A central communication network within a product or a system can be likened to a human’s nervous system. Networks continue to evolve, but the protocol that has been widely adopted to be at the heart of the modern systems is the Controller Area Network (CAN).
CAN bus, which was originally developed for data communications in automobile networks, is a robust, differential signalling, serial communications system. It has quickly gained acceptance into a variety of other industries including aerospace, industrial machinery and medical systems, as well as numerically controlled tools and intelligent robots, and is now being adopted widely within the railway industry, both in train-borne and trackside applications.
The CAN protocol allows individual parts of a system to be controlled via a two-wire differential bus which can run throughout the core of the system. Functional elements are placed along the bus at ‘nodes’ and converted by transceiver modules. Traditional transceivers can only receive and send data, which require external isolation chips, opto-coupler and an isolated DC/DC converter to complete the solution.
Integrated modules
Mornsun has developed a range of fully isolated bus transceiver modules. Each module integrates a transceiver, isolation chip and high-efficiency isolated DC/DC converter in one single package. Their compact size, low power consumption and high reliability make them suitable for use in harsh industrial environments. Modules are available in either CAN bus, RS232 or RS485 formats.
Mornsun’s CAN transceivers solve specialised networking requirements for various applications and power supply systems, providing solutions for 5V and 3V operation as well as being compatible with the new CAN FD (Flexible Data rates) standard.
Mornsun has also developed a full suite of products which are easy to integrate and offer the following advantages over discreet solutions:
a) Simplicity of design with just one module to integrate – plug and play;
b) Two-part isolation (3kV) on power supply and signals;
c) Known EMC performance;
d) Baud rates up to 5M (CAN FD);
e) Modules with suffix CAN FD meet ISO11898-5;
f) Operating temperatures from -40 to +105ºC;
g) Low cost, short lead-times.
Train power
Mornsun and its UK distributor, Relec Electronics, are also specialists in the field of DC power on trains. With a portfolio of EN50155 and RIA-certified DC/DC converters and filters, systems can easily be put together using off-the-shelf modules.
As a leading supplier of specialist products, Relec Electronics offers support to the electronics industry with a wealth of experience going back over 40 years. The company offers AC/DC power supplies, DC/DC converters, DC/AC inverters, displays and EMC filters.
Through working closely with manufacturers like Mornsun, with its range of fully integrated transceiver modules, the Relec team can bring the latest technologies and products to the railway industry and dramatically reduce design and integration time.
At the end of this month, industry regulator, the Office of Rail and Road (ORR), will publish its final thoughts on how Network Rail should allocate its budget over the next five years, during Control Period 6.
June’s draft determination focused heavily on worker protection, advising an extra £80 million should be spent on installing additional safety measures, from a recommended total renewals budget of £18 billion.
This was followed swiftly in July by the ORR’s annual health and safety report, which revealed “continuing significant failures, particularly in regards to exposure to OLE and third rail” are still occurring on our railways.
So, the gauntlet has been thrown down. How does the industry reduce the risk of serious injuries, or on occasions, worse? Despite recent upgrades, the majority of the existing rail network is ageing. What can be done, practically and cost-effectively, without ripping it up and starting again?
Britain’s railways remain the safest in Europe, but high voltage equipment, heavy machinery and moving vehicles make maintenance depots, in particular, potentially risky places to work. When coupled with an inconsistent approach to staff safety, and some facilities still relying on poor, ad hoc risk control arrangements, it is undeniable that more can be done.
The ORR has noted this year that technological developments offer great opportunities to improve safety, yet it believes such innovations should be introduced in a way that takes account of human interaction.
This philosophy is at the core of Zonegreen’s working practices and the Sheffield-based depot safety specialist continues to develop highly sophisticated systems that protect personnel, without impeding depot operations or productivity.
Protection via prevention
Perhaps best known for its market leading Depot Personnel Protection System (DPPS™), which is installed extensively across the UK, Australasia and the Middle East, Zonegreen is also a leading expert in interlocking, combining intuitive functionality with easy to use controls to improve worker safety.
The firm provides advanced interlocking systems for new build and existing facilities that prevent personnel and equipment entering dangerous areas and coming into contact with live third rails or overhead lines.
It has developed a safe system of work that absolutely prevents access to high level platforms by means of a fully guarded stairway and interlocked gate, which can only be opened with a key that is released from a control panel when the OLE is isolated. The sequence of unlocking and removing keys, which in turn allows other keys to be released, ensures prohibition of access to areas unless they are safely isolated and earthed. It is also possible to monitor the position of the gate locks to ensure that they are all closed and locked prior to enabling the reenergisation of the OLE.
In addition, a series of green lights can be provided that illuminate when roads are isolated, earthed and interlocked, providing a visual indication that it is safe to work.
Interlocking is far superior to ‘permit to work’ systems that rely entirely on everyone operating within the area of risk to follow procedure continually. One lapse of concentration is all it takes to place a member of staff in danger, so taking away the margin for human error can, potentially, save lives.
Further refinements can be included within an interlocked OLE system to protect third party depot equipment. For example, to eliminate hazards from trains with two pantographs or multiple pick up shoes and to ensure the safe placing and removal of earth loops. In the past, failure to remove earth loops has caused numerous incidents, subsequent injury to workers and damage to equipment.
Depot installations that have the potential to come into contact with a live OLE, such as cranes, pressure washers and mobile gantries, can also be interlocked to prohibit their operation in potentially unsafe conditions.
Staff working on high-level access gantries are not only exposed to the dangers of OLE, but are also at risk of falls from height. A relatively new innovation in the improvement of depot safety is GapSafe – an inflatable bladder that closes the space between a maintenance platform and train. It prevents personnel, tools and equipment from dropping between the train and the maintenance platform, eliminating injury to workers and damage to plant and equipment.
Unlike traditional fall arrest systems or fall prevention flaps, GapSafe fills spaces of varying sizes quickly, without causing damage to the train or maintenance platform. Interfacing Zonegreen’s interlocking technology with the bladders allows them to inflate automatically when the first gantry gate is unlocked. This ensures that staff are in a position of safety whilst setting up a safe system of work, eliminates human error and protects personnel working at height. When the OLE is isolated, the gantry gates are unlocked and GapSafe is in place, the aforementioned green beacons illuminate above the respective road to indicate it is completely safe to enter.
Christian Fletcher, Zonegreen’s technical director, said: “Our interlocking is so flexible it can be adapted to all sorts of third-party depot equipment. The interface with the GapSafe bladders is the perfect example of how advanced technologies can be used together to provide a fully integrated, fully automated safety system.”
Third rail risks
The prevalence of third rail electrification in the South East is greater than in any other area of the country. In this day and age, the concept that bare, 750V live conductors run through our places of work at ground level is hard to comprehend, yet these are exactly the dangers facing depot operatives in this region on a daily basis.
Traditional safety measures, for example, the use of protection boards and written procedures, are still commonplace. However, these manual systems are open to human error and can lead to fatalities, resulting in untold grief for family and colleagues and huge fines for employers.
Zonegreen is leading a two-pronged attack on the risks associated with third rail, via its interlocking and Points Converter systems.
Interlocking is applied in much the same way as it is to OLE equipment, but at low level. Areas of risk are fenced off and access is controlled via secure gates, which cannot be opened until the third rail has been isolated.
This type of system is particularly beneficial on stabling roads, where operations such as cleaning and sanding are completed. Workers are often required to access the six-foot space alongside the third rail, putting them at considerable risk.
Points Converter is an innovative method of automating manual points that has been designed to increase safety in rail depots and can be used to reduce the dangers associated with the third rail. Fitted retrospectively to existing manual hand points, they can be controlled either by key switches located in a position of safety, by remote handsets or by a central computer system. This allows the point to be operated remotely, without putting people in harm’s way.
Using Points Converter removes the need for shunters to traverse potentially long distances to reach manual points, at all times of the day and night. In areas where there could be poor lighting, ballast and uneven surfaces, the dangers of contact with the third rail are heightened and ever present.
It is a low-cost, easy to use system that maintains the integrity of the underlying hand point and requires only minimal civil works and changes to operating procedures. Routes can be pre-set through multiple points that can be reconfigured or upgraded at any time, and it incorporates an event logging facility that enables the depot manager to keep a record of all points operations.
