said Andrew Skinner, immediate past-chair of the division. “There's a lot of established solutions, but are there smaller, lighter ones for the same problem… weight is a key thing for us.”
The track also featured a new turntable, which helped prevent delays and should enable the competition to more than double capacity in future.
‘Proper experience’
Taking part in the competition gives aspiring engineers solid technical experience, said Alice Callaghan, a competitor in Riccardo’s winning 2017 team and now a challenge judge. “It might be their first proper experience of the railway – you might not know what a bogie is before you do this, but you'll definitely know by the end of it,” she said.
“It's understanding the set-up, understanding signalling, understanding how it's happening, for a full appreciation of the railway. That's really important – a lot of the time you don't get the opportunity to be really hands on, and having that hands-on experience is just brilliant.”
The industry as a whole benefits from the challenge, she added – a previous Birmingham team had a hydrogen locomotive, for example, which fed into work on the Hydroflex mainline locomotive with Porterbrook.
“They're all quite sophisticated machines,” said Iwnicki. “We provide a specification and a set of rules, they're not very detailed documents. We want them to be as free as they want to be in the way they design them, obviously within limits: they have to run on our track and fit through the tunnel, and be safe to operate.
“But they can choose any form of motor power, any form of control… We try to mimic the sort of the challenges that are real in the railway industry.”
The event also offers great opportunities for networking and discussions with senior employees from major rail and transport organisations, the organisers said, such as chief judge Bill Reeve, director of rail for Transport Scotland. Lots of the students that have taken part are now in senior positions in railway companies, Iwnicki added.
Sharing tools – and ideas
Aspiring engineers at the event learn from each other as well as senior colleagues, said Callaghan. Locomotives are inspected for potential upgrades for next year, and teams get bonuses for going out of their way to be helpful.
“A team might lend a piece of equipment, or they might have a spare part that they can share with others,” Callaghan said. “It's just really friendly, you go around and you see what everyone else is doing and you learn. That's the way it works – and that's the way the railway is as well.”
As well as the 12 full teams, five entry-level teams were also present, perhaps benefiting most from the open sharing of knowledge. A group of students from Monash University in Melbourne attended, for example, bringing a virtual design with the intention of returning in 2026.
“The teams are really nice and they were very willing to answer our questions about anything. So just by being here, we already have a much better idea of how we should redesign our locomotive,” said chief technology officer Patrick McCarthy.
“We're looking to get a minimal viable product – and we have to make it quickly, because it'll take three months to ship overseas to the UK.”
Travelling all that way – and planning to transport a locomotive the same long distance – reveals how valuable the event is. “Australia has a really big industry in rail, and currently there's pretty much only a few courses,” McCarthy said. “The only way that people learn is by getting a job in a rail company and learning from there. So what we're trying to provide for Australians is that stepping stone into the rail industry, which currently just doesn't really exist.”
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