INFORMED SOURCES e-Preview January 2014
It’s a (slightly) shorter Informed Sources this month to provide some extra space elsewhere in the magazine for my annual review of train reliability and the Golden Spanners Awards. The January Modern Railways is our annual Traction & Rolling Stock issue, so those interested in things on wheels should have some enjoyable reading over Christmas. Also in this issue I have written the second in our series of interviews with the Managing Directors of the new Direct Award franchises. If you think that these are just marking time until the replacement franchise is let, just read what Mark Hopwood of First Great Western told me.
CP5 rolling stock market uncertain.
Wilkinson revives DfT’s ROSCO jihad
Licensing – time to follow signallers’ lead
Driver licenses coming in
Reflecting the rolling stock theme of the January issue, the first item in the Column is an update of my table of current and prospective train orders. April 1 will mark the start of a new five year Control Period (CP) when meeting the requirements in the Department for Transport’s High Level Output Specification (HLOS) will involve some additional rolling stock.
During the current Control Period (CP4) procurement of three large fleets has been underway. Thameslink and Great Western IEP are done and dusted, while IEP Tranche 2 (East Coast Main Line) is expected to reach financial close in the early part of this year.
An announcement of the winning bidder for the Crossrail train fleet is officially due in the second quarter of 2014. Informed Sources suggest it may be brought forward and there are rumours from the Continent that CAF of Spain is feeling confident. It sounds unlikely, but if be true it would at least mean that Bombardier and
Actually, I sense that winning Crossrail is not longer a matter of life or death for the two
Currently, the only contract out to tender is the SWT requirement for a nominal 30 five car EMUs to provide additional capacity under DfT’s CP5 HLOS. Invitations to Tender were issued in November.
Delivery of the dual voltage units will run from July 2016 to July 2017. This short delivery time suggests that only the usual suspects with
Other potential purchasers in my Table include First Great Western, London Overground (LOROL), ScotRail, which has just issued the Invitation to Tender for the new EMUs for Edinburgh-Glasgow and the Edinburgh-Dunblane electrification and, in the longer term, Merseyrail. Under 1,000 new vehicles in all on top of the three ‘mega projects’.
ROSCOs under fire again
Old grudges never die. For me, Labour is forever stigmatised as the party which cancelled TSR2. For DfT it is the sale of the Rolling Stock Companies.
Any thoughts that the Competition Commission report on the rolling stock market in 2009 had cleared the air were dispelled on 6 November when Franchising Director Peter Wilkinson re-opened the issue with a blistering attack. Addressing a meeting of the Railway Study Association in
As for future rolling stock investment, he wanted to see the ROSCOs taking more risk, rather than ‘passing it back to the Government’ through demanding long term usage agreement and Section 54 protection. ‘If necessary we will have to get the Government to buy more trains’, he suggested.
I found this attack deeply worrying, not least because the ROSCOs are the only sector of privatised railway that has invested serious money. At the last count, Angel, Eversholt and Porterbrook had, collectively, invested £8 billion in new rolling stock, plus enhancements to the ex-BR fleets, fleet since the ROSCOs were sold in November 1995.
In the column I explain that the ROSCOs weren’t sold on the basis of the capital value of their rolling sock assets, but on the cash flow from their rentals. And these rentals were artificial constructs intended to make the cost of leasing and operating new trains the same as that for existing stock.
This ‘indifference pricing has gradually broken down. Today, as Walmsley’s Law states, if an existing ex BR-train costs x to lease, then the refurbished and re-engineered version costs 2x and the equivalent new train 4x.
And the claim that they are ‘written down’ assets overlooks the minor detail of the investment to upgrade and life-extend the ex-BR fleets. Between them, Angel and Porterbrook have spent the thick end of £200 million on their IC125 fleets alone that money has to make a return.
Does this new assault on the ROSCO concept really matter? Well, consider the message being sent out to the banks who fund private sector investment in the railways. They really are risk averse when it comes to choosing where to put their money. Look how long it has taken to get together the private funding for Thameslink and IEP – as a direct result of which the Crossrail fleet is being publicly funded.
If you were a Capital Assets Director at a major bank, which market would you rather put your money into? Aviation, which, while it can be volatile, is a genuine market with commercial customers and known residual values, or
Licensing making progress
This is being written on the 25th anniversary of the accident at Clapham on
Unless you were around at the time it is impossible to appreciate the wave of self-recrimination which swept through the signalling profession when the report of the public inquiry was published in September 1989. The profession, which saw itself as the primary guardian of rail safety, had caused a major fatal accident through sloppy procedures in a safety critical activity.
Having checked for loose wires across the network, the next task was to review the instructions for such jobs. Forty years after nationalisation it was found that different practices still existed within the Regions. A new set of standardised procedures resulted.
With these in place, it was possible to test competence against a common standard. And in 1994, the Institution of Railway Signal Engineers (IRSE) launched its Licensing Scheme for Signalling & Telecommunications (S&T) staff undertaking safety critical work.
In the past 20 years the scheme has been in use on the national rail network, London Underground, the S&T supply industry and abroad. There are 6000 S&T licence holders and just under 30 Assessing Agents ranging from Network Rail and London Underground to the contracts and specialist providers.