The future
Whilst many UK depots, particularly those associated with the Thameslink, IEP and Crossrail projects, already benefit from Zonegreen’s technology, there is still room for improvement, as indicated by the ORR’s health and safety report.
Clearly the human grief and suffering caused by workplace fatalities is unquantifiable, but it is also difficult to obtain precise estimates of the financial costs. When legal proceedings, medical charges, damage to equipment, loss of production and insurance are taken into account, a figure of anywhere between £2 and £7 million is not unreasonable. This would be crippling for all but a few large organisations, so it is vital everything possible must be done to reduce worker risk.
Christian Fletcher added: “The safest way to protect personnel is to keep them out of dangerous areas. It is vital, therefore, to have properly engineered systems that can not only play a major role in staff safety, but also have the ability to improve efficiency. By applying its expertise, experience and adaptable technology to the issue, Zonegreen is helping to prevent personal injury and the associated costly damages.
“At the moment, the rail industry still has an inconsistent approach to keeping workers safe. Until the failings of manual systems are addressed across all rail depots, the potential for loss of life remains all too real. Our user-friendly DPPS™ can be developed to encompass both electronic and mechanical interlocking, providing proven protection against the risks identified.”
High Speed 2 (HS2) is one of the largest infrastructure projects that this country has ever seen – six times the budget of the 2012 Olympics. It will provide a new high-speed railway link between London, Birmingham, Manchester and Leeds, speeding up journeys, releasing space on crowded lines and bringing Britain closer together.
HS2 will create thousands of jobs during its construction process, as well as 2,000 apprenticeships. Approximately 25,000 people are needed to build the project and, to support this, Network Rail is providing two state of the art colleges to train the next generation of rail engineers, located in Birmingham and Doncaster.
Network Rail’s high-speed rail colleges will be elite institutions, defined by their focus on progression to a higher level of study – delivering truly innovative training and offering the very best in teaching and specialist equipment.
The college occupies a 5.1 acre site at Doncaster’s Lakeside. As an elite institution, the college will be a flagship facility for advanced and higher-level apprentices as well as providing opportunities for the existing workforce to learn new skills in the latest technology. Thus it meets the wider economic need for an increased supply in engineers and will therefore have a purpose beyond the timeframes of HS2.
The new pool of talent will need to understand the challenges involved in high-speed electric railways of the future rather than the steam and diesels of the past. Doncaster is one of two High Speed rail colleges we’re building.
Heating a rail shed
Increasingly, almost as much attention is being paid to topics such as energy efficiency, sustainability and the environment as the traditional topics of railway engineering and operations. This is as true of train depots as of any other part of the rail network.
The ways in which train care depots are utilised, often intermittently and at irregular time intervals, make the efficient use of energy extremely difficult. Therefore, consideration must be given to selecting a heating system that offers flexibility of operation at optimum efficiency.
Train maintenance sheds are invariably very long and narrow, with large doors opening constantly at each end, and are thus notoriously difficult to heat and even more difficult to keep warm. The doors often occupy the full width of the building and may be left open for many hours a day, creating a wind tunnel effect as cold air at high velocity is drawn through the shed. This means that air infiltration can severely disrupt worker comfort within the interior.
A heating system needs to be able to sustain a comfortable environment in these conditions and, especially, provide rapid recovery once the doors are closed. Air curtains over or to the side of the doors, either ambient or heated, can mitigate the issue of air infiltration.
Maintenance is frequently carried out at night, thus compounding the inhospitable climatic conditions and, with partial occupation, it is therefore important, for efficient use of energy, that the heating system can be easily and effectively zone controlled.
But air ingress is not the only problem. The mass of a train is considerable and when a cold and wet train enters the shed it creates a cold sink, so the heating system needs to be able to provide rapid response to changed conditions.
Radiant heating
The primary source of radiant energy in the natural environment is the sun. By standing in the sun’s rays, a feeling of warmth is experienced, whilst in the shade it feels considerably cooler. Radiant heat warms all solid objects and surfaces in its path.
Reznor has exploited this concept in its energy efficient radiant heating systems. Radiant-tube heaters, mounted overhead, produce infrared radiant heat that is directed downward by a reflector. The infra-red heat passes through the air without heating it and falls on people, floors and equipment below, creating comfortable, all-round radiant warmth at low level, without wastefully heating the whole volume of the building or the roof space. Because radiant heat can be controlled directionally, only the occupied areas of the building need to be heated, which enables considerable energy savings to be realised.
The objective of a radiant heating system is to ensure that the people in the building are comfortably warm. By the correct application of a radiant heating system, comfort levels can be optimised. Radiant heat warms objects and surfaces, increasing the mean radiant temperature and reducing the body’s loss of heat to its surroundings. In addition, by eliminating air movement, convective loss of heat from the body will also be reduced.
Differing specifications
Steam Loco Sheds
While no longer built, many sheds today were constructed in the age of steam. Due to the nature of the locomotive, vast amounts of steam were released, captured by massive hoods and released to the atmosphere.
These sheds due to the age were notoriously poorly insulated structures with open doors at each end creating a massive wind tunnel. Radiant heat was the only realistic option as a heat source and, when designing a heating system, account of these hoods in the roof space was critical.
The majority of work undertaken on these locos was at low level, so ensuring heat between the tracks on the platform and in the pits was vital.
Nor-Ray-Vac, due to its unique long lengths of radiant emitter is an ideal solution for heating the long distances between trains.
Some rail sheds are over 300 metres long. Due to the physical size of the sheds, the design of the heating system is paramount to ensure optimum zoning capabilities, both for client operational flexibility to minimise running costs and to ensure the capability of being able to rapidly respond to changed conditions.
Diesel sheds
Many of these sheds derive from the steam era and consequently some still lack good insulation values for the fabric. Diesel locos also have hoods, this time to collect the diesel fumes from the engines, but, due to the general atmosphere within these sheds, the radiant heating system has to be designed to have a ducted fresh air supply from outside to the gas burners. This ensures the filters within the burners are kept clean and not clogged from the diesel fumes.
Again, the above points 1 to 3 are relevant to heating these sheds.
Third-rail electric sheds
These sheds tend to be cleaner, due to the lack of diesel fumes, and do not require ducted air to the gas burners of a radiant heating system. The work on these trains is primarily at low level, so the above points 1 to 3 are also relevant to heating these sheds.
Overhead electric sheds
These sheds are primarily new facilities, in which case they are well insulated. Again, due to the cleanliness within the sheds compared to diesels, there is no requirement for ducted air to the gas burners of the radiant heating system.
However, unlike the previous types of locos, work has to be undertaken on top of the loco to maintain the pantograph and power systems. As a result, these sheds have personnel staging for access to the top of the trains.
When designing a radiant heating system for such facilities, due regard of the staging has to be taken into account. The radiant emitter cannot be too close to the working area above the trains. The staging is normally in a defined location within the facility. This can result in a challenge for designers, but it is achievable given sufficient roof height within the facility. The ability to be able to zone the radiant heating is paramount in such instances.
Evidence of success
Amongst other successful traincare applications, Reznor was able to provide the ideal heating solution for the National College for High Speed Rail at Doncaster. Radiant heat (Nor-Ray-Vac – NRV) was specified as the heating system for the Large Scale Workshop, comprising an area of 1,906m2 within the facility.
The selected NRV system was made up of nine 38LR burners arranged in three branches, suspended at 12 metres above the finished floor level, with one discharge fan flue. Due to the type of operation within the facility – the training of students throughout the floor area – the system is controlled as one zone and produces blanket, uniform heat coverage for the complete workshop.
Operating costs are minimised by concentrating the heat at low level, where it is most needed, without heating the volume of air in the building. Rapid response times reduce running costs further and mean that warmth is felt by people in the building within minutes of start-up and no fuel is wasted bringing the whole volume of air to a comfortable temperature.
Since the Nor-Ray-Vac radiant system burns fuel at point of use, there are no distribution losses to take into account.
Nick Winton is divisional manager for Reznor, a subsidiary of Nortek Global HVAC.
The UK’s rail industry has faced a number of challenges over the last year, with increasingly negative reports of punctuality and delays surfacing in the media every month. The Office of Rail and Road’s passenger experience report shows that, despite significant historic improvements being made to operations in the UK, including punctuality, the industry suffers from a persistently poor perception of its services.
