INFORMED SOURCES e-Preview November 2010
When this e-Preview arrives it will be two days to railway Armageddon. Well, that is one interpretation of the promised cuts in Government spending in Wednesday’s Comprehensive Spending Review. From what ministers are saying, it looks as though Crossrail is safe, although delayed by a year and heavily value engineered. Little is being said about Thameslink, but here too the timescale has already slid to the right. Hitachi has mounted an heroic lobbying effort to save IEP.
But what I shall be looking for after Wednesday are the immediate savings. Cuts to the High Level Output Specification between now and 2014. However, for the moment, it is a case of ‘begone dull care’ since the French have been giving us more fun than at any time since they tried to build a hovercraft.
Eurostar order ignites Franco-German conflict.
Crossrail clarifies rolling stock strategy – not!
McNulty to create conditions for vertical integration?
ETCS implementation – revised programme imminent
More franchise extensions inevitable
Eurostar’s procurement of 10 new high speed trains was an embarrassingly well kept secret. My embarrassment was only lessened by the fact that the order also came as a surprise to all my Informed Sources.
What baffled everyone was how a £525 million contract could be let without a formal notice in the Official Journal of the European Union (OJEU). Investigation showed that Eurostar had slipped under the radar by using Link-up.
This organisation issues regular generic OJEU Notices aggregating the requirements of multiple train operators. These notices are simply lists of equipment which Link-up subscribers might buy one day. Suppliers responding to the notice are entered in a register and ‘may be considered by subscribers for contract opportunities, without further notification of requirements in the Supplement to the Official Journal of the European Union’. In other words, there is no need for a further OJEU notice.
Eurostar Managing Director Nicolas Petrovic explained that Eurostar initially used Link-up as part of a market testing investigation to see what train designs might be available to meet its expansion ambitions. And when it turned out that Siemens and Alstom had something suitable the market test morphed into full scale procurement. But that still doesn’t explain the unprecedented secrecy surrounding such major public spending.
In June 2010 Eurostar selected Siemens as preferred bidder. But it was not until the first week in October that the French realised that Eurostar had ordered the wrong trains. Clearly this mistake had to be rectified and the French government, aided and abetted it seems by Alstom, sought to get the order annulled on Channel Tunnel safety grounds.
This safety scare centres on the Siemens Velaro variant chosen by Eurostar having traction equipment distributed along the train rather than concentrated in end power cars, TGV style, as le bon Dieu intended. Despite the Alstom bid also having distributed traction, French ministers claimed ‘amazement’ at Eurostar’s failure to take account of Channel Tunnel safety rules in the call for tender for replacing its train sets.
Tunnel safety
As I explain in detail in the column, the Inter-Governmental Commission (IGC) responsible for Tunnel Safety began consultation on revised safety rules last year and published its conclusions in March 2010. The revision included provision for trains with distributed traction. According to Richard Clifton, Head of the UK Delegation to the Channel Tunnel Safety Authority, none of those consulted raised serious concerns about trains with distributed traction, provided they met fire protection requirements.
After losing the contract, Alstom reportedly remembered that in November 2009 it had expressed concern to both Eurostar and the IGC that trains with distributed traction were not compliant with the original safety rules. Since Alstom was also offering distributed traction, you have to wonder how strongly these concerns were expressed.
But Alstom was only a bit player in the latest farce from La Comedie Francaise. The stars are the French Ministers for Environment and Transport who issued a joint statement simultaneously with the Eurostar announcement of the order on 7 October. They demanded, on safety grounds, that Eurostar should adapt its call for tenders to comply with the current safety rules.
As I was finishing this blog the French Transport Minister declared on TV and Eurostar that only the current Alstom rolling stock can use the Tunnel and the decision to buy a distributed traction train is null and void. Would Alstom re-bid a proper TGV? I doubt it.
Meanwhile, tomorrow I’m off to inspect a German Railways ICE3 at St Pancras.
