In today's progressive railway industry, the need for competent suppliers able to work together with their customers to provide complete, cost-effective engineering solutions is paramount.

William Cook Rail is the marketing arm of William Cook Cast Products, the Sheffield based steel foundry group, dedicated to the rail industry. Structured within the Engineering Division and supported by four foundry plants, two CNC machine shops and two fabrication shops, it focuses on the market needs of the Rail industry, specifically Rolling Stock componentry.
Ninety to 95 per cent of the cast steel rail products are manufactured at the William Cook Catton site in Leeds. Rail product business amounts to 48 per cent of the site's annual turnover and this figure is expected to grow over the next few years.
Support is provided at the Parkway and Precision plants in Sheffield and also at the Tow Law site which houses both a fully integrated CNC machine shop and a small jobbing foundry. William Cook Master Patterns in Sheffield provides the group with all its pattern making requirements and has also benefited from investment in a new CNC pattern machining centre. All sites are approved to ISO9002 standards and various other approvals are held including DB, SNCF, DIN6700 for welding and 'Link up'.
The Catton site has gone through an extensive modernisation programme during recent years and now has one of the most comprehensive engineering facilities of its kind. In addition to the state of the art melting and moulding plants there have been several recent additions; a new machine shop, housing a large selection of horizontal and vertical CNC machining centres has been developed and a fabrication bay has been designed and installed, enabling fabrication of machined components such as bolster assemblies.
The most recent development is a coupler assembly shop, providing an assembly area for new build couplers and also allowing inspection, repair and overhaul of couplers. In addition to the manufacturing facilities, the Catton site, along with all plants within the William Cook Group, has invested substantially in the latest CAD Solid modelling software, namely Pro-Engineer and Magmasoft simulation analysis. This provides a vital link between the foundry technicians and the customer's engineers, ensuring that casting designs are optimised to provide the most cost effective and technically superior product.
The three main areas focused on by William Cook Rail are bogies, couplers and brake discs: William Cook Rail currently supplies cast steel products to most of the main bogie builders in Western Europe. These castings include bogie frame castings, finish machined, ready to weld into an eight-piece cast frame. The development of the weld joints and close-machined tolerances has enabled the frame to be accurately fabricated thereby reducing the amount of post weld machining. This machining process was developed by the Tow Law Machine Shop in County Durham, where the bulk of the bogie frame components are machined.
Multi-piece cast bolsters have also been designed by William Cook in conjunction with their customer: this includes not only the casting designs, but also the proof machining, fabrication, finish machining, pressure testing (where applicable) and painting. This development has enabled the Catton and Tow Law site to be certified to DIN6700 for this work.
A major strength of William Cook over the last seven to eight years has been to provide solutions to our customer's problems. This has led to the company taking the lead in the design of certain components, which are proved by finite element analysis.
In addition to bogie frame and bolster type components, designed for subsequent fabrication, William Cook also manufactures a wide range of axleboxes, centre pivots and various component bracketry, which is either welded or bolted to the vehicle.
The new recently installed coupler workshop at the Catton site provides a sound manufacturing base for both new build couplers for passenger and freight application and the refurbishment and upgrade of existing coupler systems. William Cook has supplied most of the major coupler system manufacturers in Europe over a period of years and is constantly looking at forming new partnerships both in the UK and abroad.
Other recent developments have included the design and manufacture of a universal combination coupler, which allows freight locomotives and wagons to be coupled and uncoupled to a variety of alternative coupling mechanisms. The design also permits the head of the coupler to swing away from the body to enable a screw link coupling to connect to a cast drawhook. This product innovation has led to William Cook's involvement with design and manufacture of a selection of custom built drawgear assemblies.
Cast steel brake disc manufacture in single, double sided and segmented form is another key product group which has been manufactured and supplied over the years. These products are particularly important for use in the construction of braking systems for high-speed passenger trains. As with bogies and couplers, the customer base is currently focused on Western Europe.

Enquiry No 32

William Cook Catton is based in Sheffield, UK. www.cook-catton.co.uk