A YORK engineering firm has scooped a £10,000 prize after its system for tracking trains won a national innovation award.

Omnicom Engineering, in Clifton Park, has been awarded the 2015 Future Railway Innovation Award for its proposed RailNavigator product, a low-cost advanced positioning system for rail.

The award was made on behalf of the GB rail sector by RSSB and the Railway Industry Association (RIA).

Three finalists made their presentations to a panel of industry judges and fielded questions at RIA’s Technology and Innovation Conference, held in Leamington Spa last month.

Omnicom’s chief executive Stirling Kimkeran took the podium to demonstrate to delegates how the RailNavigator system will form the basis of a wide range of services intended to deliver benefits to passengers, infrastructure owners, suppliers of service based measuring systems and operators.

At the end of the two-day conference, Omnicom was announced as the winner and presented with a cheque for £10,000 by Clare Moriarty, director general rail executive at the Department of Transport, and David Clarke, director of Innovation at RSSB.

The firm will also be given access to further funding of up to £300,000 in total as the project develops.

Mr Clarke said: “Congratulations to Omnicom. The judges were very impressed with the work they had done so far, and we look forward to seeing how this project develops.

“Command, control and communication is a key theme for unlocking and developing capacity in the rail system.”

RIA’s technical director Francis How added: “Omnicom are worthy winners of this year’s award; they made a great pitch with a very high quality entry to the competition. It is really important that we encourage and support innovations like this for the future of the railway.”

Funded by RSSB as part of the Future Railway programme, the RIA/Future Railway Award supports the development of innovative products or services for the railway and is open to UK registered companies.

RailNavigator is proposed as a low cost advanced positioning system for rail which will provide real time vehicle positioning.

Initially suitable for passenger information systems, logging driving characteristics and taking ride quality measurements; it could also be used to drive other functions that rely on accurate train position determination.

Omnicom has wide experience in providing image-based solutions to the transport industry, including the provision of the train borne image acquisition systems, video processing systems, automated image processing techniques and data visualisation tools.