Crossrail confusion
It is blindingly obvious, well, to me at least, that having a common design of train for Thameslink and Crossrail would save tens of millions of pounds – possible hundreds of millions. Contrarily Crossrail Engineers and managers wants their own unique design because that’s the way railwaymen’s brains are hard-wired. I call it Gresley-Stanier syndrome (GSS)
But on 27 September it looked as though common sense was breaking out. Crossrail issued a press release on how it was ‘delivering value for money’. One of the examples of how cost savings are being realised read: ‘new Crossrail trains will be based on tried and tested designs – designing a new train from scratch drives up the overall cost of rolling stock and is unnecessary to meet Sponsor’s requirements’.
That got my rolling stock manufacturing chums going. Did ‘tried and tested’ apply to UK gauge designs? Did it rule out innovation?
Clarification soon emerged. When Crossrail says the new trains ‘will be based on tried and tested designs’, it means ‘will be based on any basic platform currently in service which can be adapted to the UK gauge and Crossrail specification’, which is not at all the same thing
While conceding that the concepts developed by the Thameslink bidders ‘appear to be consistent with the overall concept requirements for Crossrail’, the statement continued ‘equally, other train solutions are also likely to meet our requirements’.
In other words, nothing has changed and the reference to rolling stock in the press release was all spin and no substance. Not clever when Crossrail is being squeezed for every penny, well every million pounds.
A new manifesto
Here I go again. Back in September 2001 I published a manifesto in Informed Sources on how a functioning railway could be recreated. It attracted some attention, I made a few presentations and then events took over.
But a recent session giving my two penn’orth to the McNulty Review of value for money, set me thinking and the result is a new proposal for improving the organisation of the railway. It brings together a number of current developments.
Franchise reform, based on longer franchises and aimed at bringing in private sector investment, is one. The other is the growing acceptance that Network Rail’s rigid centralisation, essential to bring order out of the post Railtrack chaos, should be replaced by a regional structure.
To recreate vertical integration, a Network Rail Regional subsidiary would form a joint venture with a train operator. The resulting Railway Company, or Railco, would be responsible for operations, maintenance of trains and infrastructure plus some infrastructure renewals. SWT and NR’s Wessex route would be one example.
Larger renewals and enhancements requiring specialist equipment and skills which are more cost effective if concentrated in a central organisation, would continue to be planned, funded and implemented centrally, but with Railco participation.
What would a Railco add to an existing operation already benefiting from an efficient Integrated Control Centre? For a start it would eliminate the bureaucracy and financial money go rounds under Schedules 4 and 8.
Variable track access charges would be internalised and disappear. Investment across the track-train interface, such as GSM-R radio and the European Train Control System (ETCS) would become a joint exercise with the pain and gain shared. Currently TOC’s see themselves as taking on all the availability, reliability and maintenance risk on train mounted equipment while Network Rail gets the benefit.
Much more detail in the column, including what to do about Intercity, the objections from freight operators to any form of vertical integration and how the new structure would interface with Government. I look forward to the usual thoughtful and lively feedback.
ETCS the mess gets worse.
This column’s proud claim is that it is ‘never knowingly oversold’ when it comes to harsh reality. But when I wrote ‘ETCS in a mess’ in the September column I didn’t know the half of it.
Forget the well-publicised problems with the cab display screens for the European Train Control System (ETCS) on the Cambrian Lines Early Deployment Scheme (EDS). A senior Informed Source described this as a ‘trivial issue’ compared with getting certification for the ETCS installation itself.
Those who enjoy that sought of thing can join me in exploring the ETCS System Requirements Specification (SRS). The current SRS, is Version 2.3.0d. The ‘d’ stands for ‘debugged’!
But Network Rail’s contract with Ansaldo for EDS is based on Version 2.3.0. And Informed Sources report that achieving certification for Version 2.3.0 is an on-going challenge, ‘let alone 2.3.0d’.
Plan
Under European rules, every railway in the Community is required to provide a National Implementation Plan (NIP) for ETCS. DfT Rail submitted the UK NIP in October 2007.
Among other things, this assumed that cab fitment of ETCS Level 2 would start with the Brighton Main Line train fleets in 2011. Not surprisingly DfT Rail is now busily preparing a new NIP.
