INFORMED SOURCES e-Preview March 2010
First of all, apologies for the late arrival of e-Preview. This unintended piece of market research has shown just how much subscribers look forward to their ‘Fourth Monday fix’.
As you will see from the blog, it has been a very lively time since the last e-Preview and the various conferences and events are reflected in this month’s column. On top of that there is also an Informed Sources special feature on Rolling stock life extension in this month’s magazine. I believe this is going to be a major opportunity for
Intangible smart cards not for InterCity?
EMU repower gains momentum
East-Coast-first strategy for IEP
Design and maintenance circumvented Eurostar redundancy
Rolling stock still sliding back
While transport smartcards are a great idea, they have their limitations and, in past columns I have pointed out why they are not really suited to long distance train travel. While the limitations are obvious, National Express East Coast signed up to the ‘objective’ of at least 50% of Passenger Journeys to be made using ITSO Certified Smartcards by the end of the franchise in 2014.
To date, none of the InterCity operators, or franchise bidders, have had the courage to question such commitments. But in a presentation to the Transport Ticketing 2010 conference in January, Andy Donelan, Distribution Manager for Virgin Trains, was brutally clear that for long distance rail travel smartcard-based ticketing would ‘create more problems than it solves’.
The overriding obstacle is what Virgin calls the ‘intangibility’ of an electronic ticket loaded on a smartcard. To take one example, how can you prove you have authority to travel or a seat reservation?
Virgin favours self-print tickets (termed e-tickets) or tickets downloaded onto a mobile phone (m-tickets). With either medium each journey has a separate printout, or file in the mobile, which can be presented at the barrier or on the train. e-ticket, has been available on all Virgin trains since December 2008. In 2009, 300,000 e-tickets were sold worth £12 million and sales are currently running at 1200 a day.
Mobile
Meanwhile, smartcards are being overtaken by mobile phones. At its simplest, the ticket is loaded onto the phone and can be shown as a bar code on the screen to be read by gates. It could also display itinerary and reservations.
Virgin is running a limited trial between
Meanwhile addition of Near Field Communications (NFC) to mobile phones, means that instead of ‘smartcards’ we need to talk about ‘smart media’ since anything the smartcard can do the mobile can do more conveniently.
Regen for Class 31X?
In the Life extension Informed Sources special I go into some detail on the opportunities for fitting the Class 31X EMU family with modern three-phase traction packages. Apart from the cost savings from regenerative braking, there should also be gains from reduced maintenance costs and greater reliability.
I thought that this was a fairly controversial proposal that would get readers talking. But as I was slogging through the Greater Anglia replacement franchise consultation document, I discovered that DfT Rail – of all people – had shot my fox. The Department is ‘keen’ that any refresh and life extension works suggested by bidders for the ‘older EMU fleet’ should seek opportunities ‘to incorporate regenerative braking into any proposed modification programme’ and assess the value of regenerative braking to the older rolling stock.
Greater
465 repower
Coincidentally at the beginning of February
Having completed 78 conversions by the time of my visit, the change is a slick production-line job using a dedicated road in the depot. A four car unit arrives at Ashford on Sunday night, work starts on Monday and the converted unit is released on Wednesday. That evening the next unit in the programme arrives and is released to service on Saturday.
In addition to improved reliability, the repower has also allowed regenerative braking to be switched on again. Each motor car brakes itself and the adjacent car, blending in friction braking as required. So there should be around 20% energy saving to be had.
Waiting for IEP
According to Informed Sources, DfT Rail and Agility Trains, the Hitachi led preferred bidder for the InterCity Express Programme (IEP), are expecting to reach commercial close on the InterCity Express Programme (IEP) 20 year Train Service Provision deal by the end of February. Financial close is now expected by the end of 2010.
As the InterCity East Coast franchise consultation document makes clear, the first batch of IEP funding will include sufficient full length (1+9) Bi-mode Hitachi Super Express Trains (SET) to replace the 13 East Coast InterCity 125 high speed diesel trains. This is known as Package 0 and replaces the previously planned Pre-Series build.
Next in the initial deal comes Package 1. This will replace East Coast’s five Class 180 Diesel Multiple Units with half length bi-mode SETs and Class 365 EMUs on First Capital Connect’s Cambridge and Kings Lynne services with half length electric units.
Replacement of the East Coast IC225 fleet is now an option later in the IEP delivery schedule. If it goes ahead the IC225 fleet would be released in 2017-18
Re-design
Since my technical description of SET in the April 2009 Informed Sources, there have been several significant changes to the train. The five Packages of the IEP, which include the Great Western electrification, will require five, eight and 10 car electric SET and five, seven, nine and 10 car Bi-modes counting the power car.
After commercial close I have been promised a technical update on what looks like a fairly extensive re-design. To simplify discussion, and have an old BR in-joke, I am calling the original concept SET-E and the current version SET-P.
