YOUNG Widnes engineers of the future have won a top design award.

The Siemens Rollercoaster Challenge asked children to design and build a model rollercoaster.

Runcorn and Widnes World:

Jurassic City beat six other schools from across the North West in the final

Aimed to help them understand the practical aspects of "STEM" - Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths - the teams were also asked to present a business plan for their projects.

The winning team was Ormiston Chadwick Academy scooped the top prize of £250 which can be put towards projects for their school.

Their design, Jurassic City, beat six other schools from across the North West in the final held at the Great Science Share at the University of Manchester.

Pete Greathead and Karen Gerrard, teachers at Ormiston Chadwick Academy said: “We're delighted to have won the Siemens Rollercoaster Challenge.

"As well as providing an exciting opportunity to put STEM into practice, it has also helped our pupils to improve their problem solving and team building skills, something which will become more important as they progress through school and into the workplace.

"I'd encourage all schools to enter the competition - we'll definitely be entering again next year.”

The Rollercoaster Challenge is aimed at school pupils in years 7, 8 and 9.

Teams have three months to design and build their rollercoaster, creating a portfolio and a digital design to showcase their project.

They must show the processes they undertook to design and build, any problems they encountered and how they overcame them.

Teams must calculate the speed and G-Force of the rollercoaster. They also need to calculate how much it would cost to build in real life, and how much they would need to charge per ride to break even and make a profit.

A team of judges which included Sue Bagguley, head of business development for Siemens Digital Industries and Emma Antrobus, Northeest director at Institution of Civil Engineers, scrutinised the final portfolios to make their decision.

Around 500 children from 45 primary schools across Greater Manchester attended the event, with 450 satellite events involving 58,000 students taking place across the country.