W.S.G. Isaac Newton

VollkerRail is a Dutch railway contractor, responsible for building and maintaining of Dutch Railway tracks. During my internship, I mainly worked in the engineering department for catenary systems. As different systems are being used and each route asks for its solutions, designing these systems needs some attention. At this moment, most of the overhead wiring is powered by 1500 V DC, however, there are some wishes to change this to 25 kV AC, as this requires fewer transformers around the tracks, while being able to ride trains faster and closer to each other. To achieve this, the B4 catenary system was introduced around 20 years ago. This system made it possible to use the 1500 V but was also prepared to change to 25 kV systems. The arms of these systems however started to fail after 10-15 years, where a lifetime of 40 years was expected. I got the task of finding out why these arms failed and what could be done to prevent these failures. In the end, I had to give advice on which solution would be best to be implemented. During my internship, I was free to work from home or at the office. Within VolkerRail, flex working is the norm, and thus you can work whenever and wherever you are. At the office, our group of engineers had a separate area, where there was a good atmosphere and I was regarded as a real employee. I got to work with people inside and outside of the company and even got to visit a construction site once. I had a great time being part of the company and got a nice experience seeing what it is like to be an engineer at VolkerRail.