Transport for London (TfL)’s new Operations, Maintenance and Control (OMC) depot for the Elizabeth line at Old Oak Common, West London is a state-of-the-art, nine-track train maintenance building. It is part of the £142 million contract awarded to Taylor Woodrow and will accommodate 33 trains while routine maintenance is carried out.
While it is fairly obvious that each of those nine roads would need to be closed off by a door, selecting the correct type was not as straightforward as may be thought.
Keith Fulton, associate architect with RPS Consulting Services Limited, the lead designer for the new OMC depot, commented: “In addition to securing the building, there were a range of practical issues that were critical in the design of these doors. The major factor was accommodating live overhead electrification lines (OLE), which meant vertical opening doors would have been impractical. These were eight extremely large openings, so effective thermal and acoustic insulation was important for the doors to ensure compliance with TfL’s strict environmental requirements.”
Demanding specification
Specialist industrial door manufacturer Jewers Doors was therefore contracted to supply and install eight of its latest Swift-SEW and two smaller Swift horizontal bi-folding doors for this application.
Four metres wide and 6.6 metres high, each of the main doors is made up of four highly insulated, single-piece composite panels, with two leaves folding to each side when open. An 850mm x 760mm cut-out allows an OLE cable to pass through the closed door. The cut-out is lined with 9mm thick safety matting tested to 30kVA to prevent bird entry and, for additional safety, the door is earthed back to the structure with suitably rated earth bonding braids.
Elizabeth line OMC roadway doors.
For visibility when closed, each door panel incorporates a 600 x 600mm argon-filled, double-glazed vision panel made from toughened glass, fitted with multi-wall rubber seals to all edges to reduce water, air and dust ingress. To meet the environmental criteria, panels are injected with CFC-free polyurethane foam providing a thermal efficiency U-value of 1.1W/m2/°C and noise reduction of 25dB. To eliminate the spread of fire and to provide great rigidity and strength, panels incorporate an internal steel frame to all edges.
The doors are operated by a powerful, centrally mounted drive unit, supplied by SEW-Eurodrive, combined with a purpose-designed control panel incorporating inverter control for smooth starts and stops. The system takes less than eight seconds to full open and close, and safety is ensured with full height, pressure-sensitive safety edges and photocell beams to create a safe zone around the door during operation.
In addition to the drive unit holding the door in the closed position, a pair of automatic solenoid-operated floor bolts provides additional security and prevents wind-damage. In the event of power failure, a low-level disengage handle enables the doors to be opened quickly by hand from ground level.
Fulton added, “This is a high-profile flagship project and, as Jewers are a tried and tested company in the rail sector, we were confident that the doors would be of the highest quality, fully meet the spec and provide reliable service for many years to come.”
It is exactly 50 years since the former Institution of Locomotive Engineers amalgamated with the Institution of Mechanical Engineers, forming its Railway Division. Andy Mellors, the Division’s 50th chairman, mentioned this when Rail Engineer interviewed him as he prepared his Chairman’s Address, which he presented on 10 September.
Andy had decided on the title “Challenging Times”, which seems particularly apt, not least for him personally, as he balances his IMechE role with his day job as managing director of South Western Railway, one of the UK’s biggest train operating companies.
Andy continued the tradition of outlining his career and using that experience to explore some of the opportunities and challenges for railway engineering.
With Sir Kenneth Grange, who designed the timeless ‘face’ of the HST.
Early days
Andy comes from the “class of 88”; one of 17 school leavers – “all male”, he said with disappointment in his voice – who joined the British Railway Engineering Management Training scheme. He reflected on what it was that attracted him to engineering, attributing it to a combination of his physics teacher, who made much of the practical application of the science, the enthusiasm of his form tutor, who urged him to go to university in London, and to his deputy headteacher, who had an interest in railways. Andy returned to this subject later.
The BR training scheme provided for practical experience in the years before and after university and a university project to solve a practical rolling stock ride quality problem. This delivered an engineer who, at the tender age of 22, was appointed a shift production manager at Wembley depot, a position of considerable responsibility.
Andy said: “Whilst I’ve had some very rewarding moments in my career in the subsequent years, never have I had a job more consistently rewarding than one where, after many a challenging night shift, with the pressure of imminent deadlines, teamwork was everything and you could readily see the fruits of your labour being realised, with correctly formed and well-presented trains going into service on-time for the benefit of our customers, as you made your way home for some well-earned sleep.”
This role was Andy’s introduction to people management, as well as learning about the systems aspects of railways, not least when he had to have a conversation with a very experienced train planning manager “undertaking a post-mortem into a Saturday night at the southern end of the West Coast main line when there were more trains planned to stable than there was actual space – never mind the manpower to clean or service them!”
Andy then moved to the Merseyrail network in a commercial role dealing with contracts required to lease and maintain the privatised fleet. He recalled: “As a relatively small operation, there was plenty of opportunity to get involved in a much wider range of issues and get a better understanding of the workings of the railway company and the communities and the stakeholders which it served” – something he would encourage all engineers to do.
After Merseyrail, Andy moved to FirstGroup, starting with First North Western dealing both with the bathtub curve problems of new trains at the start of their lives and of the end of life issue of ancient class 101 diesel multiple units. Moving to First Scotrail, at the start of that franchise in 2004, provided further challenges with an even more diverse rolling stock fleet.
South Western Railway Siemens Desiro Class 444.
Andy then moved to become engineering director and later deputy managing director at First Great Western (now GWR) in 2007, a modern-day equivalent of the role of his former mentor from the start of his career. In conversation, it was clear that he had to deal with some truly “challenging times”, but he chose to highlight some wonderful memories.
Many of these inevitably revolved around High Speed Trains, including the coalition between operator, owner and supply chain to re-engine the power cars and put further life and vital reliability into the venerable machines, as well as some record breaking non-stop runs and the 40th anniversary with Sir Kenneth Grange.
His proudest moment was the launch of the electric commuter service out of Paddington with brand new trains, which has been a real game changer on that railway.
Finally, in Summer 2017, he took up his current role.
Andy commented that the challenges had remained remarkably similar, irrespective of where he has worked. These include managing safety in a steady-state environment and ensuring that safety is not compromised during periods of change, always wanting to do better in terms of service/customer delivery with a desire to improve fleet reliability and deliver the required levels of capacity, all with the requirement to ensure value for money and achieve continuous improvement in driving out waste.
Of course, none of this can be delivered by one person and Andy emphasised the importance of teamwork and collaboration in achieving results, often across contractual boundaries and physical interfaces where the individual parties’ objectives may not be completely aligned.
“So, all of that helps explain why I am a rail engineer and a railwayman – the opportunity to work with awesome kit and great people where, not only is every day different, we can and do make a difference in people’s daily lives,” he said.
Andy briefly mentioned some of the strengths of the railway such as the dramatic increase in frequency and ridership on the North London line of the London Overground network, before focusing on things to improve.
Launch of GWR’s Class 387.
Challenging Times – Railways
Andy reported a number of measures of dissatisfaction with the railway – delays to projects, the inability to run all the trains in the timetable, demands for renationalisation, and falling customer satisfaction. Many of these are consequences of trying to carry passenger volumes that our predecessors could never have anticipated.
“Our network is increasingly congested,” he admitted. “I mentioned the North London line earlier as an example where service frequency has dramatically improved. Across the national network, some 4,000 additional services operate every day compared to twenty years ago – with almost 1,300 more a day planned within the next three years.”
Indeed, it is issues with providing additional capacity that has led to the current “challenging times” – late running electrification, industrial disputes around modernising job roles and timetable changes that have not worked out as intended. Even Crossrail – until recently seen as a model for big infrastructure projects – will be nearly a year late. Once delivered, however, they will all deliver enormous benefit to their customers and the UK economy.
Andy anticipated that demand will continue to increase, despite recent small indications to the contrary, and customer and society’s expectations for the railway will continue to evolve. He referred to three areas from the Rail Delivery Capability Plan in his predecessor’s Chairman’s Address (issue 156, October 2017) – cost effective electrification, Digital Railway and decarbonising non-electrified routes, saying “in the case of the latter, it’s certainly been an eventful last six months since Jo Johnson’s ‘2040 challenge’ back in February 2018.
“This led to the establishment of a cross-industry task force, who will be delivering a preliminary report by the end of September 2018. Direction from the Minister is that further electrification is not in scope for the initial response and options being considered are therefore likely to include bi-modes, batteries, hydrogen fuel cell combinations, and other lower or zero carbon fuels.”
Andy highlighted three more themes from the Rail Capability Delivery Plan, all of which fit perfectly with his day job running SWR.
Running Trains Closer Together will increase the capacity of the railway and allow the railway to accommodate higher passenger numbers. Andy said that moving block signalling will help, but this needs to be accompanied by a new operational philosophy of consistency in everything, whether by design or through on-the-day operation; variance is bad! This includes homogenous fleets with predictable and dependable braking rather than having to contend with a variety of rolling stock types with varying and poor, by modern standards, performance characteristics.
Andy added that “predictable door positions and locations of other on-board facilities, such as wheelchair and cycle areas, will also support active platform management and promote consistent delivery of reduced station dwell times, to be taken as either more capacity or network resilience. The Japanese have been doing this for years – despite upgrading its rolling stock more frequently than we might otherwise do, train length and door positioning remains a constant on the Shinkansen”.
He also highlighted the importance of predictable and dependable braking as a means of enabling closer running. Attitudes have changed over the years, and it is increasingly unacceptable to live with the safety and performance risk arising from leaves on the line. Wheelside protection is not enough, on its own, to overcome slippery leaf debris and Andy was “pleased to play a part last year in providing otherwise spare modern rolling stock – in that sense a welcome by-product of electrification delays – to undertake what some have since called the most significant piece of research relating to on-train sanding.” (issue 163, May 2018). Andy urged that rapid progress be made to implement the results of the research.
