Dr Moussa Hamadache, Research Fellow in Mechatronic Systems for Railways at BCRRE talks about the success of a recent Railway Pantographs project. Railway pantographs, which are nowadays (with overhead wires) the dominant form of current collection for modern electric trains, have to be inspected on a period basis to make sure that they are … Continue reading “DyanPan demonstrator: A novel solution for automated pantograph health inspection and testing”
High Speed Rail Education Interchange 2020 – delivering a digital conference
Culminating a year that has required significant adaptation to new ways of working, BCRRE hosted our first ever online conference ‘High Speed Rail: Education Interchange’ from the 14-16th December 2020. Dr Heather Steele and Dr Holly Foss report on the conference. The three-day HSREI event brought together experts in academia and industry to share knowledge, … Continue reading “High Speed Rail Education Interchange 2020 – delivering a digital conference”
Challenges and opportunities, teaching online during a global pandemic
Zena Green, Teaching Fellow in International Programmes, and Dr Holly Foss, BCRRE Director of Education, comment on their experiences in dealing with teaching under Covid-19 constraints. This blog is extracted from an article which is published in this month’s International Rail Journal. The global Covid-19 pandemic has had an enormous impact our lives and has … Continue reading “Challenges and opportunities, teaching online during a global pandemic”
Good news and exciting times at BCRRE
Alex Burrows Director of BCRRE provides us with a piece on some good news. 2020 has provided some cheer for us all at BCRRE. We found out two days ago (Wednesday 25 November) that we had won the Guardian University Award 2020 for Business Collaboration for our work with Porterbrook on the HydroFLEX project, the … Continue reading “Good news and exciting times at BCRRE”
Resilience is key for UK businesses post-Brexit
By Rachel Eade MBE, FRSA, Supply Chain Lead at the Birmingham Centre of Rail Research and Education. Resilience has become a much used word in many contexts in the current pandemic be it, personal resilience, business resilience, NHS resilience or supply chain resilience. But what is a resilient business? “One that is able to … Continue reading “Resilience is key for UK businesses post-Brexit”
Welcome to the new home of BCRRE
Alex Burrows Director of BCRRE shares his thoughts on the new building and what we aim to achieve. We are delighted to share the news that our new purpose-built railway centre designed to deliver specialist research in railway systems engineering has opened on campus at the University of Birmingham. Our new home provides us with … Continue reading “Welcome to the new home of BCRRE”
What did it take to get HydroFLEX onto the mainline?
Charles Calvert, PhD student in the BCRRE Power and Traction research group and Lead Systems Engineer for HydroFLEX takes us through the history of HydroFLEX and some of the key technical challenges the team resolved in order to take the train successfully onto the UK mainline – the first Hydrogen train ever to run on … Continue reading “What did it take to get HydroFLEX onto the mainline?”
HydroFLEX: decarbonisation and innovation
Alex Burrows, Director of BCRRE, comments on Hydrogen-based transport, the decarbonisation agenda and the value of collaboration to realise and prove innovation. Earlier this week we successfully took HydroFLEX, the UK’s first hydrogen train, onto the mainline railway – the first run by a hydrogen-powered train on Network Rail infrastructure. The HydroFLEX project is a … Continue reading “HydroFLEX: decarbonisation and innovation”
The end of rail franchising: what will replace it?
Alex Burrows comments on Monday’s announcement about the end of rail franchising and sets out a series of challenges which we, here in BCRRE and the Rail Alliance, would like to see considered, coming out of this new approach. In news that will have not come as a shock to most readers, the UK Government … Continue reading “The end of rail franchising: what will replace it?”
Education and ambiguity
“His priority seemed to be not to teach them what he knew but rather to impress upon them that nothing […] was foolproof.” [Harry on Firenze’s Teaching, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix]. Dr Holly Foss talks about the future of education and how ambiguity and the unknown is a necessity for our … Continue reading “Education and ambiguity”