The last 6 months have been exciting and busy for the Society with great progress towards our vision of maintaining value for our Members, the rail industry and other institutions and organisations that share our objectives.
The appointment of 5 new Vice Presidents has energised our engagement with the increasing number of medium sized rail businesses in the Derby area. This has helped us focus our actions to ensure that our membership represents the existing and future population of engineers in the rail industry. The diversity of businesses and people working with the Society will enrich the quality of lectures, visits and competitions such as the Peter Parkin Memorial Lecture (PPML) going forward.
The closely fought PPML was won this year by Joyce Lee, with a lecture on traction performance modelling. We wish her well with her role with ARUP and her career. This was followed in the calendar by a wonderful evening at the Derby Conference Centre (DCC) for our Annual Dinner. The guest speaker was Andrew Hall – Chief Inspector of Railway Accidents, who gave us his personal and real insight into the Railway Accident Investigation Branch and its contribution to the industry and engineering knowledge. This year we had a ‘wildcard’ additional presentation by Graham Wild on the history of the DCC from the time when it was originally built as the Railway School of Transport. The large corporate attendance of the event was good to see and for next year we will be looking to ensuring that our Members are encouraged to share in this enjoyable social evening.
In August, Ray Pettit and Jimmy Austin lead our involvement in The Greatest Gathering at Alstom. We had a stand, highlighting the way the Society supports the development of engineering knowledge across the disciplines and networking of engineers. This resulted in over 30 new Members and Affiliates joining the Society, reflecting a broad range of industry background. A fantastic outcome!
This excitement and progress is however tinged with sadness due to the loss of a few of our Members, in particular the stalwart member of the Committee and past President; David Russell, who’s guiding hand we shall greatly miss.
From October 2025, we will have a new President; Ray Pettit, whose energy has given us the brilliant lecture programme in recent years. He will, I know, bring this same enthusiasm to the role of President and take us through the next steps of our journey as a modern Society steeped in tradition and engineering experience.
The lecture programme for the 2025-26 season is now available to view. As always, we have tried to provide our Members with a variety of presentations on a range of railway related topics. The first lecture is a film show on Railway Anniversaries over the Years and will be presented by Steve Foxon on the 18th September 2025 at the DCC starting at 18:00. I hope to see you there.
Neil Andrew
DRES President