The second issue from the Capability Delivery Plan, Services Timed to the Second, is another area where heavy rail needs to improve. Providing a signalling system and rolling stock to achieve reduced headways will come to nothing if train planning/timetabling allows no more granularity than the half minute. “The right train needs to be in the right place at the right time at the right speed,” he stated.
Furthermore, understanding variances in performance will have to be much more extensive. Fresh insight into why trains are not where they should be will be required. On a congested railway, seconds really do matter and it is no longer acceptable to only consider the impact of delays of three minutes or more. The cumulative impact of time loss from what might historically have been considered as minor irritants, such as speed restrictions, under-performing rolling stock, slightly extended station dwell times and defensive driving, can no longer be ignored as headways get tighter. All of this investigation will be useless unless the results are implemented and, moreover, the operation is designed to be able to recover quickly from minor delays.
There is a risk that none of this may happen as the ORR’s draft determination for ‘pump priming’ R&D funding in CP6 included only £100 million for infrastructure and nothing for the rest of the railway system, compared with the £440 million that Network Rail had requested on behalf of the whole industry. Encouragingly, the Railway Industry Association and others are actively campaigning to redress the balance.
A More Personalised Customer Experience was Andy’s third theme. He said that it’s not just about raising the game with the on-board experience, but customers do expect air conditioning, toilets, electrical sockets and Wi-Fi to be working. These aspects of the on-train experience need to be matched by the off-train experience. This is as much about culture as design and maintenance.
Andy said: “Whilst rail is seen as a vital engine of growth and can spread wealth, we are failing to deliver the promises we make today on punctuality and value for money. We have to work hard to keep up with the progress being made in other areas of people’s lives and must be more agile, so as to meet the changing needs of passengers, communities, society and our economy.”
Challenging Times – Engineering Profession
The second part of Andy’s address considered the engineering profession, saying “without the right people we will get nowhere”. He highlighted the industry’s drive to make engineering in general, and railway engineering in particular, attractive to youngsters, citing the example of his son’s school where some seventy 11-year olds were asked to say what job they would like to do. Only one said engineering and another seven, just 10 per cent, referred to a STEM related job.
Continuing, he highlighted the IMechE’s November 2017 report “We Think It’s Important But Don’t Quite Know What It Is”, The title sums up the problem, the point is not about the children but about the adults who give them guidance, who often don’t know enough to encourage children into engineering. He outlined the report’s recommendations and described some of the research underway to see what needs to change to make a difference.
He made particular mention of the practical approach of the London Transport Museum which, despite what the name suggests, does not just tell the story of the past and present but has, for a number of years, done a lot to think about the future. A lot of this is undertaken in conjunction with industry sponsors.
A good example is the museum’s “Great Summer of Engineering” promotion, which ran for the school summer holiday. In each of the six weeks, there was a different theme with STEM-related interactive challenges to develop young people’s creative and problem-solving skills – as well as some storytelling and demonstrations.
Andy added: “It was great to be able to visit the museum in my RD Chair capacity and meet some of the volunteers involved in the project. I know this is only part of the great work which the museum and its partners do – something which the wider industry and engineering profession could learn from in terms of how we try and better engage and inspire the next generation of engineers.”
Andy also echoed both his predecessor’s and the IMechE’s immediate past president’s concerns at the poor representation of women in the engineering profession (8-9 per cent) and railway engineering (4 per cent). “This issue needs to be addressed at every step along what appears to be a tortuous path,” he said. “As well as actions by schools and universities, as employers we have to continue to work on some of the enablers including how we measure organisational culture, behaviours and business processes which will encourage, address and ultimately maintain diversity.”
Andy concluded his address by calling for more collaboration between engineering institutions and railway professional organisations, referring to the success of the Young Railway Professionals. He also paid tribute to the incoming President, Tony Roche’s reaffirmation that “the IMechE is, first and foremost, a membership organisation and it is crucial that we remember that our object and purpose under the Royal Charter is to ‘promote the development of mechanical engineering and to facilitate the exchange of information and ideas’”.
All at Rail Engineer wish Andy Mellors a fulfilling year in this role.
When researching an article for the Class 769 Flex, there were lots of ideas discussed about how the concept could be extended for other uses. What was not discussed was the possibility of a hydrogen-powered version. Yet, at InnoTrans on 19 September, in the presence of the Secretary of State for Transport Chris Grayling, Porterbrook announced that it was making a Class 319 unit available to Birmingham Centre for Railway Research and Education (BCRRE) for conversion into a hydrogen-powered train to be known as HyrdoFlex.
The announcement added that development work has recently commenced and HydroFlex will undertake testing and demonstration runs in summer 2019.
The HydroFlex will retain the ability to operate on existing electric routes (on either third rail or 25kV overhead power) and the addition of a hydrogen fuel cell will allow it to operate in self-powered mode, without the need for diesel engines.
As was reported in Rail Engineer earlier this year, Rail Minister Jo Johnson has challenged the rail industry to develop decarbonisation plans, with the objective of removing diesel-only trains from the network by 2040. HydroFlex is Porterbrook’s and BCRRE’s response to this challenge, bringing together industry and academia in partnership to deliver the UK’s first-in-class, clean energy, main line passenger train.
After the signing ceremony, the Secretary of State joined representatives from Porterbrook and BCRRE to discuss both the potential for hydrogen technology to decarbonise the railway and the world-leading rail R&D and innovation expertise to be found across the UK rail supply industry and through the UK Rail Research and Innovation Network (UKRRIN).
BCRRE reported that it has already undertaken a significant amount of research into the potential application of hydrogen fuel-cell technology to railway operations and has worked with a number of global rail businesses to identify potential opportunities to use hydrogen as a clean alternative to diesel.
Strictly a demonstrator
Rail Engineer readers who have been following this topic will understand that the Class 319 is not necessarily the best base for a hydrogen-powered train – the lack of regenerative braking might lead to a bigger fuel cell, for example. Clearly, if the objective was a fully developed train ready for production, then this might be a problem, but this is not the key objective at this stage of the project.
In response to Rail Engineer’s questions, BCRRE said that the demonstrator version focuses on delivering an electric/hydrogen bi-mode to UK gauge, which the UK market is currently looking for given the wider context of the 2040 decarbonisation ambition and the need to make more effective use of existing electrification with additional emission-free running beyond the wires.
BCRRE added that a part of the project includes developing the product approval and safety cases for hydrogen running on the UK railway.
The team working on this demonstrator project has a lot of work to do to make hydrogen rail a reality. The demonstrator will take passengers in 2019, but BCRRE will need to prove the technology to the regulator and the infrastructure manager before the demonstrator can go into full passenger service.
BCRRE promised more technical details later, so watch this space!
A previous article in Rail Engineer (issue 157, November 2017) outlined plans for bi-mode fleets on UK railways. This article briefly described Porterbrook Leasing’s Class 319 Flex conversions. A total of 32 units are currently on order, more than half of which will be the UK’s first tri-mode trains (AC, DC and diesel).
Rail Engineer was particularly interested in the engineering and performance challenges of this project and was given the exclusive opportunity to talk with Helen Simpson, engineering innovation and development manager of Porterbrook, and Simon Evans, group innovations director of Wabtec Faiveley UK. They talked about the background and engineering challenges on this ground-breaking project and kindly escorted your writer on a tour of the production facility whilst the first trains were being completed.
MAN D2876.
Initial considerations
Class 319 trains were originally provided for the Thameslink route (currently operated by GTR) in the late 1980s/early 1990s. There are 86 units with sub-fleets that have slightly different interior layouts. They are all capable of operation using 25kV AC overhead and 750V DC third rail and can operate at speeds up to 100mph.
The entire class has been through a recent upgrade programme, with the addition of passenger information system displays, as well as controlled emission and universal access toilets. The fleet was withdrawn from GTR as the Class 700 trains were introduced. Some units have been leased to Arriva Rail Northern and West Midlands Trains, operating on 25kV only.
The story starts in September 2014 when Helen Simpson was asked to start looking at how the Class 319 trains might be “re-purposed”. At this time, an ambitious electrification programme was in full swing, but Porterbrook concluded that there would never be a case to electrify all routes and there was likely to be a role for bi-mode suburban/regional trains to allow through journey opportunities, even without continuous electrification.
With the cancellation and delays to schemes since then, the opportunity has expanded.
Of course, there was a lot to consider, evaluate and model before any metal was cut. The key decision was the independent power source. Porterbrook determined that the self-powered performance needed to be at least as good as a Class 150 Sprinter train and that it should have a broadly comparable range.
Alternative power sources such as batteries, flywheels, and supercapacitors were rejected because of their lack of range, and hydrogen fuel cells were rejected because of the novelty risk, lack of hydrogen infrastructure for refuelling, and approvals risks (drafted before the announcement of the Hydroflex, covered in this issue).
Consequently, Porterbrook decided that the only fully developed option was diesel power, delivering the best compromise of range, weight, physical size, power density and total cost.
The engine raft nears completion.
Concept design
After considering a number of supply chain options, Porterbrook formed a partnership with Wabtec Brush to develop the design and convert the units. Brush has expertise in complex engineering design and prior experience of repowering the Class 73 electro diesel locomotives.
The basic concept provides for fitting a diesel alternator power pack to each driving trailer (DT) vehicle, driving the original traction equipment via the existing DC bus line with a return cable added (on electric power the return is via the track). Electronic control units are being provided a) to trick the traction package into thinking it is being powered by a DC conductor rail and b) to control the power output of the diesel engines. Rail Engineer was told that the diesel-electric package is expected to be more efficient than current diesel-hydraulic units during acceleration
The engines are MAN D2876, producing up to 390kW and connected to ABB alternators. The engines are compliant with the EU stage IIIB requirement. They have a selective catalytic reduction (SCR) system to reduce NOx emissions using AdBlue – Helen commented that the engines produce lower emissions than most existing diesel rolling stock and are expected to be quieter. She added that the MAN engine, one of the few that is compact enough to fit under the train, is widely used in rail applications in Europe and is supported in the UK by Wabtec group member LH Plant.
