So what is sustainability

24th August 2013

Sustainability. It’s the latest buzz-word in railway circles and everyone is talking about it.

But what is sustainability? Is there a definition? Or is it another word like ‘existentialism’ and ‘serendipity’ that clever people use to confuse more normal mortals?

It seems that there is indeed a definition. What’s more, Network Rail is now using sustainability as one factor when assessing tenders for contracts. So it’s important to understand what it’s all about.

Then who better to ask than Tertius Beneke, principal environment specialist for Network Rail Infrastructure Projects, what it’s all about?

Sustainability defined

“We often get asked what is sustainability or what does sustainability mean?” Tertius explained. “There is a well established definition of sustainability that was a product of a United Nations document entitled Report of the World Commission on Environment and Development: Our Common Future.”

That definition is: “Sustainable development is development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.”

On the face of it, that doesn’t help much. However, to simplify this information and to spread and implement the concept of sustainable development, Tertius uses a Venn diagram to explain the interdependencies of the sustainability concept.

Taken from Network Rail’s Sustainable Development Strategy 2013 – 2024, the diagram illustrates that sustainability is only achieved when economic, social and environmental aspects of a project are in balance.

“The spheres are also of equal size, an often overlooked part of the diagram,” Tertius explains further. “The purpose of this is that you cannot trade the one for the other, so rapid economic growth cannot be pursued to the detriment of the environment or to the detriment of people. The reverse is that economic development should not be sacrificed for the preservation of the environment at all costs.

“The definition also integrates the notion of intergenerational equity where we leave a world behind for our children that can support their needs in the same way that we had the opportunity to meet our own needs.”

Sustainability working group

Network Rail has embraced this definition of sustainability and has incorporated it not only into its policy and strategies, but also into how it actually does business.

To identify the main areas of sustainability to focus on, the same approach is used for environmental management systems where the activity of the organisation is reviewed and the areas of impact and opportunities are identified. These then form the starting point of developing robust measures including measurable quantitative data and qualitative discussions to track progress along the sustainability path as a company matures in delivering its sustainability goals.

The Commercial Directors Forum, chaired by David McLoughlin as part of contracts and procurement, has created a sustainability working group that involves the Network Rail supply chain with the aim of embedding sustainability into the work carried out by Infrastructure Projects. This group defined a list of sustainable procurement principles and has initiated a 5% sustainability score as part of all tender evaluations to drive the consideration of sustainability from the earliest phase of the project.

“Following the introduction of our sustainability strategy, Infrastructure Projects has developed objectives and targets to measure quantitative data on how we are performing in regards to our sustainability aims,” Tertius continued. “This takes sustainability from a misunderstood concept to right to the forefront where we and our supply chain can look at actual data and measure our performance. As expected, the targets measure a wide range of issues from opportunities for local employment, health and safety, biodiversity, waste management and financial efficiencies. These targets are reported on, reviewed and shared throughout Network Rail and our supply chain.”

To embed these targets and sustainability into the business and the wider supply chain, Network Rail will be implementing an integrated management system, including environmental, quality and health & safety, to formally track these targets and drive continuous improvement. Network Rail will also be using various other methods to assess performance such as PRISM (Performance and Registration Information Systems Management) and sustainability assessment schemes including CEEQUAL (Civil Engineering Environmental Quality Assessment and Award Scheme) and BREEAM (Building Research Establishment Environmental Assessment Method).

CEEQUAL Awards

Sustainability in civil engineering projects can be measured against the international CEEQUAL standard. CEEQUAL is an awards scheme developed by the Institute of Civil Engineers and is now in its tenth year. It is another way to show practically what sustainability means and how one can implement it on projects.

Infrastructure Projects already has a very good track record with its major programmes achieving a number of CEEQUAL awards. The Network Rail Thameslink project (TLP) has registered seven major projects and already won two Excellent Whole Project Awards for Farringdon and Blackfriars (90%-93%), three Excellent Interim Design Awards for Borough Viaduct, two awards for London Bridge (83% to 96.9%) and two Outstanding Achievement Awards for energy/carbon (Blackfriars) and ecology/biodiversity (Farringdon). The TLP is also the first programme in Network Rail to register its track & signalling project to CEEQUAL Term Contracts.

The Norton Bridge Grade Separation project has recently achieved an Excellent Interim Client and Design Award with a score of 97.4% which, at the time of writing, is the highest ever score on an interim award.

