Infrarail 2010 Birmingham NEC.

13 April 2010

Thanks to Bob Darvill for the following comprehensive report on this week's rail show...

This was quite a good exhibition this year and for a change there were actually two road/rail locos on display, along with other numerous road/rail equipment; and I'll deal with the locos first.

UCA Bvba, Merskem, Belgium.

This is the firm that uses JCB vehicles as the basis for their locos and they are now trying to enter the UK market – their trading partner in the UK is Motorail Logistics, Long Marston. I didn't know they were at this exhibition, but they were impossible to miss, as they were right opposite the entrance.

4wDH UCA/JCB 1517766 2010 Based on a JCB 540 – UCA RB 16

Zagro, Bad Rappenau-Grombach, Germany.

This firm has been in the road/rail market for quite a number of years and has built a variety of machines. One of their specialist vehicles is the `tug' used for shunting and they had one on display. This is fitted with a drive to each of the four wheels – each powered by a 5kW motor; and is a remote controlled unit. As far as I know there are none in use in the UK at the moment.

4wBE Zagro 80111 2/2009 Type E-Maxi. Weight 3½ tonnes

Harsco Track Technologies.

They had a new road/rail HTT/Kubota on display and as far as I could see it carried no numbers at all. I did find a small Kubota plate and this appeared to carry the number 12170. If anybody has any additional details please let me know.

4wDMR HTT/Kubota 2010 On stand – conversion of Type RTV900

Aquarius Railroad Technologies.

This firm has a new road/rail vehicle based on the Ford Ranger and as far as I can see this has not been reported before.

YF59 YHK 4wDMR Aquarius/Ford 2010 Ford Ranger

In additional to the registration number it also carried the Euro Number 99709 976055 and the name SAMANTHA.

R.A.Bance Ltd.

There was just one railcar being displayed this year – see below, and in fact was one of the same railcars that they had here in 2008.

2w-2BER Bance 095 2000 Ultrasonic trolley on track

There were also a number of other different versions of road/rail vehicles being displayed and next to the Bance railcar was a fairly large brand new Colmar unit – Type T7000fs. This carried a large notice stating it had been sold to RFI – Italian Railways.

Hydrex also had a stand with what appeared to new road/rail vehicle – I must admit I didn't take too many details, but it carried fleet number 6983 and Euro Number 99709 940703. Outside was another new design of road/rail vehicle built by the French company of Neotec and was a tracked vehicle described as a Catenaries Construction Vehicle. This firm is working in the UK with Hydrex and from what I could understand this vehicle is going to be used/marketed by Hydrex.

Categories

• exhibition
• infrarail