Performance
The rated output of two diesel engines at 780kW is the maximum they can produce. By the time alternator efficiency, auxiliary supplies, and traction control efficiency are taken into account, the electrical input to the traction motors will be approximately 550kW, little more than half the maximum rated output of the traction motors.
Simon and Helen are well aware of this deficit. They explained that simple headline figures do not tell the whole story and that the required performance on diesel was likely to be as good as, if not better than the Class 150. Simon described the modelling that had been carried out to gain confidence that the Class 769 trains – the new designation for what had internally been called the Class 319 Flex – will deliver this required performance. He said that Wabtec had constructed its models from scratch and some worst-case routes had been selected to demonstrate the performance.
Modelling is only as good as the quality of the modelling algorithms, data and assumptions and Rail Engineer heard that a degree of conservatism has been built into the modelling, leading to confidence that the Class 769 will out-perform class 15X DMUs on the tough routes modelled.
Compared with a Class 150, the Class 769 has a higher tractive effort on starting, but the tractive effort falls away more steeply. This difference in tractive effort curves makes it difficult simply to predict performance on any particular route, illustrating the importance and value of modelling. Modelling has shown the gradient balancing speed on a flat gradient when powered by the diesel engines to be approximately 87mph and the trains will retain the 100mph capability when powered by electricity. The modelling has also shown that two 1000-litre fuel tanks should be ample for the expected duty.
Whilst maintenance costs will inevitably rise compared with an electric-only Class 319, track access charges should be similar to the donor units. Compared with class 15X DMUs, overall fuel consumption – even on all-diesel routes – and routine maintenance costs will be lower, due to the use of a modern diesel engine requiring less maintenance.
Fitting out the control cubicle.
Physical modifications
Converting a Class 319 train into a tri-mode Class 769 involves the following on each driving trailer (DT) vehicle, except where stated otherwise:
Installation of a new MAN engine and ABB alternator power pack, raft mounted and using similar attachments to those on similar modern DMU rafts such as Turbostars;
Installation of the SCR system including an AdBlue tank;
Moving the existing heater contactor equipment case to accommodate the new powerpack;
Installation of a new exhaust system with a layout that is similar to that on a Class 150, given the similar carbody and bogie configuration;
Modification of the power control circuits and traction interface controller for diesel mode (DT, motor second open (MSO) vehicles);
Fitting fire barriers, a fire suppression system and a fire alarm system to control the risks of fire on or around the diesel engine equipment;
Minor modifications to the cab controls and cab circuit breakers to allow the driver to select diesel mode, AC or DC;
Installation of new return cable and jumpers for the 750V DC supply (all vehicles);
Fitment of track circuit assistor (TCA), a first on an EMU. It has to be disabled when drawing electricity from the OLE or third rail;
For the tri-mode vehicles – fitting shoegear to the trailing bogies on DT vehicles to avoid physical conflict with the TCA and fitting a new power bus to replace the original one which is used by the diesel generator; the additional changeover contactors (diesel to DC) will be fitted to the intermediate trailer car and motor car;
For vehicles specified to have air conditioning/air cooling, a static converter will be fitted in place of the motor alternator which has insufficient capacity for the additional load.
This description shows clearly that this is an extensive modification. Simon explained that more than 60 engineers have been involved in the design using more than 45,000 engineering hours to produce over 2,500 drawings, detailing more than 3,500 components for each conversion.
As is often the case with older vehicles produced by what are euphemistically called “coach-built techniques”, the vehicles did not always conform to the drawings and some of the original drawings were missing or incomplete. Access to some of the original designers was a great help, as was the early delivery of a Class 319 to Brush’s Loughborough factory allowing designers to compare drawings with the real thing.
The modifications add approximately 7.5 tonnes to the DT vehicle. In discussion about the impact of this extra mass, Simon revealed that finite element analysis of the bodyshell had been carried out, that the axles are strong enough, and that the suspension and brake cylinder pressures had been adjusted to compensate for the additional mass.
Inevitably, there were design and logistic challenges, such as accommodating an exhaust on a train never intended to have one, even though the design resembles the class 150 exhaust which has similar bogies and carbody. It was also important to make sure the extra mass was evenly spread around the underframe, which in turn led to some space constraints.
Approvals
Helen talked about the compliance and approval process. The modification is not considered an upgrade or renewal and does not require authorisation under the common safety method for risk evaluation and assessment, although this process has been voluntarily applied as a robust means of managing safety. SNC-Lavalin is providing integrated Notified Body, Designated Body and Assessment Body services.
Full details of this process would justify its own article, and Helen described some of the challenges applying the approval process mandated by the Technical Standards for Interoperability (TSI) regulations on a 30-year-old train. For example, TSI noise requirements do not apply, but pass-by noise will be compared to other DMUs operating the same services on the route; in the case of the Northern trains, this means comparing with the Class 15X units. Porterbrook needs to show it is no worse, but is actually aiming for it to be a demonstrable improvement. This, and other type approval testing, was expected to be carried out at the nearby Great Central Railway.
The completed exhaust stack.
The programme
The initial eight Northern units are being completed by Wabtec Brush Traction at Loughborough. During a tour of the factory, a number of vehicles in various states of upgrade were observed, as were the neat modifications to the body to attach the engine/alternator raft. Several engine/alternator rafts and control cubicles were seen under construction (bringing back memories of visits to Brush Traction in the 1980s during the building of equipment cases for the LU 1983 tube stock).
The tour concluded with a visit to the engine/alternator test cells, three of which have been constructed for this project.
The core Flex modifications are not the only works being carried out to these trains. As stated earlier, they have recently had PRM (persons of reduced mobility) works carried out together with the installation of retention tanks for the toilets.
All of the core Flex work will be carried out at Loughborough. For Northern, reliability improvement, re-branding and other modifications are being undertaken by Knorr-Bremse Rail Services (KBRS) under contract to Northern. For the Arriva Trains Wales (ATW) and subsequent trains (such as GWR), all works other than core Flex will be carried out by KBRS. The ATW trains are due for delivery between August and October 2018.
“All works” can include air cooling (which require the static converter), CCTV – both saloon and forward facing, at seat USB and power sockets, Ethernet backbone to support engine control and Wi-Fi, interior and exterior rebranding, and guard’s door control panels.
The first Class 769 unit arrives at Quorn and Woodhouse on the Great Central Railway for dynamic testing in diesel mode.
Dynamic testing
At the start of the process, Porterbrook resolved to provide trains able to operate on both electrified and non-electrified networks with a simple switchover, potentially on the move. Performance in diesel mode was to be similar to Class 150, uphill with several stops, and a refuelling range of at least one day (500 miles). This was to be accompanied by diesel engine fuelling and maintenance similar to Class 150 and a driving style as close to Class 319 as possible in order to deliver a bi-mode train that was attractive to operators.
Helen said that, subject to test, all this has been achieved and she is looking forward to seeing the results of the dynamic testing.
On 14 September, the first Class 769 unit arrived at Quorn and Woodhouse on the Great Central Railway to commence that dynamic testing. The diesel-powered aspects of the upgraded train will be put through their paces over the coming weeks.
The Future
Helen and Simon indicated that other orders might be forthcoming but would not be drawn on what they might be. They also indicated the possibility of other Flex products, possibly a true hybrid design based on the Class 455 750V DC units. These have been extensively refurbished and have been retrofitted with three-phase AC traction systems incorporating regenerative braking. There would be space on the intermediate trailer coach for batteries that could be charged by the regenerated energy and by the diesel engines. Such a feature could have several benefits such as being able to stop the diesel engines in terminal stations and to supplement diesel engine power when accelerating.
Thanks to Helen Simpson, Porterbrook and, Simon Evans, Wabtec for their tour of the production facility and for patiently answering questions, and to Rupert Brennan-Brown and Karen Jackson of Porterbrook for facilitating the article.
Photo: Jamie Steel.
Class 769 orders (as of May 2018):
On 22 December 2016, Northern (Arriva Trains Northern) and Porterbrook Leasing announced that they were cooperating to extend the reach of the Class 319 trains that have been leased for the North West Electrification programme. Eight of their four-car units were to be converted into bi-mode trains, described as Class 319 Flex.
Abellio Wales & Borders and the Welsh Assembly Government announced in July 2017 that they would take five Class 319 Flex trains, operated in diesel mode, to cover for Sprinter DMUs that needed to have modifications carried out to conform to the Technical Specification for Interoperability – Requirements for People of Reduced Mobility.
Next, on 23 April 2018, Great Western Railway announced that it had ordered 19 of the trains, now known as Class 769 Flex; these will be tri-mode units (diesel and AC/DC) fitted with air cooling, at-seat power sockets and Wi-Fi.
A train maintenance engineer will be familiar with sending out a clean train with all its water tanks full, and a day or so later comes back filthy with other tanks full of… well let’s leave that to the imagination!
This is just part of what has to be provided when a depot has to be built or adapted to accommodate new trains, the objective being to offer the required number of trains for service each day in immaculate condition and to be able to carry out maintenance as quickly as possible.
Staff have to be able to work safely; in the yard in all weathers, around electrification assets, around pits, at height and well within manual handling rules.
Just thinking about the author’s career, much has changed in depots. For a start, they are generally cleaner and warmer, helping to attract staff, and Health and Safety legislation has made a positive contribution to how the job is done. Using a couple of examples, in the 1970s, there would not be a torque wrench in sight, let alone power tools. And lifting techniques were primitive to say the least. To lift all cars of an eight-car train, first each car would be uncoupled, then all the bogie disconnections are made, followed by each being lifted in turn by an overhead crane, the bogie being rolled out then the car end was lowered onto stands, repeating for each of the 16 bogies.
