 yesterday saw the celebration event for the schools involved in the primary engineer rail project primary engineer is in its 4th year and the 2021 22 project was sponsored by porterbrook hitachi and the department for business energy and industrial strategy it was delivered in 240 schools across the uk key stage 1 students built a shoe box train learning how to design and decorating their own shoe boxes using string to create brakes for their vehicles key stage 2 students built an electrically powered train making their own chassis and learning about electronic circuits and how they cause movement using paper clips as their power switches all teams researched designed and built their vehicles themselves assisted by volunteer engineers from across the rail industry including five porterbrook engineers who were matched with schools in the east midlands area the students tested their projects at the event and were judged against strict criteria on the day including multiple tracks and challenges to test if their trains worked as well as an interview with rail industry staff about what they did for the project and how they found it there were prizes for best team and best communicator as well as winners and runners up in the two key stage categories the awards were presented by porterbrooks director of engineering services jason groombridge at porterbrook we believe that encouraging stem careers at a young age is incredibly important and primary engineer align with this stating that the project aims to inspire pupils with the rail sector and help create a diverse future workforce for the rail sector you can learn more about primary engineer on their website www primaryengineer com 