First & only American teamIMechE Railway Challenge
Columbia Locomotives is a student engineering team designing and building a 1/6-scale electric locomotive for the IMechE Railway Challenge.
Why this project is unusual
01 / Unprecedented
The IMechE Railway Challenge is a British competition, run in the UK, and entered almost entirely by British universities and rail-industry apprentice teams. We are the first American team to enter it — and still the only one.
02 / Traction
No combustion engine, no hydraulics. Our locomotive runs on a student-built lithium battery pack driving an electric traction motor, which means we own the whole energy path: cells, pack, controller, motor, and the software between them.
03 / Method
Build an inexpensive working integration prototype first, then upgrade the parts that measurements show are inadequate. A rolling chassis that actually moves teaches more than a perfect drawing that does not.
From the build log
Build notes are drafted and published from the club’s content system. Nothing is posted here until an editor publishes it.
Where to go next
Subsystems, key figures, and how the Railway Challenge scores a locomotive.
Open02Decisions, tests, and failures written up as the work happens.
Open03How the team is organized, and who currently leads each subsystem.
Open04Specific parts, fabrication, and equipment the build still needs.
Open05What joining actually involves. No prior experience required.
Open06Verified public routes into the project and the club.
OpenBuild with us
Members work on a real machine alongside students across mechanical, electrical, software, manufacturing, and operations. Sponsors fund named, scoped parts of that machine.