The Crossrail Programme has registered six of its major projects with CEEQUAL

World Environment Day

“However, it is not just about what we do at work that matters and it isn’t just about systems and processes,” Tertius stressed. “To really connect and drive change, the sustainability agenda process must be supported by hearts and minds. We need to engage people in issues that are not necessarily aligned to their working lives but which also touches on life outside of work.”

This year, for the first time, Network Rail celebrated world environment day to start bringing together all three of the spheres into the hearts and minds campaign.

Events were held all over the country to support the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) that focussed on food waste. Every area put its own interpretation on the celebration with activities ranging from volunteers handing out pamphlets to information tables and chilli-growing contests – anything to make people aware of World Environment Day and force them to think about the impact that their food buying and discarding activities have on the environment.

“Sustainability is not an intangible concept,” Tertius finished. “The main way of implementing it is to simply focus on where your business, or you as an individual, has the largest impact and the largest opportunity to improve the balance between people, pounds and the environment. Set some measurable targets and strive to improve on these, year on year.”

Nottingham renewed, refreshed and revised

23rd August 2013

Nottingham station is unusual in a couple of ways. For a start, it is comparatively new. Whilst many of Britain’s major stations were built in the middle of the nineteenth century, the current Nottingham Midland station didn’t open until 1904, which makes it Edwardian rather than Victorian.

It was known as Nottingham Midland as there were several other Nottingham stations at that time. Nottingham Victoria was opened by the Great Central Railway (GCR) in 1900, designed by Albert Edward Lambert – the same architect that the Midland Railway employed a couple of years later for their own project. Perhaps the GCR’s impressive new station shamed the Midland into rebuilding theirs? Nottingham Victoria is now the site of the Victoria Centre shopping mall.

The Great Northern Railway had a station at London Road, just at the eastern end of the current Nottingham station and now a health spa. When Nottingham Victoria opened in 1900, the Great Northern moved there and the London Road station declined. Passenger services ceased in 1944 and it finally closed as a parcels office in the 1970s.

The other oddity is that, for a station which serves London in one direction and Sheffield and Leeds in the other, it is orientated almost exactly east/west. This is all down to the triangle of tracks between Nottingham and Derby which surround Trent Junction. With lines coming in from Birmingham, and going out to Newark and the Lincolnshire coast, it is as much a cross-country station as anything else.

Be that as it may, Nottingham’s station on Carrington Street is overcrowded for passengers and complicated to use for train operators. Too many tracks cross or interfere with each other to make for efficient operation, and this causes delays and restricts the timetable.

A recent overview

Nottingham currently has six platforms which run parallel to Station Street. An earlier station building was accessed from this street, hence the name, before the 1904 building moved the entrance around the corner and onto the Carrington Street overbridge.

The northernmost platform is an island. Platforms 1 and 3 are the two through faces and there is an eastern- facing bay platform which is used by train services to Skegness, Newark and Boston.

The second, central island forms platforms 4 and 5, and there are two through roads between 3 and 4.

Platform 6 is the northern face of the southern island. The platforms are quite long and are split into A and B zones. However, the track layout means that departing trains often have to cross other lines and that two trains cannot leave at the same time as they will foul each other.

The station building runs across the western ends of the platforms on the Carrington Street bridge. It consists of three major areas.

Fronting the street is the porte-cochère, or ‘coach gate’. This is a high- roofed area with four entrances, two on Carrington Street and one at each end, where carriages, hansom cabs and latterly taxis could drop off passengers in the dry. The glass roof allowed a lot of light into this space.

From the porte-cochère, passengers would move into the concourse, a smaller area which included the ticket office and more open space. Both of these were constructed in a mixture of red brick and terracotta tile in a flamboyant style.

Beyond the concourse is the wooden dispersal bridge, giving access to the three island platforms. Partway down those platforms is a second footbridge which not only interconnects them but is also a public right of way across the station footprint. This walkway was moved from a third footbridge, even further down the platforms, which was demolished in the 1990s.

Just south of the main station buildings is a brick ‘house’ which is the British Transport Police (BTP) building. Further along Queen’s Road,
on the south side of the station, there was rough open-air parking outside what had been the Red Star Parcels office.

The trams are coming

The last hundred years has taken its toll on the building. Although it was cleaned several years ago, the acid wash had left marks on the terracotta tiles and there were buddleia growing on the roof.
In addition, the trackwork through the station and the nearby Mansfield Junction to the west did not make for easy operation.

Nottingham City Council introduced a tram network to the city in 2004. NET (Nottingham Express Transit) operates one line from Hucknall and Phoenix Park to the north-west of the city, through the centre, to Station Street. The tram terminus is on the opposite side of the road to the station and a footbridge connected the two.

