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iRail 2011


Ahead of iRail itself, schoolchildren across Derby tried out day-long rail design challenges and came up with some great ideas. RTM went along to one of the days to find out more.


H


undreds of schoolchildren across Derbyshire had a day out of the class-


room for a STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths) Day, giving many of them a peek into the world of railway engineering for the first time.


Designed and delivered by some of the team behind iRail alongside education charity the Smallpeice Trust, the days were a fun but challenging look at rail design.


RTM visited Year 9 pupils at Lees Brook Community Sports College in Chaddesden, Derby, for their STEM Day project – build- ing a guided rail system to transfer a load (a tin of beans) from point A, to B, to C, and back again, without physically touch- ing it. Other schools attempted a different challenge; building a ‘long load’ vehicle capable of negotiating curves and a bridge and an automatic coupling system to link it to a model electric locomotive.


The winning team at each school then went onto the iRail itself event on March 18.


Dave Saunders, chairman of iRail 2011 and one of the challenge designers, spoke to RTM at the STEM Day. He explained: “There is a general problem with getting youngsters into engineering, and there’s a problem getting them into the railway sector.


“iRail started two years ago, when I was president of the Derby Railway Engineering Society, which was celebrating its 100th anniversary. We looked around the room at our lectures, and the question arose – where are the replacement members com- ing from? The demographic was going up and up.


“Railway engineering has been particu- larly bad in portraying itself as somewhere for you to build a good future. Those of us having these discussions all loved our lives in the rail industry, had a fantastic career and wanted to share it with others. I joined the industry consciously at 18.


“But these days, there’s a huge discon- nect between the industry and the educa- tion sector, so we came up with the idea of celebrating innovation and opportunity in rail. We found out about iNet and linked up with Loughborough University, from where the Transport iNet is run, and they


50 | rail technology magazine Feb/Mar 11


Dave Saunders, who also visited the STEM Day at Lees Brook


backed it wholeheartedly. These challeng- es give plenty of scope for innovation – the amount of imagination used throughout the STEM Days challenges has been great to see.


“It’s interesting to see the kids coming up with their own versions of technology we all know about in the railway – sets of points, turntables, traverses and so on. It was quite an exercise coming up with the challenges!”


The Smallpeice Trust, founded in 1966 by self-taught engineer Dr Cosby Smallpeice with £1.6m of his personal fortune, runs hands-on STEM Days all over the country and will use the challenges developed at iRail with thousands of children.


Thea Hill, an education officer with the trust, led the STEM Day at Lees Brook. She said: “It’s gone incredibly well and they’ve really taken to it. It’s a classic design-and- make project, getting the students to think about conceptual design. They are meeting a lot of quite difficult challenges along the way - on face value, it was quite straight- forward, but after the first half-hour they realised how much there was to it!


“We seem to be really reaching out to those students who learn kinaesthetically, learn- ing by doing, some of whom are really getting into this challenge even if exams aren’t their strong suit.”


Alistair Dunn, director of applied learn- ing at the school, agreed, saying: “The students have been really engaged with it. There’s enough to keep them occupied, busy and thinking. They quickly found it was more difficult than they first thought. With 20 minutes to go, I didn’t think any were going to work, but then it all seemed to come together for them.


“They aren’t aware of the hundreds of years of rail history, necessarily, so it’s been interesting seeing what they come up with.”


One of the judges at the STEM Day, Tanya Galliara, an engineer with Atkins, told RTM: “I thought the designs were all very inventive. The students thought clearly and had some good ideas and I was partic- ularly impressed with the winning design.


“I think it’s important to encourage young- er people to think about engineering. The best way to do that is to get them directly involved.


The winning team on the day were Rubie Barker, Amber Kelly, Callum Burke, Scott Gray and Joshua Lambert. Unfortunately they just missed out on the big prize at iRail itself – but the judges stressed how close all the teams came to victory.


FOR MORE INFORMATION W: www.smallpeicetrust.org.uk


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