Trainline goes to HackTrain 4
48 hours. 2400 km. 56 people. 4 High-Speed trains. 4 parisian Métro journeys. 2 bordelaise trams. 1 packed TFL bus, one mass panic and 9 combined hours of sleep. This was my past weekend, in numbers, on the amazing, chaotic, exciting adventure that is HackTrain.
Now in its 4th instalment, HackTrain aims to solve the rail industry’s biggest problems by getting together bright minds in software, data science, design and entrepreneurship to tackle them. This year challenges included predicting train maintenance, scheduling trains, improving special assistance services, amongst others.
There were 3 groups, each assigned to a route and a topic. My train was the Customer Experience and Rolling Stock train which was assigned to the London — Paris — Bordeaux route (and objectively the best train). I was a mentor which meant my role was advising the teams while the other Trainliners on my train: Parth, Alejandro and Robert were hackers who get to be on a team and build projects.
We kicked off the event with all 3 groups in London near Old Street roundabout. The schedule for the evening included sponsor challenge presentations, idea pitches, voting and team formation but it didn’t go quite according to plan.
As the initial challenge presentations were wrapping up we learned that police were investigating an incident at Oxford Circus station and the station as well as many businesses were on lockdown. In order to avoid the potential delays, transit nightmare and risk missing our first train to Paris, the organisers made a snap decision.
“Change of plans. We’re going to the station right now, grab your stuff.”
Cut to 100+ hackers with backpacks, suitcases and winter coats cramming into TFL buses and shouting directions to get to St. Pancras International to make sure no one got left behind. Once we made it to the station we had some time before our train but a lot to get done. We ended up doing project idea pitches on the station floor with no supplies, no microphones and no time to waste.
Once that was done and we had made it through French immigration, we still had to vote and form teams so we camped out in the Eurostar waiting room near our gate and got down to business.
Once we got on the train, it was time to get planning. Teams got to know each other, and structured their thoughts during our 2 hour ride. The Eurostar service is a joy to travel on and by midnight we were in Paris.
The next morning, we got up bright and early to go spend the day in Bordeaux. The journey was lovely and incredibly quick on the TGV high-speed trains. We had a full day of ideating and coding at the lovely riverfront Palace de la Bourse, all in all not a bad way to spend a Saturday afternoon. Despite some initial WiFi hiccups, it was a productive day!
Once the sun started going down it was time to get back to Paris for a late night Dragon’s Den style pitch practice and working through the night to prepare for Sunday’s judges panel.
The next morning it was time to head back to London for judging! We had a lovely venue right near St. Pancras International where the participants polished their presentations right down until pitch time.
After hearing all the pitches the judges deliberated and named a project called Maintrain the winner of the our train! Maintrain proposed a low cost, modular Internet of Things (IoT) solution to track metrics around train performance including temperatures and gear box vibrations to analyse them in order to predict when maintenance needs to be scheduled and avoid any surprises.
The judges included representatives from rail companies including Trainline’s own Dave Slocombe who is a HackTrain veteran and has participated in every previous iteration as a hacker, a mentor and now a judge. Here’s what he had to say:
“Every year I look forward to participating in Hacktrain because the event fuses together a large number designers, technologists and even policy makers with industry mentors to originate new ideas that can change the way millions of people travel.
Being a judge on this year’s event was great fun and an awesome way to see how creative and innovative the participants were, particularly useful at helping us award our Trainline Innovation award of a paid internship here at the Trainline offices!
Ensuring we build bridges for the next generation of innovators to cross over from academia to product delivery is important to us at Trainline because we benefit from exposing our organisation to new ways of working and solving problems that matter to our customers”.
At judging, we also got to reunite with Audrey and Miral who were mentors on the Infrastructure and Cybersecurity train. Their journey included a trip to Brighton, a stay at the Ricardo Rail Centenary Innovation Centre in Shoreham-by-sea, and a lovely ride to Cambridge where they got to hack at The Bradfield Centre co-working space.
All in all it was an exhausting but thrilling weekend. It’s always so inspiring to see people come together to solve problems in an industry that isn’t necessarily known for it’s fast innovation.
If you want to see more of our adventure checkout the #hacktrain4 hashtag or look back at some of our tweets from the @TrainlineTeam twitter account.
