Aquarius Railroad Technologies

Aquarius was set up in 1999 at Old Sleningford Farm, North Stainley, outside Ripon in North Yorkshire, and its first products were Land Rovers converted to run on rails: a compact electro-hydraulic rail gear, lowered from the cab at the push of a button, lets a sub-3.5-tonne 4×4 drive onto the track at a crossing and carry a gang and up to 1,450 kg of kit to a worksite, then drive back off. The R2R 4×4 Land Rover is approved for any open line and isolated third-rail conductor lines and can run under live overhead equipment, at 20 mph on plain line and 5 mph over switches, and Aquarius has built variants with hoist bodies and a leaf-fall sanding version for the autumn campaign.

The company hires and sells its vehicles across the UK and overseas through separate manufacturing and hire companies, and as the Defender went out of production it added the Isuzu D-Max and Ford Ranger as base vehicles and developed the self-propelled Rail Mule. A run-in with Jaguar Land Rover over the 'Rail Rover' name led it to rebrand its Land Rover-based vehicles as Rail Trucks.