INFORMED SOURCES e-preview January 2021
INFORMED SOURCES e-preview January 2021
At a press-briefing last week, Network Rail Chief Executive Andrew Haines warned that the billions being poured in by Government to keep the railway running meant that the industry faces a tough couple of years financially And we are already seeing the signs of what he means reflected in this month's column. There's also analysis of the impact on drivers of the continuing computerisation of traction and rolling stock, where the railway is not alone.
Network Rail Enhancements in disarray
Neville Hill collision report highlights interface issues
Covid support - Treasury prepared for the long haul.
New train TIN-watch
In a written reply on 30 November, Rail Minister Chris Heaton-Harris revealed that the Chancellor’s November 2020 Spending Review had cut Network Rail’s enhancements budget for Control Period 6 (CP6) from £10.4bn to £9.4bn. In previous Control Periods, Network Rail’s enhancements projects were listed in the Regulatory determination with budgeted costs. However, following the classification of Network Rail as a government body, the choice and funding of future enhancements changed radically.
In 2019 a 'funding envelope' for CP6 (1 April 2019 - 31 March 2024) was agreed by the Treasury and the Department for Transport. The associated 58 projects were listed in the Rail Network Enhancements Pipeline (RNEP), published by DfT in October 2019 with a commitment to an annual update.
With the funding envelope cut by 10% Network Rail will now have to consult with DfT and regional authorities to reassess the portfolio of schemes in the RNEP and determine priorities. When schemes are funded they will be transferred to Network Rail’s Enhancements Delivery Plan (EDP), which also lists Entry Into Service (EIS) dates for each scheme.
In the latest EDP dated September 2020, of the 31 schemes listed 19 are shown as 'Completed'. All but one of the schemes are CP5 projects, some running late into CP6. The exception is the East Coast Main line Power supply Upgrade Phase 2.
Because of the enhancements funding cut, am updated ‘RNEP-Lite’ is unlikely to appear any day soon, pending re-assessment and prioritisation of schemes. And keep bearing in mind that this is funding for CP6 which started 22 months ago.
Nor is that all. The historic dip in renewals and enhancements spending caused by the changeover between Control Periods has already seen a £1.4bn drop in Network Rail’s enhancements expenditure in the first year of CP6.
As you might imagine, a £1billion cut in the enhancements budget coming on top of the continuing radio silence over the status of the projects in the RNEP did not go down well with the Railway Industry Association (RIA). Chief Executive Darren Caplan, described the reduction in enhancements funding in CP6 as ‘very disappointing’. In the staid world of trade associations, this is shorthand for ‘our members are as mad as hell’.
Mr Caplan pointed out that the industry still doesn’t have sight of what rail enhancement projects are coming up. And despite being told earlier in 2020 that there were now more than 80 projects in the RNEP, it was even less clear which schemes will be going ahead and which won’t.
One final note, the only electrification scheme in the RNEP is Wigan-Bolton, completing the remaining section of route originally proposed under the North West Electrification Programme announced in December 2013. No mention of completing the Midland Main Line scheme and keeping the electrification design and installation teams in being now that Bedford-Kettering/Corby is in its final testing stages.
Software updates complicate driver training
Today’s trains are full of what airline pilots call ‘the magic’, computer systems which automate the pilot’s job. In trains, the magic interfaces with the human Mk 1 brain through the Driver Machine Interface (DMI) – better known as the Train Management System (TMS) touch-screen.
In the Class 800 bi-mode, one responsibility of the TMS is ensuring that the pantograph is down when the diesel engines are running and raised only when there is a contact wire above. This is the job of the APCO – or Automatic Power Change Over facility in the TMS. Automatic changeover is triggered by track-mounted beacons, or balises.
APCO control of the pantograph and engines is determined by the train’s four-digit alphanumeric reporting code. The TMS uses this headcode to determine the starting location, destination, and the route in between, including scheduled stops.
When it reads an APCO balise, the TMS uses the route information in its database, which includes the location of electrified sections of line, to determine whether to initiate an APCO intervention; either shut down the diesel engines and raise the pantograph or vice versa.