Compare that with the 21st century version where an eight-car S stock is run into the lifting shed, and, provided it is stopped in exactly the right place, the whole train is lifted at the touch of a button. Bogies can then be disconnected and lowered individually.
Other depots use bogie drops to allow rapid bogie changes. London Underground has also had to change the arrangements of its District and Metropolitan line wheel lathes. Formerly they were arranged to accommodate four or three-car units respectively, but as the new trains are not easily divisible, they have had to be altered to accommodate respectively eight- and seven-car trains.
In electronics, trains often have systems that warn depots of defective equipment and depots can have staff and equipment standing by to deal with the defect as soon as the train rolls in – albeit probably taking a little longer than it takes to change a set of wheels on a Formula 1 car!
To achieve this, of course, needs excellent wireless download and analysis tools – it’s no good having gigabytes of data if no one looks at it! It would be a very strange 21st century depot that didn’t have excellent mobile phone and Wi-Fi coverage, both for maintainer’s devices and for the trains themselves.
Depot construction or alterations involve regular railway and building professions such as civil construction, permanent way, steel framed buildings (generally), power (traction and building) and signalling.
In addition, many specialised depot systems are supplied by British companies who have established a reputation for flexibility and delivery of the very many specialist systems required, from safe electrical isolation systems via platforms and staging to cleaning, replenishment of fluids and, well, sucking effluent from those toilet retention tanks.
Apropos Controlled Emission Toilets (CETs), when you include the other fluids used, such as refuelling, train washing, routine changing of lubricating oil on an increasing number of diesel/diesel bi-mode trains, there’s a lot to think about.
These were the main topics of conversation when Rail Engineer recently met Andy Coles from Rail Depot Solutions, whose company specialises in providing solutions for washing, fuelling and CET servicing, an unloved but vitally important aspect of train maintenance.
Andy said he has built his career “following new trains around”; his company seeking to provide common-sense solutions by delivering new depot systems, or by adding to or adapting existing systems.
Carriage washing, fuelling and CET servicing is generally carried out in the open, adjacent to places where trains move and where the track is electrified (either third rail or OLE). Personnel safety is therefore paramount and, indeed, subject to research into automation (RRUKA conference – Rail Engineer issue 159, January 2018), although Andy Coles’ view was that automation of these activities will take a long time to implement safely and dependably.
First – the basics; Andy said there are around 160 depot sites in the UK where fuelling, washing and/or CET servicing take place. There are a number of different ownership models. Most locations are owned by Network Rail and leased by the train operator (TOC). Depot equipment is provided by Network Rail with maintenance shared between TOC (first line) and Network Rail (everything else). In depots owned and/or operated by a train manufacturer, equipment is generally owned by that train manufacturer supplier. Andy observed that split responsibility for provision and maintenance can lead to what he described, diplomatically, as “difficulties”.
Rail Engineer has reported extensively about the large number of new rail vehicles being purchased and the opportunities and challenges they bring. There is a further opportunity/challenge in that most of the rolling stock companies (ROSCOS – the train owners who then lease them to the operators) have chosen to add provision of CETs to the modifications being carried out to existing trains to comply with the Technical Specification for Interoperability for persons of Reduced Mobility by the 1 January 2020 deadline.
It was fascinating to hear about these major challenges from the point of view of the depot equipment. For example, South Western Railway has committed to providing toilets on all its trains. Wimbledon Depot has had CET systems for many years and in fact has two systems located at different locations within the depot. This implies providing CET facilities at locations such as Wimbledon depot are expanding.
When it comes to servicing all the toilets on a train, do you position the train and have multiple servicing points or do you have one servicing point and move the train? The latter is usually frowned upon; the location has to be roughly twice as long as the longest train, and there needs to be excellent communication between the ground staff and the driver. It is much more satisfactory to have multiple servicing points.
Blackburn depot.
Vacuum facility
A servicing point needs to have a vacuum facility to pump the effluent from the tank, water to rinse the tank and a separate water feed for the flushing and washing water. The operator attaches the hoses to the first toilet and sets the system running, and moves onto the next, and so on.
At the end, the operator removes the hoses and seals the pipes. This can be accomplished in about 20 minutes. It is usual for trains to have connectors for water and CETs on both sides of the train, so that the depot facilities need only be on one side, whereas filling facilities are needed on both sides of the trains for sand used for adhesion improvement.
Changing from one fleet to another can bring its own challenges. Firstly, to comply with the current legislative regime, the connectors for water and toilets have to comply with TSIs/Euronorms.
Tripping hazard
These connectors are not necessarily those currently in use. Thus, during changeover from one fleet to another, both connectors have to be provided, increasing the number of hoses that might become a tripping hazard.
The legacy filling connection is a taper fitting onto which a hose is pushed. The new style is a claw fitting that turns anti clockwise to seal (anti clockwise being counter intuitive). Depots also have to cope with an increased volume of trains during the changeover from one fleet to another.
The temporary “bulge” in fleet numbers can result in trains being stabled in unusual locations and Andy Coles described how, with a little notice (perhaps three to four months), temporary facilities can be provided such as a temporary, extra narrow wash plant provided at Gidea Park.
Class 385 at Millerhill depot. Note CET stations in foreground. Photo: Morgan Sindall.
Fuel Systems – the growth of bi-mode
As a self-confessed fan of electric trains, your author has a prejudiced view that diesel engines leak oil and coolant and that diesel fuel gets spilled everywhere when the tanks are filled. Of course, none of this would be acceptable today!
The requirement has increased, however, with the increasing number of diesel engines to be dealt with due to the proliferation of bi-mode trains. Trains with three or five 560kW or 700kW underfloor diesel engines need to be dealt with in a number of depots, including facilities for draining and replenishing lubricating oil, refuelling, maintaining cooling systems and replenishing the AdBlue tanks for the selective catalytic reduction systems.
What to do with the waste?
Much to your author’s surprise Andy mentioned that the waste from the CETs can be discharged into the sewers as domestic waste, whereas the water from the train washers is regarded as trade waste and TOCs have to pay a fee for its disposal. This led to a conversation about the challenges of train washers.
Andy said that roundly 250 litres of water is used per car, per wash, or 3,000 litres for a 12 car train – enough to fill nearly 70 baths! Therefore, recycling of the water is useful. Andy cautioned not to heat recycled water, despite the beneficial effects on cleaning, as heating recycled water causes harmful bacteria to multiply.
In any event, there are times of the year when cleaning has to be suspended – when the temperature is too low or in times of drought. That led Andy to mention that “train washes keep clean trains clean”, highlighting that other techniques need to be used if a train has become significantly dirty. We talked about the challenge of keeping train fronts clean, which led to a discussion about automation versus bucket and mop with suitable staging to protect the cleaner.
Photo: Buckingham Group Contracting.
People
And lastly, but, probably most importantly, it should be obvious that new trains require their maintainers to acquire new skills to maintain them. The same is true of those who operate and maintain depot plant, something that, in Andy’s view, is often overlooked.
With low unemployment and a general problem of recruiting people in STEM work, depots will continue to have to work hard to provide the culture and working conditions that will attract good people and then to train them. This is particularly important as a great deal of train maintenance work takes place at night and during other unsocial hours.
Thanks are due to Andy Coles of Rail Depot Solutions (www.raildepotsolutions.co.uk) for his help in developing this article.
Mark Carne stepped down as chief executive of Network Rail in August after just under five years in the job. During that time, he gained a reputation for being passionate about safety, a keen promoter of the Digital Railway as the best way to improve capacity and network performance, and convinced that the railway was there to give its customers – the passengers – the best service possible.
His tenure wasn’t an easy one. He was involved in the aftermath of the destruction of the seawall at Dawlish, and the later one at Dover. Then there were several major landslips which closed the railway for weeks at a time, the damaging overruns of work over Christmas 2014/15 which ended up with him having to give evidence to the parliamentary committee, the delays and overspend on Great Western electrification and the shambles that was the introduction of the May 2018 timetable.
But there were high points too. The Borders Railway opened, as did the Ordsall, Ipswich and Todmorden curves. Huge new stations were successfully delivered at Reading, Birmingham and London Bridge. Billions were spent on renewing worn out sections of the railway, largely without fuss, and the safety record was vastly improved.
So, a week after Andrew Haines took over as Network Rail’s new chief executive, Rail Engineer sat down with a visibly relaxed Mark Carne to talk over his career and his achievements.
Brought up on oil
Mark joined Network Rail from Shell, part of an oil industry which has a strong safety culture. When he was just 29, the Piper Alpha oil production platform in the North Sea exploded on 6 July 1988, killing 167 people. Although not a Shell platform, it was operated by Occidental Petroleum, the disaster had a massive impact on the whole industry since, at the time, some 10 per cent of all North Sea oil and gas production came from the Piper Alpha platform.
Mark led Shell’s Piper Alpha response team, attending the public enquiry and overseeing massive upgrades on all of the company’s platforms in the North Sea. It was a big responsibility for one so young.
“I was on holiday in Cornwall on the day that it happened,” Mark recalled, “and the next morning, when the newspapers were full of it, I just got on the train and came back to the office and said, ‘What can I do to help, because we’re sure as hell going to have to do some stuff here?’ A volunteer is worth ten pressed men, as they say, and so I was quickly put into the task force and grew in that role to eventually lead it and lead the response, first in the North Sea and then two years later I went to The Hague and helped with the response internationally.
“So I saw at a relatively young age the massive impact that safety leadership, or lack of leadership, can have on businesses. It had a profound impact on me and it has completely coloured my whole approach to leadership throughout my career.”
After that early responsibility, Mark was appointed managing director of Brunei Shell Petroleum. 21 years later, he moved to BG Group as managing director for Europe and Central Asia, before moving back to Shell where he became executive vice-president for the Middle East and North Africa.
So why change jobs, and industries, to join Network Rail? Mark laughed when he was asked.
