The Rail Engineer Magazine

Of the many truisms of times past, two came readily to mind recently. One is that training was carried out in a hut ‘round the back of the offices’. It was delivered earnestly and competently, but in rather spartan...

Whatever you might read in the papers, the rail industry has a first-rate reputation for safety. According to the Rail Safety & Standards Board, it is “1,500 times safer than motorcycling, over 500 times safer than walking and 30...

Passenger train maintenance depots come in all shapes and sizes and Doncaster-based Trackwork, a specialist track contractor, covers the complete spectrum. Maintaining, upgrading or building from new, the list of depots where the company has worked makes impressive reading....

Automating the visual inspection of rolling stock components at depots offers significant improvements to vehicle maintenance and its scheduling by helping to identify equipment degradation and significant fleet trends. DeltaRail’s VIEW system offers a range of automatic procedures for the...

Shields Depot in Glasgow is a busy place. Home to five classes of electric trains from the First ScotRail fleet, its 104 sets keep the workforce busy around the clock. Also here is ScotRail’s only wheel lathe so other...

Customer demands are forcing the rail sector to develop partnerships and collaborative workstreams to deliver fleet reliability. A recent seminar organised by the Institution of Mechanical Engineers, in association with ATOC, focussed on case studies, workshops and experiences from...

The sale of EDF Energy’s networks business to the Cheung Kong Group (CKG), completed on 1st November, has brought a new name to the rail industry - UK Power Networks Services. But it’s been business as usual for the...

December is an in-between month so far as weather goes. Hopefully the worst of the delays caused by ‘leaves on the line’ are over, and the ‘wrong sort of snow” normally hasn’t arrived yet. However, there is one problem...

London’s rail network is currently undergoing a significant transformation with major projects such as the £5.5 billion Thameslink Programme. This will offer increased capacity and improved journey times on one of the UK’s busiest routes - the north-south line...

EGIP is shorthand for the Edinburgh-Glasgow Improvements Programme. It is being funded to the tune of around £1 billion by Transport Scotland on behalf of the Scottish Government and is a significant investment in the rail infrastructure linking Scotland’s...