Rail Engineer - Issue 154 - August 2017

Engineer

by rail engineers for rail engineers

AUGUST 2017 - ISSUE 154

Class act in the

cavern

BIGGEST CHALLENGE YET Eleven teams of graduates and apprentices, including one from FH Aachen in Germany, put their creations to the test in the annual IMechE Railway Challenge.

DEFENDING POOLE HARBOUR Repairing and improving the sea defences at Poole.

INNOVATION AND INSPIRATION The latest techniques for welding and repairing steel rails.

www.railengineer.uk

BRIDGES AND TUNNELS

TRACK

“Excellence in Engineering”

Lundy Projects Limited 195 Chestergate Stockport SK3 0BQ Tel: 0161 476 2996 Email: mail@lundy-projects.co.uk Website: www.lundy-projects.co.uk

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Bridges and Tunnels Feature

06 54 58 62 66 84

CONTENTS

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12 18 24 30 34 38 40 46 50

News

Electrification, UK trains, HLOS, SoFA, HS2.

Waterloo and South West Route upgrade Network Rail’s next big project is already underway at London’s busiest station.

Swanage Railway reconnected Clive Kessell took time off from his holiday in Swanage to ride on a train.

Manchester Metrolink Collin Carr visits the Second City Crossing and the new route to Trafford Park.

Thameslink - the final countdown David Bickell looks forward to the last stages of work at London Bridge.

Biggest challenge yet David Shirres spent the weekend at the sixth IMechE Railway Challenge.

Class act in the cavern Stuart Marsh looks at the work Story Contracting is doing under the Mersey.

A trio of southern bridges Bob Wright reports on Willingdon Tree, Oyster Pool and Cat’s Back.

Travel & repeat Graeme Bickerdike discovers how Amco is drilling holes in Harringworth viaduct.

Defending Poole Harbour Collin Carr looks into repairing and improving Poole Harbour's sea defences.

The reconstruction of Albrighton bridge Grahame Taylor contemplates how to rebuild a bridge on a station on a bridge.

Holding back the tide Kaymac Marine had to stem the tide to refurbish Cobb Valley culvert.

Alternative design brings success Lee Barraclough describes an award-winning bridge replacement.

Taking the Northern line to Battersea Marc Johnson goes underground to see how the Northern line extension is getting on.

The world’s longest footbridge?

No - but it does have the longest name.

Darren McKenna investigates.

Track Feature

Feature

66

74

74 78

Lightweight slab track Barnaby Temple reveals how a new track was laid on an old structure.

Innovation and inspiration Chris Parker attended the Institute of Rail Welding annual conference.

We’re looking to highlight the latest projects and innovations in Concrete / Earthworks / Drainage & Innovation in the October issue of Rail Engineer. Get in touch with Nigel on 01530 816 445.

Rail Engineer | Issue 154 | August 2017

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13th September 2017 – LONDON SUMMIT PROGRAMME 08.00 Registration, Refreshments and Exhibition

TRAINING AND DEVELOPMENT

09.00 Welcome from our Host - Colin Wheeler

13.15 Managing Safety and Complacency on 4LM - Sarah Tack, Head Of Safety For The Ground Transportation In The UK, Thales

09.05 Keynote - Paul Maynard MP, Parliamentary Under Secretary of State for Rail, Accessibility and HS2 09.25 Keynote - Francis Paonessa, Managing Director Infrastructure Projects, Network Rail 09.45 Q&A with Keynote Speakers SAFETY CULTURE AND PERSONAL RESPONSIBILITY 09.55 Bridging the Behavioural Gap: A Psychological Approach To Rail Safety - Stuart Webster-Spriggs, Director, VolkerRail 10.15 Repeated Causality Events: Why are we Making the Same Mistakes? - Ian Prosser, Chief Inspector of Railways and Director, Railway Safety, Office of Rail and Road (ORR) 10.35 Developing a Safety Culture - Mandy Geal, Founder, Learning Partners 10.55 Implementing Occupational Health And Training The Staff Of The Future - Emma Head, Corporate Health & Safety Director, HS2 11.15 Q & A With Panel 11.25 Refreshments / Exhibition TECHNOLOGY IMPROVEMENTS 11.45 Using Technology to Improve Safety and Reduce Costs - Lex Van Der Poel, Director, Dual Inventive 12.05 High Output Track Renewals, Infrastructure Projects - David Underwood, Project Manager, Network Rail

13.35 A Brand New Railway: What Methods are being used to Train Staff - Martin Brown, Director, Health and Safety, Crossrail 13.55 Application of Investigation Techniques to Manage Risk - Simon French, Chief Inspector, RAIB 14.15 The True Cost of an Incident and what Lessons we Learn - Pino de Rosa, Managing Director, Bridgeway Consulting 14.35 Q & A With Panel 14.45 Refreshments / Exhibition FUTURE OF SAFETY 15.05 A New Way of Looking at Stressful Situations in the Work Place - Mark Wingfield, Speaker and Trainer, MAX Training 15.25 The Digital Railway: Improving Track Safety Without Lineside Signals, Joint Presentation - Pat McFadden, STE Development Director, Network Rail and Tom Lee, Director of Standards, RSSB 15.45 How to be an Effective Health and Safety Leader - Jane Hopkins, Senior Psychologist, Health & Safety Laboratory 16.05 Q&A With Panel 16.15 Wrap Up and Thanks

12.20 Freight Wagon Maintenance and Loading - James Collinson, Managing Director, NCB 12.35 Q & A With Panel 12.45 Lunch / Exhibition

Purchase your tickets now at www.railsummits.com

RAIL ENGINEER MAGAZINE

EDITORIAL

RIP electrification In 2012, Transport Secretary Justine Greening explained that electric trains are faster, lighter, greener and cheaper as she announced the Government’s plans to electrify the Midland main line and extend Great Western electrification to Swansea. In his recent announcement cancelling these plans, Chris Grayling explained that disruptive electrification work was unnecessary as bi-mode trains offer faster journeys.

As originally specified, the bi-mode class 800 delivers around sixty per cent more power in electric mode than diesel mode. The claim that diesel-powered bi-modes offer faster journeys is clearly false. With its external power source, an electric train will always be faster, lighter, greener and cheaper to maintain.

With electricity being increasingly generated by renewables, the carbon footprint of electric trains is being reduced. Furthermore, the regenerative braking that is only possible with electric traction offers further CO2 and energy savings. This is an issue that has seemingly been ignored as Grayling’s statement makes no mention of carbon.

