Lee Tinney, Operations Director at Loram UK, explains more about the introduction of an exciting new grinding machine, and the journey ahead
Loram UK Ltd has introduced the first ever UK-built rail grinder, RGX-02 to the industry at InnoTrans. It comes as the company marks its 70th anniversary. grinding wheel sharpening stone
“It has been quite the journey and a remarkable achievement thanks to a huge team effort from everyone involved,” said Lee Tinney, Operations Director. “It really plants the flag that we’re here to stay. To achieve this milestone off the back of COVID that created such adverse economic and labour market conditions is simply remarkable and is something we can be incredibly proud of as a company.”
Loram prides itself on leading the transformation of track maintenance and infrastructure management, coalescing data that unlocks maintenance insights.
Although the UK side of the business has a track record of overhauling older equipment such as side tipper box conversions, repaints and corrosion works, the EN compliant RGX-02 is the first time the company has built anything from the ground up, taking the product from drawing, to building the equipment and putting it out into the market place.
“It is a high output grinder extremely versatile that has essentially been downsized and downscaled to meet the axle weights of multiple market segments, not only mainline works, but also urban transport and metro transport and tunnels,” explained Lee, who said the machine has been built to technical specifications for interoperability across Europe and the Middle East with on board ETCS and highly innovational rail measurement systems.
“We have taken our market leading high output grinder apparatus, wrapped a small frame around it and put it into the network. It means we can access more areas of the network maintain high production providing cost value add to the client, The RGX-02 itself comes in sizes of 10 to 40 stones depending on the requirement or the network.”
Its unveiling comes as the company continues to build with contract extensions across several of its major contracts infrastructure monitoring, Etihad Rail and having been awarded the ETCS retrofit of two rail grinding machines. But it hasn’t come without its challenges, most notably a small number of redundancies, some difficult decisions around contracts, as well as taking the opportunity to activate a break clause on a part of the site that it operates on in Derby.
Loram UK now is in a stronger position, and has a vision on its expansion particularly into Europe, with every aspect of the UK business now in a profitable position. In parallel with implementing a new strategy, management has also been looking introspectively at its organisation structures, training, development and processes.
Lee added: “We realigned the company resources and its competence and are concentrating on our core clients, products and services which have allowed us to go from an unsustainable position to a very bright, vibrant sustainable future with positive contribution from head count and competence, which translates nicely down to what we see on the balance sheet.”
Lee is particularly keen to praise the efforts of Managing Director (MD) Debbie Francis OBE, who first joined the company as a senior independent non-executive in 2020, becoming MD in August 2023 to guide the company into a period of stabilisation before planning for the next stage.
“There is a new streamlined, more efficient structure which has taken us into a new way of thinking under Debbie,” explained Lee, who was promoted from the company’s Director of Rail Grinding Systems and Services to Operations Director in August 2023. “We’re in a positive place from a financial, structure and people perspective , with the right people in the right roles.
“We are one Loram, one team, and one group, whereas before we were a bit fragmented. We are now pulling in the same direction and although there are different workstreams,collectively we are concentrating on our core products and services and clients so we can promote our products more deliberately providing innovational solutions for our clients’ needs.
“We have to evolve and be versatile, adapt and adjust to the changing market place, particularly around alternative power and clean energy. We’re here to provide innovational technologies and solutions, whether that is in the infrastructure monitoring space, moving things around the network, or building new equipment for profile treatment around the globe. That is what we are here for and what we will continue to do in the future.”
The conversation with Rail Business Daily concludes with the question of whether the RGX-02 will be the first of many to be built in the UK.
“We very much plan on Derby being our hub for building EN compliant equipment as we go forward and over the next five to 10 years,” said Lee. “So watch this space.”
Visit www.loram.com/en-gb/
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