INFORMED SOURCES e-Preview July 2010
No sooner had Modern Railways gone to press last Wednesday when a news tsunami swept through the railway industry. This means that e-Preview can fulfil its role of up-dating subscribers on the latest events.
Cuts – first slice revealed
New Government’s first official fib
Alstom and Virgin challenge reliability orthodoxy
SSL ready to roll-out Modular Signalling
Class 172 – engine strangled at birth
It is clear that the Department for Transport is targeted for substantial savings in the age of austerity to come. It ranked third after Business Innovation & Skills and Communities & Local Government in its contribution to the £6.2bn immediate cuts which included £100 million from Network Rail and the suspension of those High Level Output Specification (HLOS) rolling stock contracts which had not been signed by the time of the election.
Note that some infrastructure enhancements can be cut back because they were added after Network Rail’s income was determined in 2008. For example, the additional £50 million for stations announced by Lord Adonis, now binned, and, worryingly, the rolling electrification programme.
However, these schemes were ‘new money’ to be funded by more Network Rail borrowing. Real reductions in the DfT rail budget will mean cutting back on enhancements in the HLOS. The column has a table listing these.
My suggestion in last month’s column that an Interim Review of Network Rail’s Track Access Charges might be needed to cut infrastructure expenditure brought warnings that Network Rail’s current commitment to 21% efficiency savings by 2014 would mark time for the year an Interim Review would take. The new CP5 would then start early with ORR having lost the existing efficiency gains.
Currently potential cut-backs on enhancements are already being discussed by Network Rail, DfT Rail and ORR. When the Department decides what it can’t afford, the Change Review process can be used to implement savings, rather than a full-blooded Review. DfT Rail will next discuss with the Train Operators and Network Rail what could be taken out of CP4 without affecting outputs. Then ORR would have approved the change.
Even this won’t be quick or simple, since it will involve both infrastructure enhancements and investment over which DfT Rail does have direct control – such as rolling stock. These savings will contribute to the autumn four year Spending Review. But remember that the new HLOS for Control Period 5 has to be published in June 2012. And that is when the railway will be under real pressure.
Debt
Meanwhile a lot of hot air has been talked about Network Rail’s ‘unsustainable’ debt. But remember Network Rail borrows only to fund enhancements specified by Government. If you want an improving the railway, you fund it through debt.
A little graph shows that if Network Rail can continue to reduce the cost of operations and maintenance at the current rate in CP5, then borrowing can continue at existing levels, provided that Network Rail’s income remains the same at around £5.3 billion. But that is a massive proviso. And a most unlikely one given the tone of the McNulty Review covered in the update section below.
HLOS 1300 – total confusion
Tony Miles wrong-footed the new team at the Department of Transport by suggesting in a BBC Radio interview that the decision not to ‘go forward’ with HLOS rolling stock for which contracts had yet to be signed, could affect Thameslink. A DfT Rail spokesman told Railnews ‘...the major rolling stock orders for the replacement Thameslink fleet, as well as the new trains for Crossrail, are not included in the present HLOS totals’.
And, of course, as we all know, to get to the 1300 vehicles in the HLOS DfT Rail had to include the Thameslink vehicles due to be delivered by the end of CP4. Former Transport Minister Tom Harris said in a speech that the HLOS 1300 and the Thameslink fleet were entirely separate and then had to recant.
Minsters and Government spokesman trying to recover the situation quoted all sorts of numbers, culminating in a Table of additional vehicles by
Train reliability – the debate continues
Last month’s item on National fleet Reliability improvement (NFRIP) figures ended with the question ‘are we too precious about traction and rolling stock reliability statistics?’ Virgin Chief Operating Officer Chris Gibb certainly thought so, telling me ‘As long as I get 47 Pendolinos every day and they never break down and need assisting then the delay they cause is negligible compared to axle counters, points, OHLE and fatalities’.