Many countries understand these benefits. Half of Europe’s rail network is electrified, compared with a third in UK. Recently, it seemed that Britain was about to catch up. However, following Great Western electrification programme’s threefold cost increase, the evaporation of Government support for such projects is perhaps understandable.

At recent event, former Network Rail electrification engineer Peter Dearman was reported as stating that the industry was “sleepwalking into making electrification uneconomic”. Sadly, it seems that he was right.

The much-criticised Great Western electrification project is not typical.

Rail Engineer is glad to report on the many well-run projects that often use innovative solutions for difficult problems, as shown by our bridge project features.

Graeme Bickerdike gives us a good example. His feature on the 82-arch Harringworth viaduct repairs describes the development of a parapetmounted rig to drill the hundreds of holes required. This reduced the possessions required and saved £200,000.

Darren McKenna explains the benefits of taking the station footbridge at Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch to Cardiff for off-site repairs. As Lee Barraclough explains, the new Carter's bridge also required off-site work with the prefabrication of its bridge components. In addition, the bridge design had to consider historic mining and the complex geology of the South Lancashire coalfield.

Barnaby Temple’s article shows how the Ordsall Chord’s changed track alignment created a track-bridge interface problem for which a bespoke precast modular track was required. At Albrighton, there was a

bridge-bridge interface. Here, the underbridge carries the railway, station platforms and cast-iron parapets as well as supporting the footbridge above. As Grahame Taylor describes, its replacement required audacious temporary works.

Another success is reducing rail breaks to a tenth of what they were twenty years ago. Network Rail achieved this reduction with the support of the Institute of Rail Welding. Chris Parker explains how in his report on the Institute’s fifteenth birthday conference.

Under the streets of London, Amy and Helen are inching their way to Kennington as they bore tunnels for the 3.2km Northern line extension.

Marc Johnson has been to Battersea to report on the progress of this project. From Liverpool, Stuart Marsh reports on how the slab track in the Mersey loop tunnel was renewed to time and budget despite significant logistical difficulties.

Collin Carr has been to Manchester to visit Metrolink’s second city crossing which is required as the network has expanded fourfold since its trams started operation in 1992. He reports on the problems faced during the construction of this 1.3-kilometre city link. Collin also has taken a look into the sea defences at Poole Harbour and the toll on the railway causeway across the harbour. He describes the resultant repair work with its access and environmental constraints.

After many years, the complex Thameslink project and the re-building of London Bridge station will be completed in January. David Bickell has interviewed the project director and tells us about the major works in the remaining two blockades. With London Bridge almost complete, it’s time to start on Waterloo. As Mark Phillips explains, this also requires major track and platform alterations and will transform the concourse. The intention is to make Waterloo the new St Pancras.

The operation of preserved railways by volunteers is impressive, even more so when their trains operate on the main-line. Clive Kessell explains how the Swanage railway has done just this by extending its operation to Wareham. Also hugely impressive is the way young engineers tackle the IMechE’s Railway Challenge, in which a record number of eleven miniature locomotives competed this year.

As can be seen our writers have, as usual, produced many ‘good news’ stories this month. Unfortunately, these are in stark contrast to poor project management and Government short-sightedness that has led to the cancellation of electrification schemes.

RAIL ENGINEER EDITOR

DAVID SHIRRES

Rail Engineer | Issue 154 | August 2017

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THE TEAM

NEWS

Editor David Shirres david.shirres@railengineer.uk

Production Editor Nigel Wordsworth nigel.wordsworth@railengineer.uk

Production and design Adam O’Connor adam@rail-media.com Matthew Stokes matt@rail-media.com

Engineering writers bob.wright@railengineer.uk chris.parker@railengineer.uk clive.kessell@railengineer.uk collin.carr@railengineer.uk david.bickell@railengineer.uk graeme.bickerdike@railengineer.uk grahame.taylor@railengineer.uk lesley.brown@railengineer.uk malcolm.dobell@railengineer.uk mark.phillips@railengineer.uk paul.darlington@railengineer.uk

HS2 contracts awarded

peter.stanton@railengineer.uk stuart.marsh@railengineer.uk

Advertising Asif Ahmed

asif@rail-media.com

Chris Davies

chris@rail-media.com

Jolene Price jolene@rail-media.com

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Rail Engineer | Issue 154 | August 2017

With Royal Assent having been received for the High Speed Rail (London West Midlands) hybrid Bill on 23 February, HS2 has now awarded construction contracts worth £6.6 billion for the first phase of the high-speed line between London and Birmingham.

Nine organisations, mostly joint ventures, bid for seven packages of work totalling £6.6 billion. Four were successful, with three getting two packages each (the maximum allowed by the bidding rules) and the fourth winning one.

The contract awards, which include the civils construction works along the route, including tunnels, bridges, viaducts and embankments but not railway systems, were: »» Euston Tunnels and Approaches SCS JV (Skanska Construction UK Ltd, Costain Ltd, STRABAG AG); »» Northolt Tunnels - SCS JV (Skanska Construction UK Ltd, Costain Ltd, STRABAG AG); »» Chiltern Tunnels and Colne Valley Viaduct - Align JV (Bouygues Travaux Publics, VolkerFitzpatrick, Sir Robert McAlpine); »» North Portal Chiltern Tunnels to Brackley - CEK JV (Carillion Construction Ltd, Eiffage Genie Civil SA, Kier Infrastructure and Overseas Ltd); »» Brackley to South Portal of Long Itchington Wood Green Tunnel

CEK JV (Carillion Construction Ltd, Eiffage Genie Civil SA, Kier Infrastructure and Overseas Ltd); »» Long Itchington Wood Green Tunnel to Delta Junction and Birmingham Spur - BBV JV (Balfour Beatty Group Ltd, VINCI Construction Grands Projets, VINCI Construction UK Ltd, VINCI Construction Terrassement); »» Delta Junction to WCML Tie-In BBV JV (Balfour Beatty Group Ltd, VINCI Construction Grands Projets, VINCI Construction UK Ltd, VINCI Construction Terrassement).

Preparatory works are already underway and the main construction phase will begin next year.

Transport Secretary Chris Grayling said: “This is a hugely important step in the construction of Britain’s new railway and underlines this government’s determination to deliver an economy that works for all.

“HS2 will deliver vital links between some of our country’s biggest cities, helping to drive economic growth and productivity in the north and midlands.”

NEWS

coming soon...

NEXT MONTH...