But if the TMS doesn’t have a valid headcode, and is running under electric traction, when the train passes a balise the APCO lowers the pan’ and fires up the MTU power packs, just to be on the safe side
Leaving Leeds station to enter Neville Hill Depot there is an APCO balise protecting the end of electrification on the main line. However, the wires continue into the depot.
On 11 November 2019, a driver kept the headcode (1D29) of his incoming London-Leeds service for the short run into Neville Hill. What he should have done was insert the headcode (5D29)for the Empty Coaching Stock (ECS) move between station and depot
As his train passed over the balise, APCO noted the invalid headcode and initiated a power changeover, starting up the diesel power packs. The first the driver knew of it was when the electric power supply indicator on his desk went out and the TMS screen told him that the power changeover was completed.
A subsequent discussion with his Driver Manager confirmed that entering the ECS headcode for the depot run was required to prevent a recurrence of the APCO annoying the engines.
A couple of days later, the driver once again brought 1D29 back to Leeds. As before the final duty was an ECS working as 1D29.
However, when the driver tried to enter the ECS head code he was unsuccessful. Instead he isolated the APCO and passed over the balise uneventfully.
He was following an IC125 into the depot and stopped for just over a second before the train in front was on the move again. Keen to reinstate the APCO, the driver started to use the TMS. At the same time he saw the IC125 moving and selected a low level of tractive effort, intending to crawl along behind while continuing to use the TMS. Having reinstated APCO, which took about 20 seconds, the driver looked up and realised that he was going much faster than expected and ran into the rear of the IC125 at 15 mile/h.
RAIB's report into the collision drills down into TMS display and discovers a fundamental error in the understanding of how headcodes should be entered. This error was incorporated in the Class 800 driving simulator, and the tablet app also used for driver training.
LNER based the training courses for its drivers on the Class 800 operation manual plus another document, the ‘TMS screen specification for train crew’. This describes each TMS screen individually and explains the effects of pressing each button on each screen.
RAIB reviewed both documents and concluded that the Hitachi documentation ‘was ambiguous’ on the procedure for entering a new headcode. Had the driver been able to enter the ECS headcode, using the procedure he had been taught, he would not have had to isolate the APCO and would not have been distracted entering the depot.
Apart from the flawed TMS ergonomics, a key lesson is the importance of configuration control in this new generation of software enabled trains. Like Windows 10 or Apple’s IoS, traction software is now continuously evolving.
Periodic software ‘drops’ will continue throughout a fleet’s service life. Keeping track of the software status is one thing, but configuration control also has to include driver training in the loop. In one of its ‘Learning points’ from the accident, RAIB reminds train operating companies of the importance of briefing their drivers about engineering changes made to the trains that they operate.
More from this RAIB report in a future issue
Covid support continues at £550-650 million per Period
Payments to Train operation companies under the Emergency Measures Agreements (EMA) for the first six Periods affected by the Coronavirus crisis have been published by the Department for Transport. This covers to the end of September 2020, when the recovery of passenger traffic had peaked and then plateaued at just under 40% of pre-Covid ridership levels.
EMAs were replaced by Emergency Recovery Measures Agreements (ERMA) from 21 September 2020. These will be replaced by Direct Award management agreements, which, in turn will eventually be followed by Concessions.
Under the EMA/ERMA, DfT covers each train operator’s costs and receives any farebox revenue. Falling payments should reflect rising revenue as ridership recovered. Support is set to continue, costing £550-650 million per Period.
Meanwhile, on 18 November the House of Commons Transport Committee took oral evidence on the Coronavirus emergency measures for the railways. The two-part hearing opened with representatives from the franchise owning groups, before moving on to Rail Minister Chris Heaton-Harris supported by Managing Director of Passenger Services, Peter Wilkinson.
It was a fairly anodyne session, with the owning groups bound by the Non-Disclosure Agreements in the current negotiations over Transition Payments. DfT has a model which calculates how long a franchise would have survived had the pandemic not occurred. If the model shows that a franchise would have defaulted before its end date, DfT requires the remaining Parent Company Support which the owner would have had to put into the franchise to keep it going until it defaulted. In return for this settlement, the owner gets a new Direct Award franchise agreement.
