David Shirres

Whilst attending the strategic railway business forum for 1520 mm gauge railways in Sochi last year, The Rail Engineer had to opportunity to see the construction work on new lines and stations being built for Russia’s 2014 Sochi Olympics (issue 94 – August 2012). This year’s forum was held on 30/31 May at the Olympic [...]

Glasgow’s east end, like the east end of London, has suffered urban decay with the closure of its major industries. Dalmarnock, 2 miles south-east of the city centre, was one of Glasgow’s earliest industrial centres due to its extensive river frontage along the Clyde. Industries included various weaving factories, a cotton mill, gas works, iron [...]

Rarely can the announcement of a £650 million rail investment package have been subject to as much criticism as July’s announcement by Scottish Transport Minister Keith Brown of the programme to transform Scotland’s flagship route between Edinburgh and Glasgow Queen Street High Level, the E&G. In doing so, Brown announced: “The Edinburgh- Glasgow Improvement Programme [...]

Understanding the condition of substructure is vital for maintaining good track geometry. With trackbed investigation now recognised as good practice, some engineers might dismiss this statement from the 2012 Rail Technical Strategy (RTS) as obvious. However, the issue is how to obtain this understanding with increasingly limited possession times for trackbed surveys. So it’s hard [...]

Anyone strap hanging on a crowded Victoria line train could be forgiven for not believing that, a few months ago, its upgrade gave a 21% increase in passenger capacity. The reality is that the various challenging capacity improvement projects being undertaken by London Underground (LU) barely keep pace with London’s insatiable demand for tube travel. [...]

The Secretary of State for Transport, Patrick McLoughlin, has officially opened the Institute of Railway Research (IRR) at Huddersfield University. The IRR's team of researchers, headed by its director Professor Simon Iwnicki, had been at Manchester Metropolitan University's Rail Technology...

The 177 delegates attending the fifth Railway Industry Association’s (RIA) Technology and Innovation Conference were treated, amongst other things, to a mix of success stories, blue sky thinking and guidance on the current maze of technology initiatives. With such wide ranging topics there was certainly a buzz about the conference. Rail innovation is certainly a [...]