INFORMED SOURCES e-Preview September 2012
First of all, apologies for the slightly late arrival of e-Preview this month. I’m just back from a week’s holiday in
IEP – signed and sealed.
Alstom anger as DfT dismisses Pendolino potential
IEP – losers go quietly
Multiple Unit life extension kicks off
Right time punctuality – back to Railtrack levels
After last month’s false start, we finally had the formal confirmation that the Intercity Express Programme contract had been awarded to Agility Trains – the Hitachi-led consortium. This clarified a number of points on such matters as employment at the Newton Aycliffe assembly plant and the fleet sizes and allocations.
It is up to Agility to determine how many sets it needs to cover the diagrams in the timetable specified by DfT. I had a go with the previous fleet allocation using 90% availability and came up with around 580 vehicles.
Agility has been more conservative on availability and, with a rationalisation of the trains formations, 596 vehicles will form 92 electric and bi-mode Super Express Trains to cover 78 diagrams. That’s 85% availability, the figure being depressed by some small fleets covering only 8 or 10 diagrams. Of course, if you had an all EMU fleet with loco haulage away from the wires availability would be improved.
But even with the larger fleets on the Great Western,
Mind you, under the IEP contract Agility is incentivised to offer spare sets which the operator can use to introduce additional diagrams. The company sees SET emulating the Alstom-maintained Class 390 Pendolino fleet where availability has increased over the years.
In the column I provide an update on the proposed allocations to both Greater Western and East Coast. Plus the options which DfT is still flogging. Current thinking is that the standards lengths are now five-car and nine-car. However incoming franchisees may have their own ideas.
Pendolino poor value
A journalist chum at Rail.co asked DfT whether, given the time to deliver the IEP trains, procurement of more Class 390 Pendolinos off the Alstom production line might not have been a cheaper and quicker option? This obviously struck at nerve within
DfT’s riposte focused on seating capacity, arguing that ‘an 11-car Pendolino only holds as many people as a nine-car IEP, so you need fewer IEPs to transport the same amount of people. As for cost, an electric IEP carriage costs £2,431,389, compared to an estimated £2.7 million for the Pendolino equivalent, and a bi-mode IEP costs £2,829,187. That’s the first time I’ve ever seen train prices quoted to the nearest pound.
However, the claim on capacity was typical DfT misinformation. When Virgin specified the Pendolino back in 1997, capacity was not a primary consideration and the internal layout, still in use 15 years later, is remarkably wasteful of space.
A nine car Class 390 seats 439, not a lot even allowing for the ‘sterilisation of the outer end thirds of the driving cars as required for EMUs running at over 100mile/h. If a nine car IEP will provide approximately 188 more seats than a nine car Pendolino – that is 627 seats, or an average of 70 seats per car.
As usual, I have come up with a table. I haven’t got the seating layout for the nine car IEP, but I do have the eight car, so I compare it with the original eight car Pendolino, the First Great Western High Capacity IC125 and IC225. It makes interesting reading.
I also analysis the claim that an 11 car Class 390 ‘only holds as many people as a nine-car IEP’. Assuming capacity optimised interior layouts a 26m IEP vehicle should have around 13% more seats than the 23 m equivalent.
On this basis a seven car SET should have the capacity of an eight car Pendolino. However, a nine car SET would equate to 10⅓ Pendolino cars.
Alstom claims that in high density configuration, with two first class coaches, a kitchen and a smaller shop area, an 11-car Class 390 would seat 667 passenger ‘in comfort’.
Anyway, as Alstom pointed pout ‘Pendolino is a completely different machine to the IEP, being a tilt train that can travel at 140mph, with passenger layouts specified for specific services making any comparisons between the two pointless’. The company added that as a ‘fast accelerating, high top speed, tilting train’ the Class 390 is an ‘ideal train for the
East Coast
While we are on the subject of Pendolino, thanks for your feedback on Alstom’s claim that a Class 390 running with tilt at 140 mile/h could cut 50 min off the London-Edinburgh journey time. This sent me back to the January 1986 Modern Railways, which quoted British Rail estimates for time saving from higher speeds and tilt on the ECML.
I’ve got another table you won’t see anywhere else. This shows that compared with the then IC125 London-Edinburgh time of 4hr 28 mi, an IC225 running at 140mile/h plus tilt would have given 3hr 39 min, a saving of 49 min.
But even with 140mile/h, plus tilt plus blistering Pendolino acceleration, knocking even 30 minutes off current timings on today’s railway would be an achievement.
IEP – losers give up challenge
Express Rail Alliance (ERA), the runners up in the bidding for IEP, brought together Bombardier and Siemens. In February 2009 ERA was put on standby as reserve bidder when Agility Trains was appointed preferred bidder. The ERA bid had been assessed by DfT as being both technically and financially deliverable. However, DfT’s evaluation also showed the bid was around 10% more expensive than the Agility Trains offer.
On 9 July this year DfT sent out what is termed the ‘standstill letter to all the firms which had sought to prequalify for IEP. This started a 10 day period during which unsuccessful bidders can appeal against the contract award.
I’m still working on what happened next. But one moment is too good not to share.
We know that ERA’s lawyers filed a challenge to the contract award on the basis of the changes in specification after the preferred bidder announcement. These included the design refinements by
In a piece for Newsfront in the October 2010 Modern Railways I did query whether this radical change in concept could be pursued within the framework of the IEP, but thought nothing more of it. I returned to the subject in June 2011 with the latest of my detailed technical descriptions which have traced the evolution of the SET.
On July 16 this year DfT invited ERA to the ‘wash-up’ meeting held to go through why the bid was unsuccessful ERA’s lawyers posed a simple question: ‘When was ERA told of the changes in the output specification’?
