A new world-leading railway research and innovation centre is to be established at Goole by the University of Birmingham, supported by Siemens Mobility, which has been awarded £15 million by the UK Research Partnership Investment Fund.
The investment will mean the University of Birmingham, working with the University of Huddersfield, be able to establish a new Centre of Excellence for Railway Through-Life Engineering alongside the major new Siemens Mobility train manufacturing facility in Goole, due to open in 2024.
The funding is part of £30m announced through the UKRPIF fund to establish two new world-leading railway research and innovation facilities, with the other being a new Centre of Excellence for Railway Testing, Validation and Customer Experience in South Wales.
The funding bid includes a wider commitment from the rail industry to co-invest £60m, with a further £16m being invested by the University of Birmingham. In total the package represents a £106m boost for UK research and development.
The new Centre of Excellence for Railway Through-Life Engineering in Goole will be next to the Rail Accelerator for Innovation Solutions and Enterprise business centre and within the major new Siemens Mobility rail village.
This Centre will provide cutting-edge facilities to support the build, service, maintenance, and modernisation of railway rolling stock with a focus on robotics, sensing, and automation.
Siemens Mobility is investing up to £200m in Goole, a site that spans 67 acres. The new train manufacturing facility will create up to 700 skilled jobs, as well as up to 1,700 in the supply chain and 250 during construction. In April 2023 the components facility opened, this is where gearboxes, traction motors and other parts for trains and tram fleets across the UK are maintained. Trains for the UK market will be built at the new factory, starting with new Piccadilly line Tube trains for London, with manufacturing due to begin in Goole next year.
Professor Clive Roberts, BCRRE Director, said: “With the new factory and centre of excellence underway we are determined to build, grow, and innovate the UK railway system.
“As a global leader in railway research and education, we work with partners across the world to develop their workforce and their technical and operational capabilities and it starts on our doorstep. We champion SMEs and work closely with supply chains to introduce new ideas, new ways of working and cross sector collaboration.
“With this new funding our aim is to have the capabilities and tools for through life engineering from conceptual design all the way to end of life with a focus on robotics, sensing and automation, coinciding with our Centre of Excellence in Digital systems.”
Sambit Banerjee, MD Siemens Mobility UK Rolling Stock and Customer Services, said: “This is fantastic news, not just for Goole but the rail industry as a whole. Our vision was always much more than just building a train factory, we want to have a full rail village for the industry and to create a lasting skills legacy in Goole. Bringing academia, with the University of Birmingham and University of Huddersfield, and industry together in one site is exactly the kind of opportunity that will continue to foster collaboration and innovation across the UK rail industry as well as support the economy.”
