Informed Sources e-Preview January 2007
If it’s the January issue of Modern Railways, then the focus is on
traction and rolling stock, starting with the Informed Sources annual
fleet reliability review. I’ve also written two feature articles, a report
on what English Electric, oops, Alstom TLS, is doing to earn a crust at
Preston and an update on what used to be called HST2 and is now called
IEP. In the search for a more memorable acronym, can I suggest New
Environmental Vehicle for Express Rail? Perhaps not.
Train reliability – new EMUs start to deliver
Networkers to get chrysanthemum power
ROSCO profits – DfT hoist by its own petard
As you probably know, the Fleet Reliability Survey, like the Fourth
Friday Club’s associated Golden Spanners Awards, uses data collated by
ATOC’s National Fleet Reliability Improvement Programme(NFRIP).
There’s a new abbreviation this year, out goes Miles Per Casualty (MPC) in
comes Miles Per 5 Minutes Delay (MP5MD).
As always there are tables for five categories, BR era and
post-privatisation EMUs and DMUs plus Inter-City fleets. For each fleet I list the
MP5MD for Period 7 this year (September/October), the Moving Annual
Average (MAA) MP5MD as at P7, the MAA for Period 7 last year and the
percentage year-on-year change.
I should add that this is entirely unofficial and ATOC deprecate my use
of the NFRIP figures for comparative purposes, let alone handing out
gold and silver spanners to the best and most improved fleets. But the
response from the successful depot managers whose efforts are recognised
can get quite emotional. And the Golden Spanners event is the one time
each year when engineering excellence is celebrated.
In fact the results this year suggest that we need more competitive
pressure and a bit less of Teletubbies ‘big hugs’. All the Pacers have
got worse and in several categories there is a distinct trend towards
the best getting better and those at the bottom of the tables are
deteriorating. Anecdotal evidence suggests some resistance to sharing best
practice.
In the case of BR-era EMUs, for example, the superstars are reaching
20,000 MP5MD and above, the solid achievers are in the 8000-15000 range
but the bottom third are getting only 6,000 or not even that.
Old trains perform
Another characteristic of this year’s survey is the way BR-era kit
outperforms the new trains As you can see from the front cover this month,
Britain’s most reliable train is a Silverlink Class 321, comfortably
ahead of c2c’s Class 357s. In DMUs, the Hull Trains Class 222 beats
SWT’s Class 159s by just 8 miles in 27,000. On the DC electrified lines,
SWT’s Class 442 fleet – off lease in January, is way ahead of the best
Electrostar.
Only 10 fleets make the exclusive 25K Club – for those bettering an
MP5MD of 25,000. Of these, four pre-privatisation designs.
Lessons
There are all sorts of lessons to be drawn from this annual snapshot of
reliability. One is that more fleets are starting to show their need
of a mid-life overhaul and reliability upgrade. It looks as though
pretty well everything capable of moving its wheels is going to have to
run through to 2020. This means, as you will find in my TLS Preston
article, that ROSCOs can afford to spend serious money on improvements with
TOCs able to provide the return on the investment through lease
rentals.
There is good news too. The new EMUs are starting to work as
advertised with almost every fleet showing double digit percentage improvements;
some have more than doubled last year’s figures.
I include the Networkers, with their three phase drives, in this
category and the performance of the Class 365 fleet shows that they can hold
their own with the Electrostars and Desiros.
There’s more good news in the Inter-City fleet category. GNER were
runaway winners of the Golden Spanner for most reliable fleet with IC225.
Of course, you can argue that they ought to be given the money spent on
reliability improvement, but an 18,000 MP5MD is pretty impressive.
GNER also won Captain Deltic’s personal prize for most reliable IC125.
Not only that, they improved reliability by 22% when the other two
operators fell back.
Class 465 repower
Unlike some magazines, Modern Railways, and Informed Sources in
particular, don’t splash ‘Exclusive!!’ labels all over the place. It may be
hubris, but I assume that readers know they get stuff in Informed
Sources beyond the ken of other publications and telling them something is
exclusive is a bit redundant. On the other hand, as you slog through a
detailed analysis of some regulatory wonkery, you may at times think
that a bit more mainstream news might be welcome!!