It is therefore vital that efficiencies are located wherever possible, including in areas that are invisible to passengers, as the knock-on effects of operational delays caused by inefficiencies in depot operations can be almost impossible to mitigate.
In any depot, yard or maintenance facility, it is essential that trains depart on schedule. With so many activities taking place before service, including cleaning, CET (controlled emission toilet) service and small repairs, a quick and reliable signalling system that is easy to handle is a must for successfully managing operations.
Managing movements
The Tie-Fen Lock Depot Control system – consisting of the TMC-RaStw depot system – is an innovative solution that assists depot operators by reducing their workload and increasing safety, allowing them to set multiple routes within the depot in just a few seconds to optimise the operation of the depot.
Fenix Rail Systems, in conjunction with its partner Pintsch Tiefenbach, is the sole provider of the Tie-Fen Lock Depot Control system in the UK. The companies’ combined knowledge and experience, with hundreds of depot systems in use worldwide, has enabled designers to develop a system that makes depot operators’ jobs quicker and easier – meaning that a single operator is able to control even complex depots. This is already the case at the Deutsche Bahn (DB) depot in Cologne, Germany, where 105 point machines, 97 signals and 100 axle counter track sections are controlled by just one depot operator supervisor (DOS).
It is imperative that train movements into, out of and within a depot are as smooth as possible, and the Tie-Fen Lock system allows single operators to control as many movements as possible, safely and easily.
The system is totally adaptable and equally applicable to modified and new depots around the UK rail network due to its centralised depot control features, flexibility and low operating costs.
Fenix has developed a bespoke technical interface that enables the system to be integrated with all UK-based interlockings. Indeed, it has already been implemented in several UK depots, including:
Central Rivers, Burton-on-Trent – 26 points, signals and axle counters;
Northam Depot – 10 points, signals and axle counters;
Immingham Port – 10 points, signals and axle counters;
Golders Green Depot – 29 points, signals and axle counters;
Morden Depot – 32 points, signals and axle counters; and
Banbury Depot – 7 points, signals, axle counters and interfaces to mainline interlocking and DPPS.
Depot operators have many responsibilities in addition to setting routes, including entering train describer codes and communicating with drivers, maintainers, interface signal boxes, operations staff and contractors working on site, as well as being responsible for the overall operational safety of the train facility. Codes of practice and safety dictate that all of these actions must also be recorded via daily reports and entry into the train register.
As the operators go about their daily tasks, the Tie-Fen Lock Depot Control system’s computer-based interlocking (CBI) continuously and automatically checks the current traffic and operations in the depot, alerting the operator to any conflicts or potential dangerous situations and preventing a wrong-side failure.
The system also checks that the operator’s commands are safe and do not conflict with the implemented rules and operations, alerting them using pop-up information boxes and audible or visual alarms where necessary.
Activities are automatically recorded throughout each shift, with a printed copy available at any time to assist daily reporting.
In the event of an emergency or degraded mode situation, the system has a defined (configurable) fallback level to minimise any impact on train movements, getting the system and movements back up and running as soon as possible.
During peak times, the handling of incoming and outgoing trains can require complex shunting movements. The Tie-Fen Lock is designed to make this as stress-free as possible, with a screen layout that allows for a good overview of the depot situation at all times.
All operational and hardware commands and activities are continually monitored, logged and saved in the data log file on the VDU PC. This data has a number of practical uses, including helping maintainers to prepare themselves with spare parts before going to the depot, allowing engineers to review the status of the ongoing system and its activities as well as enabling managers to plan predictive maintenance and to continuously improve and fine tune their strategies.
Point control
All points control circuits communicate with the central control unit via serial bus. Each points control circuit has its own microcontroller card for communication and individual functions. For fast responses, the points controllers are typically organised into sub control logic groups of 60-80 points. These substations exchange information and data with the main logic station via serial interface. Over long distances, fibre-optic communication is recommended, allowing up to 256 points controllers to communicate with just one CPU.
Should the project require stage work, individual points control circuits can be enabled according to the stage requirements. This provides total flexibility during the installation of any stage or enabling works.
This approach allows the hardware design to be completed and stage work data design prepared and downloaded to new cards in advance for a simple card changeover during commissioning.
The Tie-Fen Lock approach to sub-grouping circuits saves time and costs on projects by reducing cabling costs over long distances, as well as overcoming specific cable route problems on existing infrastructure.
The point machine is fully trailable and can be six-foot or four-foot mounted, depending on the requirements of the client.
Signals
Six individual signal controllers can be housed in one 19” rack. Each signal controller card is the interface between the central control unit and local shunt signal (normally a Dorman LED head for the UK infrastructure). An internal fallback function guarantees the reversion of a signal to danger (red) in failure mode, for example in the event of loss of communication or loss of control voltage.
This modular design results in a system that is able to control hundreds of signals that can be modified or upgraded at any time with minimal software and hardware changes – users simply plug in a new signal control card. This also provides a significant time and cost saving when implementing a system in stages, as not only is the hardware a modular design, but the software is too.
Train detection
The Tie-Fen Lock system receives vital track occupation information from track section control circuits. There is an individual, modular pair of circuit boards for each track section. These SIL 4 (safety integrity level 4) control circuits are purely hardware-based and a hybrid FPGA (field programmable gate array) relay-based dual channel design.
All track section control circuit 19” racks and their printed circuit boards (PCBs) are built up in a modular form and can be cascaded in unlimited numbers of racks in an unlimited number of cabinets. This modular design with plug couplers allows the system to be integrated into existing infrastructure in stages and ensures a quick and easy modification to the next stage commissioning.
Track occupation data is transmitted with the output of switching amplifier cards and input information is received via rail-mounted axle counter heads. These detect the flanges of the wheels on the running rail and work as proximity switches, generating an analogue signal that is fed into the switching amplifier in the REB for evaluation and electric noise filtering. This communication works safely and reliably over distances of up to 8km.
Axle counter detection
The axle counter head is a dual-proximity switch unit designed to detect the flange of the wheels passing over the two proximity switches. With each detected wheel, the axle counter detection systems send one package of data to the switching amplifier.
The evaluation electronics used in train detection and axle counter detection are installed in the REB or location case. There is no danger of damage from trackside lightning strikes or over voltages. This is a significant advantage of the Tie-Fen Lock system, as many other systems require electronics to be installed trackside.
An outstanding track record
The Tie-Fen Lock system was first installed in the UK at the Central Rivers Depot in 2000 and has since established a track record of outstanding reliability and low maintenance. The system is simple, offering numerous benefits over old systems, and its low-cost and simple maintenance makes it highly likely that depots across the country will be enjoying these benefits for years to come.
In August 1968, the last scheduled British Railways steam train ran on the British railway network. By then, the heritage movement had already started, and the slowness of the Barry scrapyard in South Wales to scrap redundant steam locomotives provided one source of motive power for many of the new railway owners and operators.
Time passed, and diesel locomotives and multiple units were added to many heritage railways’ fleets. Heritage vehicles now operate on the main line railway too. All this keeps alive the history and tradition of the railways from time past, and the public loves it, as do the people who run the railway heritage movement – staff and volunteers.
Nostalgia is often viewed through rose-tinted glasses, and one of the unwelcome characteristics of railways of the past is the comparatively poor safety record. Historic tragedies are well documented in Her Majesty’s Railway Inspector’s reports, most of which are available on The Railways Archive. Indeed, it lists ten reports from 50 years ago about accidents involving fatalities or major injury.
Ex-GWR locomotive Bradley Manor.
Modern standards
Today, with improved design and operational control, derailments or collisions leading to injuries or fatalities are rare, and this is now the expectation of all UK railways. However, it is challenging for heritage railways to deliver safety to the same standard as the national network when they are operating old rolling stock that predates modern design standards, often using volunteer staff.
But delivering modern safety standards is their duty and the results are good; the ORR paid tribute to them in their 2017-18 Annual Safety Report saying: “Heritage operators across Britain continue to demonstrate enthusiasm to manage their operations safely.”
Accidents still happen, and recent examples include the derailment of a Welsh Highland Railway locomotive due to the failure of a suspension component and the near miss on the South Devon Railway where a child nearly fell though the missing floor in a toilet whose door had been inadequately secured.