SIGNALLING AND TELECOMS Equipment, Systems, Resignalling Schemes, Displays, Gantries, Software, Training, Warning Systems, WiFi, GSM-R, Broadband, IP Networks, Radio, Loudspeakers, Information Systems

PLANT AND EQUIPMENT New Developments, Hire, Lifting, Excavation, On-track, Road-Rail Maintenance, Rail Handling, Welding

New life for old Eurostars Two Class 373 power cars saved from scrap yard and donated to the National College for High Speed Rail (NCHSR).

With the introduction of the new Siemens e320 Class 374 trains, the future of Eurostar’s first fleet looked uncertain. Some will be retained, but most will have reached the end of their highspeed careers.

However, two Class 373 power cars that were on their way to be scrapped are to be given a new lease of life with the National College for High Speed Rail (NCHSR).

The power cars have been donated to the college’s campuses in Doncaster and Birmingham. Alstom will refurbish the two power cars before they arrive at the training centres.

Eurostar has retained and refurbished eight Class 373s, but the rest are to be scrapped.

One power car has already

been saved this fate and is now on display at the National Railway Museum (NRM).

Clair Mowbray, chief executive of the NCHSR, commented: “This generous donation of two power cars allows us as a world-class college to offer our students the opportunity to develop real-life skills using industry-leading technology.

Support like this is crucial for us to ensure that we can properly train and prepare the future workforce for the rail and infrastructure industries.

“We are very grateful for the support we have received so far from business and industry leaders. As an employer-led college, we are still keen to hear from employers wishing to show support in addressing the current engineering and rail skills gap.”

OCTOBER 2017 CONCRETE / EARTHWORKS / DRAINAGE Precast Sections, Modular Systems, Piling, Structures, Maintenance, Installation, Geotechnical, Soil Nailing, Rope Access, Excavation, Geotextiles, Ground Surveys, Foundations, Ground Stabilisation, Fastenings, Pipework, Gratings, Design, Installation, Cleaning, Specialist Equipment

INNOVATION Latest Technology, Novel Techniques, New Working Practices, Product Approvals, Research and Development, Pilot Studies, Advanced Thinking

NOVEMBER 2017 ROLLING STOCK / DEPOTS New designs, Components, Interiors, Refurbishment, Maintenance, Lighting, Fuel, Equipment, Vehicle Maintenance, Condition Monitoring, Lifting, Train Washing, Inspection

SUSTAINABILITY / ENVIRONMENT Sustainable Programmes, E ciency, Planning, Surveys, Wildlife, Vegitation, Waste Disposal, Carbon Emissions, Sustainabilty, Green Initiatives, Seasonal Issues, Recycling

Rail Engineer | Issue 154 | August 2017

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8

NEWS

Electrification programmes cancelled The Government has abandoned plans to electrify the railway between Cardiff and Swansea, the Midland main line north of Kettering and the line between Windermere and Oxenholme in favour of bi-mode or 'alternative-fuel' trains.

An announcement from the Department for Transport (DfT) said electrification of the lines was no longer needed and that cancelling the work would result in less disruption for passengers.

Referring to the Cardiff-Swansea route, the statement said, “Rapid delivery of passenger benefits, minimising disruption and engineering work should always be our priority and, as technology changes, we must reconsider our approach to modernising the railways.”

The argument is based on the planned introduction of bi-mode Class 800 trains later this year. Bi-mode trains will also be deployed in place of electrifying the Midland main line north of Kettering to Nottingham and Sheffield.

“We do not intend to proceed with plans to electrify the line from Kettering to Sheffield and Nottingham, and there will be further investment to come to ensure Sheffield is HS2-ready.”

Finally, the government also no longer plans to electrify the Windermere-Oxenholme route. The DfT said that using alternative-fuel trains will stop OLE gantries “spoiling protected landscapes”.

Transport Secretary Chris Grayling said: “Passengers expect and deserve high quality rail services and we are committed to using the best available technology for each part of the network, delivering significant benefits for those who use our railways.”

Criticism Some, however, failed to see the benefits. Liberal Democrat Shadow Transport Secretary Jenny Randerson called it “a betrayal of passengers across the country who would have benefited from these upgraded routes” while her Labour equivalent, Andy McDonald, commented on the cuts in Wales: “The decision betrays a promise to South Wales and the Transport Secretary sneaking out the news on the final day before he goes on his summer holidays adds insult to injury.”

Rail Engineer’s specialist electrification writer and acknowledged industry expert, Peter Stanton, was scathing in his comments. “The decision to halt the electrification programme is a short-sighted narrow decision. The industry is perfectly capable of bringing the costs down given the freedom and the will to do so, as it did when faced with the same challenge in the 1960s.

“Bi-mode is NOT new and has been around for years, as a means of moving a train off an electrified railway for short distances with power limited to whatever is available from the engine.

“The power unit is a dead load, uselessly dragged around for the

Rail Engineer | Issue 154 | August 2017

majority of the journey under the wires, and carries all the downsides of the diesel engine; still requiring fuel and enhanced maintenance compared with low-maintenance pure-electric traction. A bi-mode train cannot perform at the same rate as the equivalent pure electric.

“By ordering diesel-powered units, the railway is a hostage to fortune for forty years whilst diesel traction becomes less and less acceptable to the public and the environment.”

About-turn The Department for Transport seems to have performed a complete U-turn on this. In March 2011, the Department stated: “Electrified railways are essential to getting maximum efficiency and capacity from a modern railway.

“Compared to non-electrified railways, electrified railways are faster, quieter, greener as they produce less CO2 and emit no air pollution at the trackside, more reliable, lighter and cause less wear and tear on the tracks, more cost-effective for carrying freight loads and cheaper to buy, operate and maintain.”

The same announcement added: “Electric trains are more reliable than diesels. An electric intercity train will travel 40 per cent further than an equivalent diesel train before a technical failure and an electric commuter train will travel well over twice as far.”

Now the tune has changed, and bi-mode trains (diesel and electric) are the flavour of the month. However, these have the worst of both worlds. They weigh more, as they are fitted with two types of traction, and, as the amount of time they will spend diesel-powered is increasing, so the maintenance requirement will go up and the reliability and availability will go down.

The Great Western electrification scheme, which has had problems and is running over budget, has been criticised for using an untried, heavy and costly system of overhead structures. That too is down to the DfT. Rail Engineer has been told that the Department specified electrification that could cope with 140mph trains with twin pantographs, but then actually ordered 125mph trains with a single pantograph, leaving the catenary system massively over-engineered (and over-priced).

