Industrial News

Listen to this article In December 2023, there was much adverse criticism of the railway when there were several incidents on the Great Western Main Line caused by rail breaks, compounded by a major delay caused by damage to the overhead line equipment. Against this background, Rail Engineer was keen to hear from Brian Whitney,…

Listen to this article With the European summer hopefully just around the corner, engineers must consider how best to manage the risk of heat-related track buckle. Established measures include targeted (and disruptive) speed reductions and (expensive) human observation of the track to detect and report lateral movement. They also include localised temperature monitoring, but this…

Listen to this article Software has become a major feature of rolling stock design maintenance and operation. Even in the 1990s, your writer counted over 200 microprocessors fitted to systems and sub-systems on each new eight-car Central line train. That was a comparatively simple train by today’s standards which might see as many as 200…

Listen to this article The direction that the UK rail industry takes in the next few months is taxing the minds of many and generating much speculation. To try to understand the issues and to perceive the likely way forward, an online conference was recently organised by the Westminster Energy, Environment and Transport Forum. The…