Heritage operators also have a duty to evaluate and implement improvements that further reduce risk and address societal concern. It is the hallmark of operating a good safety management system that the lessons of incidents are taken on board and changes made. Yet, it is the very nature of heritage and, charter operations, that many of the safety features of modern railways could spoil the heritage appeal.
A case in point is Mark 1 coaches (see end panel), which are the mainstay of such operations and which have a number of features – poor crashworthiness, opening windows, slam doors and lack of retention toilets that would in an ideal world be eliminated.
It was with all this in mind that Rail Engineer visited the Severn Valley Railway and met Neil Taylor, its engineering services manager. Neil is a chartered engineer and a fellow of the Institution of Engineering and Technology, with over 30 years experience. Unusually, his experience is not from the railway but from the defence industry. In discussion it quickly became apparent that both industries share similar problems when operating older equipment!
The Severn Valley Railway is one of the largest and oldest heritage lines in the UK. It is 16 miles long, operating between Kidderminster and Bridgnorth. It was incorporated 51 years ago in 1967 and started operations in 1970 between Bridgnorth and Hampton Loade. The line was gradually extended, reaching Kidderminster in 1984. According to its 2017 accounts, the railway had a £7 million turnover, carried roundly 240,000 passengers and has approximately 80 permanent, 50 part-time and another 50 seasonal staff, plus around 1,700 volunteers.
Load rig for carriage dynamos.
Kidderminster carriage works
The first stop was the carriage works at Kidderminster. The tour included nostalgic sights of 60-year-old rolling stock being overhauled or converted. It has often been said that old rolling stock can be kept in service indefinitely as everything can be re-created as it wears out or breaks – like Trigger’s broom (“I’ve had this broom for 20 years. It’s had 17 new heads and 14 new handles!”).
The tour showed how SVR manages this process and takes account of new issues as vehicles get older and older. Neil described how the railway has documented the maintenance and repair requirements of all the coaches and the competence required of the staff and volunteers. Documentation is based on the original British Rail documents, but updated to take account of factors never considered by BR.
BR maintained these vehicles from new to about 30 years old. Some coaches are now well over 60 years old and suffer problems that BR never had to deal with. Indeed, some of the older coaches use materials no longer available and substitutes have to be found.
Amongst the first people Rail Engineer met were two apprentices, one of whom was on an exchange from France. In the coach shop was one of SVR’s brake guard’s (BG) vehicles that had been converted to a wheelchair persons’ vehicle some years ago and is now being converted into a dining car for disabled people. The disabled toilet was a masterpiece as it looked as though it was an original fitting.
The apprentices were repairing corrosion damage at cantrail level on one end of the vehicle. James Broughton, the carriage shop chargehand, compared this work in progress with a completed repair at the other end of the vehicle. James also described how BR mark 1 coaches suffer from corrosion of the “crash pillars” at vehicle ends. These square sections were only protected on the outside and, after decades of service, they corrode from the inside.
Corrosion damage around cantrail of ex-BG mark 1 vehicle.
James also demonstrated heritage test equipment for the coaches’ belt-driven dynamos and vacuum brake cylinders and the documentation covering their safe use. In the context of the South Devon Railway accident, Neil talked Rail Engineer through the repair and test process and documentation for the door locks used on the various different types of carriage, with a modern digital force meter to ensure that spring forces are within tolerance.
During a train ride from Kidderminster to Bridgnorth, hauled by West Country pacific “Taw Valley”, Neil and Jane Preece, the SVR’s HR manager, described how the railway is run and how competence is assured. They were clearly proud of their Heritage Skills Training Academy, which is funded by the Severn Valley Railway Charitable Trust and has an association with Dudley College and, through them, the Black Country museum.
At the time of the visit, there were 10 apprentices in the Academy, the majority of whom are gaining technical skills across the railway including locomotive mechanical maintenance, boiler shop, carriage mechanical and carriage bodywork. Two apprentices are recruited annually through a national recruitment process, as SVR seeks people who are enthusiastic about railways but not rail enthusiasts!
All operational staff have to be demonstrably competent for the job they do and they have an enormous mine of good practice to draw upon from the members who come from all walks of life. Neil emphasised that SVR is a member-led railway; the staff support the volunteers but also, sometimes encourage volunteers to “move with the times”.
Neil said that he routinely reviews Rail Accident Investigation Branch reports relevant to the SVR and has had several papers approved by SVR’s senior management aimed at further improving the competence and culture. This includes demonstrating competence of staff and volunteers using material from the Heritage Railway Association (HRA), and the Boiler and Engineering Skills Training Trust (BESTT), redrafting the railway’s safety management procedures and developing a “just safety culture” (learning from mistakes, not blame).
Boiler for BR standard Class 4 number 75069.
Facilities at Bridgnorth
The boiler shop opened in 1990, is involved in the repair and manufacture of boilers for locomotives that operate on the SVR (of 27 locos currently operating, the SVR only owns three) and manufactures for others. A new boiler was being manufactured for the Bala Lake railway’s “Alice” and a number of boilers were in work, both new and refurbished, for the Isle of Man steam railway.
Neil made the point that it is usually much easier and often cheaper to manufacture new boilers than attempt to repair older boilers where many of the materials were of questionable quality. The machine shop included machine tools that your writer recognised from his time as a trainee in the 1960s, although Neil confessed that they do have a numerically controlled lathe for making, for example, boiler stays.
Old skills much in evidence included manufacture of white metal bearings and, in the locomotive shed, some excellent quality welding was observed on frames that had cracked.
Neil illustrated the problems of running old vehicles with the work they had done to manage fractures on locomotive leaf springs. As a result, they have serialised all the springs and have virtually completed a programme to refurbish or renew them. Neil made the point that new springs cost little more than refurbished springs. All this was in place before the incident on the Welsh Highland Line.
Purists might wonder about the historical accuracy, and Neil was at pains to reassure that the railway has to look, feel and sound right, but in order to deliver a safe railway that is also dependable and reliable they have to recognise that they need to have much more control of process and have to embrace modern health and safety practice. Sometimes substituting modern materials saves an awful lot of trouble.
As the tour concluded, Neil gave his honest assessment of his engineering domain:
They practice competence management;
They use processes that are suitable for competent-wise people;
They learn from their own and others’ mistakes;
The carriage works is where he would like it to be;
There is more work to do in the locomotive works and the material from BESTT is a good start for the training/tutorial aspects, but work is needed to translate all this in to competence statements against which people can be assessed.
All that remained was a leisurely trip back to Kidderminster on a mark 1 set hauled by ex-GWR locomotive “Bradley Manor”, enjoying a coffee brought to my seat, confident that SVR is in good hands.
Thanks to Neil Taylor and Jane Preece of the Severn Valley Railway for their help in preparing this article.
Digital affects almost every facet of UK rail activity. It has been transforming rolling stock, maintenance, and passengers’ journeys for almost a decade. Industry requirements, such as ASDO (Automatic Selective Door Operation), remote CCTV and timetabling, mean that it is now impossible NOT to have a digital train.
The pace of change is now faster than ever. Train components that improve the passengers’ experience, such as intelligent information screens, are driving greater technological sophistication and the further digitisation of modern trains. Digital is already playing a vital role in increasing reliability, which remains a top priority for UK passengers.
Improving reliability
One of the manufacturers at the forefront of this technological revolution is Hitachi. Its ‘Digital Brain’, which was developed specifically to cut down the hours needed for train maintenance, consists of tens of thousands of sensors throughout the train that feed back to the main computer in the driver’s cabin. On the Class 800/802 IEP trains, for example, there are over 48,000 signals – from the engine to door sensors – which provide real-time data to the driver or, remotely, to the support team.
If an issue should arise, the train’s Digital Brain identifies and processes the system data in a matter of seconds, supporting technicians and engineers in diagnosing defects and formulating a repair plan. On a manual basis, by comparison, just identifying the source of a problem can take hours.
Although the benefits of this technology are already being seen on the company’s high speed IET and Class 385 commuter trains, the greater application of this technology will come when data analytics are combined with Hitachi’s machine learning software, enabling engineers to predict and take steps to fix potential faults before they even occur.
For every mile that Hitachi trains accumulate, more and more valuable data is gathered about their performance and general wear and tear. This establishes a data model that will start to identify trends as the fleet matures.
