Trackside At Rail Live

from Plant Planet August 2023

Kubota Unveils Innovative New Machines in the UK

Rail Live, the UK’s largest outdoor rail exhibition, once again took place at Long Marston Rail Innovation Centre in Warwickshire on 21st and 22nd June 2023.

Rail Live is an event that continues to evolve and thrive. It is the only exhibition in the UK to bring the entire rail industry together in a real railway environment.

Making Rail Live unique is its home at Porterbrook’s Long Marston site: it includes 135 acres of space, thousands of metres of sidings and the unique 3km continuous oval of rail track for testing and trials.

Everything about this year’s event was bigger, and even better. Blessed with gloriously hot weather, it attracted over 5000 rail professionals, spanning all aspects of the rail industry, with an inspiring mix of live demonstrations and innovative exhibits on display together with a packed programme of forums and workshops.

True to theme, visitors were again able to travel entirely by train to Rail Live – a great lead-in to the event, as an ex-Great Western Railway Class 769 tri-mode was operating from Honeybourne Railway Station into the Rail Live show site.

My mission for Plant Planet was to focus on ‘all things Plant’! So, let’s take a glimpse at some of the highlights of plant and equipment that were exhibited at Rail Live 2023.

The SPL Powerlines stand showcased a range of advanced machinery such as the Zech overhead wiring unit, a new long reach MEWP and a Doosan long reach multi-purpose excavator. SPL Powerlines UK operates a large fleet of specialist rail plant and supplies skilled operators.

G.O.S. Tool & Engineering Services Ltd, as usual, had a very impressive stand displaying a range of road rail equipment.

The Allan J Hargreaves Plant Engineers stand featured a Wacker Neuson Dual View converted for road/rail use

The company is a market leading manufacturer of road rail vehicles (RRV) and a specialist in rail infrastructure installation and maintenance equipment solutions. The range includes tracked and wheeled excavators, flash butt welders, rail cranes, box back and flatbed lorries; as well as a series of ancillary equipment including lifting beams, sleeper layers, trailers and rail trolleys. It also produces an assortment of wagon-based maintenance and amenity modules in its extensive fabrication, machine shop and assembly facilities.

The Allan J Hargreaves Plant Engineers stand featured a Wacker Neuson Dual View converted for road/rail use. This increasingly popular machine is, of course, ideal for rail applications. Its swivelling seat means the operator is always facing the direction of travel.

Another impressive stand was Elmec Solutions Ltd, an electrical and mechanical rail plant engineering company that designs, builds and maintains specially modified road rail vehicles and rail mounted maintenance machines for the Rail Industry. Elmec showcased its safety shield rail intelligent collision avoidance and rail infrastructure monitoring solutions.

A very impressive machine on the A P Webb stand was a ballast undercutter. Clean, correctly laid and maintained track ballast plays a very important part in the proper running of a modern railway and this innovative machine helps to achieve this.

QTS Group always has a great variety of machines on display and this year was no different. One of the main exhibits was a rail vehicle mounted Kronos Gripto 709 wood handling crane.

Every year VP PLC have one of the largest stands and this year was certainly no exception. VP PLC effectively used its stand as a platform to promote all its companies involved in supplying services and equipment to the rail industry.

‘Recruitment’ appeared to be a big issue for the industry, highlighting yet another sector that is finding recruitment a real challenge. There was an abundance of stands displaying those all too familiar signs: “We are Recruiting!”