A well kept secret has been the proposal to fit Hitachi inverters to
the Southeastern Brel-built Class 456 Networker fleet owned by HSBC
Rail. I go into some detail of the fleet performance, including a
comparison with the more reliable Metro-Cammell 465s. Then I try to balance
the financial benefits of improved reliability, the costs of fitting
new drives and how the sums add up, or not.
This item fits in well with the emerging theme in the Reliability
Review, that with new trains unaffordable, the immediate future is going to
be all about refurbishment, upgrades and modernisation
ORR reports on ROSCO profits
It may be Christmas, but that doesn’t mean that ORR gives the technical
press a break. On 29 November, in good time for the January column,
ORR issued the findings of its market study of the rolling stock leasing
market. If you run out of things to do over Christmas you can find the
report in full in Professional Stuff (www.alycidon.com.
If DfT Rail thought that ORR would simply analyse lease rentals on the
ex-BR rolling stock (the MOLA fleets), do some sums and come up with a
figure for excess profits to be clawed back, they were sadly mistaken.
ORR has gone back to first principles.
If market forces haven’t brought MOLA fleet rentals down, the market
clearly isn’t working. Why isn’t the rolling stock market working? Well
one reason is because the franchising system prevents the Train
Operators bargaining over renewing leases at renewal time.
Time and paper
So ORR spends a lot of time and paper offering suggestions to DfT Rail
on how radical surgery to the franchising structure and the franchise
letting process. And if such changes meant that the market started
working properly, a referral to the Competition Commission might not be
necessary.
In Competition Law terminology, factors which work against an efficient
market are called ‘Features’. ORR lists 12 such features, only one of
which is really down to the ROSCOs.
And although ORR says that it is ‘minded’ to refer the leasing of
rolling stock to the Competition Commission for a market investigation, it
also emphasises that there is some heavy duty consultation on the
document in prospect over the next three months. This consultation will
help ORR develop its ‘initial thinking’ on remedies so that it can
advise on potential options ‘if we decide to refer the markets to the CC’.
So a referral to the CC is by no means certain. As I see it there are
three possible outcomes.
ORR’s could conclude that franchising policy is the primary cause of
market failure, not the commercial policies of the ROSCOs. Or it could
agree that the ROSCOs are exploiting their dominant position, justifying
a reference to the CC.
But what about a good old fashioned compromise? DfT Rail makes some
changes to its franchising policy, for example, reducing residual value
risk. With a more stable market the ROSCOs are happy to cut lease
rentals on the MOLA fleets.
That would also avoid the two years of uncertainty caused by a full
scale Competition Commission investigation, during which time the banks
owning the ROSCOs would be reluctant to risk more money in the railway
market. But, what if DfT Rail is banking on just such an event so that
it can blame the ROSCOs for not investing in growth builds of new trains
it can’t afford? Just a thought
Roger’s Ramblings
It’s been a busy month since the last e-Preview. The Fourth Friday
Club Golden Spanners was a sell out and the following Monday there was a
party to say farewell to Adrian Lyons, the outgoing Director General of
Modern Railways’ partner in the FFC, The Railway Forum.
After this, I was getting my head down with some serious word processor
action for this month’s magazine, when DfT phoned to say that the
report on the Eddington Study was going to be published on 1 December.
Rail’s coverage in the study reflects its market share of passenger and
freight traffic. For Eddington, our future lies in making the most of
the available infrastructure. Infrastructure upgrades should be
considered only after the extra capacity provided by longer trains and improved
signalling have been exploited.
Actually, Eddington has some funny ideas on signalling which I hope to
explore next month.
The following week I switched from journalist mode to act as summariser
and rapporteur for a major industry conference on intelligent
infrastructure. This dealt with such issues as remote monitoring and automated
inspection. Some interesting insights emerged during the day which
complemented developments in traction and rolling stock remote diagnostics
– such as Alstom’s Class 319 installation described in this month’s
issue.
Last week it was the Rail Freight Group Christmas Lunch, where I missed
the mince-pies and coffee as I went story hunting with my note-book,
with some success. And this week there is a trip to Derby to see First
Great Western’s Mk 3 IC125 coaches being refurbished. There’s an
interesting techie issue to be bottomed here – to be revealed next month.
Meanwhile, a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to all e-Preview
readers. Thanks for your support and invaluable feedback throughout the
year. Back in April the number of subscribers passed 500, now we are
approaching 1,000.
Roger
