A SIGNALLING SUPPLIER VIEWPOINT

The main supplier of signalling systems in Scotland is Siemens, so says Steve Wright, the company’s Scottish representative. Siemens partnership with Network Rail is widely considered to be working well but an open discussion is needed as to how this will work into the future.

Competence in the industry is a concern. Network Rail has to be assured that supply industry designers and implementers have the right skill sets. The people who were trained in the British Rail era are coming to the end of their careers and the onus for competence has shifted towards the suppliers. With the change in technology evolving towards the digital railway, there is a need to attract people from different backgrounds. Within the supply chain, the purchase of materials is becoming increasingly difficult. Microchips are a real problem, with manufacturers uninterested in supplying small quantities. It is recognised that better integration between signalling, telecommunications, and rolling stock is needed and a move away from silo thinking is required as well as the recognition that signalling is the enabler for operations.

The Rolling Stock Situation

Whilst concerns are raised about interoperability and interchangeability in signalling, it comes as something of a surprise that similar concerns exist for rolling stock. In the British Rail days, the specifications for the various types of multiple units designed in the 1980s required that they could all couple together, for example 153s, 155s, 156s, and 158s for DMUs and similar for EMUs. With the huge numbers of new trains having been purchased over the past decade, regrettably the specifications for these did not call for the same inter-coupling requirement from train builders. This has seriously impacted on operational flexibility.

Graham Taylor from CAF remarked that a third of Scotland’s operating costs is spent on the provision of trains and this is a sixth of the total of Scotland’s railway costs. Not enough work is carried out to ascertain what is really needed. In other industries, this is known as Front End Engineering Discipline (FRED), where, for example, BP as an example spends £25 million per annum on such investigations. Rail companies spend precious little on rolling stock research and getting the resultant product wrong can result in horrendous costs. It must be remembered that there are lots of alternative ways of travelling and that road vehicles are catching up fast with electric technology. If rail is to produce the modal shift that everyone seems to think would be good, getting the technology right is going to be critical.

Audience Participation

The discussion session threw up some difficult questions that don’t have ready answers:

» Why are we buying so many trains from abroad? Although Brexit has happened, procurement law still exists on an international basis which is supposed to open up markets and see fair play.

» Why do we not specify interoperable trains? Unfortunately, trains tend to be built as standard products by manufacturers. The closer the trains remain to this standard, the cheaper they are. Any deviation from the standard design causes a cost increase which can be considerable. One manufacturer has offered to have a height adjustment to the coupler used. This has not been taken up!

» When Solid State Interlockings (SSIs) were introduced, a standard communications protocol between the control centre and the outstations was part of the specification. This, however, was itself nonstandard in terms of telecom transmission bandwidth allocations so it needed to be modified. Since privatisation, different interlockings have adopted different protocols although some elements of the original have been maintained. It is not a satisfactory situation.

» Will signalling standards ever be harmonised so as to get away from ‘lock in’ to a particular manufacturer’s system? Although this has been talked about and various harmonisation initiatives have taken place, the suppliers have concerns about progressing this. They are not against it in principle but regard the cost of converting the proprietary technology as significant and not very good value for money.

» Are specifications deficient in not asking for common standards in signalling? Back in the British Rail days, detailed technical specifications were issued but this was considered to be stifling innovation. As a result, technical specs were replaced by functional specifications that detailed the output required without detailing the technology. This gave the suppliers more freedom of design and was supposed to cheapen the overall cost.

» Are the arrangements for taking possessions and managing site safety too restrictive? This is recognised as a problem with often less than half the possession time resulting in work actually being performed. There should be improved methods for taking a possession using digital technology and communications. The problem has resulted in a blockade mentality creeping in with lines often completely closed for days, even weeks, on end with resulting disruption to passenger travel. The GBR statement of putting passengers first will be a challenge to get a revised possession management regime in place.

Final Thoughts

The meeting exposed many of the challenges faced by Network Rail and the train operating companies. Although the focus was on Scotland, the issues raised will be recognised by other parts of the UK including devolved administrations. The current buzzword of innovation, whilst aimed at generating new ideas and working methods, has to be balanced against the drawbacks of not having standardised systems and technology to allow interworking.

Obtaining value for money is vital and it is clear that Transport Scotland has severe reservations as to whether ETCS will achieve this. Clearly, the cost of signalling is seen as a major issue and, according to press reports elsewhere, the ORR has similar concerns. Electrification is important in the decarbonisation agenda but there must never again be the same cost and timescale overruns that occurred on the GW main line and to some extent on Edinburgh Glasgow. When supplying trains, a return to standards whereby rolling stock from different train builders could couple together would be a welcome step forward. This may have to be at an international level as the same problems exist in Europe and beyond.

It was good to see signalling and rolling stock engineers debating these challenges in the same room as it seems inevitable that signalling will be increasingly train borne into the future. The influence of the customer must be made more decisive.