making next-generation rolling stock safer and more reliable

Celebrated at the recent Rail Business Awards, Frazer-Nash and Bombardier’s co-designed Train Zero testing facility has the potential to revolutionise the design process of the next generation of rolling stock. With Crossrail looming large in the backdrop,

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Richard Jones, Frazer-Nash’s business manager, rail sector, lays out the benefits of this new technology.

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There's nothing that solidifies industry approbation quite like an awards ceremony. Frazer-Nash and Bombardier can testify to hopper wagon" href="http://www.railway-wagon.com/hopper-wagon-1.html">

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, having picked up the gong for Best Technological Innovation for their Train Zero project at the Rail Business Awards, held in London on 26 February.

Hailed as a cutting-edge testing facility, Test Zero has been designed with the goal of making the next generation of rolling stock safer and more reliable, improving the all-round performance of trains. In turn, passengers can expect a tangibly ameliorated service.
Notably, the Mayor of London, Boris Johnson, was on hand to open the £1.6m, Derby-based facility in December. With Bombardier set to provide 65 trains to Crossrail by 2018 - having secured the £1bn contract in 2014 - Train Zero will play a vital role in ensuring 

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progresses off the production line and onto the tracks as seamlessly as possible.

As Johnson said at the time, Train Zero serves as ample proof that the "UK's train industry is alive and well". In fact, it is the first time such technology has been deployed to test trains in this country.

Yet, for it's clear innovation, the model-based engineering approach on which the facility is based also draws considerable inspiration from a technique commonly used in the aerospace field - the 'iron bird'.

In an exclusive interview, Richard Jones, Frazer-Nash's business manager, rail sector, talks us through the project's beginnings, the collaborative process between both parties, and how we should expect Train Zero to extend beyond Crossrail and play a pivotal role in the future manufacture of rolling stock across the industry.

Ross Davies: I've read that the Train Zero concept is partially modelled on the 'Iron Bird' full-scale testing tool deployed in the aircraft sector? Is that correct? How does it work?

Richard Jones: Yes. When we had our first meetings with Bombardier back in 2012, we together came up with the idea of using the Iron Bird concept.