The machine learning software can make recommendations on when parts of the trains should be investigated or replaced. It will also identify whether certain aspects of the trains are changing or there are anomalies – for instance, if the long-term variance of door cycles is increasing or there are gradual increases in compressor times. The software will be able to identify data patterns and recommend when preventative maintenance can take place,increasing reliability as well as driving down costs of doing unnecessary work. Equally, it can identify if the variance is symptomatic of another fault and will then recommend when a thorough depot check should take place.
Having this critical information and the capacity to fix problems before they occur has numerous and wide-ranging benefits to fleet management, ordering supplies and organising maintenance regimes. Most importantly, this all adds up to ensuring reliability remains high across the fleet’s life cycle.
Futureproofing
Being part of a global company, Hitachi Rail is in the fortunate position that it collaborates with other companies in the group, including Hitachi Consulting, Vantara and CSI Research Labs, which specialise in big data, machine learning and Artificial Intelligence. Indeed, the global leading research company, Gartner, recently placed Hitachi in the top three “Magic Quadrant” for IoT (the Internet of Things).
Being able to call upon this leading expertise to develop, and continuously refine, the preventative maintenance product, by combining expertise in rail engineering and information technology (IT), has proved essential to creating a product that is not only effective today, but also has the potential to deliver more in the future.
To create future-proofed products, one must think ahead to predict the solutions that will add value to customers, as well as what rail passengers want to see from their trains. An excellent example of predicting, rather than simply following, demand is the work undertaken by Toyota in the automotive industry to develop in-car GPS before it was widely used by the public or before smartphones even became commonly available.
This begs the question what’s next for digital rail? Driver monitoring that ensures drivers have seen the signals, perhaps?
To ensure that Hitachi trains are future-proofed and are ‘digital ready’, they are already compatible with digital signalling, future traffic management systems and smart ticketing, even if all of this technology is not currently being fully utilised and may not have been in the original design scope.
Onboard CCTV is a good example. When it was first installed, CCTV was used to review past events. Now it provides live footage that can be accessed remotely. In the future, it may be able to identify real-time developments that can be used to warn the driver. Through incremental change and integrating new digital solutions, CCTVs functionality continues to evolve.
As in mechanical engineering, digital also goes through an iterative process of improvement. There are very few instances where installing or introducing new digital technology has worked perfectly first time. The good news is that incremental improvements to digital solutions tend to happen far more quickly than when building a complex mechanical device, such as an internal combustion engine.
The next step in the process to hone and improve the railway of the future is through sharing data. Data is knowledge, and knowledge is, most definitely, power. Sharing knowledge is how the digital railway will become a reality. Having data sets – of trains, operators and the rail network – communicating with each other is essential in achieving more trains running closer together and increasing service frequency on the current network.
Understandably, and rightly, businesses are protective of their data. Nevertheless, Hitachi Rail has already found that, where it is appropriate and legitimate to do so, pooling data provides benefits. Sharing data with suppliers about their products and their performance, and providing detailed feedback, allows them to understand where wear and tear takes place. This information can be used to adapt and improve their manufacturing accordingly. Likewise, their data is incorporated into Hitachi’s ‘data model’ and algorithms to improve predictive maintenance.
Digital workforce
As trains become increasingly digital, the workforce needs to keep up with the latest developments. IT specialists and data scientists are now at the heart of every aspect of rolling stock, from design, maintenance and operations. They regularly work alongside mechanical engineers to maintain and improve train fleets.
Data scientists have a key role to play in analysing the mountains of data created by the train’s ‘digital brain’. Hitachi’s software is able to make sense of all of this information and to turn it into easily understandable and actionable content so that maintenance teams can be as effective and efficient as possible.
Having mechanical engineers and data sciences working together is now fundamental to maintenance operations. Transferring knowledge between teams with a variety of different work backgrounds and experiences allows them to speak a common language. Combined with an extensive programme of digital upskilling at all of its depots, Hitachi is creating a digital workforce ready to deal with an even greater rate of technological change.
The benefits of digital are making a real difference in the rail sector, as can be seen every day. The ‘digital railway’ is a truly exciting opportunity and will deliver tangible benefits on reliability, frequency and capacity. As a sector, we need to collaborate, be bold and to put digital at the heart of a modern and sustainable railway.
This article was written by Philip Hewlett, business change and IT development programme manager at Hitachi Rail.
The 18-mile long Aberdeenshire canal, from Aberdeen docks to Inverurie, opened in 1805. It was not a commercial success, so its shareholders were glad to sell their canal to the Great North of Scotland Railway (GNSR) who wanted to build their planned railway on top of it.
In 1854, the GNSR opened its first railway between their Kittybrewster terminus in Aberdeen and Huntly, extending it to Keith in 1856. Two years later, the Inverness and Aberdeen Junction Railway reached Keith, thereby completing the railway between Inverness and Aberdeen.
A further extension, also built on top of the canal, enabled the GNSR to open a new terminus in 1856 at Waterloo, close to Aberdeen’s docks. This became a goods terminus in 1867 after a 1.5-mile line was built through tunnels under the city centre to connect Kittybrewster to Scottish North Eastern Railway’s line from the South. A jointly run city-centre station was also built at the time.
The GNSR gradually doubled its single-track line between Aberdeen and Keith from the 1880s. Of the 20 original stations, 16 were closed by the 1960s. In 1968, the line was singled. The following year the discovery of the Montrose oil field heralded Aberdeen’s oil boom. Although Dyce station, adjacent to Aberdeen airport, re-opened in 1983, the single track north of Aberdeen constrained significant train service improvements.
In the project office, interactive planning sessions use Post-it notes on a large chart.
Redoubling out of Aberdeen
As reported in issue 158 (December 2017), the Aberdeen to Inverness improvement project (A2I) aims to add capacity for commuter services into each city as well as supporting longer-term improvements. Last year’s completion of the new Forres station, as well as signalling enhancements at Elgin, will improve commuter services into Inverness. This was the first part of phase one of the A2I project.
To complete phase one, A2I is now working to improve local train services at the other end of the line to enable the frequency of trains between Aberdeen and Inverurie to be increased from one to two an hour. To do this, 16 miles of track is being redoubled from just beyond the city centre tunnels (1,500 yards) to the loop at Inverurie station (16 miles 1,580 yards), taking in the existing loop at Dyce station (6 miles 242 yards to 7 miles 106 yards). A turnback facility is also to be installed beyond Inverurie station extending to 17 miles 1,100 yards. Distances quoted in this article are those from Aberdeen station.
In the fifty years since the track was singled, it has been given a racing line, numerous assets have been placed adjacent to it and some underbridges only have a single-track deck. Moreover, the original earthworks cannot accommodate a double track in accordance with current standards.
Redoubling this 16-mile corridor therefore requires the virtual reconstruction of the railway corridor, for which a blockade is the only option. This was assessed as six months work. As it was considered unacceptable to close the railway for this time, it was decided that it would be done in two summer blockades, each of about three months, with the loop at Dyce enabling the redoubling to be split into two parts.
Hence, this year saw the line from Aberdeen to Dyce close from 12 May until 19 August for its redoubling. When it reopened, passengers could see the new adjacent line but could not travel on it. Trains will only use this line once it is part of a complete new double-track section between Aberdeen and Inverurie at the end of the 2019 blockade. A 30-minute service should then be introduced in the December 2019 timetable.
Moved from Forres to Inverurie
Rail Engineer visited the redoubling works during week 11 of the 14-week blockade and had an opportunity to meet its programme manager, Colin MacDonald, at BAM Nuttall’s large project office and compound at Inverurie. As Colin explained, much of this compound has been used for the recently completed Forres work, including its 50-bed ‘Hotel BAM’ to accommodate some of the workforce.
Building this temporary accommodation block was one way of addressing some of the issues associated with the project, as it is a three-hour journey from Scotland’s central belt where many of the project personnel are based. For example, as well as overseeing the work on site, the Network Rail project team must liaise with engineers, designers, operational planners and others based in Glasgow.
Network Rail has engaged two contractors for the current A2I work: Siemens for the signalling and telecommunications work and BAM Nuttall for everything else. BAM Nuttall’s main sub-contractors are AECOM and Jacobs for design, Babcock for track work and Stobart Rail for ancillary civil engineering work.
