With the Office of Rail Regulation and Network Rail trying to fit the HLOS into the SoFA and the letting of Intercity East Coast bringing a period of frantic franchise replacement to an end, the industry can get on with the eternal preoccupations of cost cutting and improving performance. To these we should add dealing with the Department for Transport’s twin obsessions of carbon and capacity which provide two of the subjects in the October column
A thank you to all the e-preview subscribers signed up to my Electrify! Petition on the
Many readers e-mailed me, and the Prime Minister’s office, protesting about the policy that new electrification schemes must payback in ‘10-15 years’ because the ‘development of alternative low carbon forms of traction’ could make the wires redundant.
In fact, the PM’s office was simply quoting the policy on electrification in DfT Rail’s White Paper ‘Delivering a sustainable railway’ published on 24 July. Obviously my priority in reviewing the White Paper last month was to make sense of the HLOS and SoFA, followed by the need to clear up some confusion over ERTMS/ETCS. But this month, by popular request, I get stuck into the Government’s non-policy on electrification.
It is clear that the true policy is ‘anything but electrification’ and that compliant civil servants have been tasked with generating arguments to justify this position. The result is a mish-mash of naïve optimism, flattened straw men and internal inconsistency of which the response to the petition is only a part.
Unfortunately no one seems to have been responsible for coordinating this knocking campaign. Even the 10-15 year payback doesn’t stand up to analysis, unless you believe that by 2030 all the advantages of an electric railway will be wiped out by the reductions in emissions from unspecified, not to say improbable, ‘new low-carbon traction systems’.
DfT Rail certainly doesn’t believe this, because elsewhere the White Paper assumes that low-carbon hydrogen will not become available ‘within the lifetime of this strategy’ – which covers the next 30 years!
Or consider these statements, both from the White Paper. ‘a pragmatic and progressive approach to electrification, determined on a case-by-case basis, driven by business and operational need’ and the ‘right long-term solution for rail will be the one that minimises its carbon footprint and energy bill’. Choosing traction on the basis of carbon footprint is like choosing a car on the shape of the wing mirrors.
I did think of naming the guilty men responsible for this farrago, but my naturally sunny nature took over. But it may not last. Anyway that’s the last I’m going to write on electrification until the new year!
I know someone should have held me back, while uttering the words beloved of TV soaps ‘Leave ‘im Rog, ‘e ain’t worth it’. But I could not resist giving John Redwood’s policy proposal for rubber traction tyres on trains a quick spanking. In fact there was a more serious purpose, because the policy paper, one of series produced within the Conservative Party, shows what happens when a special interest within our industry, in this case, a freight operator, captures a political ear.
As a result, the paper features lots of sensible stuff on freight, stuff on commuter traffic from Redwood himself and concludes that since inter-city rail can’t compete with air, the Tories ought to look again at MagLev if they ever come to power. John Gummer’s subsequent environment paper came to the opposite conclusion, arguing that if rail replaced domestic air services we wouldn’t need to build more runways in the southeast.
So apologies for rising to this stuff, but it allowed me to bring an adventure on my Norton into the column.
Fitting double deck trains into the
It is a very detailed study which works backwards from designs of double deck multiple unit stock in service on European railways to vehicles suitable for use on the
By and large it comes up with the answer you would expect, the gains are not all that great, even when clearances are increased to the
Curvature, especially at stations, means that even 23 metres would be problematic. According to the study the ‘wholesale re-alignment and re-construction’ of Clapham Junction would be required to accommodate useful 23m long double-deck vehicles’.
There are lots of tables in the column, for those who like that sort of thing. There are comparisons of seating capacities of notional double deck vehicles with existing EMUs, breakdowns of engineering costs and estimates of the gauge enhancements on sample commuter routes
In addition to double-deck vehicles the study also looked at the costs of running longer trains – 16 car in place of 12. What I found interesting, and counter intuitive, was that modifying the infrastructure to accommodate longer trains cost slightly more than gauge enhancement for double deck trains.
A final table enables readers to compare options. For example, a 12 car high density double-deck train has a similar seating capacity to a 16 car single deck unit.
Is this the final word on the subject? I doubt it. I suspect that Forum, the Modern Railways readers’ letters column, will have some vigorous reactions from double deck rail vehicle design experts.
One criticism, already received from an engineer with 20 metre double deck stock in service, is that working back from 26 metre European vehicles is a waste of CAD time. Designing from first principles would provide more seats with
When it was announced that National Express Group had won the Intercity East Coast (ICEC) franchise, the story went that NEG had maintained the approach to premium profiles, which had seen it lose previous franchises in the current round. It then won with a lower offer which DfT Rail considered ‘deliverable’. Well, it was a nice story, and it was supported by the sporty premium profiles with which Arriva won New Cross Country and Stagecoach took
In fact, I think the truth is that NEG cranked up the optimism a little, that the Stagecoach bid for East Midlands was flattered by the potential upside following the disruption to services during the CTRL work at St Pancras and that Arriva, or rather their consultants, were a bit too gung-ho for DfT Rail’s comfort.
I support this analysis with a new technique – the indexed premium profile. When you index the existing GNER and New NEG premium profiles for the ICEC the slopes of the graphs give rate of premium growth and it looks as though the NEG bid is really quite aggressive.
For years I have been banging on about the fact that support for today’s railway is a multiple of what British Rail cost at the peak of the last economic cycle. For years I have been told this is irrelevant or even downright misleading.
Now I read in the White Paper, ‘It is right that subsidy levels should now start to return closer to the historic norm’. Naturally, I asked DfT Rail’s for a definition of the ‘historic norm’. A couple of months on and I’m still waiting.
Trying to be helpful I have proposed some Norms. But in the coming months I am looking forward to asking ministers for their definition. I’ll let you know if and when I get an answer
In September the round of technical meetings, conferences and visits marks the start of Autumn. On 11 September I went to
This coming Tuesday it’s off to
Friday is, of course, the first Fourth Friday Club meeting of the new session with our guest speaker Rob Holden Executive Chairman of London & Continental Railways. See http://www.4thfriday.co.uk/ for details.
The following week there’s an update session with Siemens, then in the first week in October there’s the Railway Forum annual symposium on delivering the 30 year strategy plus an IET (formally the Electricals) conference on rolling stock.
Throw in an accessibility conference at the end of the month plus organising Mrs F’s contribution to an exhibition of prints and October is going to be busy – even before ‘stuff happens’.
Roger