And before subscribers e-mail me asking whether I’ve gone soft on IEP, I’m just writing down the facts, analysis comes later. As the England rugby team say ‘I can only play what’s in front of me’.
How the Eurostars failed.
Rather than cover all aspects of the report of the Independent Eurostar Review into the events of 18/19 December last year, the March column concentrates on the technical issues which led to five Eurostar trains failing in the tunnel. After all, the trains were designed with massive redundancy so that in an emergency at least half of a train could be driven out of the Tunnel.
At the press conference for the publication of the Report I asked the Independent Review’s Joint Chairman M. Claude Gressier, whether it really was possible, with all this redundancy for both power cars to be knocked out?
A Eurostar needs only two of its six motor blocks to climb the gradient out of the Tunnel and the driver of one of the trains reported that although he had lost some motor blocs he still had sufficient to exit the tunnel. But then, as M Gressier put it, ‘bang! He lost them’.
Motor bloc failures
In four of the five train failures the motor blocs were a major factor. While there were also electronics-induced failures, what knocked out many motor blocs was arcing between a component on the motor block - an inductor, or choke, and the metal of the pantograph well above the motor blocks in the power car.
To meet BR gauge clearance requirements, the pantograph on each power car sits in a deep well in the roof line. The depth means that the inductors are very close to the bottom of the pantograph well.
Snow filled the pantograph wells keeping the walls at freezing. In the warm humid tunnel, moisture condensed on these cold surfaces, dripped onto the inductors, which were not fully insulated with resin anyway. The result was a flashover and another dead motor bloc.
Other vulnerabilities to cold weather and the environment within the Tunnel have emerged over the 15 years since Eurostar entered service. Some have been addressed, other have not. Having technical responsibility for the fleet split between three railways doesn’t help – although Belgian Railways has subcontracted maintenance of its trains to French Railways.
Snow getting into the rear cabs was indeed a problem. Remember that the Eurostar power car has to pack more power than a TGV into a smaller space. This means that much higher flows of cooling air are needed for the traction equipment.
When the anti-snow screens – which are pretty primitive – became blocked the cooling fans kept on trying to suck in air. Such is their power that air and powder snow was drawn in through any available gap, such as door seals, cracks in the roof and so on.
This was particularly harmful in the cab, where there is an electronic cubicle with no cover. Other cabinets housing electronic components had doors with inadequate seals and locks.
So it’s a sorry tale of engineering complacency.
The review lists ‘important additional measures’ to be taken before next winter, some of which are so basic that you wonder at them being necessary. For example when printed circuit cards have been modified, Eurostar should ensure that the water resistant coating has not been damaged.
With the Eurostars coming up to their mid life (MiVie) overhauls there are opportunities for more permanent changes. Examples in the report include improving ventilation and cooling.
Of course, Eurostar was not alone in sitting down due to the snow. TGVs suffered as well, but they didn’t warm up until they were safely in their depots.
Rolling stock update
Remember the deadline of 25 March for a decision on the preferred bidder for the new Thameslink train fleet? It now expected ‘in the summer’, currently assumed to be the end of July. Financial close is now set for December. Add 39 months to get the service date for the first trains
And I’m still trying to bottom suggestions that completion of Thameslink has slipped by a year to December 2016. Ministers now say that Thameslink will be in service from 2016 – but is that January or December or some month in-between?
Finally, the breaking news, not in the column, is that DfT Rail has decided that it cannot afford to take up the option to lengthen all the Pendolino fleet to 11 cars. This will mean operating a mixed fleet with 9-car units on the Anglo-Scottish runs. Since the extra cars would be funded by Angel and paid for from long term lease rentals the decision suggests that the age of austerity has dawned.
Roger’s Blog
Be careful what you ask for. Having complained about being stuck in the office in previous blogs, I have been filling the notebook and running the digital recorder at sprint rating since last month.
January ended with the excellent Transport ticketing 2010 Conference. The first week in February saw me at
The following week was just as mad. On the Wednesday I gave the keynote address at the seminar on Wheelsets organised by the Railway Division of the IMechE. I suspect that I was chosen as the only person still active who was at the last Wheelset seminar in 1989. It was a wide ranging and authoritative event with a near record attendance of 140, most of whom stayed to the very end. What struck me were the radical change in the topics discussed over the past two decades. If you’d like a copy of my ‘simple but effective’ (according to a French delegate) Power point presentation showing these differences drop me an e-mail.
Friday that week saw publication of the Report of the Eurostar Independent Review. Perfectly timed – not – since it fell into my peak writing period. It was a well organised press conference with simultaneous translations for the French and English joint-Chairman. As ever with this system I found myself at times listening to Christopher Garnett in French and had to whip off the head-phones.
So far, March is very quiet and I’m not complaining. The only entry in the diary is the Election 2010 all-party rail debate on 17 March. You can find details on www.theraildebate.com.
On the other hand, as you will have seen above, commercial close on IEP is supposed to be imminent so I mat be scrambled at any time.
Roger