“Interestingly, there were two key factors that made me want to join rail,” he explained. “One is that, in my last job in Shell, I’d been running the Middle East during the Arab spring, and that was a pretty tough gig. I had five countries where I had to evacuate all our staff in emergency circumstances during revolutions and so on.
“But we were also developing a field in Iraq. We were building an oilfield on the site of the Iran/Iraq war and it was a massive live minefield, so our first job was to clear four thousand mines from where we were working. The challenges were huge and there were the social challenges of just dealing in Iraq with the security situation, which was very, very difficult.”
Despite the tough environment, Mark found that he was doing more than building a refinery, he was helping to rebuild a nation bringing in different ways of working and helping to change the lives of the people.
“My mind was very much driven by being motivated by things that matter to society and in wanting to run big businesses which are safety-critical. And, of course, the rail industry is exactly that, it is a business that matters enormously to the country – four and a half million people every day depend upon it – and it’s safety-critical.”
Safety behaviour
When Mark joined Network Rail, he told his management team: “I’ve got three priorities, three messages that you’ll hear from me every day for the next few years; safety and performance go hand in hand, continuous improvement or better every day, and digital railway.”
However, once in post, Mark found he was shocked at how poorly the safety performance of Network Rail, and the whole rail industry, compared to the industry he came from. A firm believer that safety and performance go hand in hand, he decided that improving safety performance would also improve business performance.
“In safety leadership, you as a leader have to be able to juggle three balls in the air at the same time,” he explained. “One is design safety, engineering safety, making sure that you’re always dealing with things in the appropriate technological way.
“Second is about process safety, the organisation of capability and resources in an efficient and effective way to deploy work safely. And the third is behaviours, personal behaviours. You can’t focus on any one to the exclusion of the others without something going wrong; you have to have all three in your sights the whole time.
“In the days of Piper Alpha, behavioural safety was just irrelevant. Frankly, technical safety was pretty poor as well and process safety wasn’t much better.
“But that was 1988. And what came from it was technical safety through the safety case and process safety. Behaviour safety didn’t come in the North Sea until about 2000, so a full twelve years later.”
There were interesting parallels with the rail industry. The Clapham Junction disaster happened in the same year as Piper Alpha, 1988, and Mark accepts that a lot was learnt then in the rail industry about technical safety and, in that particular case, about process safety, the management of time and the hidden rules. But the behaviour safety journey didn’t follow in the rail industry in the way that it did in the oil industry.
“I think one of the things that attracted me to this job, and the reason why, ultimately, I decided I wanted to do this job, was because of the safety performance. I thought there was a really fascinating opportunity for somebody coming from a different industry, with the experience that I had, to help to make a difference in that area, and think it’s been a fascinating journey over the last few years to see the progress that has been made.”
Reclassification
Mark joined Network Rail in January 2014, having been appointed in September 2013. It was a time of change for the organisation and Mark stepped right into the middle of it.
When he arrived, Network Rail was still an independent company. However, all the assurances were that reclassification wouldn’t change anything. Those assurances proved to be wholly inaccurate.
“It was a huge change”, Mark admitted. “The people who ran Network Rail and the rail industry in CP4 (Control Period 4 – 1 April 2009 to 31 March 2014) did an amazingly good job of persuading the government to carry out the biggest rail upgrade programme in the history of the railways and to invest in the massive projects that we had to deliver in CP5. They also knew that the amount of development work that had been done on those projects was really very, very limited – they were literally just ideas.
“So, recognising that immaturity, they developed, with the regulator, a cost adjustment mechanism (ECAM) which meant that the final cost and timescales of these projects that were in a very early stage of development could be set further down the line and more funds be made available by the regulator so long as it was economic sense to do so. Hats off to the team in CP4 who persuaded government and developed a regulatory structure that would manage the risk.”
The problem, however, was that no one anticipated reclassification and the Treasury then refusing to advance the organisation any more money. That changed everything, because it meant that suddenly Network Rail was left with a portfolio of very immature projects, which were going to cost a lot more than was originally thought, with no means of paying for them as the regulatory ECAM process had been decapitated.
It all came to a head in 2015 after the general election, although it was obvious in the months beforehand that this was a massive problem, and ultimately led to the Hendy Review.
Visiting Dawlish with Prime Minister David Cameron. Photo: Crown Copyright.
Dawlish
The organisation faced other challenges too. Mark Carne joined Network Rail in January, with the intention of having three months to get to know the company before taking over the reins from Sir David Higgins in April, at the start of CP5. However, on 7 February 2014, a storm destroyed the sea wall at Dawlish and the railway that ran behind it, effectively cutting part of Devon and all of Cornwall off from the national rail network.
“I’d done a fair bit of touring by then,” Mark remembered, “so David and I just agreed that I would take over at that point in time, which was right decision because both of us knew that you can’t have ambiguous leadership at those times; people have to be really clear who’s in charge. And I was very hands-on with Dawlish.
There was massive political pressure to get the railway reopened as quickly as possible, including weekly COBRA (Cabinet Office briefing room A, where ministers and officials meet in response to major events and emergencies) meetings chaired by Prime Minister David Cameron.
“It taught me a lot about the heroic over-optimistic assumptions that people make and how quickly that can get you into trouble,” Mark recalled. “I remember meeting with the team the day before the Secretary of State came down to see me, in the first few days of the problem, and I said to them: ‘So how long is it going to take?’ – this was in the late evening – and they said: ‘Oh we’ll fix this in six weeks.’
“I said to them: ‘Where’s the plan to show the six weeks’ and they said: ‘Well, we haven’t really got a plan, it’s just our judgement as experienced railway engineers. It’s about a six-week job.’ And I said: ‘I’m sorry, guys, but that isn’t really good enough and I’m not going to sit in front of the Secretary of State tomorrow and tell him six weeks if I haven’t got a plan, so dinner’s off.’
“So, they all rather shamefacedly left the dinner table, went into a dark room and about one o’clock in the morning I got a phone call saying: ‘Okay, we’ve now got a plan.’ I came down and they rolled out the plan and they said: ‘Look, you see, we can do it in six weeks.’
“I asked: ‘How much float have you got in your six weeks?’ ‘Oh, there’s no float.’ ‘So what’s the probability of success of you delivering it in six weeks?’ ‘Well, pretty much zero, because everything has to go right.’
“Then I said: ‘Okay, we’re not going to say six weeks, are we? I’m going to say ten weeks.’ They said: ‘You can’t say that, they’ll go mad.’ I said: ‘I’m going to say ten weeks until you’ve got a better plan, basically.’
“And Cameron did go a bit mad, he was very unhappy about it. But then what happened was we got a bit of confidence, started work, and then we brought it back to nine weeks, then eight weeks and we delivered it in about seven. The point was that we didn’t over-promise and under-deliver, completely the opposite, we said it was going to take longer and then over-delivered, and we were national heroes.”
David Cameron still remembers it. Meeting Mark Carne at an event recently, the former Prime Minister recalled it as “one of the best days of my entire time as Prime Minister.”
He went on to explain that very seldom does a Prime Minister go to a town or a village to find that every single person is out cheering his great achievement. It never happens – but it did at Dawlish.
Mark can understand how he felt. “We got there on the train together and the whole of Dawlish, the brass band and the Women’s Institute and the Morris dancers and the Girl Guides, they were all out to welcome the reopening of the railway; it was just a great day of celebration and it was terrific, it was a great moment.”
With 10 apprentices from 10 years of the scheme.
Christmas 2014/5
But it wasn’t all brass bands and Morris dancers. Almost a year later, Network Rail deployed 11,000 people over Christmas 2014/5 to work on 2,000 sites around the country. However, in the national press afterwards, the story wasn’t about the 314 projects that were handed back on time, it was about the eight that weren’t. Or, more exactly, it was about two of the eight that weren’t. That seems like a very small number, but those two delays did shut two of London’s main termini – King’s Cross and Paddington.
Unsurprisingly, everyone took this very seriously. Mark Carne made a public apology and pledged that an internal report on what went wrong would be prepared and published. That duly happened. Written by Dr Francis Paonessa, the managing director of Network Rail Infrastructure Projects, it was published on Monday 12 January. Mark and Robin Gisby, managing director of Network Operations and the duty director over the Christmas holiday, then met with the Commons Select Committee on Wednesday 14 January. It was a very public embarrassment for all at Network Rail.
Looking back on it, Mark now thinks that the “debacle” – his word – was actually, in many ways, a blessing in disguise.
“It was really a poorly run job. It was very, very much hand to mouth. Francis Paonessa wrote a very good and open report about it and exposed all the weaknesses in a very open way and you could really see there was no contingency plan – there were lots and lots of lessons that could be learnt from it.
“The reason why I think it was a blessing was because it was very early in the control period and we immediately put in place all sorts of enhancements and an improvement plan and started to say: ‘This must never happen again, how are we going to work fundamentally differently?’
“And we’ve had fourteen Bank Holidays of work since then, carrying out the biggest programme of works ever, and we’ve never had another repeat event or anything even remotely like it. I think that’s down to the fact that, today, going into a Bank Holiday, or into any weekend’s work, the amount of preparation and planning and contingency planning is just of a completely different order than was the case in 2014.”
Of course, one way to make sure no project overruns is to put so much padding into the programme that it can’t.
“It’s inevitable that people are going to be conservative and I think we need to recognise that,” he admitted. “I think we’re probably less conservative now than we were three years ago. As you get better and better at managing it, you are able to reduce the float; you are able to be smarter about the times when you will trigger the contingency plans. So I don’t think we are excessively conservative today, but I do think the risk/reward equation inevitably means that you’re going to have a pretty risk-averse approach to these sorts of opportunities.
“If you’re just a few hours late and you don’t get the people into work on the day after the Bank Holiday then it’s a really huge problem for hundreds of thousands of people and I think we need to take those responsibilities very seriously – and we do.