Colin advised that the blockade could be broadly split up into eight weeks of civil engineering work, four weeks of track work and two weeks of signalling. A maximum of 400 personnel per day worked on the blockade. Once the track was all in place, about 60 were on site.
One advantage of blockade working is that noisy activities can be scheduled during the daytime, as can access at sensitive areas. With some minor exceptions, no work was done between 02:00 and 06:00, when plant was refuelled.
From Dyce to Kittybrewster
After a site briefing, project engineer (track) Mark Taylor was the guide for a four-mile inspection of the work at Dyce. At the time, the new Up line was connected to the old Down line immediately south of the Dyce loop points (6 miles 70 yards) by a set of temporary points, which are to be removed at the end of the blockade.
Mark explained that the project has to address the requirements of the Railways (interoperability) Regulations. In doing so, as much as possible of the existing Down line was retained whilst the Up line is entirely new. Hence, subject to their condition, it was possible to re-use some of the Down line’s existing F27 sleepers. To take account of further track renewals, the reused sleepers were grouped together at one location on the re-laid Down line.
About a quarter of the ballast was reused after it had been regraded, washed and screened at the site of an old papermill near Inverurie. Ballast and sleepers were stockpiled at the Raith’s Farm freight terminal, which is connected to the Dyce loop.
Mark advised that staging the track work was highly complex. Amongst other things, this had to consider the requirement to move the existing track, the new long welded rails that had previously been delivered to the site, reusing sleepers at one location, interface with civils work and the need to provide a track to deliver materials. Track relaying was done with a FLASS machine provided by McCulloch Rail, which aligns and spaces sleepers to eliminate the need for manual handling.
Heading towards Aberdeen, underbridge UB40 over Fairburn Road (5 miles 1,590 yards) is one of five that needed structural work to accommodate two tracks. UB40 required new cills and separate Up and Down steel spans and ballast retention units. UB20 and UB22 required re-decking, UB24 was infilled and UB34 required an extension to its concrete deck, which was done during a weekend disruptive possession immediately prior to the blockade. Four other underbridges required parapet alterations.
At the Market Street overbridge (OB38 at 5 miles 170 yards), various types of slope stabilisation could be seen. Immediately north of the bridge, the Up side slope had been regraded using high-friction materials and the Down side slope had soil nails. Beyond this, bridge retention was by interlocking pre-cast concrete blocks and king post retaining walls. These use H piles driven to pre-determined depths into the ground with timbers inserted between the webs of the H section.
Further slope regrading was evident on the embankment south of Stoneywood Road, where high-friction fill had also been used. The project had no powers to acquire land, so the design of such slopes is derived from a risk assessment with the intention of minimising the railway’s footprint. Soon after this, the A2I project has increased this footprint by purchasing an 18 metres long strip of Council land, two metres wide, to ensure signal sighting and provide space for a signalling location case.
Passing signal DY7205 (3 miles 853 yards), Colin explained that the project has an unusual signal-sighting problem as the new Up line will not be used by trains until the end of the 2019 blockade. Until then, what will become the Down line remains as the single bi-directional Up/Down line.
This means that, until the 2019 blockade commissioning, some signals for trains in the Up direction will have to be relocated as temporary signals to the right of the single line as the new Up line prevents them being located on the left. These temporary signals will have to be replaced by new permanent signals to the conventional left of the new Up line when this is commissioned in 2019.
UB40 – removal of steel span. Photo: Peter Devlin.
Filling in the canal
The new deck on UB22 (2 miles 1440 yards) required the temporary infill of a gulley to position the crane. Unfortunately, this is a scheduled ancient monument as it was part of the old canal that didn’t have the railway on top of it. As a result, Historic Environment Scotland (HES) objected to the planning application for this temporary access. Following consultation with HES, the original application was withdrawn and a revised one submitted. This committed the project to an archaeological written scheme of investigation that had to be approved by the Council prior to any infill work. Due to the resultant delay, it was not possible to re-deck UB22 during the weekend disruptive possession prior to the blockade as originally planned.
This planning application was one of many planning and consent issues that had to be managed by the project team in consultation with numerous stakeholders. This highlights the volume of consents work that is required for major works of this nature.
The possession limit board was at the Hayton Road pedestrian access point (2 miles 186 yards), adjacent to a re-sited GSM-R mast and UB18 on which new bridge waybeams had been installed, despite this being a mile from the start of the blockade. This was because it was a Wednesday, when a mile of the blockade had to be handed back each week to enable a freight train to access the Waterloo branch under pilotman working at 20 mph.
Four types of slope stabilisation – king post retaining wall, interlocking blocks, soil nailing and high-friction materials. Photo: Peter Devlin.
From Dyce to Inverurie
Next year’s Dyce to Inverurie blockade requires nearly ten miles of new track, almost twice as much as this year’s blockade. This section of the line is largely through farmland, whereas this year’s blockade was through an urban area. To ensure all the work can be completed within this blockade, as much as possible will be done beforehand including devegetation, access works, earthworks, drainage, advance structures works and signalling ancillary civils works. Before the blockade, there will be two weekend disruptive possessions for bridge and other civil engineering work.
One civil engineering challenge is reinstating the Up line on the five-span River Don viaduct (15 miles 1300 yards). This is a combination of superstructure and substructure strengthening works that may require in-river work, which can only be carried out at certain times of the year and could be a significant programme constraint.
Colin expects that the 2019 blockade will start off by completing any remaining civil engineering corridor works, followed by around eight weeks of track work and four weeks of signalling. With the commissioning of the entire new double track and transfer of its control to the Highland workstation at Inverness, this next blockade will also have more signalling work, to include the abolition of Dyce and Inverurie signal boxes together with the provision of a fringe train describer and NX panel alterations at the Aberdeen signalling centre.
In addition, the Inverurie to Insch single line is to be converted from Scottish Region Tokenless block to Track Circuit block with fringe working at Insch to the Highland workstation. Once commissioned, this workstation, which now controls Inverness to Keith, will also control the line between Inverurie and Aberdeen, with the central section of the line remaining under the control of manual signal boxes.
Being a rural area, this section of the line has three user-worked crossings that will be upgraded when the line is doubled. One, at Kirkton of Kinellar, will be provided with both miniature stoplights and power-operated sliding gates. The automatic half barrier (AHB) crossing at Boat of Kintore is also to be upgraded to a manually controlled barrier with obstacle detector (MCB-OD). This will have stopping and non-stopping controls for the future provision of Kintore station.
This proposed new station will have a 166-space car park and be built immediately north of Kintore off the main A96 dual carriageway road on land that is being compulsorily purchased. Its estimated cost is £12 million. The Scottish Government is to provide sixty per cent of this cost with the remainder being provided by the station’s promoters, Aberdeenshire Council and the North East Regional Transport Partnership (NESTRANS). It is expected to open by May 2020 latest, although possibly sooner. Although this station is not part of the A2I project, it is likely some of it will be built during the 2019 blockade.
ScotRail Alliance managing director Alex Hynes helps clip one of the last rails into place. Photo: Peter Devlin.
From Keith to Inverurie
The 108-mile railway journey between Aberdeen and Inverness currently takes around two hours 25 minutes, with an irregular service that is roughly two hourly. The Scottish Government’s long-term aspiration is to deliver a two-hour journey time with an hourly service by 2030.
Achieving this will require the development of A2I phase two, which has yet to be funded. It is likely that this will focus on the route’s central section between Keith and Inverurie. This will probably provide more efficient loop operation and resignalling to remove the remaining mechanical boxes to give the Highland workstation control of the entire line between Inverness and Aberdeen.
Before then, at a cost of £330 million, phase one of the A2I project will, in 2019, deliver the Government’s immediate objective of enhanced commuter services into each city and make use of the 2018 blockade’s double-tracking.
The statistics for this year’s blockade are impressive – 76,000 tonnes of earthworks spoil, 65,000 tonnes of ballast, 19,000 sleepers, 45 miles of new cable in 5.5 miles of new troughing, six miles of new rail and 2.5 miles of new drainage. However, perhaps more impressive is the management, planning and logistics that delivered all of this activity in a constrained corridor with limited access.
