The Railway Challenge at Sheffield team have been crowned overall winners of
Railway Challenge 2024, a competition organised by the
Institution of Mechanical Engineers (IMechE), that took place between 27-30 June 2024 at
Stapleford Miniature Railway, Leicestershire. On its 10th anniversary of participating in the
Railway Challenge, this is the first time the team from the
University of Sheffield has won the competition, while notching up its highest-ever score.
In second place were the Derby and Alstom team with the PUTrain team from Poznań University of Technology in Poland, defending champions from 2023’s competition, taking third place overall.
The 2024 competition saw three teams enter the Entry Level category which included for the first time a team from outside Europe taking part - TeamTRAK from the Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur. Joining them were Heriot-Watt University and Siemens Mobility Ltd.
They submitted designs of their proposed locomotives which had to follow all the rules of the main competition as well as a CAD model to demonstrate their overall structure and a more detailed design of one chosen sub-system, in addition to competing in all of the other presentation challenges (business case, technical poster, innovation and design).
Siemens Mobility team were the first-ever overall winners of
Railway Challenge 2024 Entry Level competition as well as the HW-Rail team from Heriot-Watt University, which won the CAD award in the
Entry Level competition which is open for teams from institutions which have not previously participated in the competition with the intention that this provides them with a stepping stone towards a full entry to design and construct a locomotive in a future year.
There were also new track-based challenges which teams can choose to participate in. These included an ‘Autocoupler challenge’ in which teams need to demonstrate that their locomotive can couple up to a coach, move it and uncouple from it without driver intervention.
On 2024’s event, Simon Iwnicki, organising committee chair professor, said: “The
Railway Challenge provides a unique experience to all the teams as they tackle the various issues relating to the design and operation of a locomotive in a real-world environment. Not least are the challenges of managing a team making critical decisions and the
Railway Challenge provides a fantastic learning experience which the participants will take with them into their careers.”
The
2024 Railway Challenge was sponsored by Angel Trains, AtkinsRéalis, CAF and RSSB, Network Rail, and the David Rollin Foundation.