Plans were drawn up for a second phase of the tram network as early as 2006. Funding was approved in 2009 and work started in 2011.

The new plans would extend the line southwards, over Nottingham Midland station and out to Clifton and Toton. The Great Central Railway had also run over the Midland station on a 170 foot long bowstring bridge which was removed in the 1980s. However, it offered the perfect alignment for the second phase of Nottingham tram.

So a new bridge had to go in over the top of Nottingham station (not Nottingham Midland any more as it’s the only one left). The tram stop would then be moved from its site on the north side of Station Street to the middle of the new bridge, right over the station and linking with it to form a transport hub. There was no point in doing that without reworking and remodelling the station buildings to accommodate the extra traffic, and while that was going on it made sense to modify the track layout and make the whole thing more user-friendly.

Three projects in one

Plans were drawn up for three separate packages of work all interlinked into one overall project to deliver Nottingham Hub. The three partners working together to deliver it are Network Rail, East Midlands Trains and Taylor Woodrow (Vinci Construction). Nottingham City Council is funding the tram work and the Railway Heritage Trust is also contributing.

The tram bridge was one of those three packages. A two-part bridge was built adjacent to the site and slid into place over two weekends. The first was described by Chris Parker in issue 101 (March 2013) and left the bridge suspended halfway over the station while the second half was attached to the first. When that was complete, the bridge was slid the rest of the way in April.

At the same time, Taylor Woodrow started work on the station buildings. A temporary station was built on the south side of Station Street, the first time the station had actually been on that street since 1903. The cabins used to construct the temporary ticket office were recycled ones previously used for the regeneration of Farringdon Station.

The porte-cochère was closed and is being refurbished, cleaned and completely glazed to form a new pedestrian area with enhanced levels of retail. In future, taxis will make use of a remodelled Station Street rather than enter the station buildings themselves.

The existing concourse is undergoing the same restoration process and the ticket office is being relocated to a more centralised position in the refurbished concourse. The dispersal bridge remains open and can also be accessed using a protective pedestrian tunnel from the front entrance, through the worksites of the porte-cochère and the concourse.The BTP has been relocated from the building on Queens’ Road to a temporary location further down the street whilst the new southern concourse is built to connect the new multi-storey car park, Platform 6 and the dispersal bridge.

Platform changes

To increase capacity, a new platform face will be constructed by stepping Platform 4 out to one of the through roads part way along. This will create a new, shorter Platform 4, and the remaining western end of Platform 4 will be been fully glazed, were rebuilt using corrugated steel in the 1970s. This has left the platforms somewhat dark, so glazed panels will be reintroduced partway through the canopy span, adjacent to the buildings, to brighten everything up.

Most of this work has been taking place over the last few months while the station remains open. However, the new stepped Platform 4 will be constructed between 20 July and 25 August when the whole station will be completely closed for trains running westward (to Derby and London) and partially closed for eastbound trains (Newark, Lincoln, Grantham and Skegness). During this period, passengers for destinations on the Midland main line will be bussed to East Midlands Parkway.

The track layout and signalling at Nottingham station and at Mansfield Junction will be radically overhauled at the same time, but that is to be the subject of another article. (page 77)

By Monday 26 August, when Nottingham will fully reopen, the new platform 4 will be in operation as will the revised track layout, and further platform work will have been done. However, there will still be much work to do. The obvious change, so far as passengers are concerned, will occur early in 2014 when the main station buildings will reopen and the East Midland’s leading city will once again have a station of which it can be proud.

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23rd August 2013

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Bluebell’s ‘Big Dig’ completed

22nd August 2013

Anyone familiar with Boston in the USA ten years ago may know of the project to put the city’s overhead viaduct road system into tunnels. Known as the ‘Big Dig’, it became notorious because of its late running and huge overspend.

Equally notorious has been the Bluebell Railway’s own Big Dig – to clear Imberhorne cutting of waste and allow the railway to reach East Grinstead. There have been many spectacular achievements in the history of heritage railways but this project must rank as one of the most ambitious ever attempted. Its notoriety did not mirror the Boston problems but the challenges that had to be overcome were equally taxing. The Rail Engineer met with Chris White, the Bluebell infrastructure director, to understand exactly how it had been achieved.

Project history

The line had closed in 1958 but the double track section from East Grinstead to Horsted Keynes was kept on a care and maintenance basis until 1964 and used to store surplus rolling stock. It was lifted soon after and the Imberhorne cutting, just south of East Grinstead, was acquired by the local authorities.

