DG8 Industrial Design and Engineering

DG8 Industrial Design & Engineering

Icomera’s dedicated design and engineering division, DG8, are a creative and versatile team with extensive experience in delivering projects from concept through to implementation.

Experience & Expertise Industrial Design Product Design Starting from concept sketches through to final manufacturing drawings, the industrial design team can create bespoke / customise existing interior products, ranging from seating, tables, luggage racks, and luggage stacks to lighting modules and bike storage.

Graphic Design Within the industrial design department, DG8 also undertake graphic design including: vehicle liveries, interior and exterior signage, along with branding.

Textile Design When an interior scheme is produced, all aspects are coherently designed; this includes the design of new textiles, including seating materials, carpets, and curtains.

Interior Design DG8’s design capabilities allow them to produce a complete vehicle interior, including 3D visualisations, schedules of colours and finishes, and full colour contrast assessments, ensuring all designs meet current standards and regulations.

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Engineering Electrical Engineering The team offers vehicle surveys including power capacity testing, EMC investigations and fault analysis. Previous projects include GSM-R Radio, RETB Radio, Wi-Fi, CCTV, at Seat Power and lighting upgrades to both passenger and plant vehicles.

Engineering Design DG8 can deliver cost effective, reliable and high-quality designs, complying with all relevant standards including those imposed by manufacturers, owners, and operators.

Engineering Documentation Whether it be fault investigations, leading engineering design, or full suites of mechanical reports to support engineering design, DG8 can provide documents to meet many engineering requirements.

Structural Engineering DG8 analyse all engineering designs to ensure compliance with the relevant standards. These calculations encompass everything from small electrical items mounted within the saloon, to vehicle body modifications. The team can also provide a structural analysis of third-party designs.

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Time Travel How DG8 is Taking Older Rolling Stock into the Future

AU T H O R S : M I K E M O RT I M E R & M A R K H O P T R O F F Mike Mortimer and Mark Hoptroff are the directors of DG8 Design & Engineering Mark Hoptroff

Mike Mortimer

While introducing more new vehicles into service will contribute to the technological advancement of the transport industry over the next decade, it is the life-enhancing, life-extending upgrades of older vehicles that will have a greater, more immediate impact on supporting the transport industry’s overarching goals in a sustainable and cost-effective way.

Playing Catch-up Ten years is not a long time in Rail, with limited valuable windows of opportunity to modernise rolling stock - realistically only one or two at most per vehicle - and equip them to meet challenges that are already very present.

Vehicles are always playing catch-up with new technologies, even before they have entered service for the first time. It starts with the long train procurement process, where manufacturers are building vehicles to specifications that were defined 4-5 years earlier and trying to incorporate technologies - particularly in the cases of those that are digital - that refresh every 5-7 years.

If the hardware required to support that technology is not installed during vehicle construction, it can face a five-year wait for the next opportunity, and the difficulties will only ever increase each time the window opens again. Eventually there will come a point where the train design pre-dates even the conceptual stage of a new technology. This is something Icomera encountered when first installing its connectivity hardware on older rolling stock, trying to find the best way to route fibre optic cable through a train that was designed long before manufacturers understood that fibre optics was ever coming to the railways.

We will encounter this more frequently over the next decade as global events dictate the need for the faster adoption of a wider range of new technologies, from multiple vendors, across multiple vehicle classes. In the UK, for example, the average age of passenger Rail rolling stock over the last 10 years has been between 17 and 21 years. This is a huge 3

number of vehicles that pre-date the wider understanding of concepts like the Internet of Things, or emissions targets.

But they will all be expected to play an equal role to their newer counterparts in terms of delivering a smarter, safer, and greener travel experience.

Intelligent, Space-Efficient Design: The Blueprint for Success The projects that most successfully blend new technologies with older assets are those that keep the passenger’s engagement with their journey in focus: Design-led, from concept through to implementation, working across all tiers of the supply chain.