A trip to Liverpool with Alstom and Virgin to see the new Pendolino maintenance facility provided the opportunity to quiz Tony Mercado, formerly the head of Alstom Train Care, currently seconded to DfT Rail, and his successor in the job, Tim Bentley, I asked them why Pendolino reliability has gone down since the introduction of the new Virgin High Frequency (VHF) timetable in December 2008?
And, reliability has suffered because the trains are working harder than ever before, compounded by the recent extreme weather conditions.
Since the start of the VHF Alstom has been putting out 47 sets a day from a fleet missing the Pendolino lost at Grayrigg. This equates to a fraction over 90% availability for a fleet of complex tilting trains averaging 1000 miles a day each. Annual fleet mileage rose from 12 million to 16.6 million with VHF
On top of this, Virgin then chose to offer passengers a full timetable through the extreme winter weather in December and January. The column gives some examples of how this impacted maintenance.
Climbing
Intensive use and extreme weather explain the fall-off in reliability. But even with performance climbing again, the Class 390 fleet is nowhere near the 60,000 Miles per 5 Min Delay specified for the electric Intercity Express programme. At its previous best, Pendolino achieved a quarter of this figure. So why isn’t Virgin complaining?
Simply because passengers don’t notice many NFRIP delays because they can be contained in recovery time. And the impact minutes generated are very low.
For example, on the day before the visit Virgin West Coast’s PPM had been 98% and the fleet had generated just 12 impact minutes. As Phil Bearpark, Virgin train’s Production Director told me despite the low NFRIP scores, the fleet causes few PPM failures. Few delays cause stands of more than 5 min and very few rescues are needed.
So, has the Golden Spanners been simply a diversion for readers? I think not, because what the Class 390 experience shows is that continual improvement is essential in keeping impact minutes low and the Golden Spanners awards are all about improvement – both of equipment and maintenance.
Modular Signalling – part 2
In last month’s column I described the Invensys approach to their Crewe-Shrewsbury Modular Signalling pilot project. This month it is the turn of Signalling solutions Ltd (
And I was very surprised find a full set of operational hardware and software, less axle counters, up and running ready for delivery to site.
SSL is focusing on the ‘exam question’ Network Rail has put to the two signalling majors. This asked ‘can you resignal your pilot line for 25% less than current costs’?
Network Rail works on the basis of Signalling Equivalent Units (SEU. The challenge with ModSig is to get the cost for rural lines down from the current £200,000 per SEU to £150,000.
As with Invensys, Network Rail’s new Fixed Telecommunications Network (
Island
By using
Interlocking philosophy is where the rival ModSig schemes really start to diverge. Where Invensys is employing its basic Westrace single processor interlocking,
This seemed a bit OTT for a low cost scheme but I had forgotten is that Smartlock can create virtual interlockings (VIXLs) within its architecture. According to
SSL is also using Delta Rail’s ‘Scaleable IECC’. Delta Rail is, of course, the descendent of British Rail Research which developed the Integrated Electronic Control Centre (IECC) - the pioneering ‘glass signal box’. Scaleable means that the system will deliver the full IECC functionality but is capable of operating down to a single workstation.
Hardware
Equipment on site included the lightweight signals. These combine a Dorman Light Emitting Diode (LED) head with a base which contains the signal controls and arrives on site fully wired and tested. The light alloy had is mounted on a composite pole which drops into one side of the base where it is locked in place when you close the cover. All the items of equipment are linked by armoured cables fitted with Military Specification plug couplers.
Class 172 blues
After the signalling good news a fresh set-back for the ill-fated Class 172 Diesel Multiple Unit. Already a year or more late, test running with the units for London Overground (LOROL) has revealed a serious problem with the engine installation.
Adoption of the new lightweight inside-frame bogie meant a change to a more convoluted exhaust system, with twin pipes running round the bogie instead of a single pipe over the top. All this pipe-work means that the exhaust gases can’t get out easily and the back pressure affects both power and emissions.
