Mechan jack production hits record levels

31 October 2022

Print Page

Rail depot equipment specialist Mechan has enjoyed a bumper 12-month period for its flagship lifting jacks, producing 122 between August 2021 and August 2022.


The Sheffield-based manufacturer created jacks for facilities up and down the country, building 104 since January alone.

Twenty 20 jacks have been delivered to GTR’s Selhurst Depot in London, where they are enabling five-car trains to be overhauled without decoupling, saving valuable servicing time.

Orders have also been fulfilled for rail facilities in Rugby, Wakefield and South Lanarkshire in Scotland, while ten mobile jacks were installed at Heathrow airport to speed up the removal and replacement of the large-tyred wheels on its Track Transit System. Mechan had to create a bespoke design to fulfil this project, as the jacks needed to fit into an elevator used to access the underground maintenance facility at Terminal Five.

Lindsey Mills, Mechan’s sales director, said: “Interest in our lifting jacks, particularly from UK partners, has remained strong for the last few years. This has kept our workshop busy in recent months! Despite the time pressures they’ve been under, our skilled engineers have done a fantastic job keeping production running smoothly, ensuring we’ve been able to deliver such high order numbers in a timely and efficient manner.”

Mechan’s jacks allow the synchronised lifting of multiple rail cars and are used in many of the world’s most advanced rail facilities. The firm recently introduced an updated version of its control system, which has been developed to include input/output (I/O) technology, reducing the size of cables and 4G connectivity for remote diagnostics.