Originally, transition payments had to be agreed by 14 December 2019. Following mutterings about this timescale being sufficiently unreasonable to merit a legal challenge, the deadline has been put back to 29 January.
Questioned on this Domenic Booth of Abellio replied ‘We do not recognise some of the numbers that have come out so far from the previously strong and healthy contracts we had in place. We are very concerned about the process. We look for fairness and reasonableness in it. We look for increased transparency, and we would like human dialogue’.
As for suggestions of recourse to the courts, ‘of course that is always something that we keep under consideration, but we do not want to get into that type of process. We want fairness and reasonableness. We see that as a two-sided process, as was just mentioned’.
For DfT, Peter Wilkinson was singing from the same song-sheet. He declared, ‘ I am not afraid of legal action. I do not want it. None of us wants it. We hope to be able to find an agreed position. But if, in finality, the agreed position is not value for money for taxpayers, we will have to stand up for what we think is value for money. If that ends up in legal action, it will be very unfortunate, but we will stand behind our process and behind what we are trying to achieve’.
But as ever, there is no standard franchise, and FirstGroup was the first to settle. As expected, DfT has agreed that no payment was required to terminate the Avanti West Coast franchise, ‘which was performing well prior to the pandemic’.
In the case of the South Western Railway franchise, which had been declared ‘unsustainable’ by Transport Secretary Grant Shapps, FirstGroup’s share of the Transition Payment is £33.2m. MTR has 30% share in the operation
I reckon a transition payment of £33.2m for SWR, the biggest franchise after Thameslink, with no revenue risk under the new Direct Award management agreement now being negotiated, is good value. DfT is also freed of the prospect of calling in the Operator of Last Resort had FirstGroup decided to cut its losses and bail out.
TPE’s maximum cash exposure, is larger, at £126.3m. But the SWR experience suggests that FirstGroup could negotiate a another positive deal and consolidate its position as the UK’s largest train operators.
Meanwhile Informed Sources suggest that for some franchises, recovering PCS may not be the limit of DfT’s ambitions. In some cases Committed Franchise Obligations may have been paid for, but not yet delivered and DfT will seek to recoup this money too.
New train TIN-watch
No analysis this month as my annual reliability review in this month’s magazine should provide enough data for the most ardent follower of traction and rolling stock performance. However there is one fleet worth mentioning: the West Midlands Trains Viva Rail Class 230s. These have had a turbulent introduction to service, but now seem to have been sorted out with zero failures reported in Period 7.
Roger's Blog.
Well, the virtual Golden Spanners awards were streamed on 26 November and the trophies posted to the successful depots. It wasn’t the same as the live awards, when staff from the depots come together to celebrate success – with much banter and general jollity. But in a hard year for all the people at the sharp end of the railway , it was good to recognise what depots have achieved working through the pandemic. There are the usual tables covering the reliability of every fleet in the annual review..
Live streamed events are now the new normal and there have been some excellent webinars organised by various industry bodies. I try to maintain some degree of normality by continuing to keep a record in my usual notebook.
Unable to have our traditional lunch for the Modern Railways team on a trip on GWR, we had our get-together on Zoom.
Meanwhile some positive news is that I have had the first of my Covid vaccinations, so that when live events start I will be ready to go.
Finally, it's time to wish all e-Preview subscribers a happy Christmas. As for the New Year, we'll have to wait and see. And, as ever, those of us at home should not forget all those working on projects across the network over the holidays.
Roger
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Video previews
Each month we produce two video previews explaining more about what’s in the new issue of the magazine.
Go to our Facebook page (www.facebook.com/modernrailwaysmag) to see the Editor talk to Roger Ford and Ian Walmsley in a ‘Zoom’ call, or head to our YouTube page (https://rb.gy/jog4f7) where Ian Walmsley hosts a longer video with individual contributions from the magazine’s writers. Both videos are usually published on the day the magazine goes on sale, normally the fourth Thursday of the month.
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