Working Closely With The UK Rail Industry

For many years, PRV Engineering has been a supplier of precision engineering and custom fabrication services to several sectors, including the UK rail industry, defence, aerospace, oil and gas, construction and automotive. We’ve worked with numerous rail companies, such as Transport for London and the Underground Rail Network, to provide specialist services. Here, we share a brief history of how PRV started and why so many customers trust us to deliver the product they need.

In our state-of-the-art in-house machining and technology centres, we developed standard solutions and custom components and systems for railway rolling stock, among many others. The product ranges for the UK rail industry are of the highest quality design and versatile to meet the specific requirements, and following the relevant standards.

Stepping Into The UK Rail Industry

We moved into the UK rail industry when Claverham approached us to develop a revolutionary set of electromechanical points for their new division called IAD Rail Systems. Our task was to look at the design and add value to the product by reducing costs where possible to make it more accessible to the UK rail industry.

We achieved the customer’s objectives with great success and have consistently been manufacturing components for their points systems for several years which have been installed at more than 800 locations. Since then, we’ve done loads of projects for IAD Rail Systems and added to our rail portfolio by doing the following:

• Manufacture for track, track laying and maintenance equipment
• Secured contracts for supplying electrical connections, contacts and other rolling stock products to Transport for London and the Underground Rail Network
• Worked with customers such as Hawker Siddeley Switchgear (Brush Switchgear) on overhead line equipment

How PRV Engineering Drastically Reduced The Production Costs Of A Highly Complex Product

In this video, Simon Jones, MD of PRV Engineering Ltd, talks about a railway project of epic proportions. A client came to PRV with an original project that was highly complex and extremely costly with an aerospace-style design.

Whilst it was a great product, it was too expensive and complex to fit anywhere in the marketplace. After doing extensive research and development, PRV Engineering was able to help the client commercialise the product away from the aerospace dynamics.

We turned it into something far more practical and affordable bringing the cost down from around £35k to roughly £3,500. Ever since this project’s tremendous success, this customer has become a long term ‘partner’ with several more projects.

PRV Engineering: A True One-Stop Engineering Shop

When PRV Engineering started in 1986, the main focus was on three main areas: high voltage switchgear, rail product and the oil and gas industries. We soon realised that many engineering companies were using the term “one-stop-shop” to describe their services but many failed to deliver on that statement.

This opened the door for us and we decided to provide an all-encompassing service that would offer as much as possible without losing control of the product during manufacturing. Since its inception, PRV has expanded and developed its well-equipped 54,000 sq. ft. facility in Pontypool, South Wales. Our facility now has the following:

• A large, CNC department comprising of 30 machining centres with a wide-ranging capacity
• Ten deep hole drilling machines
• A finishing department equipped with a 6-metre shot blast room, various shot blast cabinets, powder coating booth, wet spray room and a 2.2 cubic metre high bake oven

PRV Engineering And The UK Rail Industry

Over the years we’ve manufactured various components for the UK rail industry. This includes small switch contacts, wheels and axles gantries, and support columns for electrical installations, cables and pipework. We’ve also added custom enclosures to our rail portfolio accommodating any type of IP rating, even container conversions for generator soundproofing applications.

Combine all of this with our involvement in overhead line equipment and it becomes evident that we enjoy a successful alliance with the rail network and its suppliers. As good as the UK railway industry is, we believe it could be one of the best in the world with the help of companies working to improve the infrastructure.

Being a jack of all trades in the engineering world doesn’t cut it, especially in the railway sector, busbars and deep hole drilling. Here, you need specialised skills, expertise and be a master which is what we are!

Why Work With PRV Engineering

Whether our team has to work on our suppliers’ technical engineering drawings, or we are given a specification to develop the design ourselves, we have the expertise and equipment to cope with the task at hand.

Another successful area of supply is remanufacturing Obsolete OEM products. This extends to parts that are no longer available or from companies that have shut their doors. We can reverse engineer parts for many industries and even improve on existing ones by redesigning or utilising more modern materials.

For more information about the products, services and industries we specialise in, please visit the website. You can also join the conversation on Twitter, Facebook, YouTube or LinkedIn using the hashtag #PRVtech.