The Department for Transport seems to have many questions to answer, once again raising the topic of how much say a government department, staffed by civil servants, should have in specifying complex and inter-related specialist engineering programmes.

NEWS

Building trains in the UK? Alstom and CAF to join the fray.

Only a couple of years ago, Bombardier (owned by Canadians) was the UK’s only train manufacturer/assembler.

Then came Hitachi’s new facility in Newton Aycliffe, County Durham.

This month revealed news of two more.

Alstom opened “the UK’s largest and most sophisticated new centre for train modernisation”. Initially to be used to repaint Pendolinos, the new workshop is large enough to house three 11-car trains at once, so it’s certainly big enough for major work to be carried out. There is also plenty of land available to expand the facility, should Alstom win either Transport for London’s order for new tube trains or HS2’s for high-speed trains, surely Alstom’s ultimate goal.

Meanwhile, Spanish manufacturer CAF released plans to build a factory on a plot of 46,000 m² in Newport, South Wales.

With a workforce of up to 300, this new plant is designed to produce all manner of rail vehicles, performing vehicle assembly

Express, and sleeper cars for the Caledonian Sleeper franchise. However, these orders may be too far advanced to be built in the new factory which will have to supply the next train orders that CAF wins in the UK.

and finishing activities as well as all the tests required before commissioning. It is expected to be operating by mid-2018.

CAF currently has orders for trains from Arriva Rail North and First TransPennine

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Rail Engineer | Issue 154 | August 2017

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NEWS

Clearing the DfT's desk?

What happens the day before a holiday starts? Desk-clearing time. When it comes to the crunch, it's amazing how much work can be completed, or at least passed on to someone else, the day or two before going away.

Parliament started its recess on 20 July. So it’s not really surprising that news of the cancellation of a large part of the electrification programme came through on that day. But that wasn’t the only news that was released.

East Midlands Trains, which is owned by Stagecoach, has been the franchise holder on and around the Midland main line since 2007, but its current contract was due to end in March 2018.

In March this year, three firms were shortlisted to run the new franchise: Arriva Rail, First Trenitalia and Stagecoach.

On 20 July, the government re-issued expression of interest documentation for the new franchise and announced that Stagecoach will have its current contract extended until 3 March 2019, with the intention to strike up an interim agreement until August 2019.

The announcements were made on the same day the government revealed it would

be scrapping the electrification of the Midland main line north of Kettering to Sheffield and backing the rollout of bi-mode trains instead, something that wouldn’t have been factored into the original bids.

Again on 20 July, the DfT released its HLOS (High Level Output Strategy) for Control Period 6 (2019-2024).

The document sets out what work the government wishes to be undertaken, but doesn’t reference any specific projects. In addition, no clear commitment has been made on the initial statement of funds (SoFA), but a further announcement is expected to be made “no later than 13 October 2017”.

Although the whole strategy is a bit sparse (just three pages and one annex), some detail does come through.

One is: “The Statement does not commit to infrastructure enhancements. These are expected to be dealt with separately.” So CP6 funding

Rail Engineer | Issue 154 | August 2017

will only cover renewals and maintenance. Enhancements are likely to be treated as standalone projects, planned and funded accordingly.

There will be “increased volumes of renewals compared to CP5, to improve on the outcomes delivered in the context of rising demand and better meet user priorities”.

However, the DfT is concerned about the affordability of the initial cost estimates, which do not contain an allowance for efficiencies, particularly of operations and maintenance.

It is therefore initiating work to provide further assurance on the costs of these activities to provide confidence in setting the level of public funding available to the railway in order to confirm a final SoFA. Perhaps as part of the holiday preparations, or perhaps not, the hybrid bill for HS2 phase 2a, Birmingham to Crewe, was submitted three days earlier.

On that same day, the chosen route for HS2 phase 2b (Crewe

to Manchester and Leeds) was announced. Notable changes include adopting the new ‘M18/Eastern route’ between Derbyshire and West Yorkshire and proposals for a new hub station in Crewe.

HS2 had originally proposed running the eastern leg of Phase 2b between Sheffield and Rotherham and building a station close to the Meadowhall shopping centre.

Instead, the M18/Eastern route will take the line around the other side of Rotherham and construct a spur off HS2 at Stonebroom, which will allow high-speed trains to travel on the Midland main line through Chesterfield and into Sheffield city centre.

The M18/Eastern route was one of seven refinements included in a consultation in 2016. All but one of these have been accepted, the one that hasn’t been taken forward concerned moving the route through Measham in the East Midlands.

NEWS

British Transport Police could vanish Plans have been laid for British Transport Police (BTP) to lose its independence and merge with national police forces.

In Scotland, the national assembly has already voted 68 to 53 to subsume BTP into Police Scotland. This was clearly a ‘nationalist’ decision as Conservatives, Labour and Liberal Democrats all voted against the plan, but Scottish Nationalists carried the day.

Speaking to The Scotsman, Scottish Conservative justice spokeswoman Margaret Mitchell said: “Police Scotland is in meltdown at the moment. The last thing it needs is the extra responsibility of Scotland’s part of the British Transport Police.

“The British Transport Police is one of the most respected and successful arms of the justice system - so why would we hand it over to an organisation in crisis?

“The single force has proved itself utterly incapable of dealing with even the most straightforward of calls. It would be absolute folly to transfer this chaos on to Scotland’s rail network too.”

Union reaction Manuel Cortes, general secretary of the Transport Salaried Staff Association, had earlier spoken out against the plans. “British Transport Police is an integrated, wellembedded efficient force which keeps trains moving equally safely and soundly whichever side of the border you travel, precisely because it is specially designated to the rail industry,” he commented. “Breaking up BTP won’t make it better but it will cause chaos and delays in Scotland’s railways for years to come.

“A joined-up, cross-border rail police force is a long proven asset which keeps all people, irrespective of national identity, transiting safely. The proposal to merge BTP with Police Scotland is injecting politics into policing.

“The Scottish Government are out of step with their people, as both public consultations on the proposal and the bill for policing the railway show there is no will for this merger on the part of the Scottish people.”

There have been reports of some BTP officers in Scotland transferring to units in England and Wales. Others have expressed fears that, should an incident occur on a railway, having a non-specialist officer respond due to being the closest available could delay the reopening of the railway.

Then there is always the spectre of a police officer responding to an incident and being refused access by railway staff on the grounds of not having the correct health and safety training and certification to be on a live railway.

Industry views The network owner can clearly see problems ahead. Phil Hufton, managing director for network operations across England and Wales, said: “Having a dedicated transport police force is really important to the successful running of the railway.

