Maria Tabarani

Said the following about Phil Hingley:

“Phil is a very helpful person, he will always share his knowledge with the team when required. He is a very Positive person, he was always sending good vibes around him, even when he was having a lot of challenges in his private life. He always smiles and listen and then advise. Phil is a legacy to the Railway Industry. See below with his own words, his history with the Railways:

"What has the Railway Industry done for me!

First of all it helped me finish my technical education and by training me. I joined British Railways Western Region in 1961 as an Engineering Student in the S&T department at Reading and was sent on a “sandwich” course at Reading Tech College where I gained an HND in Electrical Engineering and then Part 3 of the Institution of Electrical Engineers examination – equivalent to an undergraduate degree.

With that under my belt it taught me the basics of signal engineering covering scheme and relay interlocking design and the whole range testing of new installations.

Five years later I went to BR HQ and worked on equipment specification including such item as signalling relays, the introduction of flashing aspects to junction signalling and, in the Level Crossing group, the standards for the then new CCTV monitored level crossings.

Like Network Rail today BR, at that time had a consultancy unit which traded as Transmark. I worked on projects as geographically separate as Hong Kong and Iran. Transmark sent me on my first travels outside Europe to Liberia (west Africa), Libya, India and Hong Kong and Northern Ireland. Those were short visits of a few weeks but in 1982 I went to New Zealand where Transmark was responsible for signalling input to that country’s first 25kV ac electrification. I was the first of our group to arrive and set the framework in which our team would work for over a year although my stay was shorter. We worked with our Japanese opposite numbers whose role was the electrification itself. They introduced me to the Auto-transformer system of ac electrification (some years before it was applied to NR) and which gave me some new challenges as a signal engineer as the BR signalling immunisation rules did not apply.

By 1987 Transmark had an established organisation in Sydney and I got the chance to take over the signalling group of 16 people within that organisation. The new challenge was representing BR’s signalling capabilities to the several separate state railway entities across the country and going out and winning consultancy work to keep the team employed; this was important because once they arrived in Sydney not many people wanted to come back to the UK!

I returned to the UK in 1991 and soon became Project Engineer on the London Tilbury and Southend re-signalling project; the aim was to turn round the performance to ditch the route’s title of “Misery Line”. I worked on other projects being run out of the Reading signalling team’s office. In 1995 I took early retirement after 34 years of continuous service with BR or its successors and joined an independent consultancy MHA Associates which eventually became Lloyds Register Rail.

It was at that time I began to take an interest in the application of ETCS, the European Train Control System and took a part in a small consultancy project for the national ETCS team. By 2006 I was working for Network Rail in the Signal Design Group office in Reading and in 2009 began to get the opportunity to take a part in some discussions about the application of ETCS to Network Rail. One of the first such occasions was a discussion in April 2009 about how intermediate block markers would be applied on Thameslink, help to devise an appropriate aspect sequence link the technical issues with the Rule Book."

I would be grateful if you consider nominating him for this award.

Kind regards,

Maria Tabarani“