This is our latest addition to our range of underframe inspection and maintenance vehicles.

Designed to cope with arduous conditions with elevated temperature and humidity, this robust vehicle makes light work of travelling more than 300 metres under the Shinkansen 700T high speed train.

Harmill designed, built and installed 8 complete systems which included the installation of rails in 8 pits.

A total of more than 5 kilometres of rail was laid to a tight installation programme so as not to hinder the overall programme for the whole project.

The vehicles incorporate state of the art control with regenerative braking and on board computer controlled battery management and charging.

Maximum vehicle speed is 100 metres per minute.

The problem:
Tucked away behind the scenes lie underground train repair facilities generally unseen to the public. Hard at work are some of the most dedicated engineers who treat their job very seriously. However conditions are sometimes very arduous, being underneath trains for long periods carrying out inspections.

Harmill Systems was approached to find a way improve the working environment of these train doctors working under trains. The solution was an innovative mobile work station running on it's own rails. Harmill Systems designed and built a maintenance trolley which is used to transport the maintainer and access the required areas. The trolley is fully mobile in X, Y and Z axis and the seat can swivel 360 degrees as well as fully recline.

The trolley is produced in two versions, one type runs on cushion tyres on the pit floor and we also produce an extremely low friction model running on its own rails in the pit bottom.

The advantages of rail mounting become obvious once you test drive it and generally produce remarks from the operators like "wow" and "this is so easy".

The seat is designed to have 4 axis movement and is fully reclinable. The operator has utmost flexibility and control over the work position.

This design and build project has given the train doctors a greatly improved working environment.