“Over time, we have established incredibly joined-up working practices with BTP and we now work in partnership with them on a daily basis across the country in order to make the railway the safest it can possibly be.

“This is through the prevention and detection of crime, but it is also through suicide prevention and ensuring passengers are getting the best service possible when they travel by rail through countless other initiatives to prevent and deal with incidents.

“An example of our now well established partnership working is that we have embedded inspectors in each of the Network Rail routes to support blue light capability, ensuring incidents are dealt with as quickly as possible.

“The BTP is unique because its officers work on the railway, they understand the railway and so can support us in running the railway that’s what you get with a dedicated transport police force.”

The Rail Delivery Group, which represents all of the train operators as well as Network Rail, also has reservations. “Passenger safety and security are a top priority for rail companies,” a spokesman said, “and some train operators are of the view that the transfer of transport policing away from the British Transport Police, which is a specialist transport police force, is not the best way to serve the interests of the travelling public.”

England and Wales The discussion isn’t restricted to Scotland.

In November 2015, the Conservative Government published its National Security and Strategic Defence and Security Review. This noted that responsibilities for critical infrastructure policing are shared

across a number of organisations with different levels of capability and capacity, and different arrangements for funding, oversight, regulation and legislation. The review included a commitment to “integrate infrastructure policing further and to review the options to do this”.

One of the options discussed was a single National Infrastructure Constabulary combining the function of the Civil Nuclear Constabulary, the Ministry of Defence Police, the British Transport Police, the Highways England Traffic Officer Service, the Home Office police forces’ strategic road network and airports policing capabilities.

The Conservative Party manifesto seemed to bring this into party policy: “We will create a national infrastructure police force, bringing together the Civil Nuclear Constabulary, the Ministry of Defence Police and the British Transport Police to improve the protection of critical infrastructure such as nuclear sites, railways and the strategic road network.”

Discussions continue. In Scotland, the TSSA has launched a petition against the proposals. In England and Wales, the newly elected Conservative Government has yet to make its position clear. Certainly, the BTP’s role in combating the recent terror attacks in London, which resulted in one officer severely injured, could delay the whole process.

Rail Engineer | Issue 154 | August 2017

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BRIDGES AND TUNNELS

Class act in the

cavern

I

t was an unlikely venue for a chance meeting that would change popular music forever - the less than salubrious surroundings of a dingy nightclub beneath a Liverpool fruit warehouse. It was here of course, in the Cavern Club, that Brian Epstein, a local record-store owner and music columnist, first encountered The Beatles. The rest is history.

Unfortunately, the same can be said of the original Cavern Club. It closed in 1973 and was filled in during construction work on the Merseyrail underground rail loop - a cavern of a very different kind!

Loop back Major engineering works were undertaken deep beneath the streets of Liverpool between 1972 and 1977 to link and integrate the Wirral and Northern lines of the Merseyrail system. These two commuter routes, electrified with 750V DC third rail system, have been operated under the Merseyrail brand name since 1978, latterly by a train operator of the same name.

Interchange facilities between these two lines were constructed at Liverpool Central and Moorfields stations.

As part of what became known as the ‘Loop and Link Project’, this grand scheme included the creation of a two-mile singlebore loop-back tunnel - the Mersey Loop.

Driven under the Liverpool streets at depths

Rail Engineer | Issue 154 | August 2017

STUART MARSH

varying between 17 and 40 metres, this created a one-way loop line, starting and ending at James Street station. As well as increasing destinations for Wirral line passengers, by serving the business and shopping districts and Lime Street station, this new line increased capacity by allowing the seamless turn back of all services around what is effectively a balloon loop.

The running line of the Mersey Loop was laid as a form of slab track, comprising concrete sleepers encased within a concrete bed. This has lasted reasonably well but, after over forty years, maintenance issues were arising. Broken and deteriorating sleepers, increasing in numbers, were notoriously difficult to change, requiring lengthy and expensive possessions.

Network Rail therefore took the decision to renew the slab track. This remedial work has been undertaken in stages, typically with 200-250 metre stretches of track being renewed on each occasion.

(Below) Diagram of Mersey Loop.

BRIDGES AND TUNNELS

A

!

!

E

D

Story In order to improve efficiency, diminish passenger disruption and reduce costs, planning commenced in 2014 on a scheme that would see all of the remaining stretches of track, amounting to 1200 metres in total, renewed in one phase. Three tunnel track sections and four station platform sections were to be renewed during a six-month

!

central semi-circular drainage channel was incorporated into the tunnel invert beneath.

Steel walkway plates were placed between the sleepers in the four-foot to cover the drainage channel.

Renewal of the remaining original slab track in the tunnel sections has been completed, with the plinths being entirely broken out and replaced by new concrete

A

!

B

*

!

!

complete line closure, commencing in January 2017. Network Rail appointed Carlisle-based Story Contracting to undertake the works.

In the tunnel sections, the existing 1970s slab track was formed using standard concrete sleepers set at 750mm centres within reinforced concrete plinths. The plinths were cast directly upon the tunnel invert sections, with a void formed between them for drainage purposes. A

D

haunches cast in situ. These are linked by pre-cast reinforced concrete struts. Pandrol Vipa SP base plates carry new CEN 56 rails and the drainage channel has been protected by a sectional phenolic fire integrity FRP walkway.

Within the station platforms, the original track was installed as a concrete slab with a drainage pipe cast into it in the four-foot.

The rails were sat on Pandrol base plates fixed into the concrete at 610mm centres.

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BRIDGES AND TUNNELS Here, the solution has been to remove the permanent way and then reduce the slab by planing, leaving the existing drainage unaltered. The slab has, however, been broken out locally for the installation of new transverse drains. Pandrol SFC base plates have been fitted by over-coring the existing bolts. The SFC baseplates offer a shallower construction depth, which reduced the slab planing depth. By using these methods, the estimated saving to Network Rail has been greater than £1 million.

Isolated Jonny Fearon, senior project manager for Story Contracting, explained how access difficulties modified the working methods used. “Logistics were a great challenge for this project,” he told Rail Engineer.

“Other than the station access points for operatives, there were just two points of access open to us in terms of plant and concrete deliveries. Throughout the project, our RRVs were faced with a six-mile round trip under the Mersey from Birkenhead.

Fortunately, for the concrete deliveries, we could make use of a ventilation shaft behind Central station.”

The single-bore tunnel also hampered operations in terms of storage areas and methodology. To avoid any storage, handling and transportation issues associated with steel rebar reinforcement,

Rail Engineer | Issue 154 | August 2017

fibre-reinforced concrete was used instead.