During the late 1960s and early 1970s it was used for the dumping of domestic waste until it was completely full. The cutting is 380 metres long, 18 metres wide at the bottom and around 40 metres wide at the top, and had a maximum depth of 13.5 metres. An estimated 125,000 cubic metres of waste was dumped, protected by clay capping to an average depth of 3 metres. Vegetation soon took over with little evidence that a cutting had once existed.

Meanwhile, the Bluebell Railway had acquired the section of track between Horsted Keynes and Sheffield Park and began running trains in 1960. Even then, a fanciful vision was always to extend northwards to East Grinstead but, in the early days of the preservation movement, no- one quite knew how to go about this, let alone where the finance would come from. Many years were to pass before the ‘Northern Extension Project’, or NEP as it became known, was to progress to planning stage. Eventually the railway was re-instated in stages to Kingscote by 1994 with rails laid to the south cutting face by 2003

Environmental requirements

Planning permission had been granted in 1985 for the Northern Extension but with strict conditions relating to Imberhorne cutting. Condition 7 of the agreement stated that the cutting must be ‘sufficiently cleared of domestic waste to allow the railway to be re-instated’. This wording was to prove fortuitous once work actually started. Other requirements were that the Bluebell had to demonstrate to the Local Authority and the Environment Agency that the work would be carried out safely, not interfere with local residents and that waste must be taken away to an appropriate and registered landfill site.

Environmental requirements loomed large as planning of the actual work took place. Control of odour and prevention of leachate escape (contaminated water in waste) were dominant and this required a survey of all underground and surface waterways to ensure none could or would be polluted. Trial borings in the late 1980s had indicated that only domestic waste was present, officially classified by the EA as municipal solid waste (MSW), and in 2004, following the drilling of more extensive bore holes and detailed analysis, nothing toxic was found.

Waste removal was still going to be a major undertaking and a feasibility study by Atkins in early 2000 explored alternative means of the railway reaching East Grinstead. One idea was to create a diversionary route on adjacent land and another was to create a tunnel. Both would have been much more expensive. Thus the big dig was the only practical way forward and acquiring the right expertise and people would be crucial.

Atkins became the principal contractor for the design and with its team came environment director David Barry, whose knowledge was to prove invaluable. All the key civil engineering guidance came from former railway engineer Dick Beckwith who is Bluebell’s regular professional advisor.

Also involved was Jonathan Atkinson, the Environment Regulator for the South East, with these experts having the task of supporting the Bluebell and satisfying the Mid Sussex District Council Environment Officer that the project was fit for purpose.

One significant consideration was the cutting ownership as the owner (West Sussex County Council) was liable if things went wrong. Thus ownership had to transfer to the Bluebell Railway who then took on the associated risks. It took five years to get ‘ticks in all the boxes’ but eventually agreement to proceed was given in 2009.

Removal process

Further test bores in 2004 revealed that the south end of the cutting either side of Imberhorne Lane bridge contained only earth and not waste and was thus suitable for use on other engineering projects rather than go to landfill. This saved considerable cost and was dug out by Bluebell staff and volunteers. Transported by rail to Horsted Keynes, it was used to build up the embankment for the future re-instatement of the Ardingly branch to an Atkins design. This was a useful starter and gave visual evidence that things were happening.

A pilot scheme at the north end led to a contract being let to Land and Water of Guildford who took 5-6 weeks to dig out 10 metres of waste. This was very successful but the use of road transport involved extensive infrastructure fixed costs including provision of a weighbridge, a wheel wash facility and the use of banksmen. 10,000 tons over the full cutting width were taken away at a cost of £45 per tonne. A cost review indicated that this method was never going to be affordable.

A decision was then taken that the Bluebell Railway would become the main contractor, employing subcontractors to provide plant and carry out the work. This saved a considerable sum but required the railway to take on all the risk and fulfil CDM (Construction (Design and Management) Regulations 2007) requirements for a construction site including the production of all documentation and the provision of training for the large volunteer workforce which would provide all the on-site support. In parallel, various former senior railway managers were able to facilitate a deal with GB Railfreight to take the waste material out by rail and a contract was arranged with Shanks Waste to unload the waste at the landfill sites. A trial of this arrangement in 2010 showed the cost could be reduced to £24 per tonne and thus it became the chosen method.

The East Grinstead line has weight limitations imposed by the various viaducts along the route so the make up of the spoil train had to be carefully controlled. At midday, a train with 20 wagons would arrive at East Grinstead and, via the access siding, move south to the Bluebell station. Using the newly constructed run-round loop, the train was split in half with 10 wagons being propelled to the loading dock some half a mile southwards.