And note that the 2007 NIP warned that if any of the assumptions behind the Plan proved invalid or changed, ‘especially those with a cost impact’, the economic viability of ETCS would have to be reviewed and the NIP updated. The revised Plan should make interesting reading.
Meanwhile among the banter at the SSI 25th anniversary lunch I particularly enjoyed the quip, not entirely in jest, that Radio Electronic Token Block has been modernised ‘just in time to up-grade the Cambrian lines installation next year’.
Franchise replacement bottleneck.
As an engineer by training I instinctively draw diagrams when trying to grasp a complex issue. Often a bar chart or graph cuts through a mass of data, or dates, and highlights the salient issues.
This month’s column has a chart showing the termination dates of current franchises, their financial status and extension options available or taken up. I think you will find it interesting.
In particular it highlights that, because of the consultation on franchise reform, which closes today, the Government has run out of time and will have to extend a number of franchises due to terminate in the next two years.
On September 14 National Express revealed that DfT Rail had exercised its right in the franchise agreement to extend the Greater Anglia franchise by seven accounting periods under the existing terms. Predictably the national media went wild about National Express ‘winning’ an extension to its franchise.
In reality, DfT Rail had no option but to go for an extension because it had run out of time to find a replacement franchisee. And NXEA is only the first domino.
DfT rail is determined to get Intercity West Coast re-let by 1 April 2012 come what may, and has rejected Virgin’s proposal for a two year extension. Fast-tracking ICWC means that other franchises must be put on hold.
Given that it takes about 12 months to re-let a franchise, Greater Anglia is not going to be let in the course of 2011, nor is Essex Thameside (the sensible name for c2c) which expires in seven months time. I reckon that National Express is negotiating a demon package combining a further extension for NXEA with an extended c2c.
Three other franchises have extension options in the agreements coming up shortly - Thameslink/Great Northern, South East Trains and Trans-Pennine Express. For example, TPE’s term ends before ICWC, but DfT Rail seems reluctant to discuss the inevitable extension with the operator.
I reckon that all franchises with nominal end-dates in the next two years are going to be extended up to the end of 2012. And serious bets have started to be placed on whether ICWC really will be in new hands by 1 April 2012. Can you invite bids for a franchise without a Route Utilisation Strategy?
Roger’s blog
It’s been a comfortably busy time since last month’s blog. My visit to Invensys to see their version of Modular Signalling revealed some interesting differences in approach from rivals SSL. And their new facility where the equipment will be assembled and tested before site installation was most impressive.
With this month’s column to write I ducked out of the Rail Summit at the end of September but did make it to the launch of Christian Wolmar’s latest book covering the use of railways in war. I rate it his best yet.
October began with the Fleet Reliability Focus (ReFocus) annual seminar. ReFocus has replaced the National Fleet Reliability Improvement Programme (NFRIP) which introduced the reliability data behind the Golden Spanners awards.
A review of NFRIP last year concluded that it was reaching the point of diminishing returns, not least because the financial crisis was making it harder to justify investment in reliability improvements. But with the reliability gap between the best and worst fleets growing I fear that the drive to improve reliability at depot level has been abandoned prematurely. More on this in my January 2011 rolling stock reliability review.
Last week I went to Derby to see the first National Express East Anglia Class 379. After all their well publicised delivery problems Bombardier has brought in my old chum Peter Doolin to sort out production. Peter won a champagne challenge way back for similarly rescuing Pendolino production and the Class 379 programme is on time
For a first off the line the Class 379 stood up to the fist of quality remarkably well, with only one panel failing the test – behind Peter’s head! First class is to intercity standard and I didn’t realise how quickly you could run on Bombardier’s short test track.
This week there’s the ICE3 at St Pancras to inspect then November starts with a visit down the road to Borehamwood to catch up with Signalling Solutions. In mid November I will try to get to the Future of rail conference, which is supported by Modern Railways.
On 26 November I’ll be awarding the gold and silver spanners for rolling stock reliability as part of the Fourth Friday Club meeting. This year the top new EMU is going to be very close.
Roger