DG8 Design and Engineering was formed in 2008. In our early years, retrofitting vehicles with known third-party systems made up the largest percentage of our work. Now, with the increasing interest and availability of innovation funding (such as the UK government’s First of a Kind competition), retrofitting new and advancing technologies accounts for at least 60% of our active projects at any given time. This will only increase.

When (re)designing and delivering the onboard networks of devices and systems that will support the digital and energy transitions, the main challenges are (1) limited space and (2) the need for integration with current on-board systems.

The rapid installation of safe and reliable modular systems across a wide variety of vehicle types requires innovative engineering design work. When DG8 was tasked with adding Icomera’s 5G connectivity solution to a West Midlands Metro (WMM) tram - the country’s first 5G enabled tram project - the limited space available on the vehicle required a compact design solution. Collaborating with multiple partners, we worked to neatly package the new connectivity solutions around the existing equipment, and to ensure the deployment met all industry standards; once designed, installation was completed over the course of a day, with the support of WMM’s depot team.

This project (and the other case studies which follow in this brochure) help demonstrate the potential of what can be achieved in the near-term when partners with the required competency and capacity are engaged at the earliest stages.

DG8 completed the engineering design work on the UK’s first 5G enabled tram project

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Case Study: Network Rail Class 153 Visual Inspection Unit Conversion Project

DG8 delivered a turnkey solution for Network Rail as part of a project to convert two British Rail Class 153 “Sprinters” into Visual Inspection Units (VIUs). In its role as lead supplier, DG8 oversaw the installation design and engineering, approvals (RIS-2700-RST), material supply and installation work.

The Urgent Need to Address Two Key Challenges Reduce Risks to Railway Staff Issues surrounding track worker safety are treated with utmost priority by Network Rail – the owner and infrastructure manager of most of the British railway network.

Currently, Network Rail employees spend hundreds of thousands of hours on track for switch & crossing (S&C) inspections. However, switches and crossings are the highest risk asset in track engineering. Network Rail standards require S&C inspections to be carried out up to weekly in some areas. This is sometimes done during the day (causing disruption to passenger and freight services) but more often done manually at night by a track engineer who walks along the track during a possession and looks at the asset using just a torch.

Manual S&C inspections bring risks to engineering teams. Following several serious incidents, Network Rail sought a proof-of-concept which would demonstrate a viable alternative to on-foot visual inspections, meaning that some inspections could be diverted to the safety of an office.

Improve Network Infrastructure Management By guiding trains from one track to another, switches and crossings play an integral role in the life of the railway.

However, they are very prone to wear and tear because trains frequently travel over them, meaning that they need to be monitored and replaced regularly. With 20,000 miles of track for Network Rail to maintain, that’s quite a job for its staff to do manually out on foot!

Every year, several low-speed train derailments occur on the network due to issues in which S&C are at fault. These derailments cause significant disruption; and they also require large numbers of engineering staff to be (re)allocated 5

to help resolve the problem, which incurs its own staff safety risks, in addition to cost and logistical issues.

Network Rail were therefore keen to implement a solution which would help to accurately determine the location of any issues along the track and ensure a resilient and reliable “Predict and Prevent” maintenance strategy. If successful, they would improve operational efficiency on the network, ultimately helping offer the travelling public a more reliable service, while maintaining the network at a lower cost.

Switches & Crossings are the highest risk asset in track engineering

About the Project DG8’s Role as Lead Turnkey Supplier Given the pressing need to address these two challenges, Network Rail sought a train-based solution capable of performing automated rail line inspection, which it could commence testing in under one year. A multi-company project team was formed to design and build a swift solution.

DG8 was assigned as the lead supplier, responsible for delivering a turnkey service for Network Rail in which it would oversee all aspects of project management, design, and installation.

Complex Digital Onboard Solutions To achieve the project goals set out by Network Rail, the unit conversion of the Cl153s was based around integrating three complex digital solutions: 1. A track condition and geometry monitoring system enabling non-contact measurement of railroad track 2. A camera system recording images of the track and uploading the footage back to Network Rail’s Video Management System (VMS) 3. A positioning system that accurately tags the data from the other systems with the location on the network DG8 worked collaboratively with the industry-leading solution providers involved to accommodate their requirements into the vehicle’s interior and exterior design.