Once loaded, the 10 wagons would be exchanged for the empty ones, these being loaded in a similar manner. No wagon was permitted to carry more than 70 tons. The train would depart at 21:00 for the land fill site and be unloaded at 02:00 the next day. Once empty, it would return to East Grinstead and thus a daily cycle was created.

Initially the waste went to Stewartby on the Bedford- Bletchley branch and later to Calvert on the erstwhile GC main line. The reason for the change was to accommodate land fill operators licences that permit only so much to be dumped each year and the considerable volumes produced by the Bluebell cutting caused the first site to reach its quota. Superb co-operation was given by both Network Rail and Southern in terms of granting paths and alternative berthing arrangements for EMU stock at East Grinstead.

To dig out the rubbish, the Bluebell employed L&W (Billingshurst) for the provision of plant and operators. Three excavators were supplemented by dumper trucks to take the waste to the loading dock. Every day, the machines would dig longitudinally into the cutting side. Moving the waste around and loading it into the wagons was almost as big a task as the actual digging work. Early on it was realised that the waste material was very stable as it did not contain granular material and had been kept dry by the clay capping.

Smart thinking

The original cutting width was very generous even for a double track railway but, with planning permission only allowing the re- instatement of a single track, the question was asked, did the railway need to dig out the full width? By having slightly steeper gradients on both the north and south approaches, it was possible to reduce the cutting depth from 13.5 to 11 metres. These two factors considerably reduced the amount of waste that had to be removed, hence the importance of Condition 7 in the planning agreement that only sufficient waste need be removed to allow the railway to be reinstated.

Another critical factor was the Landfill Tax Credit legislation that was to be abolished in April 2012, after which the removal cost would rise to £94 per tonne. A certain focussing of minds resulted and all necessary waste was removed by the due date.

Between April 2012 and March 2013, the remaining waste was re-engineered within the cutting site. Work was due to finish in October 2012 but the appalling weather during the year prevented the planned completion until almost opening day. The cutting sides are profiled to about 60o and are capped in Mypex, a horticultural product that encourages growth of vegetation and prevents any surface material blowing away. On top of this is a geotextile grid that provides the necessary reinforcement and through which the vegetation will grow.

The tops of the cutting are clay capped, it being realised that preventing ingress of water is vital. Good drainage has been installed throughout the Northern Extension, there being seven miles of drains in the two mile section, plus all culverts being repaired. ‘Look after your drains and the rest looks after itself’ being an adage worth remembering.

Costs, opening and ongoing work

Test trains were run for two weeks before the opening on 23 March 2013. Safety verification was undertaken in accordance with the ROGS procedures (The Railways and Other Guided Transport Systems (Safety) Regulations 2006). This demonstrated that the railway had been built in accordance with the design, crew training was performed, a maintenance regime was in place and the whole railway could be operated safely. The opening day duly took place in a snowstorm and patronage of the railway since that time has increased significantly.

A project of this magnitude was never going to be cheap and, for a heritage line, could be viewed as mountainous. Digging out the cutting has cost £1.75 million, the provision of the railway and the new Bluebell station at East Grinstead cost £450,000, repairs to the brick Imberhorne viaduct since 2002 have cost £400,000 and the track from Kingscote through the cutting has worked out at £1,500 per 60’ panel. Although expensive, it is actually less than the original estimate of around £6 million. Reducing the cutting size has been the key factor.

Raising funds to pay for it all has been an inspiration to the heritage movement. The initial share issue produced £700,000, the ‘tenner for the tip’ and ‘fiver for the finish’ initiatives raised £120,000 and there have been some very significant donations by individuals as the work progressed. No grants were received from public bodies other than one from East Grinstead Town Council for some station work, and there has been no borrowing from banks.

The Big Dig project officially closed on 19 July but some rearrangement of soil and waste within the site are continuing. What do they do next? Well, reinstatement of the line to Ardingly is on the cards and other than a bridge replacement, should not pose the same challenge as that of the Big Dig. A station at West Hoathly is a possibility but, with a longer bigger railway, keeping it all in fine fettle could well be the challenge for the next few years.

Particular thanks are extended to the army of Bluebell volunteers who have given hundreds of man hours to support the contractors’ work and without whom, this project could not have happened. In addition to Chris White, mention must be made of Matt Crawford, the infrastructure manager and to the previously named experts who steered the project in the right direction.