Informed Sources e-preview by Roger Ford (view all archives)

INFORMED SOURCES e-Preview September 2011

Although the September issue of Modern Railways is published while many readers will be enjoying a late August holiday, this month’s column includes a number of heavyweight issues, starting with a statement of intent.

Time to challenge ersatz data
IEP weird numbers up-date
GWML resignalling programme emerges
Rail Operating Centre strategy – here we go again
Six prequalify for new Traffic Management system

For me, September, not January, is a time for new beginnings. Moving up a year at school, the new sporting season, or the start of the winter session of technical institution meetings and seminars.

So this month’s column kicks off with a September resolution. I am fed up with the rising tide of official duff data. It may be intended to mislead or confuse, or it may be down to incompetence. No matter, I have had enough and from now on it is name and shame, as well as correct and ridicule.

In the column I trace this problem, from the mythical ‘1300 extra vehicles’, through the claims for IEP that defied common sense, Newton’s Laws of Motion and sometimes both, through to today’s stream of nonsense from DfT.

New this month is a howler on DfT’s Thameslink rolling stock consultancy costs, some strange interpretation of IC225 reliability by East Coast’s Managing Director and Network Rail struggling to justify the claimed £5 billion investment in the Great Western Route Modernisation.

It is a constant battle against the forces of obscurantism. At the Office of Rail Regulation’s consultation on the next Periodic Review in July,

Transport Minister Theresa Villiers had the chutzpah to call for ‘a more open and transparent view of the industry’s finances’, adding that her Department was committed to having a section on its website where subsidies were given.

That did it! When my turn to speak came I told Theresa what I thought of her much vaunted ‘transparency’.

In Control Period 3 (2004-2009) the DfT Press Office provided me with a handy spreadsheet with the subsidy/premium profiles of the TOCs, year by year. Since the restructuring of track access charges for CP4 in 2009 I have been chivvying the DfT Press Office for an updated version of that spreadsheet. The last time I pressed I was told the data was not available.

Meanwhile if you come across dodgy data or fatuous factoids, please let me know.

IEP numbers still baffle

Last month I tried and failed to make sense of some IEP costs released by DfT in a written answer. They covered maintenance, fuel and Variable Track Access Charges (VTAC) for five car IEPs. Maintenance was not too far out, I left energy to readers, but VTAC was ludicrously high.

Fortunately, my engineering chum at Hitachi, Koji Agatsuma, saw the Table and sent me the actual VTAC data calculated for the Super Express Train by Network Rail.

These make the VTAC for a nine car Bi-mode SET £1.07 per mile, which compares with £1.09 for a 2+8 IC125. But DfT’s figures quoted in the August column put the VTAC for a FIVE car Bi-mode at £1.13 per mile.

That’s pretty clever. You spend coming on for £30 million on consultants and then get a simple cost wrong by a factor of two.

Energy

And when readers came back on the energy costs it wasn’t much better. How about a notional five car Pendolino costing £0.90 per mile when DfT reckoned £1.32 per mile for the five car electric IEP?

But for the IEP in diesel mode the claimed cost is £1.72 a mile, compared with the current cost for a five car Voyager of £3.85 per-mile at current diesel prices.

As I said last month, I don’t believe anything coming out of DfT.

Factoids

For example, a reader wrote to his MP expressing concern about, as he elegantly put it, the Bi-mode IEP ‘humping tons of dead diesel power equipment for 100s of miles’ when you could loco haul an EMU beyond the wires. Said MP received a reply from Theresa Villiers which perpetuated some interesting claims.

Amazingly, she revives both the discredited coupling and uncoupling delay argument and DfT’s blind faith in the ability of distributed traction to suspend the laws of physics. This time it is claimed that distributed traction offers better fuel consumption’.

The trouble is that this techno-tosh is purveyed with such conviction that you begin to doubt reality. A quick check showed that on measured fleet performance an IC125, with two locomotives averages 6.74 litres per mile while the nine-car Meridian uses 7.54 litres per mile. Scaling down consumption pro rata the Class 222 has the same fuel consumption as the IC125.