This caused consternation because DfT had not given ERA formal notification. But DfT recovered fast.
Irresp3ective of formal notification, ERA would have known about the change because it was discussed in the railway press and confirmed in detail in Modern Railways – specifically, my June 2011 write up.
As a bemused Informed Source commented, the message from DfT can only be that anything you have read in Modern Railways about the IEP must be true. (You have to be a regular reader to get the joke)
Multiple unit modernisation
I’ve been banging on for several years about the emerging rolling stock market based on life extending ex British Rail EMUs and DMUs for Continued Service Operation (CSO). Now, at last, it is starting to happen.
As explained in earlier columns, accessibility legislation is no longer a ‘drop dead’ threat to these fleets. As a result, the ROSCOs have been investigating improvements to make their assets attractive long term propositions.
Top of the list is reducing energy costs. So, already we have the Porterbrook/SWT/ZF trial installation of a more fuel efficient transmission in a Class 158. But it is the ex-BR EMUs which have the greatest potential.
On commuter services regenerative braking offers savings of 15-20%. Currently most of the Class 31X 25kV ac EMUs have thyristor control of DC traction motors and can’t regenerate.
Replacing the existing traction package with a three phase drive would provide regen’ braking plus a number of other benefits. These include lower maintenance cost, better availability because of reduced maintenance time and greater reliability.
Angel Trains has set the ball rolling with a £6 million contract for Bombardier Transportation to repower a Class 317 EMU. A further £1 million is being spent on refurbishing two vehicles in the set, including the installation of air conditioning.
Prospects
Meanwhile the other ROSCOs are not idle. Eversholt has been working up a refurbishment proposal for the Class 321, with full scale alternative interiors likely to be revealed by the end of the year.
Porterbrook is also putting hard cash behind CSO. The next C6 overhaul contract for the SWT Class 455 fleet will include the full house of accessibility modifications needed for CSO beyond 2020.
But when it comes to repowering you have to make the business case for the considerable investment. And my analysis in this month’s column suggests that it will need some hard work.
Based on the Class 455 fleet, a 15% gain from regenerative braking equates to a saving of £1.5 million a year. But, assuming a new three phase traction package costs around £500,000 per train, the return needed on the investment in the fleet comes out at around £4million a year.
So what other benefits can be called in aid? Electric braking means less frequent brake pad changes. Three phase drive eliminates traction motor brush gear and commutators and even English Electric camshaft control equipment also needs periodic maintenance and expert set-up.
Maintenance costs should fall. But the associated reduction in down-time for maintenance could be more valuable to the business case if translated into higher availability, making more trains available from the existing fleet. How to put a value on, say, a couple of extra trains in the peaks from the existing fleet is another matter altogether.
Right time punctuality
As you may have noticed, this column is the sworn enemy of those who, like Pol Pot, try to restart history from a carefully selected ‘year zero’. In our industry the most popular year for massaging statistics is 2001 and the collapse of the rail network after the Hatfield derailment.
On 10 July the Association of Train Operating Companies (ATOC) revealed, for the first time, right time punctuality figures. And guess what? Year zero was 2001-2 when only 46.9% of trains arrived within a minute.
By 2011-12 right time arrivals were up to 69.8%.
According to ATOC, allowing for the additional services introduced over the past decade this improvement represented ‘an 80% increase in 'right-time' arrivals – more than five million in 2011-12 compared to 2.78 million in 2001-2’. Gosh!
So how did today’s performance compare with the longer term record, I asked Network Rail? ‘Sorry Roger, we haven’t got figures going back that far’.
Oh what a shame. Never mind. I’ve found them and in the magazine I have the chart to prove it.
And guess what? Punctuality is back to the 68.9% achieved in 1997-98. And seems to have levelled out over the last three years.
Yes, of course we are running more trains than we were 15 years ago, which makes current right time performance quite an achievement. But that doesn’t excuse such a selective use of statistics.
Roger’s Blog
Well I certainly chose the right to go on holiday, with the Intercity West Coast franchise decision being announced while I was in a mobile-free corner of rural
I followed developments through the press, TV news and radio and can now understand how the public is confused by our industry. In particular subsidies were quoted with no indication of whether there were Net Present Value or cash. And Virgin’s current premium was quoted as gospel, without anyone pointing out that the franchise is in Revenue support.
So as soon as I have finished this is it out with the DfT and First Group statements, fire up a spreadsheet and try and put the premium profile on a cash basis. It will be instructive to compare it with the profiles for the much maligned National Express East Coast bid and the First Great Western premium profile which were remarkably similar.
Talking of NPV, I have checked the basis of the £4.5 billion quoted as the lifetime cost of the IEP 27.5 year deal. This is the Net Present Value, so that over 27.5 years the cash value is going to be much higher.
Looking ahead, my diary for September has only a couple of entries, but both are major events. In the second week it is the IRSE’s Aspect 2012 international signalling conference – a unique opportunity to catch up with developments world wide.
Then on 28 September it is the Modern Railways Golden Jubilee celebration, with a special train to the
Meanwhile, can I leave you with an unusual book recommendation. Christian Wolmar’s publishers Atlantic Books sent me an advance copy of Jonathan Glancey’s new book ‘Giants of steam’.
As you may have noticed I have little interest in steam locos and know even less about them. But I thought it only fair to read the preface – and I was hooked!
Mr Glancey is a superb writer and he knows his stuff. Essentially a world wide history of steam traction in the first half of the 20th century it is an exciting story of personalities, politics, performance and power. It was my holiday reading and is my railway book of the year. And I never thought I would say that about a book on kettles.
Now for the West Coast premium profile.
Roger