Further, by drawing upon expertise from Transport for London, Story Contracting was able to introduce lightweight FRP walkway gratings, diminishing the manual handling challenges.

Similarly, the concrete struts that span between the concrete haunches were originally a 60kg two-man lift. Designer Arcadis was able to develop a more slender strut, which reduced the weight by half.

Effective forced ventilation within the tunnel sections was a primary consideration.

Diesel fumes and dust from the plant machinery were potentially hazardous, so a system of 14 large ventilation fans was installed to keep the air moving. The air quality was continuously monitored throughout the duration of the project.

Water supplies were piped from ground

level along the tunnel. Also, lighting, electricity and compressed air supplies were fixed to the tunnel wall.

The four station platforms around the loop were the only areas available for storage. Their surfaces required protection by boarding and the use of geotextile membranes. All in all, two weeks of set-up time was required before work on the slab track could start.

Pumped To handle the concrete deliveries, a wagon-mounted pump was positioned at the head of the Central station ventilation shaft. The concrete, brought to the site through the city centre by over thirty road deliveries, was pumped down the shaft into a static concrete mixer mounted on Story’s concrete train. This was then hauled

BRIDGES AND TUNNELS

along the tunnel, headed by Story’s railmounted Unimog. Adjacent to the worksite itself, a second static pump was then used to deliver the concrete, pumping it over distances of up to 140 metres.

From initial mixing, a maximum work time of four hours was permitted. This took account of the transport time, the twostage pumping operation and the actual placement into the haunches. Thereafter, the concrete mix was designed to accelerate its curing rate to accommodate the canted track and steep gradients of the slabs. In order to prove the concept, a trial pour was undertaken on the surface, replicating the anticipated conditions in the tunnels, complete with installed Vipa plates and rails. This mock up was subsequently used for training purposes and as an induction tool for visitors.

Describing the logistics, Jonny Fearon said: “Approximately 170 cubic metres of concrete was poured using the double pumping method. Meanwhile, the brokenout slab track and other waste materials were transported by RRV to James Street station before being loaded into engineering trains. In all, we ran eight works trains, carrying 1,600 tonnes of spoil off site for later recycling.”

Paths for the works trains were only available at weekends. “We were effectively land locked from Monday to Friday,” Jonny continued. “Restocking onto the platform storage sites could only take place at weekends when we had possessions in place out to Birkenhead.”

Wet Transporting materials within the singlebore tunnel wasn’t the only difficulty, as Jonny described. “The tunnels are rather wet in places, so dealing with ground water was a concern. At all times, we had to be very careful to maintain the water flow in the drainage channels. Pumping of the tunnels is constant and it was very important that we protected the pumps from contamination and detritus. Mesh and filter membranes were installed for this purpose and required consistent supervision as unpredictable surges were frequent.”

Work in the tunnels followed a set routine.

Firstly, the live rail was removed, followed by the running rails, which were cut into twometre lengths for ease of transport and to reduce handling difficulties. An RRV would then be used to break out the slab using a

pecker attachment. A mini-digger would load the spoil into a bin, to be transported

by RRV to the twin bore area of James Street station.

Formwork was then fitted, which also supported the pre-cast struts used to link the two haunches. The three steel lacer bars were then added within each haunch before the concrete was pumped. In this way, 110 metres of slab would be formed, principally because the continuous welded rail was delivered in 108-metre strings.

Rail launchers were set up in the four-foot to allow the CWR to be launched over the newly constructed slabs. The rails were then supported at two-metre intervals on alternating blue and yellow colourcoded jigs. The blue jigs set the horizontal alignment and the yellow jigs set the gauge and vertical alignment.

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BRIDGES AND TUNNELS Quality A wire brushing technique was used to provide a key for the Pandrol Vipa baseplates which were then wedged in position with the clips preinstalled. Four 32mm core drillings were required for each base plate. The project required some 14,000 drillings to accept Hilti resin anchors.

Voids under the Vipa baseplates were then filled with a Tecroc cementitious grout, cast within reusable GRP form work. Each Vipa baseplate rests on a 22mm Tecroc pad and a 10mm plastic shim.

A strict Quality & Inspection Test Plan (QITP) process was followed throughout these procedures. Pull out tests were undertaken on 10 per cent of the anchor bolts, with negligible failures detected.

With the rails in situ, the FRP gratings were then laid in place to cover the central drainage channel. Finally, a new conductor rail was installed using Rehau glass-fibrereinforced supports.

The project required over 9,500 man hours to complete, the work being undertaken on a three-shift pattern comprising two 10-hour shifts overlapping by one hour, plus a nightly maintenance shift of eight hours. In this way, productive output was maintained for 19 hours each day, with site management, cleaning and restocking occurring during the night. This also helped with the management of fatigue experienced by operatives and staff working in challenging environmental conditions.

Rail Engineer | Issue 154 | August 2017

The lifespan of the new track slab is expected to be at least 60 years and the use of the adjustable Pandrol Vipa baseplate system means that track gauge, top and line can be easily maintained.

FLIRT friendly

Timely With the Mersey Loop project underway, the opportunity was taken to undertake other maintenance works to alleviate future disruption. Early in the scheme, the S&C North Alliance (a partnership between Network Rail, Amey and Rhomberg Sersa) undertook switch and crossing (S&C) renewals at Hamilton Square. Later in the project, the S&C Alliance returned to carry out heavy refurbishment of S&C around Mann Island junction (adjacent to James Street station) and the renewal of 1,100 metres of plain ballasted track under the Mersey.

The value of the Mersey Loop scheme was £8.75 million and hand back occurred, on budget and on time, on 19 June. A major factor in the success of the project was the involvement by Story Contracting of experienced specialist contractors that had worked on previous phases of track slab renewal. This ensured that the knowledge and equipment was available to undertake the work safely and to a high standard.

The investment in new maintenancefriendly track will support a new Merseyrail fleet on the network. Bespoke four-car FLIRT (Fast Light Innovative Regional Train) units, built by Swiss manufacturer Stadler Rail, will be introduced from 2020. Indeed, the Mersey Loop project forms part of a £340 million investment in the Liverpool City Region’s rail network over the next three years - a combination of funding from Network Rail and the Liverpool City Region Combined Authority, via the Government’s Growth Deal fund and Merseytravel.

Due to the Loop and Link Project, the original Cavern Club cellars may have been destroyed in 1973, but happily a new Cavern Club was opened in 1984, having been built nearby to a similar floor plan and using many of the bricks from the old club.

