TRAINING
Stephen Kent, a teaching fellow at the Birmingham Centre for Railway Research & Education, at the University of Birmingham, reports back from an engineering challenge full of thrills and spills.
B
ritain’s railways must act to ensure that young engineers continue to join
the industry, allowing it to tackle the chal- lenges that it will continue to face for the foreseeable future.
This is not an easy task, because many young people do not realise that railway engineering can offer an exciting and re- warding career, with the potential to earn a good living. The railways may lack the glamour of Formula 1 racing for example, but they still use cutting-edge technologies to provide a reliable public service.
A recent event at the University of Birming- ham sought to stimulate interest in the profession by hosting 36 school pupils for a three-day residential course involving one of two taxing design, make and test pro- jects. This is part of a series of events with a railway focus, sponsored by The Lloyd’s
Register Educational Trust and the Nation- al Skills Academy for Railway Engineering (NSARE), and delivered by educational charity the Smallpeice Trust.
Learning and doing
The course introduced the 16 and 17-year- old students to both the theory and practice of railway engineering, and participants were given a number of lectures, including one from the UK Rail Accident Investiga- tion Branch.
This was followed by an intensive two-day period during which the teams constructed 1:30 scale models, with help and guidance from staff and postgraduate students from the Birmingham Centre for Railway Re- search and Education (BCRRE). Formal testing and evaluation then took place on the final morning.
The first challenge was to develop a crash- worthy vehicle, capable of keeping peak de- celeration levels under 10g when crashed into a solid wall at 2.5m/s (9km/h). To make the challenge as realistic as possible, heavy die-cast 1:30 scale bogies were pro- vided, along with a steel plate to represent the mass of traction and other on-train equipment. Sensitive instrumentation was fitted to the models, and a speed trap and high frame rate video camera were used to assess the designs using a bespoke test ramp.
If at first you don’t succeed…
It is fair to say that the initial attempts at a crashworthy vehicle design were not a great success. In addition to vehicle bodies simply collapsing upon impact, a number bounced back following an excessively se- vere impact and derailed or overturned.
Setting up for a crash test
Trains approaching the station
The participants with Jon Bentley 58 | rail technology magazine Aug/Sep 11
Train activates platform screen doors
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60 |
Page 61 |
Page 62 |
Page 63 |
Page 64 |
Page 65 |
Page 66 |
Page 67 |
Page 68 |
Page 69 |
Page 70 |
Page 71 |
Page 72 |
Page 73 |
Page 74 |
Page 75 |
Page 76 |
Page 77 |
Page 78 |
Page 79 |
Page 80 |
Page 81 |
Page 82 |
Page 83 |
Page 84 |
Page 85 |
Page 86 |
Page 87 |
Page 88 |
Page 89 |
Page 90 |
Page 91 |
Page 92