“Before every Bank Holiday we hold an executive review and sometimes a Board review, and the train operators are in the room, so we ask the train operators just as many questions as our own teams. During the debacle at King’s Cross, there was no passenger handling by GTR of the people at Finsbury Park, there was no contingency plan, and so it was as much a failure of the train operator’s contingency arrangements as ours. I take the blame for that, because we never asked them to even prepare those contingency plans, that was the failure. Today, we do.”
Joining Air Vice-Marshall Graham Russell to re-sign Network Rail’s Armed Force Covenant on Reservists Day.
GW electrification
Two other well-publicised problems during Mark’s tenure as chief executive have been Great Western electrification going over budget and over time, and the recent chaos caused by the introduction of the new timetable on 20 May 2018. He was quite happy to give his views on both.
“Great Western, clearly, was an example of an extremely immaturely planned project. The problem with it was that the dates that had been indicated and promised meant that people felt the need to go out and start building stuff before we’d even designed it, before we knew what it was we were even building, and so the whole project got into a very bad place.
“But I would say that I’m very proud of Great Western actually. People find this a bit strange, because I’ve had to take such a lot of stick in the Public Accounts Committee and so on, but we re-based that project in 2015, a year and a half into the control period, and we are absolutely on track to meet every date that we said we would meet, and pretty much bang on cost as well. From what we said in 2015, the team have done a phenomenal job of delivering it, and to hit every single construction milestone, either on the date or early, as Great Western have done in the last three years, which is an absolutely staggering achievement because it’s an incredibly tough project.”
So is that what Mark and Network Rail want to do in the future, to get projects to that level of maturity before they start the job?
“Absolutely, exactly that, which is the approach that we’re taking on TransPennine. Two years ago, or just over two years ago, I was under a lot of pressure from the government at the time to commit to dates and projects and so on and I just said: ‘No, we’ll do a study and we’ll deliver you a study by December 2017 and then you can decide what it is you want to buy and then we’ll go and build it.’
“And that’s what we did, we gave them the study, the government are now considering that report and they will decide what project they then want to buy and we’ll build it and we’ll make a massive success of it. So this is lesson 101 of all project management in any industry, whether it’s the oil industry or the rail industry, is do your homework, do the upfront design work, take the time to do it right, understand really what it is you’re trying to build, what the specification should be and then you’ve got a fair chance of delivering it – if you rush into it, it always goes wrong.”
Timetabling
The other ‘own goal’, or one for which the press seemed to put some of the blame on Network Rail, was the introduction of the May 2018 timetable, which rescheduled a huge number of trains and which resulted in cancellations and delays, much to the noisy annoyance of passengers.
“Just to be really clear, there’s nothing wrong with the timetable,” was Mark Carne’s somewhat surprising comment. “The timetable is fine, the problem is the resourcing of the timetable. The industry, as a whole, hasn’t got enough train crew with the right level of competencies to operate the timetable and the problem is that the timetabling process didn’t give the train operators enough time to develop those skills. We’ll have to wait and see what the Glaister Report concludes, of course, but I think it’s an example of a total system failure – you’ve got little elements of the system all optimising their parts, but the total system doesn’t work.”
This is not, in Mark’s opinion, a new and isolated instance. The Gibb Report of 2016, looking at the performance of the Southern Rail network, said basically the same thing, that the system has not been designed to actually provide the level of performance that the railway needs.
“You’ve got a timetable where the operator has filled the middle of the day with trains so there’s no ability to recover between the two peaks, you’re running trains all through the night so we can’t get on and maintain the railway, you’ve got a train crew diagram system which is theoretically brilliant but practically useless, which all means that, as soon as one train is delayed, there’s a huge cascade knock-on effect to other trains.
“So, there are lots and lots of system-wide problems which no one individual is accountable for resolving. There’s no one person that’s overseeing all of those different elements and making sure that they work and there’s no one person that is ensuring that, if there’s a problem in one area, we all understand the implications of that problem to the other parts of the system.”
Visiting Basingstoke with apprentices Tanushri Gukhool and Princess Balun.
Specific cases
The two biggest problems occurred in implementing the timetables for Northern and GTR. However, Mark feels that the two cases were slightly different.
“Northern was definitely impacted by the delayed infrastructure and therefore the change to the timetable that we ‘imposed’. We had offered them back a timetable, we then said: ‘No, we have to change it’ because the Bolton Corridor couldn’t be electrified, so they then had to go and rework it all again and come back. So definitely Network Rail infrastructure delays were a key contributory factor to the Northern situation.
“GTR is different because the infrastructure was all there. The problem was that there were lots of changes to the timetable being made by the industry, by government, by GTR, at the request of various people and that led to lots of late changes to the timetable which then ultimately didn’t give GTR enough time to check that they had enough drivers with the competencies needed to run the trains.
“The really worrying thing in both cases, I think, is that the alarm bells were not ringing in the weeks running up to the May timetable, so we were collectively unsighted on the scale of the problem. Again, that comes back to, where was the integrated leadership where this should have come together? And it is concerning because, in the case of GTR, we did have integrated leadership through the Industry Readiness Board, which was put in place to manage those integrated risks.
“But I think what that shows is that, if you put in place a board with some very competent people in it, and still they’re not able to identify the risks, in a way it just shows how incredibly complicated these systems have become but also how vulnerable they are to single point failures.”
Successes
However, Mark’s time at Network Rail hasn’t been all doom and gloom. There have been many successes as well. What did he think were the most significant?
“The delivery of the biggest railway upgrade programme in the history of the railway,” was Mark’s immediate answer. “Despite all the massive challenges and the setbacks that we’ve had along the way, I think delivering that programme is something that the industry should be proud of because millions of passengers will benefit from these projects for decades to come.
“But I think that this is an industry where you also have to adjust to the crisis of the moment, and if you think about some of the issues that we’ve also had to deal with over this time, where we’ve had the railway washed away in Dawlish, the railway washed away at Dover, we’ve had massive landslips at Harbury, at Eden Brows and at Hatfield. We’ve had to deal with these really challenging sets of circumstances at the same time as driving operational performance and delivering these massive projects and I think there’s a lot there to be very proud of.
“And, of course, going back to where we started, I am very encouraged by the progress that the company has made on the safety side. I think that, although we continue to have near misses and all the rest of it, no Network Rail employee and nobody working on the track, contractor or Network Rail, lost their life in the four and a half years. Now, we had six fatalities in the construction part of the business. Five of them were road traffic accidents, and one of them the terrible Bearsden incident, but we’ve made great progress – a 39 per cent reduction in lost time injury and a 39 per cent reduction in train accident risk.
“It’s not me, I haven’t done it. What you try to do is to create the environment which allows people to do that and it’s just wonderful when they do it.”
Safety isn’t the only area that has seen big improvements. Network Rail recently achieved 17 per cent of its workforce being women for the first time, which goes back to the second of Mark’s business priorities – continuous improvement or better every day.
“People today would recognise that diversity and inclusion drives better business performance,” Mark commented. “It’s not about political correctness, this is about actually wanting to be a better performing company and you become a better company if you have different ideas, different ways of thinking in your organisation, and that’s what diversity really brings.
“I’m really encouraged by the progress that has been made in the understanding of why this is important and in the belief that it’s important that we should do something about it, but of course we’re still only scratching the surface of the scale of the challenge. We’ve made a really concerted effort to have a gender equality approach to recruitment which then enables us to attract more very capable women to want to come and work in the rail industry.”
Celebrating success at the 2018 Rail Partnership Awards as host Alexander Armstrong looks on.
Unfinished business
Mark’s time at Network Rail isn’t quite over. He is staying on to present the organisation’s case for CP6 funding to the regulator, as he has been intimately involved in its preparation. But then he will go. What will he leave unfinished?
“This is a never-ending journey, and so there are lots of things which are unfinished business. Even the devolution process – I always said that the full devolution of Network Rail would take ten years and we’re five or six years into that process, so there’s still a lot of work to do on it, but I do believe the back is broken on that and we’ve made massive progress.
“But I have two regrets that I would talk about particularly. One is that, in the early years when CP5 was so obviously in real problems, I think we just tried almost too hard to keep it going rather than saying: ‘You know what, this is a material change, we need a rethink.’ Because, unfortunately, we needed an absolute crisis to trigger that moment in 2015 but I think, looking back at it, we all knew it was going to come.
“This is where politics comes in. In the run-up to the election it was absolutely obvious we were in huge problems, but it was politically not acceptable to fully expose that. And so, we were all trying desperately to keep a brave face on things. But, as soon as the election was over, you couldn’t do that anymore, and so Patrick McLoughlin said: ‘Okay, we need to make some changes here, we’ve got to sort this out. There is no more money so we, as government, have to make some choices about what projects to deliver.’
“Sir Peter Hendy’s first task as the new Chairman was to manage that process of the government deciding what it wanted to buy. In the Hendy Review, what Peter did, quite rightly, was to say: ‘You can’t afford everything you want, this portfolio of projects is going to cost much more than you thought. These projects are all underway and I think you should carry on with them. These ones haven’t started yet; it makes sense to push them back.’ But it was as much a government review as anything else.
“My point is the timing of it. If we could have done it earlier, it would have been better.”
However, in making that comment, Mark isn’t talking about the arguments for or against renationalisation of the railways. Network Rail, is, of course, already nationalised, but the operating companies are not, with the current exception of LNER.
“I don’t think the ultimate shareholding is the key question here. The key question is, how do you assemble the parts of the railway in such a way that they work seamlessly and most efficiently together in the interests of passengers? That’s what I want to see happen. I actually think there’s a huge advantage in having private sector involvement in whatever model you have, but it doesn’t need to be private sector ownership.
“I have private sector involvement in all of the projects that we deliver; they’re delivered by the private sector, they’re all private sector contracting entities that take risk on the delivery of projects. You can do the same thing in the way in which train operators operate; you don’t have to use the current franchise model, you can use different kinds of contract models to engage train operations.”
Another of the areas that the private sector is beginning to get involved with is the digital railway – the third of Mark’s three business priorities.