2017 marked the Cavern’s 60th anniversary and celebratory events are taking place throughout the year.

Rock and pop is alive and well on Merseyside, although there’s not much in the way of shake, rattle and roll down in the caverns of the Mersey Loop. Story Contracting’s excellent track alignment sees to that!

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A trio of southern bridges W BOB WRIGHT

illingdon Tree, Oyster Pond and Cat’s Back – three delightful names, but what are they? The answer is they are all footbridges, recently installed on the network at Eastbourne, Newhaven and Wandsworth respectively. They all also presented their own challenges - a level crossing so dangerous it had to be closed before its replacement bridge was ordered, long pedestrian diversions and protected trees in the way of craneage.

All three were installed by B&M McHugh, based in south London and holders of the minor works contract for Kent and Sussex. However, these three projects were awarded as individual design and build contracts from GRIP stage 3 to 8.

Willingdon Tree

The completed bridge is fitted with mesh screens to prevent items being thrown onto the railway.

This pedestrian-only crossing was a lightly used means of access from a housing estate onto the Willingdon Levels, a lowland marsh area used for agriculture and recreation. The crossing was located between Polegate and Hampden Park stations in Eastbourne, on a slight curve, with 80mph traffic and up to 145 trains crossing each day.

Rail Engineer | Issue 154 | August 2017

In the normal course of events, its replacement by a footbridge would have been relatively low priority in Network Rail’s plans to eradicate level crossings. The key issue that raised its risk rating to C (Very High) were the number of near-misses reported - 19 incidents in five years. These included a near miss with a young child aged between 8 and 11, and two girls observed sitting in the four-foot, very close to touching the conductor rail.

Such was the concern with the risks to young users that Network Rail took the unusual step of seeking permission from East Sussex County Council to temporarily close the crossing to users for seven months until a footbridge could be provided.

Network Rail’s route managing director for the South East, John Halsall, described Willingdon Tree crossing as “one of the most frightening level crossings on my route”.

To allay local concerns at this temporary lack of access across the line to Willingdon Levels, Network Rail held a local public meeting on 7 November 2016.

Network Rail’s route managing director for the South East, John Halsall, told the meeting: “We have seen several incidents where people, including children, could have been killed and we also know that young people use this crossing as a means to trespass on the railway.

“I know this will come as a shock to some, but I cannot leave this crossing open. I’m keen to work with the community to close it, so we can keep them – and their children – safe.”

Following the meeting, the crossing was closed off by palisade fencing on 13 November 2016. At the meeting, local anglers, who used the crossing

BRIDGES AND TUNNELS

daily to access a fishing lake, were vociferous in their concerns at the lack of a suitable alternative access route. As a result, Network Rail agreed to provide a pontoon footway through an adjacent bridge over a drainage channel. However, the floating walkway provided to meet anglers’ concerns was in reality barely used.

The proposed footbridge was to be a standard steel structure with a span of 14 metres. The layout of the Network Rail land boundary, and the land purchased, resulted in a straight stair on the Down side and a 180° cranked flight on the Up side. The design for this was undertaken by Ipswich based MLM Group.

Work to build the bridge began in January 2017, with the construction of the foundations, which were 12-metre-deep CFA piles installed by a Klemm 709 rig working during normal hours behind hoardings. The trestle and stair steelwork erection by B&M McHugh personnel took place in an eight-hour rules of the route possession on 22 April, and the bridge span during another possession on the 23rd.

The original crossing at Willingdon Tree.

The bridge was completed and opened to the public in May, as had been promised at the public meetings. It has received a positive reception from the local community and, importantly, removed a high risk crossing from the railway.

As the bridge was located adjacent to private gardens, and also as a result of the site’s history of stone throwing at trains, it was agreed that the mesh screens would be provided throughout.

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Oyster Pond The footpath from Beach Road to Seaford Beach in Newhaven passes over the single line railway between Newhaven Harbour and Bishopstone stations on an ‘Exmouth’ type footbridge.

This design of precast concrete bridge, a product of Exmouth Concrete Works, was widely used by the Southern Railway and Southern Region, from the early 1920s to late 1970s, but many have since been replaced as corroding reinforcement and spalling concrete weakened them.

Oyster Pond footbridge had been deteriorating for some years and, to maintain its integrity, had a temporary timber prop on the down line formation (see below) and the trestles had been encased in blockwork.

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In 2015 Network Rail approved the replacement of Oyster Pond footbridge with a standard steel structure.

Like the bridge at Willingdon Tree, the land available meant the layout was asymmetric, with a single flight on the Up side and a 180° cranked flight on the Down side. The new bridge is of twin track span to permit future doubling here and is located four metres west of the existing structure. This optimises the use of available land for the stair flights and also permitted the new foundations to be constructed prior to the demolition of the concrete structure.

An early task was therefore to gain planning approval for the repositioning of the new bridge from Lewes District Council, which was achieved on

20 October 2015. The formal closure of the footpath by East Sussex County Council began on 1 February 2016 and a very long diversion alongside Mill Creek provided to maintain access to Seaford Bay beach.

Working closely with MLM Group, the design was developed to incorporate the extensive experience of fabricating steel footbridges for Network Rail by fabricator Convira Group.

Network Rail land to the west of the site provided a compound for B & M McHugh whilst the working access to the site was through a Southern Water sewage treatment works. Work to build the bridge began in January 2016, with the construction of the foundations, which here were CFA piles driven 19 metres deep through alluvial and fluvial deposits, again installed by a Klemm 709 rig working during normal hours behind hoardings.

A good working relationship with the Southern Water operations team enabled a 500-tonne crane to be positioned in the works. The old bridge was demolished in a single 57-hour possession on 12/13 May and the new structure erected in two eight-hour rules of the route possessions on 6 and 7 May. The completed bridge reopened to public use on 4 April 2016.

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Cat’s Back footbridge

The original bridge was in need of replacement.

Cat’s Back footbridge is a pedestrian and cycle bridge, located between Clapham Junction and Wandsworth Common stations, which provides a crossing point over the four-track cutting that dissects Wandsworth common.

The bridge deck, 3.8 metres wide, was of steel trussed girders with concrete-encased cross girders and a heavily spalled concrete deck. In 2015, Network Rail agreed to replace the superstructure.

B&M McHugh was awarded the contract to replace the superstructure with a standard steel footbridge of similar width and to upgrade the side span parapets and surfacing.

