Ross Handling raise the standard at IMechE Railway Challenge
A team from engineering giant Alstom recently selected Ross Handling as supplier of choice for their first entry into the 2017 IMeche Railway Challenge.
A team from engineering giant Alstom recently selected Ross Handling as supplier of choice for their first entry into the 2017 IMeche Railway Challenge.
An engineering powerhouse in the field of rail vehicles, signalling and infrastructure Alstom have been part of the transport industry since the dawn of the railway, providing world-class mobility solutions across the globe. As a part of the Alstom UK & Ireland graduate development programme, Graduate Design Engineer, Cillian Lynch, and a team of fellow graduate employees were tasked with entering the 2017 Railway Challenge.
The project set by IMechE was to design, build and validate a fully operational 10.25 inch gauge locomotive. A challenge for Alstom was to find a way to safely manoeuvre the locomotive on and off the track, so when an Alstom component supplier mentioned Ross Handling they gave us a call.
Cillian explains, “We contacted Ross Handling and they responded to us straight away. They sent out two sales representatives to discuss our needs and learn more about our project, and the result was a solution which was perfect for our requirements.”
The chosen product was four heavy duty jacking castors with 200mm lift and swivel rubber wheel. With help from our castors, Alstom achieved 8th place out of 12 teams overall, and were awarded first place in the Business Case Challenge. The challenge was a mock sales pitch to a prospective client, in which the team outlined the design life cycle costs of the vehicle to senior experts in the UK rail industry.
Cillian concludes, “We are very happy with the products purchased from Ross, and feel that we achieved so much for a first year entry. The jacking castors worked out of the box and did the job exactly as intended. Alstom is now looking at entering the 2018 Railway Challenge competition and will almost certainly be using Ross Handling lifting solutions for future entries.”
Alstom isn’t the first team to have used our jacking castors at the IMechE Railway challenge. Check out how we helped Hud Rail achieve 5th place in 2016.
