Stevenage pupils build model trains to inspire future engineers

The model trains were the headline act at Stevenage Arts and Leisure Centre, where 100 schoolchildren from across the town put their designs in front of an expert panel from Thameslink and Great Northern after spending Primary Engineer week building their own locomotives.

The project pulled pupils from nine schools in and around Stevenage into a hands-on challenge that mixed hobby making with real railway thinking. At Roebuck Primary Academy in St Margarets, Stevenage, headteacher Mr Andy Mari backed the work as part of a wider push to show children how design, testing and problem-solving connect to engineering careers. Roebuck Academy is part of Chiltern Learning Trust and is based at St Margarets, Stevenage, Hertfordshire, SG2 8RG.

Primary Engineer, the not-for-profit organisation behind the classroom programme, has been running since 2005 with a clear mission: bring engineering into classrooms early enough to make it feel normal. Its own figures show the scale of that effort. In the 2024-25 academic year it worked with 108,395 pupils, 6,059 teachers and 2,384 engineers, giving the Stevenage project some hard numbers behind the more familiar school-day excitement of cardboard, glue and rolling stock design.

For model railway readers, the attraction is obvious. This was not a generic STEM exercise dressed up with train graphics. It was rail-themed making with a purpose, using the language of design, testing and iteration that already lives at the heart of the hobby. Children who sketch a body shell, think about balance, or judge whether a model will survive handling are doing the same kind of practical problem-solving that goes into building a reliable layout or improving a small-scale fleet.

Stevenage is a fitting place for that lesson. The town sits on the East Coast Main Line and has long lived with rail in view, while local regeneration work has tied skills training to construction and STEM careers as part of its economic future. In that setting, the project looked less like a one-off school visit and more like a pipeline update, linking a town with a rail identity to the next generation of engineers.

The final test at Stevenage Arts and Leisure Centre gave the pupils something that felt close to a real design review. Their model trains were judged, their ideas were taken seriously, and the message was clear: the path from classroom craft table to engineering workshop can start at primary-school age, with a model railway build that already speaks the language of the industry.