“I unashamedly pinched David Waboso from TFL,” he admitted, “because he had already delivered a digital railway (London Underground) and I needed somebody who could deliver a digital railway and who had the respect and understanding of the supply chain and the industry.
“We – Network Rail, government, and the wider rail industry – have been working tirelessly behind the scenes to get the concept of a digital railway off the ground. It is now a reality. We now have a plan, the impetus and the funding, to introduce these systems across large swathes of our railway network over the coming years.
“Transforming our railway into the digital age offers the chance to deliver huge benefits for our passengers and the freight that this country depends on. It is the most cost-efficient way to deliver the future railway Britain needs.
“So, the digital railway is the key to unlocking a lot of latent capacity in the railway. But, if you’re going to bring digital train control onto the railway, why not let the private sector invest in the digital train control to enable the trains to run?
“They can then benefit from the incremental capacity that the digital railway will bring, the incremental farebox revenue and so on, and they can use that incremental revenue to help fund and pay for the necessary upgrades to the train control system.
“These are the ways that the model is going to have to evolve; I think the black and white days of government funded infrastructure and privately funded train operations have passed.
“I think there needs to be a wider debate about the right way to organise the railway so that it operates in the most seamless and effective way, and then you think about, given that organisation, which bits of it now should you enable the private sector to contribute to and to compete for? And some of that will be construction, some of it may be operations and some if it may be ticketing or something.
In much the same way that Network Rail has a dedicated train for inspecting the railway, the HST-based New Measurement Train, German state railway Deutsche Bahn has the ICE-S for the same purpose. The ICE-S usually consists of two power cars and two trailer cars, although it has been seen with any number between one and three intermediate laboratory cars. It is based on an ICE 2 unit but with a power car at each end, unlike the normal ICE 2 which only has one power car and one cab car, and runs on an overhead 15kV 16.7Hz AC supply. Operated by the technical arm of Deutsche Bahn, DB Systemtechnik, the train runs over every German high-speed line at least twice a year, checking clearances, overhead lines and track geometry. The equipment used for these tests is housed in the intermediate carriages.
However, since April, a new trailer car has been seen in the consist. Painted blue, it is quite different from the ICE 2-based carriages of the rest of the unit. For a start, it is slightly longer at 28.75 metres as opposed to the standard train’s 26.40 metres. To maintain gauge, the new coach is also slightly narrower, and it has shrouded bogies.
The new car is not a development in DB’s testing regime, rather it is the first experimental carriage for Siemens’ new high-speed train, the Velaro Novo.
The ICE-S test train operated by DB Systemtechnik. Photo: DB/Frank Barteld.
Velaro history
The Velaro family of high-speed trains has been remarkably successful. The first model – Velaro E – was delivered to Spain, commencing in 2005. RENFE has 26 eight-car sets which operate the Madrid to Barcelona high-speed service.
60 eight-car trains for China followed, with bodies that were 300mm wider to allow for 3+2 seating. More, wider trains followed for Russia. Eight 10-car sets, running on 1,520mm gauge bogies, were ordered in 2006 for the Moscow to Saint Petersburg line. A further 20 sets were ordered in 2011.
Deutsche Bahn itself ordered 16 eight-car Velaro D sets for international services from Germany. Keeping up the international theme, Eurostar ordered ten 16-car, 400-metre long Velaro e320 trains for services between London and Paris/Brussels.
Finally, Turkish railways bought 17 eight-car units for the country’s developing high-speed network.
Reduced energy consumption
Building on this success, Siemens started, in 2013, to develop the next generation – Velaro Novo. Intended to be lighter and more efficient than its predecessors, the longer cars will, as standard, be coupled into seven-car formations, eliminating both the weight and maintenance requirements of a pair of bogies.
The bogies themselves are an inside-frame design. Siemens developed inside-frame bogies for the Desiro City design that is now the Class 700 trains used on Thameslink. On that train, the inside-frame saved one tonne of weight per bogie. Much work was needed to develop the design for high-speed use, but similar weight savings are anticipated. The lower unsprung mass also ensures smoother operation and reduced wear.
In addition to the lighter bogies, new profile and welding technologies for the body shells, including the use of friction stir welding, new on-board converters and the use of innovative materials and construction solutions have reduced the train’s weight by over 70 tons, or around 15 per cent.
Despite having a narrower bodyshell, the Velaro Novo has a gangway that is 11mm wider than earlier models.
The use of permanent-magnet motors further reduces weight, as the heavy cooling systems needed for normal asynchronous motors is no longer needed.
But weight saving is only part of the equation. Improved aerodynamics also play their part in achieving higher energy efficiency and thus substantially reduced lifecycle costs.
The completely covered and streamlined bogies (see above) cut energy consumption by roughly 15 percent and reduce noise emissions. This shielding is not restricted to the outside of the car, but the underside of the bogie is also covered, giving the whole train a smooth underbody and helping to control airflow under the train.
The aerodynamics of the end cars is further improved by a more streamlined design, and gangway connections that are flush with the train’s body shell substantially reduce aerodynamic drag and cut energy consumption by around ten percent. In addition, the high-voltage equipment on the car roof is also completely covered, further improving the aerodynamics.
These improvements to weight and aerodynamics result in a train which, running at 300km/h, for example, will use 30 per cent less energy than previous Velaro models, translating to savings of 1,375 tons of CO2 emissions a year.
Flexible interior concept
The Velaro Novo’s lightweight body shell is based on the empty tube concept, meaning that there are no permanent installations inside the car and the interior can be laid out however the operator wishes and altered whenever requirements change. The cars have no underseat fittings or electrical cabinets in their interior. Technical installations are reduced to a minimum and are functionally organised to optimise cable routes and weight savings. Overall, the interiors are some 10 per cent roomier than previous models.
Combined with the new wider connections between cars, already mentioned due to their improved aerodynamic performance, the interior of the train will have a more spacious feel than earlier high-speed trains. Internet service, passenger information systems, on-board entertainment and CCTV security surveillance systems can be integrated to meet customer needs.
Despite the longer car length, and slightly narrower bodyshell that necessitates, the new cars have an aisle width of 535mm, 11mm wider than the previous Velaro, while offering the same seating comfort. For operations on rail routes with larger structure gauges, such as in Sweden, Russia and China, a variant is available with a wider body shell, making possible a 2+3 seating configuration.
The test car currently running as part of an ICE-S formation.
The future is here
As has been mentioned, Siemens is already testing these new innovations. A test car, integrated into the ICE-S operated by DB Systemtechnik, is currently undergoing test runs throughout Germany. The tests are being conducted under various operating conditions to monitor and analyse the performance of the car body and bogies, among other things.
The ICE-S test train has a maximum operating speed of 280km/h, although it can run at up to 330km/h. Velaro Novo is intended to operate on high-speed railways at between 250 and 360km/h.
Programme director Michael Kopp explained that the test car was actually almost a production vehicle. “Actually this car already has a series-production status,” he explained. “Essential components of this car have been manufactured as standard products. Bogies, car body, windows, doors and many more.
“The crucial point is finding a solution, and what we did differently this time with Velaro Novo, was to tell colleagues involved to step forward with ideas, to question everything we have known up to now, to think “out of the box”, to think in new ways – we are not going to brush anything aside for now.”
That approach has borne fruit, and the test/development car, christened “#seeitnovo”, is the tangible result.
“The Velaro Novo is our answer to global demands in high-speed transport,” Sabrina Soussan, CEO of Siemens’ Mobility Division, commented before the train was shown off for the first time at InnoTrans 2018.
“The new train writes a new chapter in the Velaro’s success story and enables operators to offer improved passenger comfort and economy over the train’s entire lifecycle. What we are presenting today is the result of five years of development: a platform offering uniquely optimised energy consumption and maintenance costs, as well as maximum flexibility and reliability.”
Over 7,000 new rail passenger vehicles are to enter service between 2014 and 2021, representing more than half the UK fleet. These orders are due to a combination of factors including cheap finance, lower manufacturing costs, franchise quality requirements and new trains having lower operating and maintenance costs, as described in our feature on remote condition monitoring this month.
Whilst this is apparently good news, there are downsides. The Rail Delivery Group estimates that these new trains will provide an extra 3,000 vehicles in service. Thus, thousands of serviceable surplus vehicles are likely to be scrapped, as leasing companies are unlikely to pay for their storage. This adds cost to the industry and threatens rolling stock companies, which provide heavy-maintenance and enhancement services.
Only a small proportion of these new trains will be owned by the original rolling stock companies (ROSCOs), which provided a stewardship service over the vehicle’s lifetime. It will be interesting to see how this role will be exercised by the finance houses that will own the remainder of these new trains.
Over the years, the price of new trains hasn’t changed much. At today’s prices, in the 1980s, the East Coast electrification scheme spent £447 million on 299 passenger vehicles and their locomotives, representing £1.5 million per coach. The cost of recent train orders is just under £2 million per coach.
In contrast, current electrification schemes have cost seven times more per mile than the East Coast scheme. Given changes to standards and traffic levels, this is not a totally fair comparison. However, it shows that today’s electrification costs much more than it should, as we explained in issue 164 (June 2018). Signalling costs are also increasing. Ten years ago, the renewal cost of a signalling equivalent unit was £200,000, now it is around £500,000.
Mark Carne addresses the issue of project costs in his interview with Nigel Wordsworth, in which he points out that the Great Western electrification scheme was over budget because it was an immaturely planned project. Yet there must be other lessons that need to be learnt to reduce the rising project costs that led to the cancellation of many projects following Network Rail’s reclassification as an arms-length government body.
Nevertheless, Carne has done much to promote improved project discipline, including avoidance of bank holiday project overruns. His wide-ranging interview is an interesting read which highlights his belief that diversity and inclusion drives better business performance and shows his passion for safety improvement.