Transport for London (TfL)’s new Operations, Maintenance and Control (OMC) depot for the Elizabeth line at Old Oak Common, West London is a state-of-the-art, nine-track train maintenance building. It is part of the £142 million contract awarded to Taylor Woodrow and will accommodate 33 trains while routine maintenance is carried out.
While it is fairly obvious that each of those nine roads would need to be closed off by a door, selecting the correct type was not as straightforward as may be thought.
Keith Fulton, associate architect with RPS Consulting Services Limited, the lead designer for the new OMC depot, commented: “In addition to securing the building, there were a range of practical issues that were critical in the design of these doors. The major factor was accommodating live overhead electrification lines (OLE), which meant vertical opening doors would have been impractical. These were eight extremely large openings, so effective thermal and acoustic insulation was important for the doors to ensure compliance with TfL’s strict environmental requirements.”
Demanding specification
Specialist industrial door manufacturer Jewers Doors was therefore contracted to supply and install eight of its latest Swift-SEW and two smaller Swift horizontal bi-folding doors for this application.
Four metres wide and 6.6 metres high, each of the main doors is made up of four highly insulated, single-piece composite panels, with two leaves folding to each side when open. An 850mm x 760mm cut-out allows an OLE cable to pass through the closed door. The cut-out is lined with 9mm thick safety matting tested to 30kVA to prevent bird entry and, for additional safety, the door is earthed back to the structure with suitably rated earth bonding braids.
Elizabeth line OMC roadway doors.
For visibility when closed, each door panel incorporates a 600 x 600mm argon-filled, double-glazed vision panel made from toughened glass, fitted with multi-wall rubber seals to all edges to reduce water, air and dust ingress. To meet the environmental criteria, panels are injected with CFC-free polyurethane foam providing a thermal efficiency U-value of 1.1W/m2/°C and noise reduction of 25dB. To eliminate the spread of fire and to provide great rigidity and strength, panels incorporate an internal steel frame to all edges.
The doors are operated by a powerful, centrally mounted drive unit, supplied by SEW-Eurodrive, combined with a purpose-designed control panel incorporating inverter control for smooth starts and stops. The system takes less than eight seconds to full open and close, and safety is ensured with full height, pressure-sensitive safety edges and photocell beams to create a safe zone around the door during operation.
In addition to the drive unit holding the door in the closed position, a pair of automatic solenoid-operated floor bolts provides additional security and prevents wind-damage. In the event of power failure, a low-level disengage handle enables the doors to be opened quickly by hand from ground level.
Fulton added, “This is a high-profile flagship project and, as Jewers are a tried and tested company in the rail sector, we were confident that the doors would be of the highest quality, fully meet the spec and provide reliable service for many years to come.”
It is exactly 50 years since the former Institution of Locomotive Engineers amalgamated with the Institution of Mechanical Engineers, forming its Railway Division. Andy Mellors, the Division’s 50th chairman, mentioned this when Rail Engineer interviewed him as he prepared his Chairman’s Address, which he presented on 10 September.
Andy had decided on the title “Challenging Times”, which seems particularly apt, not least for him personally, as he balances his IMechE role with his day job as managing director of South Western Railway, one of the UK’s biggest train operating companies.
Andy continued the tradition of outlining his career and using that experience to explore some of the opportunities and challenges for railway engineering.
With Sir Kenneth Grange, who designed the timeless ‘face’ of the HST.
Early days
Andy comes from the “class of 88”; one of 17 school leavers – “all male”, he said with disappointment in his voice – who joined the British Railway Engineering Management Training scheme. He reflected on what it was that attracted him to engineering, attributing it to a combination of his physics teacher, who made much of the practical application of the science, the enthusiasm of his form tutor, who urged him to go to university in London, and to his deputy headteacher, who had an interest in railways. Andy returned to this subject later.
The BR training scheme provided for practical experience in the years before and after university and a university project to solve a practical rolling stock ride quality problem. This delivered an engineer who, at the tender age of 22, was appointed a shift production manager at Wembley depot, a position of considerable responsibility.
Andy said: “Whilst I’ve had some very rewarding moments in my career in the subsequent years, never have I had a job more consistently rewarding than one where, after many a challenging night shift, with the pressure of imminent deadlines, teamwork was everything and you could readily see the fruits of your labour being realised, with correctly formed and well-presented trains going into service on-time for the benefit of our customers, as you made your way home for some well-earned sleep.”
This role was Andy’s introduction to people management, as well as learning about the systems aspects of railways, not least when he had to have a conversation with a very experienced train planning manager “undertaking a post-mortem into a Saturday night at the southern end of the West Coast main line when there were more trains planned to stable than there was actual space – never mind the manpower to clean or service them!”
Andy then moved to the Merseyrail network in a commercial role dealing with contracts required to lease and maintain the privatised fleet. He recalled: “As a relatively small operation, there was plenty of opportunity to get involved in a much wider range of issues and get a better understanding of the workings of the railway company and the communities and the stakeholders which it served” – something he would encourage all engineers to do.
After Merseyrail, Andy moved to FirstGroup, starting with First North Western dealing both with the bathtub curve problems of new trains at the start of their lives and of the end of life issue of ancient class 101 diesel multiple units. Moving to First Scotrail, at the start of that franchise in 2004, provided further challenges with an even more diverse rolling stock fleet.
South Western Railway Siemens Desiro Class 444.
Andy then moved to become engineering director and later deputy managing director at First Great Western (now GWR) in 2007, a modern-day equivalent of the role of his former mentor from the start of his career. In conversation, it was clear that he had to deal with some truly “challenging times”, but he chose to highlight some wonderful memories.
Many of these inevitably revolved around High Speed Trains, including the coalition between operator, owner and supply chain to re-engine the power cars and put further life and vital reliability into the venerable machines, as well as some record breaking non-stop runs and the 40th anniversary with Sir Kenneth Grange.
His proudest moment was the launch of the electric commuter service out of Paddington with brand new trains, which has been a real game changer on that railway.
Finally, in Summer 2017, he took up his current role.
Andy commented that the challenges had remained remarkably similar, irrespective of where he has worked. These include managing safety in a steady-state environment and ensuring that safety is not compromised during periods of change, always wanting to do better in terms of service/customer delivery with a desire to improve fleet reliability and deliver the required levels of capacity, all with the requirement to ensure value for money and achieve continuous improvement in driving out waste.
Of course, none of this can be delivered by one person and Andy emphasised the importance of teamwork and collaboration in achieving results, often across contractual boundaries and physical interfaces where the individual parties’ objectives may not be completely aligned.
“So, all of that helps explain why I am a rail engineer and a railwayman – the opportunity to work with awesome kit and great people where, not only is every day different, we can and do make a difference in people’s daily lives,” he said.
Andy briefly mentioned some of the strengths of the railway such as the dramatic increase in frequency and ridership on the North London line of the London Overground network, before focusing on things to improve.
Launch of GWR’s Class 387.
Challenging Times – Railways
Andy reported a number of measures of dissatisfaction with the railway – delays to projects, the inability to run all the trains in the timetable, demands for renationalisation, and falling customer satisfaction. Many of these are consequences of trying to carry passenger volumes that our predecessors could never have anticipated.
“Our network is increasingly congested,” he admitted. “I mentioned the North London line earlier as an example where service frequency has dramatically improved. Across the national network, some 4,000 additional services operate every day compared to twenty years ago – with almost 1,300 more a day planned within the next three years.”
Indeed, it is issues with providing additional capacity that has led to the current “challenging times” – late running electrification, industrial disputes around modernising job roles and timetable changes that have not worked out as intended. Even Crossrail – until recently seen as a model for big infrastructure projects – will be nearly a year late. Once delivered, however, they will all deliver enormous benefit to their customers and the UK economy.
Andy anticipated that demand will continue to increase, despite recent small indications to the contrary, and customer and society’s expectations for the railway will continue to evolve. He referred to three areas from the Rail Delivery Capability Plan in his predecessor’s Chairman’s Address (issue 156, October 2017) – cost effective electrification, Digital Railway and decarbonising non-electrified routes, saying “in the case of the latter, it’s certainly been an eventful last six months since Jo Johnson’s ‘2040 challenge’ back in February 2018.
