A team of 12 final-year undergraduate Mechanical Engineer students finished as the highest placed university team (third place overall) at the recent IMechE (Institution of Mechanical Engineers) Railway Challenge, at Stapleford Miniature Railway in Melton Mowbray, Leicestershire. This was the first year that a Southampton team had entered the competition.
Competing against teams of students, apprentices and graduates from other UK universities and industry, the students had to design and build a miniature (10录鈥� gauge) railway locomotive to compete in a number of track-based challenges.
Their locomotive, designed for their final Group Design Project (GDP), featured a number of unique aspects, such as complete Wi-Fi remote control; a brake energy recovery and storage system; and a Hybrid drive system.
Mitchell Clark, Project Lead for the team, said:
鈥淭he weekend was a real success. We arrived, and left, as the only rookie team to have competed, the top scoring university team and, uniquely, the only university team to comprise solely of undergraduates.聽We are very grateful to everyone who has helped us along our way and we hope that Southampton will remain as a force to be reckoned with at the Railway Challenge in future years.鈥�
Dr Mohamed Torbati, lecturer in the and the student team supervisor, said:
鈥淭he purpose of a GDP in Engineering is to allow students the chance to work as a team to apply the engineering principles taught throughout the course to a practical design project, to replicate that of industry activities. Both the hybrid drive system and the energy recovery that featured on the student鈥檚 locomotive are technologies currently being explored and rolled out in full-size locomotives as environmental considerations become more of a priority for transport infrastructure.鈥�
You can watch a video of the overall project including testing at Eastleigh Lakeside Steam Railway, drone footage and the competition weekend below.
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DZILJRFxUkw]