INFORMED SOURCES e-Preview October 2010
Well, here’s the last e-Preview before the Comprehensive Spending Review (
Meanwhile, the October Modern Railways includes a two-handed feature on SWT. Alan Williams interviews Managing director Andy Pitt while I do my usual thing with a report from Wimbledon Depot
Rolling stock – famine deepens as Bombardier feasts
Javelin ride – hunting solution found
Access charges confuse West Coast extension analysis
ITPS – Network Rail breaches licence
This month I revive a popular feature from the 1990s – a counter of the number of days since the last main line rolling stock order was placed. As you read this it stands at 536 – over half way to the previous record of 1,064.
I doubt if the famine will be broken this year. Department for Transport Rail had been hoping to get to preferred bidder status on the Thameslink fleet by Christmas but this is now considered unlikely.
On October 20 we should find out whether Sir Andrew Foster’s report has killed off the Intercity Express Programme (IEP). An opinion piece in RAIL, outlined a radically simplified version of the Hitachi Super Express Train responding to Sir Andrew.
SET is now a five car EMU which would be fitted with additional auxiliary diesel generators for bi-mode operation. It is claimed that this would provide enough power to match IC125 performance.
There’s a brief report on the latest proposal in the news pages.
As for the HLOS 1300 vehicles, it looks as though Porterbrook’s cunning plan to reconfigure the Class 458 and 460 Juniper EMUs for SWT may survive the
Nervous
Add in cancellation of the Piccadilly line replacement stock and it is not surprisingly that the rolling stock supply industry is jittery. When DfT Rail issued a Table of current orders towards the HLOS 1300, the Electrostars for National Express East Anglia were omitted. Next thing I knew I was being asked whether the contract has been cancelled.
I fired off an e-mail to a ministerial special advisor pointing out the error and a corrected version was issued. But four days later Bombardier still issued a press release confirming that production of its Class 379 Electrostar trains for National Express was well underway, with a photo to prove it.
Class 395 gliding along
You have to sympathise with those responsible for the Hitachi Class 395 EMUs on Southeastern. After years of being told how wonderful Japanese railways and their trains are, we now have an example in the metal, running on our own tracks. And then it turns out to be a normal train.
But even I was surprised on the inaugural Class 395 run back in June 2009 when I detected what seemed like ‘hunting’ in the tunnel sections. Modern trains shouldn’t hunt.
When I raised the issue during the run I was told that what I could feel was caused by aerodynamic turbulence in the tunnel. This seemed unlikely.
Visiting Ashford Depot in February this year,
Simple fix
Well, it was and it wasn’t. Because the yaw damper connects the bogie to the body, you need some rubber in the linkage to prevent the transmission of vibration and noise from the running gear to the passenger space.
Now at high speed the movements of the bogie relative to the body are quite small. And what was happening was that the rubber bush was absorbing these movements instead of the damper. So the suspension was soft when high speed stability needs a bogie which is stiff in yaw, which is why you fit a damper.
Solution? Fit stiffer insulating bushes so the damper can do its job. Informed Sources report an excellent ride in modified sets. The whole fleet should be retrofitted by the end of the year.
This type of empirical ride development has been a regular feature of Informed Sources. And normally I write up the solution in boring detail and everyone forgets it ever happened.
Face
But because of the perceived loss of face, Southeastern made some unlikely claims for the Class 395 which I address in the column. Much as SWT are proud of their Desiros or c2c their Class 357s (117,000 Miles Per 5 Min Delay in Period 5), they don’t do starry eyed. Nor do they rubbish other equipment.
Perhaps Southeastern should take a tip from Michael Winner – ‘calm down dear, it’s only a train’. And a competent enough one at that, which is going to cost me a bottle of champagne.
Subsidy or premium – who cares
Fortunately, no one spotted the howler in last month’s column - or you were too kind to point it out. So time for a confession
I wrote, ‘This year (2010-11) the (Virgin West Coast) subsidy is around £230 million but revenue share will slash this dramatically’. This was followed by reference to the two year extension proposed by Virgin ‘paying a “significant” premium’. It later emerged that this premium would be £70 million. Clang!
I was still working from the franchise subsidy/premium profiles for Control Period 3 (CP3). Why does that matter? Because from the start of CP4 in April 2009, the Track Access Charges (TAC) paid by Train Operators fell dramatically and DfT Rail’s direct grant to Network Rail increased in proportion.
Is ‘dramatically’ too strong for this normally restrained column? Wait ‘til you see my chart of the Virgin West Coast TACs over the years.
TOCs are insulated from the effects of changing TACs. If access charges fall a franchise will receive correspondingly less in subsidy or pay more in premium, So talk of ‘profitable’ or ‘subsidised’ franchises is both misleading and meaningless unless you reallocate the direct grant pro-rate. I asked DfT Rail for a set of subsidy/premium profiles for CP4 on 19 August. I’m still waiting.
East Coast
Meanwhile, the East Coast Pendolino project, for which no one will admit responsibility, has got Virgin back pedalling. Last month the company was claiming that under its proposed two year extension for the West Coast franchise the first of the new Class 390 Pendolinos would provide a Scotland-Birmingham service from July 2011.
