Emeg® Group
A Conversation with Railway Depot Specialist Emeg Group
This article first appeared in the Railway-News magazine Issue 2 2022.
In the midst of a busy year for Emeg, we caught up with Emeg Group President Carl Backhouse to hear about some of the company’s past, prestigious successes as well as exciting, upcoming projects.
Railway-News: You provide mechanical and electrical engineering services for the rail sector. Your headquarters are in Chesterfield and you
are a Network Rail-designated Principal Contractor, but you do have an international office in Dubai. What are some of the international projects you have worked on?
Carl Backhouse, Emeg Group President: Recent international projects include the design and build of the main depot at Al Faya, the largest and most important O&M facility in the Etihad Rail network in Abu Dhabi. In fact, we’ve just shipped the first batch of e-fillTM units, our intelligent fluid mixing solution, from our Manufacturing & Distribution Centre in Chesterfield for installation at the Al Faya depot. It’s a great honour for Emeg to be involved with such a high-profile and prestigious rail engineering project, which will bring so many benefits to the Middle East. We’re also working on a new project with Saudi Arabia Railways, namely, the Al Qurayyat depot in Saudi Arabia. The Al Qurayyat depot plays an important role in the 1,242km Riyadh–Qurayyat network so again, it’s a real feather in Emeg’s cap to have been appointed to work on it.
RN: One of your areas of expertise is in railway depots. I believe you were involved in a facility for Bombardier Transportation (now Alstom) in Derby for the testing of the new Crossrail trains. What was your brief there?
CB: Yes, that was a 24-month project for Balfour Beatty to build a new 10,000m2 V-Shop facility to enable the final test and sale of trains for the Crossrail project. Emeg supplied a range of electrical services, the interlocking system, gas heating, ventilation and cooling systems, and compressed air solutions.
