DRAFT: Dynamic Testing of Railway Challenge at Sheffield (RCAS) Locomotive

Railway Challenge at Sheffield (RCAS) is a student-led, co-curricular activity at the University of Sheffield. It involves the design and manufacture of a 1/5th scale locomotive to compete in the annual Institution of Mechanical Engineers (IMechE) Railway Challenge competition. The locomotive is assessed in front of a panel of judges over a 4-day weekend at the end of June.

The team has approximately thirty undergraduate students from across multiple engineering disciplines. New members immediately get stuck into the design process, looking at structural, mechanical and electrical components and systems. The manufacturing and testing stages allow students to experience all parts of the engineering process. Additional personal skills such as management skills, communication, and financial planning are developed by working on the team.

The Railway Challenge at Sheffield team designs and builds its own 10 1⁄4 inch gauge locomotive for the Institution of Mechanical Engineers (IMechE) Railway Challenge competition. The locomotive must meet specific technical requirements set by the IMechE judges, whilst also incorporating innovations developed by the team.

The team has a great history of implementing out-of-the-box concepts. In 2017-2018 the team decided to split the locomotive into 3 separate modules, thus creating the famous "snake train". This train won the audience vote for the 'Favourite Train of the Competition'.

Since 2016, the canopies of their locomotives have been built using a transparent acrylic, which has been the team's trademark ever since. As a team, they think that there is nothing more interesting and educational than being able to see the inner workings of their build!

In 2018-2019 the team successfully transitioned its locomotive power source from a petrol generator to battery power. This also reduced the number of modules from 3 to 2, as the generator module had been made redundant.

In 2019-2020 the competition was cancelled due to COVID-19 and the team was not able to manufacture the locomotive. However, the team still continued and finalised the design virtually, holding virtual meetings and collaborating remotely through a variety of platforms.

From 2020-2022, the team finalised a 2 bodied, diamond-patterned locomotive. They even customised the wheels to replicate their logo.

For the 2023 competition year, the team returned to more conventional two bogie design, which despite coming 4th place scored the highest score of any RCAS locomotive up to that point.

In 2024, the design was refined, with the notable addition of a nose cone in order to compete in the aerodynamics challenge. The hard work of the team paid off, as this locomotive went on to give Sheffield it's first ever competition win!

The competition sees teams of young engineers from across the world design and build their own 10¼” gauge locomotive and compete in a series of trials both on and off the track, to test their business knowledge, design ability and practical engineering skills. The idea behind the initiative is to help young engineers to develop skills beyond their degree programmes to help prepare them for a career in engineering, and to encourage more young people to pursue a career in the rail industry.

In 2024, most teams were made up of recent graduates working in industry or final year masters students, however the team from Sheffield was one of the few to be extra curricular - formed by students from all levels who built their train alongside their studies.

Each team was required to design and manufacture a miniature train in accordance with a set of strict rules and a detailed technical specification. The locomotives were then tested live at a competition weekend at Stapleford Miniature Railway in Leicestershire, where several categories of winners and an overall Railway Challenge champion was crowned based on who could master skills across a wide range of engineering disciplines.

The University of Sheffield students were awarded the Grand Champion prize, scoring their highest ever points total. They also came first in a series of individual categories both on and off the track, including the category for innovation for proposing a new system for tackling leaves on the line - a problem that causes delays, cancellations and misery for rail passengers every autumn. Four new challenges were introduced this year and Sheffield was the only team to successfully implement design solutions for, and compete in, all four of them.

Sheffield’s students also set a new competition record in the Auto-Stop Challenge, in which each team must bring their locomotive to an automatic, controlled stop in exactly 25m. Sheffield’s score was accurate to over 99 per cent.

The RCAS team brought their competition winning locomotive to the Laboratory for Verification and Validation (LVV) to use the Multi-Axis Shaker Table for dynamic testing. The team were particularly interested in understanding the performance of the locomotive's suspension.

The key aims for the testing were.....

The tests compiled of....

The LVV MAST was especially useful for this testing because.......

The data collected will help the team to understand how the loco’s suspension works and will hopefully make a better locomotive for this upcoming years competition! 

Whilst competing in the challenge this year, the Sheffield students placed a special sticker on their locomotive to show support and appreciation for the Richard Pover Endowment Fund - a fundraising initiative that was set up in memory of a mechanical engineering student who passed away from testicular cancer.

Richard began his studies at Sheffield in 2009 and was passionate about his course and student life at the University. However, during his third year, he was diagnosed with a rare and aggressive form of testicular cancer. Richard sadly passed away in 2013, on the day he would have left University had he finished his degree.

Richard’s family have since worked tirelessly to create a lasting memorial leading to the establishment of the Richard Pover Endowment, a fund that awards scholarships and other prizes to mechanical engineering students at Sheffield – with funds of over £50,000 already raised. Several members of the Railway Engineering Challenge team at the University - both past and present - have been supported by the fund to date.

You can find more information about Railway Challenge at Sheffield here. Follow the team on Facebook, Instagram, X and LinkedIn.

If you would like to know more about the testing capabilities offered here at the LVV facility, or if you would like to learn more about The University of Sheffield's Rail Innovation & Technology Centre please contact Charlie Field at c.w.field@sheffield.ac.uk