The Wednesday night social event at this year’s Annual Rail Seminar was organised by the Railway Division Young Members Committee and took the form of ‘A Virtual Night at the Dogs’. Held at the University of Manchester, attendees had the opportunity to place money bets on which dog they thought would win in each of the six DVD greyhound races run during the evening with a maximum bet of 200 ‘Bank of Mech Eng’ pounds.

With each of the races being relatively short and fast the excitement was high, especially to begin with when everyone had money to place bets with. It soon became apparent that there were some ‘experienced’ gamblers in the room who managed to avoid the pitfalls that others came across to make large wins on each of the races.

At the end of the night it the person with the largest winnings was given the choice of either a Porsche experience day or an iPod Touch as a prize. Carl Moore from Wabtec Rail chose the Porsche experience day as his prize which was presented to him by Debbie Brayshaw from the evening’s sponsors Environmental Scientifics Group. The person with the second highest winnings, Peter Hopkins from Interfleet Technology received the iPod Touch. A consolation bottle of champagne was presented to one of the (many!) attendees who had managed to lose all of their money who was picked at random.

After the races had been run and the prizes had been presented a couple of free drinks at the bar were made available per person courtesy of the Young Members Committee before a number of the attendees made their way out into the Manchester night before the seminar began in earnest the following morning.