But what if DfT Rail offered Virgin the chance to run the first new Pendolino on the West Coast from July next year under the current franchise? Ah well, that would be a different matter. My ‘what-if’ was something Virgin didn’t really want to discuss.
When pressed an Informed Source agreed, reluctantly, that if DfT offered the train then Virgin would consider putting it into service. And if Virgin did accept the train? Well, it wouldn’t go on the promised Scotland-Birmingham service. The most likely application would be on the Euston-Birmingham- Wolverhampton route.
Since getting approval to run a new Class 390 on the East Coast for nine months will not be as simple as some make out, and DfT Rail not replying to Virgin’s extension proposal, I reckon the first Pendolino will be commissioned and go into store – which was the programme all along..
Train planning system breaches licence
Earlier this year, operating Informed Sources began reporting that Network Rail’s new Integrated Train Planning System (ITPS) was making life harder, rather than simpler. And in May the Office of Rail Regulation wrote to Network Rail warning that it was launching an urgent investigation into the introduction of the System. ITPS is the replacement for a number of legacy timetabling systems and processes centred on Trainplan.
Originally ITPS was to be introduced in four phases between July 2007 and December 2008. Phase 1 covering Long Term Planning (LTP) was available to set the new timetable in September 2009. Short Term Planning (STP) went live in February this year and Phases 3 and 4 are on-hold.
Although Network Rail thought very hard about how to handle this vital and complex system, for example basing it on a Commercial Off The Shelf Product, ORR concludes that its management breached Licence Condition 1. This requires Network Rail ‘to the greatest extent reasonably practicable’, to run an efficient and effective process, reflecting best practice, for establishing a timetable and any changes to it’
Licence Condition 2 is all about providing access to ‘accurate and timely’ timetable information so that customers can plan journeys. Which is where my chums at the operating sharp end got upset.
ITPS is used initially to make bids for train paths during timetable development (LTP). From then on the focus shifts to entering changes to train services - STP and Very STP. A typical example is weekend timetable changes because of engineering work.
When STP started in February faults in drafts of the National Timetable were the first sign of problems. Difficulties then multiplied with trains disappearing from the base timetable, an inability to handle portion working, operators unable to import bids electronically and the loss of services from the operators’ downstream reservations and customer information systems
Iceberg
But in the modern electronic railway, the timetable is only the visible part of the information iceberg.
In an Integrated Electronic Control Centre, for example, the Automatic Route Setting needs accurate timetable information. Then there are revenue allocation systems like ORCATS and LENNON which need to know how many trains belonging to whom are running.
Whether these breaches merit a fine will be considered by the ORR at its October board meeting. By then, according to ORR Chief Executive Bill Emery ‘there will be more information available about the real damage’. The Board will ‘deal with the extra costs that have been incurred by train operators’.
I have dropped a note to Bill suggesting that instead of a fine he requires Network Rail to give TOCs a 50% discount on their fixed Track Access Charges for a Period. This would be worth £35million, which seems proportionate.
Roger’s Blog
Imagine being invited to join George and Robert Stephenson and the Rocket mechanics at a lunch to celebrate the 25th anniversary of the Rainhill Trials. I enjoyed the 21st Century equivalent when I jointed the engineers responsible for the development of Solid State Interlocking (SSI) at a lunch to celebrate the anniversary of the commissioning of the first interlocking at Leamington Spa on
Not only was I breaking bread with the giants of modern signalling, I had been asked to say a few words. So since development of SSI started the year I joined Modern Railways I ran through my memories of this world beating technology.
There was lots of interaction between hosts and speaker. When I could not remember the name of the Railtrack Director who told signalling contractors that if they were still making SSI they were heading down a blind alley, the gap was filled-in with feeling.
A great honour and a great day and an exclusive addition to my tie collection. And compliments too to Chiltern for the quality of their London-Leamington service, except for a severe resonance in my coach on the outbound Class 168.
Last week it was the naming of the Alstom black and silver liveried Pendolino end vehicles at Euston. The notebook had a good thrashing afterwards. And my old chum Tim Bentley, head of Alstom Traincare took me to task over my use of NFRIP in relation to his Pendolinos
On Wednesday this coming week I’m off to Chippenham to see the trial installation of Invensys’ approach to modular signalling. I also hope to catch up with the Victoria Line resignalling which has been reassuringly out of the news. Unlike the Jubilee Line resignalling which I hope to write up next month.
The following week sees Christian Wolmar’s launch for his latest book followed by the Rail summit. Fortunately, I won’t be tramping round the aisles at Innotrans. Mr Editor Abbott and Ian Walmsley will be wearing out the shoe leather.
As already mentioned, October starts with the annual train reliability seminar at the IMechE, where I will follow up Tim’s comments. The following week there’s a press visit to see the first Class 379 at
That will also provide the opportunity to ask how on earth they got the exhaust measurements so wrong on the class 172. Apparently the exhaust scare was a false alarm, everything works as advertised and LOROL should have their sets by the end of October.
And (it’s going to be a busy day) I will try to get to the bottom of the Class 378 unreliability. Reportedly this is down to the Driver Only Operation software. But 1000 miles per casualty?
Then on 19 October we’re expecting a German Railways ICE at St Pancras. And after that light relief, it’s into the
Roger