The safe operation of old rail vehicles has its own challenges, as Malcolm Dobell reports following his visit to the Severn Valley Railway. His article shows that, with the support of the Boiler and Engineering Skills Training Trust and Heritage Railway Association, this heritage railway has a modern approach to developing both competence and a just safety culture.
Another heritage railway, the Great Central Railway, is expected to be used for type approval testing of the class 769 Flex units which will be Britain’s first tri-mode trains. These are the result of an initiative by Porterbook Leasing to fit a diesel engine to surplus dual-voltage Class 319 units. Two articles describe these Flex units, how they are being modified by Wabtec at Loughborough, and why hydrogen is now of interest.
In contrast, the Velaro Novo is a development of the successful Siemens Velaro high-speed train which operates in Spain, Germany, Russia, China and Turkey. It is expected to use 30 per cent less energy than previous Velaros and will, no doubt, be a contender for the HS2 train tender.
As well as trains, we feature depots this month, with various articles on their construction and operation and how these have changed over the years to provide a better working environment. However, some work, such as carriage washing, fuelling and controlled emission toilet discharge, still has to be carried out in the open. There are about 160 depots with such facilities.
Maintenance and repair work is generally done inside. This requires depot doors built to a demanding specification and heating systems to overcome the cold sinks that are trains entering the depot in winter. Depot protection systems to ensure a safe working environment and signalling systems to control depot movements are also becoming the norm.
Signalling features in our reports on two capacity improvements at opposite ends of the country. The Cornwall Capacity Enabling Scheme provides 20 intermediate block sections between Plymouth and Penzance whilst, just north of Aberdeen, 16 miles of track is being redoubled. A three-month blockade has just completed the first part of this project, which will double the frequency of local services in 2019.
Bob Wright reports on another track renewal, the replacement of four life-expired crossovers at North Wembley – a project that closed Euston station for three consecutive weekends. His article describes the extensive contingency planning required for this high-profile project, which posed significant challenges.
Challenging times is the apt title of the address that Andy Mellors, as chairman of the IMechE Railway Division, is giving as he tours the Division’s centres. His theme is that railway engineering offers big challenges that bring their own rewards. Communicating this message to the next generation of railway engineers is a challenge that Andy feels has to be addressed.
When Kier, a leading infrastructure services, buildings and developments and housing group, bought McNicholas last July, the company’s chief executive Haydn Mursell said it was “a highly complementary addition to our utility services business and enhances our presence in the power, rail and telecoms markets.”
A year on, senior operations manager Duncan Hall, who made the move with McNicholas, sees it as the final piece in the jigsaw for Kier’s rail offering.
Kier already has a huge amount of experience in the sector, covering major construction works – it’s currently working on Crossrail, an 80km section of HS2 and the Luton Airport Direct Air to Rail Transit (DART) scheme – tunnelling, signalling and asset management.
It has a principal contractor’s licence and full RISQS accreditation with Network Rail, allowing it to undertake all types of operational rail works. With McNicholas’s expertise in the installation and enhancement of power systems added to the mix, the rail sector now has a much fuller service to tap into.
The McNicholas legacy
McNicholas brought with it a wealth of successful delivery experience in major frameworks with Network Rail, Network Rail Telecoms, Crossrail and London Underground. Its expertise includes design, project management, telecommunications, heavy power, civil engineering, electrification and plant, lineside structures, route works and cabling. This includes a number of Network Rail frameworks.
“As a part of Kier, we see ourselves playing a major part in the power market in CP6 for Network Rail replicating and growing our existing footprint,” says Duncan Hall, who has more than 20 years’ experience in the rail industry, working with Balfour Beatty before McNicholas and now leading Kier’s power engineering delivery capability.
At the time of the acquisition, McNicholas was already on the Network Rail Infrastructure Projects (IP) South control period framework and tendering is currently taking place for the CP6 control period, which starts in April next year. This will include the £40 million Sussex Power Supply Upgrade (PSU) and various other power upgrade works.
“It’s now all about bringing McNicholas and Kier together under one banner and growing the business with a multi-discipline rail offering,” says Duncan. “Kier has always had more of a civils and signalling expertise, so combining it with McNicholas’s power expertise means we have a greater offering.”
Powerful offering
Kier’s rail team operates from offices at key locations across the UK, including London for Crossrail, Birmingham for HS2, Cardiff, Bury St Edmunds and its head office at Tempsford in Bedfordshire. It offers all the services required to install and enhance power systems across the rail network.
A 50-strong in-house design team focuses on delivering power solutions to meet Network Rail’s, and the railway’s, growing capacity needs. This includes electrification and plant (E&P), high voltage (HV) works and cabling, including switch gear renewals, feeder and pilot, installation, commissioning and recoveries; low voltage and signalling power supplies; lighting and distribution; electric track equipment; earth farms and points heating.
It’s the power work on the track that enables the rail network to operate and it’s an area spearheading advances in the sector. As far as the future for Kier’s multi-discipline rail offering, Duncan refers to it as “powering up rail for the next generation”.
Most pressing are issues caused by timetable changes that rail companies have had difficulty fulfilling. “More capacity is needed; eight-car trains should be 12, which requires platform extensions and extended power systems to cater for them.”
This type of project is already underway. Electrification work by Kier has enabled eight-car trains to be replaced by 10-car trains on the line from Reading to Waterloo, allowing additional capacity to London suburban stations from Reading.
The project included installing Electrical Track Equipment (ETE) across the route totalling 10km of traction feeder cable, 376 cable management sleepers, 77 track isolating switches, 24 Mk8 hook switches, 12 under-road crossings and 13 under-track crossings. As part of the project, the HV network was also reinforced with seven HV Feeders replaced, covering 47km.
Co-locating with National Rail during the project delivery helped improve decision making, benefitted project delivery and helped reduce costs. Kier also put an emphasis on safety, using Vortok fencing to create a ‘Green Zone’ to enable significant productivity gains and reductions to safety risk and costly operational disruption to railway services.
In this way, the team was able to install the new cable during the day without any disruption to services, saving on possession costs and eradicating issues such as tiredness associated with night-time working.
In addition, lightweight troughing reduced the need for manual handling and therefore potential injury. The risk of theft of the cable was also reduced, by shortening the time between when it was laid and when it was connected. Dedicated security teams patrolling the route reduced the risk further.
As with all Kier projects being good neighbours was paramount. Letter drops kept residents updated and town hall briefings took place in a number of affected towns. The team also got involved with the community by raising money for a local children’s hospice through taking part in a Three Peaks Challenge.
Signalling capability
Kier’s power capabilities go hand in hand with its signalling offering, which covers everything from design to commissioning. Since 1997, its team of skilled signalling specialists has developed an excellent track record of carrying out complex and technically challenging projects, working with clients from early contractor involvement through to design and build.
The company’s strength is in installing new technology in older existing railway environments on projects from feasibility studies to full design and build programmes, from £1,000 to £15 million. It is recognised in the industry for its expertise in relay route interlockings, solid-state interlockings including CBI (computer-based interlocking) data design, and all types of mechanical interlockings.
Recent projects in this field include coming up with a solution to keep the unelectrified East Suffolk line running after the Band III Private Mobile Radio frequency used to control trains via a Radio Electronic Token Block (RETB) system was allocated to the MoD. It was not possible to allocate new frequencies without undertaking a new safety case and obtaining new Network Rail product approval. The RETB system had to be replaced.
The East Suffolk Line runs between Ipswich and Lowestoft for passenger services operated by Greater Anglia and nuclear flask trains for the Sizewell nuclear power stations operated by Direct Rail Services. Train control on the line between Westerfield Junction and Oulton Broad North was achieved via the RETB system, which was installed in the 1980s as a cost-effective way of controlling trains with minimal lineside infrastructure.
Kier, as principal contractor, was responsible for the design, installation and commissioning including permanent way, civil, electrical, telecoms, signalling and systems. A conventional SSI (Solid State Interlocking) solution was used, which required a new signaller’s control system and Mk III SSI interlockings at Saxmundham Signal Box.
Axle counters were used in the ‘long section’ areas and track circuits within the station limits. A new passing loop was also installed at Beccles Station to allow an hourly train service.
Work has also been completed on increasing line capacity on the Brighton main line, which is quadruple track through most of its length, but is only double track between Balcombe Junction and Haywards Heath allowing just one train in the reverse direction every ten minutes.
The Kier team designed a new bi-directional signalling system to allow a minimum of six trains per hour to run in each direction. Additional wrong-direction signals were installed on both lines and a dual detection system was also provided for Balcombe tunnel.
Gearing-up for the future
In addition to major projects, the Kier rail team also delivers a wide range of civils and building work at stations and depots and is on many frameworks including the National Level Crossing Risk Reduction Programme, Civils Renewals, and British Railways Board as well as using its extensive in-house engineering capabilities to develop and implement detailed mechanical and electrical solutions for bridges and viaducts. It has particular expertise in mainlining existing structures through assessment, repair and strengthening.
As with any responsible twenty-first century organisation, Kier’s approach goes way beyond turning up, doing a job and leaving. It works hard to enrich the communities affected by rail works by providing jobs, interacting with schools, supporting local wellbeing and contributing to charities and voluntary organisations.
It also works hard to be a sustainable business, aiming to have a positive social and environmental value with every project, including using intelligent design to reduce the environmental impact of waste and emissions, aiming for a 10 per cent reduction in the carbon dioxide it produces by 2020.
With increased passenger numbers and demand for more lines and trains, Kier sees rail as a major growth area for the company, particularly with digitisation offering even more opportunities. This could not be achieved without its people, which it believes are its biggest asset.
For that reason, the company wants to continue to hire the best people and is working to encourage the next generation entering the workforce of the benefits of working in this sector. A campaign called Shaping Your World has been launched, to show the built environment in formats that Generation Z (11-15 year olds) can easily engage with, as well as challenging misconceptions about the industry. That way, it hopes to address the issue of skills shortage and continue to provide innovations well into the future.