A solution has been found, but it is drastic. A single exhaust will now run to roof level in an insulated duct through the passenger compartment: Class 222 Meridians have a similar arrangement.
LOROL are accepting their Class 172s, subject to being retrofitted with the new arrangement, which should enter in service in September. Delivery of the units for London Midland has slipped by a further six months. Chiltern expect to get theirs in a year’s time but are looking at options
e-Preview News Update
On 17 June Network Rail announced that Chief Executive Iain Coucher was standing down. This had been in the wind for the last fortnight. Sad to say, the move was widely seen as a good thing among Informed Sources.
According to the Network Rail press release, ‘The Board and Iain agreed that, with Network Rail one year into a five year financial settlement, now is the ideal time in our financial and regulatory cycle for Iain to hand over to a new chief executive who will guide the company through the process of reviewing our funding with the Office for Rail Regulation for the next regulatory control period and address the next phase of challenges in its transformational journey’. In fact, a year into a demanding control Period is the worst possible time to lose a Chief Executive.
Unless you have an internal candidate lined up it’s going to take a year before the new man, or woman, is fully up to speed. Time the railway can’t afford.
Did Iain jump or was he pushed? A bit of both, I suspect. I liked Iain and if, as he says, he couldn’t be sure of staying through into CP5 in 2014, the ideal time to leave would have been when the Regulatory Settlement for the current Control Period had been determined successfully under his leadership.
Earlier, on 14 June, DfT Rail published the Scoping study report for Sir Roy McNulty’s Rail Value for Money review. I’ll give this the full treatment next month, but if you want to download it (http://www.dft.gov.uk/pgr/rail/strategyfinance/railvaluemoneystudyscopingreport.pdf, can I steer you to Figure 1.2: industry revenues and subsidy 1986/87-2008/09? This shows data which you have seen many times in this column including the fact that today’s railway costs five times the subsidy for British Rail in 1988-89.
This has always been dismissed as irrelevant or ‘comparing apples with oranges’. Now it is official.
Jumping on a bandwagon this illustrates the vuvuzela approach to campaigns in this column such as boiling frogs, electrification and the bonkers Intercity Express Programme specification. If you drone on long enough someone important picks up the message and you get a result.
Talking of IEP, Sir Andrew Foster had been due to deliver his Value for Money report to the Transport Secretary by the end of May. A series of delaying tactics by DfT Rail, trying to soften the conclusions, meant that it was not presented until last week and them unfortunately, to Transport Minister Theresa Villiers rather than the Secretary of State.
Finally DfT Rail lost another of its fights with industry. This was a wrangle with South West Trains over when cap & collar revenue support cut in. SWT said April this year, DfT Rail said February 2011. The arbitrator agreed with SWT. At least DfT Rail didn’t go to court, saving a million or more in legal fees.
Meanwhile the franchise replacement process for Essex Thameside (c2c) and Greater Anglia has been cancelled.
Roger’s blog.
Well I got it right in last month’s blog when I suspected that June would not stay quiet for long. Shortly after e-Preview went out I had my ‘get-to-know-you’ meeting with new ORR Chairman Anna Walker and then the following week it was all go.
First ORR called us in for a briefing on the latest Network Rail monitor and the letter to the Company’s Remuneration Committee. You can read about this in Railtalk and Newsfront. Next day, on the way to my school year re-union I met a railway chum to exchange views on innovation and on the Friday it was off to see
This coming week the IMechE has a seminar on Tram Train on Tuesday. The Fourth Friday Club follows where I will be let loose with a microphone for the Modern Railways Innovation Awards. Then June ends with the Stagecoach summer reception on the 29th.
Early July is dominated by the arts, with much shuttling of senior grand daughter to rehearsals for her Dance School’s summer show, which may mean morning-only attendance at the Rail Freight Group conference on 7 July. And after that the diary is empty for the summer. But for how long?
Roger