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The VIU conversion units have each been equipped with eleven cameras which can record thousands of high-resolution images at high speed (eight at the front, one underneath, and two at the back). Mounted approximately 20cm above the rail, the cameras capture an area of up to 40cm wide, delivering high-fidelity images. Since the image resolution is good enough to inspect (for example) an individual bolt, S&C checks can be performed remotely based on data received from the VIUs.

Line Scan Cameras are installed underneath the train

An Innovative Hybrid Power Solution The train systems required a hybrid power source with multi-mode controls to support recording while in service, and post-processing while in sidings. DG8’s solution was to install an internal generator and supporting lithium batteries working in tandem.

A distinction was drawn between the critical (“essential”) and non-critical (“secondary”) onboard systems. The generator powers both the “essential” and “secondary” circuits while the train is running – But when the train is shut down at the end of a shift, the generator closes down and some services (e.g. non-essential lighting) are switched off, while the critical systems continue to receive constant power via the lithium batteries.

The lithium batteries have a capacity of 600 Amp hours, 48V, which can power the kit for approximately 3.5 days. When the batteries begin to lose their charge, the generator automatically starts up and charges them until they are full again, before switching itself off. This ensures that the train remains permanently powered and ready for operation.

Since the VIUs essential systems are permanently powered, they can constantly transmit data back to The Cloud; this allows Network Rail to access the systems 24/7. Should the train be operating in bad reception areas or working in tunnels, the kit is able to transmit the data after the shift has finished. Even after the driver has gone home, the train remains powered and transmits.

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What Network Rail Say:

What We Say:

“[The project’s] return on investment is fast, and if

“Working as part of this innovative Network Rail

it saves one more death on the railway it will have

project, it’s been a pleasure to demonstrate DG8’s

paid for itself a hundred times over.”

capabilities to deliver turnkey services within an ambitious timeframe" Project Lead,

Mark Hoptroff, Director,

Network Rail

DG8 Design and Engineering

Battery charger and lithium batteries

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Case Study: HydroFLEX Supporting The UK’s First Hydrogen-powered Train

The HydroFLEX project, led by rolling stock asset manager Porterbrook, involved the conversion of a 30+ year-old British Rail Class 319 train, fitted with hydrogen fuel cells, giving it the ability to run autonomously on hydrogen power on non-electrified routes. HydroFLEX is expected to play a key role in decarbonising the British railway network, by helping to replace diesel-only trains by 2040.

DG8 was responsible for the train’s mechanical installation design, including how best to integrate key components such as the hydrogen fuel tanks, fuel cell and battery module, and the interior design of the train’s ‘onboard boardroom’ conversion, giving passengers the chance to work with Icomera’s 5G Passenger Wi-Fi while travelling on the train.

In addition, DG8 supported the electrical installation design, working to ensure that it conformed to the railway industry’s specifications and best practices; performed structural calculations to verify that the items installed on HydroFLEX met structural compliance requirements; and provided support to validate the wider approvals process.

Working collaboratively with a number of skilled partners, DG8 was proud to have been involved in this ambitious project to make the vision of the hydrogen powered train a reality in the UK, successfully creating the UK’s first hydrogen-rail supply chain in the process.

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DG8 Delivers Solutions Globally…

Client Testimonials DG8 brought three key elements to the project; strong engineering competence, flexibility in being able to cope with design requests/changes and turn these into firm proposals without fuss or argument, [and] project leadership through firm adherence to a project plan with timescales. From my perspective DG8 were able to fulfil the dual roles of project management and design consultants. The team were a pleasure to work with and without their contribution I do not believe the project would have reached fruition. I would be pleased to work with DG8 again and I would recommend them without hesitation.

Client Operations Standards Manager

Please pass on my thanks to all involved in this project it has been very successful with only a handful of minor design issues. The clients are delighted with the results.

This has been a fantastic achievement considering the un-forecast delays on getting purchase orders signed off etc, many thanks for all your help.

Client Design Manager

Client Lead Development Manager

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