“This led to the establishment of a cross-industry task force, who will be delivering a preliminary report by the end of September 2018. Direction from the Minister is that further electrification is not in scope for the initial response and options being considered are therefore likely to include bi-modes, batteries, hydrogen fuel cell combinations, and other lower or zero carbon fuels.”
Andy highlighted three more themes from the Rail Capability Delivery Plan, all of which fit perfectly with his day job running SWR.
Running Trains Closer Together will increase the capacity of the railway and allow the railway to accommodate higher passenger numbers. Andy said that moving block signalling will help, but this needs to be accompanied by a new operational philosophy of consistency in everything, whether by design or through on-the-day operation; variance is bad! This includes homogenous fleets with predictable and dependable braking rather than having to contend with a variety of rolling stock types with varying and poor, by modern standards, performance characteristics.
Andy added that “predictable door positions and locations of other on-board facilities, such as wheelchair and cycle areas, will also support active platform management and promote consistent delivery of reduced station dwell times, to be taken as either more capacity or network resilience. The Japanese have been doing this for years – despite upgrading its rolling stock more frequently than we might otherwise do, train length and door positioning remains a constant on the Shinkansen”.
He also highlighted the importance of predictable and dependable braking as a means of enabling closer running. Attitudes have changed over the years, and it is increasingly unacceptable to live with the safety and performance risk arising from leaves on the line. Wheelside protection is not enough, on its own, to overcome slippery leaf debris and Andy was “pleased to play a part last year in providing otherwise spare modern rolling stock – in that sense a welcome by-product of electrification delays – to undertake what some have since called the most significant piece of research relating to on-train sanding.” (issue 163, May 2018). Andy urged that rapid progress be made to implement the results of the research.
The second issue from the Capability Delivery Plan, Services Timed to the Second, is another area where heavy rail needs to improve. Providing a signalling system and rolling stock to achieve reduced headways will come to nothing if train planning/timetabling allows no more granularity than the half minute. “The right train needs to be in the right place at the right time at the right speed,” he stated.
Furthermore, understanding variances in performance will have to be much more extensive. Fresh insight into why trains are not where they should be will be required. On a congested railway, seconds really do matter and it is no longer acceptable to only consider the impact of delays of three minutes or more. The cumulative impact of time loss from what might historically have been considered as minor irritants, such as speed restrictions, under-performing rolling stock, slightly extended station dwell times and defensive driving, can no longer be ignored as headways get tighter. All of this investigation will be useless unless the results are implemented and, moreover, the operation is designed to be able to recover quickly from minor delays.
There is a risk that none of this may happen as the ORR’s draft determination for ‘pump priming’ R&D funding in CP6 included only £100 million for infrastructure and nothing for the rest of the railway system, compared with the £440 million that Network Rail had requested on behalf of the whole industry. Encouragingly, the Railway Industry Association and others are actively campaigning to redress the balance.
A More Personalised Customer Experience was Andy’s third theme. He said that it’s not just about raising the game with the on-board experience, but customers do expect air conditioning, toilets, electrical sockets and Wi-Fi to be working. These aspects of the on-train experience need to be matched by the off-train experience. This is as much about culture as design and maintenance.
Andy said: “Whilst rail is seen as a vital engine of growth and can spread wealth, we are failing to deliver the promises we make today on punctuality and value for money. We have to work hard to keep up with the progress being made in other areas of people’s lives and must be more agile, so as to meet the changing needs of passengers, communities, society and our economy.”
Challenging Times – Engineering Profession
The second part of Andy’s address considered the engineering profession, saying “without the right people we will get nowhere”. He highlighted the industry’s drive to make engineering in general, and railway engineering in particular, attractive to youngsters, citing the example of his son’s school where some seventy 11-year olds were asked to say what job they would like to do. Only one said engineering and another seven, just 10 per cent, referred to a STEM related job.
Continuing, he highlighted the IMechE’s November 2017 report “We Think It’s Important But Don’t Quite Know What It Is”, The title sums up the problem, the point is not about the children but about the adults who give them guidance, who often don’t know enough to encourage children into engineering. He outlined the report’s recommendations and described some of the research underway to see what needs to change to make a difference.
He made particular mention of the practical approach of the London Transport Museum which, despite what the name suggests, does not just tell the story of the past and present but has, for a number of years, done a lot to think about the future. A lot of this is undertaken in conjunction with industry sponsors.
A good example is the museum’s “Great Summer of Engineering” promotion, which ran for the school summer holiday. In each of the six weeks, there was a different theme with STEM-related interactive challenges to develop young people’s creative and problem-solving skills – as well as some storytelling and demonstrations.
Andy added: “It was great to be able to visit the museum in my RD Chair capacity and meet some of the volunteers involved in the project. I know this is only part of the great work which the museum and its partners do – something which the wider industry and engineering profession could learn from in terms of how we try and better engage and inspire the next generation of engineers.”
Andy also echoed both his predecessor’s and the IMechE’s immediate past president’s concerns at the poor representation of women in the engineering profession (8-9 per cent) and railway engineering (4 per cent). “This issue needs to be addressed at every step along what appears to be a tortuous path,” he said. “As well as actions by schools and universities, as employers we have to continue to work on some of the enablers including how we measure organisational culture, behaviours and business processes which will encourage, address and ultimately maintain diversity.”
Andy concluded his address by calling for more collaboration between engineering institutions and railway professional organisations, referring to the success of the Young Railway Professionals. He also paid tribute to the incoming President, Tony Roche’s reaffirmation that “the IMechE is, first and foremost, a membership organisation and it is crucial that we remember that our object and purpose under the Royal Charter is to ‘promote the development of mechanical engineering and to facilitate the exchange of information and ideas’”.
All at Rail Engineer wish Andy Mellors a fulfilling year in this role.
When researching an article for the Class 769 Flex, there were lots of ideas discussed about how the concept could be extended for other uses. What was not discussed was the possibility of a hydrogen-powered version. Yet, at InnoTrans on 19 September, in the presence of the Secretary of State for Transport Chris Grayling, Porterbrook announced that it was making a Class 319 unit available to Birmingham Centre for Railway Research and Education (BCRRE) for conversion into a hydrogen-powered train to be known as HyrdoFlex.
The announcement added that development work has recently commenced and HydroFlex will undertake testing and demonstration runs in summer 2019.
The HydroFlex will retain the ability to operate on existing electric routes (on either third rail or 25kV overhead power) and the addition of a hydrogen fuel cell will allow it to operate in self-powered mode, without the need for diesel engines.
As was reported in Rail Engineer earlier this year, Rail Minister Jo Johnson has challenged the rail industry to develop decarbonisation plans, with the objective of removing diesel-only trains from the network by 2040. HydroFlex is Porterbrook’s and BCRRE’s response to this challenge, bringing together industry and academia in partnership to deliver the UK’s first-in-class, clean energy, main line passenger train.
After the signing ceremony, the Secretary of State joined representatives from Porterbrook and BCRRE to discuss both the potential for hydrogen technology to decarbonise the railway and the world-leading rail R&D and innovation expertise to be found across the UK rail supply industry and through the UK Rail Research and Innovation Network (UKRRIN).
BCRRE reported that it has already undertaken a significant amount of research into the potential application of hydrogen fuel-cell technology to railway operations and has worked with a number of global rail businesses to identify potential opportunities to use hydrogen as a clean alternative to diesel.
Strictly a demonstrator
Rail Engineer readers who have been following this topic will understand that the Class 319 is not necessarily the best base for a hydrogen-powered train – the lack of regenerative braking might lead to a bigger fuel cell, for example. Clearly, if the objective was a fully developed train ready for production, then this might be a problem, but this is not the key objective at this stage of the project.
In response to Rail Engineer’s questions, BCRRE said that the demonstrator version focuses on delivering an electric/hydrogen bi-mode to UK gauge, which the UK market is currently looking for given the wider context of the 2040 decarbonisation ambition and the need to make more effective use of existing electrification with additional emission-free running beyond the wires.
BCRRE added that a part of the project includes developing the product approval and safety cases for hydrogen running on the UK railway.
The team working on this demonstrator project has a lot of work to do to make hydrogen rail a reality. The demonstrator will take passengers in 2019, but BCRRE will need to prove the technology to the regulator and the infrastructure manager before the demonstrator can go into full passenger service.
BCRRE promised more technical details later, so watch this space!