GWML resignalling timetable

This month I update the programmes for both the conventional resignalling and the ETCS overlay for the Great Western Main Line. The ever helpful Network Rail press team has even provided the commissioning dates.

These show that while the start of the ETCS overlay has slipped back, the final commissioning has been brought forward by six months to December 2018.

ATP for IEP?

Slippage of the ETCS overlay could present an interesting problem for the Great Western IEP fleet commissioning. Delivery of the trains with ETCS factory fitted, is due to start during 2016.

While Bi-mode versions will be able to start commissioning over the full length of the route while electrification is still going on, the sections with operational ETCS will be restricted at first. Which raises the question would the politicians be happy for the new trains to run for a short period with only TPWS, which reduces SPAD risk to a level where you can’t make the case for ATP on safety benefits, or will fear of a media storm require BR ATP to be fitted to IEP?

Rail Operating Centre strategy

Somewhere in the filing system there is a BR Research leaflet from the early 1970s on the future, or rather ‘futuristic’ railway. I seem to recall that this included controlling the whole network from a couple of control centres. And similar proposals, with varying numbers, have come and gone over the years

On 20 July Network Rail unveiled its new operating strategy, based on controlling the network from just 14 Rail Operating Centres (ROC). Compared with some of the visions floated it has a sensible timescale plus realistic aspirations.

That said it doesn’t lack boldness. For example, all of Thameslink, including the Southern ends of the East Coast and Midland Main Lines will be controlled from Three Bridges which will fringe with York on fast services.

Efficiency

Economy of scale is a key driver of the new strategy. Currently, the smallest centres, which today control only 18% of the Network, generate nearly half the operating cost. In contrast, the IECCs and the largest Power Signal Boxes control 42% of the network but represent only 21% of the cost.

While the ROCs will help to cut spending on Operation, Maintenance and Renewals (OMR) in CP5, to deliver the savings, signalling renewals will have to be accelerated if existing boxes are to close.

Renewals during CP5 would increase by £600-700million with a further £500 million in CP6 and CP7. By 2029 this new strategy would be generating savings of £220million a year with 80% of the network controlled from the 14 ROCs.

Contingencies

But what happens when things go wrong? The theory is that all or some ROCs will have additional work-stations to which control of other routes could be transferred. I suspect that for this to work there will have to be regular rehearsals of emergency scenarios.

There is also the issue of the ROC being remote from the scene of the action. As one senior railwayman put it, when Waterloo runs into trouble will the staff at Three Bridges ‘feel the heat’, the way the staff in Waterloo Integrated Control do?

Traffic Management System contenders

One of my favourite Kipling poems came instantly to mind when Network Rail listed the six firms that had qualified as potential suppliers of the Traffic Management System (TMS) which will form the ‘brain’ of the ROCs. According to Network Rail, all the clever software and hardware in the ROC, with the ability to predict and resolve conflicts and smooth service perturbations, should produce a ‘significant’ reduction in reactionary delays, which represent half of all delay minutes at present. There is also a ‘potential’ 2% gain in PPM

But getting there won’t be easy. In effect Network Rail will be pioneering the ‘TMS’ in ERTMS which was intended to sit on top of ETCS but has yet to be developed. So Network Rail is diving into the deep end.

An OJEU Notice for the new Traffic Management System attracted 64 expressions of interest which have been refined to a shortlist of six potential suppliers.

Network Rail expects to reduce the field to ‘about’ three potential bidders, when the Invitation to Tender go out in November.

Prototype development and testing should be completed by September 2013 after which ‘One, or possibly two’ suppliers will be selected to take their proposals forward for evaluation. Approvals of technology and process should lead to national roll-out from 2015.

Which is where we come to Kipling. For some odd choices have made it into the six.

For example, Ansaldo STS and its American subsidiary Union Switch & Signal were the contractors for Railtrack’s ill fated Network Management Centre. The project ran into problems and was cancelled in 2005.

