The Institute took the award for the SUSTRAIL project which aims to boost the quantity of freight carried by rail

AFTER participating in an EU-funded research project that led to a breakthrough design for an eco-friendly freight train of the future, the University of Huddersfield’s Professor Simon Iwnicki has collected an award from one of the world’s leading rail industry publishers.

He heads the Institute of Railway Research (IRR) that is based at the University and which was one of the Europe-wide participants in a multi-faceted project named SUSTRAIL, which had the goal of boosting the quantity of freight carried by rail.  The European Commission wants to see at least a 30 per cent increase by 2030.

Professor Iwnicki and his IRR team collaborated with colleagues at Stockholm’s Royal Institute of Technology, the Technical University of Berlin and the St Petersburg State Transport University on new designs of locomotives and wagons for future freight trains.  The Huddersfield researchers were primarily responsible for wagons and they developed a new type of suspension for which a patent has been applied.
A prototype wagon was built and successfully tested in Romania.  “It fulfilled all our computer predictions,” said Professor Iwnicki.  “The wagon ran very stably at 150 kph and could probably have exceeded that, but the locomotive couldn’t pull us any faster!”

The major breakthrough is that the new vehicle generates up to 50 per cent lower lateral track forces, leading to much less wear on the system – meaning lower operating costs and therefore economic gains for switching freight from road to rail.

SUSTRAIL was a four-year research programme that concluded earlier in 2015.  Its final conference was held in Brussels, where the University of Huddersfield’s Institute delivered a presentation on the freight train of the future.

Specialist journals published by sector leaders Rail Media – which issues The Rail Engineer and RailStaff – took an in-depth look at SUSTRAIL and the Huddersfield contribution.  This led to a shortlisting for The Most Interesting Awards, bestowed by The Rail Exec Club, after judges pored over articles published by Rail Media titles.

At an event held in the restored and converted Derby Roundhouse – the world’s first and oldest surviving railway roundhouse – Professor Iwnicki accepted an award on behalf of SUSTRAIL and its partners.  He states that the project was one of the most successful in which he has been involved and it is set to be followed by an even more ambitious schedule of research named Shift2Rail, that will be funded to the tune of a billion euros – half of it from the European Commission via its Horizon 2020 programme.

The Institute – currently expanding its suite of labs and offices at the University of Huddersfield – aims to play a key role in Shift2Rail.