IAN WALMSLEY REPORTS ON ‘UNLOCKING INNOVATION’
HUDDERSFIELD UNIVERSITY hosted the Railway Industry Association’s ‘Unlocking Innovation’ conference on 10 December 2019. There has clearly been a change in direction: the Rail Research Council has changed the way research money is directed to be more solid ground than blue sky. Practicality is coming back.
Huddersfield knows it is not top of the pile for the high fashion money, but the university has developed a rail research facility which puts it top of the digital high street for rail problems. Most impressive is the testing facility, dominated by HAROLD (Huddersfield Adhesion and Rolling Contact Laboratory Dynamics Rig), soon to be joined by a pantograph test rig (acronym under development). HAROLD is worthy of anything the Railway Technical Centre could offer and is able to test bogies under load up to 200km/h. Waiting its turn next to it is the CaFiBo carbon fibre bogie, based on a Class 180 design but half the weight.
The objective is to ‘reach out across the valley of death’ this being the gap between initial innovation and implementation where so many projects come to grief. There is a reason for this: most don’t have a business case. However, th…
