“It’s nice to know that something that I’ve done has genuinely been invested in,” said Jackson Hall, as quoted by the BBC.The 17-year-old is a manufacturing and engineering T-Level student at York College. His invention is a polycarbonate screen that keeps rats and other animals away from electric cables inside signal boxes. Network Rail has already fitted it at two signal boxes in the Leeds area.
The idea came on a work placement
A face-on view of the polycarbonate screen that Jackson Hall designed, installed on a signal box (Credit: York Press)
Jackson came up with the screen while on placement at AGH Engineering, a design consultancy in York. The problem he looked at is a known one. According to reports, ageing signal boxes on the rail network often suffer cable damage from animals, which leads to power failures and delays.He explained why the damage is so costly: “Before, if just one of the boxes was damaged it was creating a short circuit that would stop trains being able to run on miles and miles of track.”The repair is not quick either. “They have to get decommissioned and rebuilt, which is more money and time,” he said, the BBC reports.
What the numbers say
Network Rail now has plans to use the screen at 63 more signal boxes. AGH has also been asked to quote for installing it at 65 in total, which is the two existing sites plus the 63 planned.Adam Wood, AGH’s principal engineer, pointed to a recent power failure at Leeds Station that cost more than £1m in repairs and delay compensation, the BBC reports. He did not say the failure was caused by animals, so the figure is best read as an example of what outages cost.Wood said he hoped the product would be rolled out nationwide. “Sometimes, a simple idea can become a very efficient way of saving delay minutes, which is obviously great for Network Rail and cost-saving,” he said.He added that the effect reaches beyond the railway: “There’s also a wider impact to passengers and rail operators and, when you start looking at the knock-on effect, the numbers clearly increase exponentially.”
Credit for the idea
Now, it is not often that a client’s confidence in a firm rises because of a student. But Wood said exactly that. “For Jackson to deliver something that has future-proofed and negated an issue has enhanced the confidence the client has in our company,” he told the York Press.He was clear on where the idea came from. “It’s all come from his ideas and thought process, which is impressive for a student coming to us at the age of 17.”
Job offer and what comes next
Jackson will start as a design technician at AGH next summer. The firm will also fund his Higher National Diploma (HND) qualification.He said his family and friends were “buzzing” about the news. On the job offer, he said: “It’s really hard to get jobs at my age, so it was very lucky I’d been given the opportunity to show someone who can give me a job what I can do.”The placement also changed how he sees his own work. “It feels pretty good that they trusted me to create the product, and it’s given me a bit more confidence in my ability,” he said, according to the BBC.Of course, a pilot at two signal boxes is not yet a national rollout. But with a 65-box quote on the table, a job waiting and a funded qualification, Jackson Hall is leaving college with more than good grades.