Then there’s GE Harris Harmon which equipped Union Pacific’s famous Harriman Dispatch Centre in Omaha. This controls 38,000 miles of track and over 800 trains from a mission-control style bunker. It is enormously impressive and at the press briefing Network Rail quoted the Harriman centre as an exemplar of control technology.

It puzzles me that Network Rail, as with Railtrack and the NMC, appears not to realise that there is a considerable difference between controlling low density long distance freight lines and high intensity traffic flows through Clapham Junction or Crewe, let alone 24 trains/hour in and out of the Thameslink central core

Next up is Hitachi. Taking my usual rant about reciprocal trade as read, the company has been supplying operation systems for Shinkansen Lines since the original Tokaido and Sanyo Shinkansen. As with Omaha, there is difference in scale between a segregated high speed network which runs like clockwork and, say, the approaches to Waterloo.

Thales is also in the mix despite its variable performance on recent UK schemes. Then we come to Signalling Solutions, effectively Alstom with its ICONIS system controlling Bologna Centrale and surrounding lines. Finally, there’s Invensys, recently declared Network Rail’s supplier of the year. The Chippenham firm has supplied Centralised Train Control as part of its ETCS contracts for high speed lines in Spain.

Notable absences from the six include international IT group CSC, which developed the Traffic Management Systems for Swiss Federal Railways’ four new network control centres. And where is Siemens, which is equipping German Railway’s eight national control centres and has an advanced network management system concept under development?

So why are two North American firms short-listed but not two companies with relevant European experience? Over to you Ruddy: ‘And the burnt fool’s bandaged finger goes wabbling back to the Fire’. There’s a lot of that about at present.

This and that

Some snippets to end the column. Siemens has produced a version of its Simis W interlocking for the UK which ‘can now work in a de-central mode like SSI’. This ‘substantially reduces the civils footprint and cabling required’. So that’s only 26 years to see the light.

I also provide an update on the Thameslink train fleet order row which, despite competition in the headlines from the collapse of the global economy, rioting in city streets and, continues to gain traction.

Finally, the original tender validities having expired while DfT vacillated, South West Trains has just submitted an updated bid for rolling stock to extend the 10-car railway. SWT was tight-lipped on the offer it submitted to DfT on 12 August, but Porterbrook, had been working flat out to refine its bid to merge the Class 458 and 460 fleets.

Roger’s blog

After a lively fortnight with various members of the family coming to stay it only remained to get Informed Sources written before the summer break. So there has been time for lunch with a ROSCO and a visit to Salisbury Depot, which proclaims itself ‘Home of the DMU Golden Spanner since 2005’.

This was a cracking day out, including a cab ride in a class 159 from Basingstoke. The depot itself was a real eye-opener and I’m planning a feature article as part of our Rolling Stock issue in January. This issue also contain my annual fleet reliability, analysis.

Only this year’s spanners were displayed in Depot Manager Danny Berry’s office, placed in front of a print out of the latest MTIN figures. Not only don’t they dwell on past glories, the theme that emerged during the visit was that topping the reliability charts is not enough for the Salisbury team. That said, when the Period 4 figures arrived on the day of the visit, the first fleet they checked was not a DMU but an EMU!

Looking forward, September kicks off to a lively start with the Guardian’s new George Bradshaw Address at the Civils on the 6^th. Network Rail Chairman Rick Haythornthwaite will join Guardian staffers for what is advertised as an evening of ‘discussion, insight and reflection about the future of the rail sector’. Sounds intriguing.

Next day, the transport Select Committee has a hearing on the Thameslink train order. I suspect a lot of people are going to be very circumspect. After that there’s the first Fourth Friday Club meeting on 23 September. With guest speaker Adrian Shooter demob-happy it’s likely to be a lively meeting.

Looking ahead in my diary has reminded me that I have yet to enter all the meetings and conference for the new winter session. So that’s the next thing to do.

Meanwhile, enjoy any remaining holidays.

Roger