TRACK TECHNOLOGY & RAIL LIVE
Half a billion pounds of plant and equipment at Rail Live 2014
Adam Hewitt reports from the Rail Live show in Warwickshire. T
housands of visitors saw innovation in action – and half a billion pounds worth of
plant and equipment on display – at the fi rst Rail Live event.
The two-day Network Rail show on June 18-19 built on the success of last year’s National Track Plant Exhibition, also held at Long Marston in Warwickshire, but with an enhanced scope including signalling, asset management and electrifi cation technology, rather than just track plant.
Rail Live was “twice the size” of last year’s event, according to Network Rail track director Steve Featherstone, who was closely involved in organising both.
Patrick McLoughlin, National Supply Chain director Nick Elliott, Pete Waterman, National Electrifi cation Programme director Saleem Mohammad, FutureRailway director David Clarke, and programme director for signalling, Mark Southwell.
Because the site is connected to the rail network, companies could show off even the very largest plant and equipment, from cranes and excavators to Kirow piling trains and Colas Rail’s new ‘Super’ Class 60 locos, one of which, 60087, was named at the show for the charity it’s supporting, CLIC Sargent. A cheque for £15,000 was handed over, but the total amount raised is likely to be many times larger.
There was also a very busy programme of talks and speeches, including transport secretary
Robbie Burns, regional director for Wales and Western, also spoke, as did Steve Naybour of the Track Partnership collaboration between Balfour Beatty and London Underground. Simon Scott, who is leading major changes to Network Rail’s product approvals system, updated the audience on what that will mean for suppliers and designers, now that it is becoming a fee-based service and the ‘sponsor’ element is being stripped out. “It’s not who you know, it’s what you have,” he said, and the new risk-based approach means low-risk products or technologies won’t need to go through the full approvals process. Not everyone in the audience was happy with the changes.
‘A real statement of intent’
Steve Featherstone said Rail Live had its genesis in an event held “in the car park” at Network Rail’s Westwood facility about fi ve years ago,
rail technology magazine Jun/Jul 14 | 111
which has grown every year. He called Rail Live “a real statement of intent about the industry’s confi dence and ambition”.
His excitement shone through as he discussed some of the kit he’d been looking at, from rail saws and RRVs to the fl exible train arrival point system which is allowing the High Output Track Renewal System ‘factory train’ to do up to an extra 100m of renewals a night.
That system, which won approval in principle from two RSSB committees earlier this year, is based on the simple concept of stopping the train where the team wants to work, then taking the possession around it, saving 10-20 minutes a shift.
In his speech and subsequent interview
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