Which brings me to the question raised in my analysis of the Stafford Class 47 SPAD (Informed Sources November 2913). How does a Depot Manager know that a fitter is competence to work on, say, a Class 66 and what jobs does that competence cover? And, how much experience does the applicant have of doing this work – which is recorded in the IRSE Scheme’s log-book.
Obviously, a competence-based licensing scheme and logbook is the solution. And over the years the IRSE has offered to extend its Scheme to other railway engineering disciplines, or run similar schemes, or help others to set up their own systems of competence certification. Other than London Underground electrification staff, no one has taken up the offer. Reasons have included that it is all too difficult and bureaucratic, too expensive and too restrictive.
Well, the latter is true, in that licensing restricts people being taken on to carry out tasks for which they are not adequately qualified.
UK driver licensing starts
Also in the Stafford SPAD article, I queried how operators recruiting drivers could be sure that someone is competent, current on the traction involved and has the necessary route knowledge? A reader wrote in reminding me that The Train Driving Licences and Certificates Regulations 2010 (TDLCR), which have covered new-entrant drivers operating international services through the Channel Tunnel since October 2011, were extended to new entrant domestic drivers in the
TDLCR bring into
In the
According to the Office of Rail Regulation (ORR), which is responsible for licensing, TDLCR will establish a ‘single certification’ model for training and competence management of drivers by train operators and infrastructure managers and ‘reinforce management of driver skills and knowledge as a key part of an operator’s safety management system’.
Certificate
In addition to the licence, which is valid for 10 years, drivers will also have to carry a certificate describing the rolling stock they are competent to drive and the infrastructure they can drive on - passed routes in other words. Certificates will be issued and owned by a driver’s employer. In addition to issuing licences ORR will also inspect and monitor train operators’ arrangements for driver training, competence management and fitness.
During the 10 year validity of a licence there will be medical assessments every three years. Competence will be assumed on the basis that a driver continues to be employed under a safety management system that ensures that drivers remain competent. That sounds a bit circular to me.
Come 2018, experienced drivers applying for their first licence will normally be considered to have met the training and assessment requirements if they have maintained their general competence through their current employment. Routine reassessments of general knowledge are not required if the driver continues to work under a safety management system that ensures drivers remain competent. More circularity.
But, to keep their new certificates valid, drivers’ competence must be regularly assessed. It is up to the employer to decide the frequency of assessments, but TDLCR specifies at least every three years, or after the driver has not driven the relevant rolling stock or on the relevant route, for more than one year.
So, progress is being made. And the ‘depot dynamics’ between licensed new-entrant drives and unlicensed old hands could be interesting
Roger’s blog
Last month’s e-Preview left me getting ready to assemble the Golden Spanners trophies. This year, I had sprayed the spanners in good time, allowing the lacquer to harden and they looked an absolute treat. Then the bases arrived and – panic moment – there was a manufacturing error.
That was sorted, but it meant that on the morning of the event Tony Miles and I set up a trophy assembly line in a corner of the Great Connaught Rooms. With Tony putting the plaques on the bases and me adding the Velcro strip which holds the spanners in place. The original whim was that a fitter in urgent need of a 10mm spanner could whip one off a trophy.
After that bit of excitement, it was the best Spanners Awards to date. In the morning Modern Railways had organised a maintenance seminar, as an extra for those attending the event. This proved very popular, with around 60 taking part.
And there was a record attendance for the Fourth Friday Club Lunch which hosts the awards, with 325 members and guests in the Great Hall. It’s always an enjoyable moment, after the tension of MC’ing the presentations, to walk among the tables as the lunch breaks up meeting old chums proudly clutching their spanners.
Last week, I sadly had to miss the Rail Freight Group Christmas lunch, but I did get to the Next steps for rail conference on franchising. On Friday was due to continue with my attempts to get my brain round Network Rail’s Traffic Management System, with a briefing from Network Rail and a demonstration of the Thales demonstrator.
Tonight (Monday) it’s the Fourth Friday Club Christmas networking reception at the Parcels Yard at Kings Cross station and on Wednesday I hope to escape from the office and have a ride on Eversholt’s refurbished Class 321 demonstrator and ask them about the lease rentals for this ‘second hand train’.
New Year
January gets off to a quiet-ish start until the 24th when the Fourth Friday Club hosts the Golden Whistles Awards for operating excellence. All we need now is the Golden Pandrol Clip for the infrastructure maintainers.
Then on the 28 January it is déjà vu all over again, when the IRSE is holding a seminar on ‘Track, traction and S&T’. That takes me back two decades to the technical paper I gave to the IRSE on the then topical subject of traction current interference and safety cases for the new-fangled three phase drives. I note that one of the papers this time round is on Interference Current Monitoring Units (ICMUs) in icy conditions. That was a current topic 20 years ago! I must try and dig out a copy of my paper to take along.
And so, after a mad year which started with the West Coast Main Line franchise competition fiasco and never really calmed down, it’s time to wish all e-Preview subscribers a joyful Christmas and a happy new year. I suspect that 2014 is going to be just as lively.
Roger