Railway Engineering

The multi-award winning Edinburgh Railway Group is focused on undertaking world leading research and delivering solutions to the international railway industry.

The railway research has ranged from NDT/radar assessment of masonry arch railway bridges, through geophysical identification of abandoned mineshafts, condition monitoring of fouling of railway ballast and concrete slab track using GPR (radar) and impulse response through to numerical modelling of ground borne vibrations from high speed trains using the University of Edinburgh's supercomputer and the world leading radar modelling software GprMax

Our PhD students have won over 10 awards from the ICE, plus various best paper and poster awards. We have graduated 8 PhDs in railway engineering. In addition we sponsor the International conference series: "Railway Engineering" which will be held 9th-12th June 2025 in Edinburgh: www.railwayengineering.com.

Working with our research sponsors (Network Rail, Carillion Rail and EPSRC) we have achieved new understandings in the NDT of masonry arch bridges, geophysical identification of abandoned mineshafts, condition monitoring of railway ballast and slabtrack, plus new understanding of ground borne vibrations from high speed trains.

The Edinburgh group comprises: Professors Mike Forde and Yong Lu, Drs Martin Crapper, Antonis Giannopoulos, Robert De Bold; PhD student Weizhi Fan and Masters students Michelle Lim and Stoil Ivanov.

Further Information