Ultra Light Rail Partners Ltd
Ultra Light Rail Partners Ltd (ULRP) is a new company set up by four partner companies, Parry People Movers Ltd (PPM) (www.parrypeoplemovers.com); Sustraco Ltd (www.ultralightrail.com) (the successor to Bristol Electric Railbus Ltd (BER)); Clayton Equipment Ltd (claytonequipment.co.uk), a former subsidiary of Rolls Royce (but now independent after an MBO) and Pre Metro Operations Ltd (premetro.co.uk), the operators of the Stourbridge service (see PPM web-site for details) for Abellio, the current franchisee. Major Kit Holden, a former Inspector of Rail, is also on the Board of the company as he is the inventor of an innovative form of rail-track known as metal Waybeam Tramway Track. The Chairman is Professor Beverley Nielsen, Associate Professor at Birmingham City University.
ULRP has been set up in order to take advantage of the success of the Stourbridge service by building a worldwide ULR industry that will provide a solution to the lethal particulate pollution (known as the Oslo Effect) created by buses running on rubber tyres on tarmac.
ULRP has four immediate objectives:
- to build the successor to the PPM Class 139 light rail car in the form of the PPM90 Compact Tramtrain. This larger vehicle will be able to accommodate the increased patronage on the Stourbridge route.
- to develop an innovative Tribrid drive train combining flywheel/ battery energy storage with a drive fuelled by liquid air/nitrogen, using Sustraco’s Bristol tram (pictured below) as a demonstration vehicle on a Waybeam Track.
- To build a one-kilometre test track, using the Waybeam system, in the Tyseley Energy Park in Birmingham, on which to run the Tribrid demonstration, in time for the Commonwealth Games in 2022.
- To organise a worldwide marketing campaign to re-engineer buses to run on steel wheels on steel rails instead of on rubber tyres on tarmac.