As the only crossing point of the line within the common, it was a well-used bridge by walkers, runners and cyclists as well as by pupils at Northcote Lodge School, whose pupils used it to reach their playing fields. A long diversionary route was provided alongside the railway boundary to Bellevue Road at the southern end of the common, returning on the opposite side.

The key problem to be overcome in planning the project was the craneage for the demolition and construction works. Wandsworth Borough council was concerned that several of the common’s mature trees would have to be removed or heavily trimmed to enable a 250-tonne crane to access the works, and so they requested that a larger crane be used. As a

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result, the project was planned around the use of a 1000-tonne Demag AC1000 road crane, located 50 metres back from the bridge, with lifts planned over the tree canopy.

The works started on 3 January 2017, with the team first carrying out work to the side spans during normal working hours. Abutment brickwork repairs took place during night-time rules of the route possessions.

On 13 January, a temporary trackway for that weekend’s crane and lorry access was laid across the common. This ran from Bolingbroke Grove to the site using Dura-Base HDPE panels laid directly on the grass.

The existing span was lifted out for offsite demolition and recycling at the start of a 52-hour possession on 14/15 January.

Temporary timber bracing had previously been installed between the parapets to ensure the span could be lifted safely.

The existing bearing shelf was broken out on each side using hydraulic breakers mounted on 13-tonne excavators. The crane placed new precast cill beams on each abutment before adding the new steel superstructure,

designed by MLM Group and fabricated by Nu-Steel. The following day, the temporary access trackway was removed, returning the common’s grass to normal use.

Final finishing works followed, with the bridge being completed by 24 February. It was formally opened by students from Northcote Lodge School on Tuesday 22 March.

Bruce Karsten, vice-principal of Northcote Lodge School, said, “Network Rail has done a great job in keeping us up to date with the works and we are grateful that they have completed everything so speedily. The boys are looking forward to being able to use the bridge again on their way to and from school as well as having access to the sports pitches across the railway line.”

So, three great names for three much-needed new bridges. Cat’s Back is probably the highest profile, while Willingdon Tree was arguably the most necessary in terms of public safety. But all were installed in a timely manner and are welcomed by their local communities.

Who said that footbridges were simple structures?

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A bespoke drilling rig overhangs the parapet of Harringworth Viaduct which spans the Northamptonshire/ Rutland border.

TRAVEL & REPEAT TRAVEL &

A

s nineteenth-century railway companies levelled corridors through Britain’s landscape, those in their employ inflicted

disorder and upheaval on the places they visited. Navvies earned notoriety for working hard and drinking even harder, that latter characteristic having a predictable impact on previously unsullied rural communities.

There is, however, a more nuanced story to tell. Of immense social value is the Reverend Daniel William Barrett’s sympathetic insight into navvy culture, chronicled during his time running a Railway Mission on the KetteringManton line in the late 1870s.

Seaton, a village close to the Rutland/ Northamptonshire border, had a population of about 320 at this time; then

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Messrs Lucas & Aird arrived with their construction contract from the Midland Railway. Suddenly, 47 wooden huts appeared nearby, at the northern end of a proposed viaduct; each one typically housed seven men, two women and three children - upwards of 560 souls. Beer consumption was conservatively estimated at 30 gallons weekly per hut (a daily rate of about five pints per man), on top of which was half a gallon of whisky.

But the work ethic was heroic. Wagons with a capacity of 2¼ cubic yards would do 14 rounds in a shift, with two men allocated to each one. This meant that every man was tasked with shovelling more than 20 tons of earth, above their heads, in 12 hours. And they often finished early. At its peak, a workforce of 3,500 - assisted by 120 horses - was occupied along 15

miles of route. Around 90 million bricks had to be manufactured and fired, mostly on site. It was backbreaking, monotonous and monumental; today, it is also beyond anyone’s imagination.

Hard sell Using three kilns, Mr R Holmes made 20 million bricks for the line’s centrepiece - the aforementioned viaduct across the Welland valley and its flood plain, now generally taking the name Harringworth. Extending for 1,280 yards (1,171 metres), the structure was surpassed in length only by the elevated multi-track approach to London Bridge.

Responsible for its design was the firm of consulting engineer William Henry Barlow, his second son Crawford - who acted as resident engineer - and former pupil Charles Bernard Baker.

BRIDGES AND TUNNELS

PHOTOGRAPHY: FOUR BY THREE GRAEME BICKERDIKE

& REPEAT A banquet to celebrate the keying of the last span by Lieutenant Colonel Tryon - whose land the viaduct stood on - was hosted in a shed at Seaton station. It was July 1878 and work to construct the 82 arches had been ongoing for less than 13 months. Barlow Jnr described the structure as “one of the grandest and most perfect pieces of workmanship to be seen in the United Kingdom”. History suggests he was probably overdoing it, but he had every right to indulge in a little hyperbole.

Strong and stable Throughout its operational life, Harringworth Viaduct has benefited from numerous repair interventions, hence its red and blue patchwork appearance. The most recent, undertaken by Amco Rail for Network Rail’s Infrastructure Projects

TRAVEL & REPEAT East Midlands Civils Renewals team, was extensive and deeply described by Chris Parker in August 2016’s Rail Engineer.

In summary, the work has involved a comprehensive programme to address all recorded brickwork defects, together with optioneering for a longer-term strengthening scheme which will raise the structure’s currently-restricted load capacity rating to RA10. As things stand, 25-tonne axle-load freight is limited to 20mph across the viaduct; the objective is to increase this to 60mph. However, the need for further option development has prompted the deferral of this phase into CP6.

We return now to focus on the parapets, which presented a challenge that could

not reasonably have been overcome by conventional means - a bespoke machine was called for.

Better connected Investigations by Cowi UK (formerly Donaldson Associates) indicated that the transverse distribution of live load through the viaduct’s fill material had the effect of pushing out the spandrels, driving arch ring separation as well as the formation of longitudinal cracks in the arch barrels below both the six-foot and inner face of the spandrel walls. These were, in turn,

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(Below) The variable makeup of the parapet had an impact on drilling time and the rate at which the bits had to be changed.

causing the parapets to lean outwards, whilst movement of the piers and arches under traffic - combined with an absence of construction joints in the parapets - encouraged extensive fracturing to occur. Whilst none of this is unusual in masonry structures, the lean was locally significant recorded at more than 40mm.

Cowi’s remediation design developed by senior engineer Manesha Pieris and Peter Harris, director of civil engineering specified the local replacement of bricks and installation of 6mmdiameter stitch bars within the mortar joints across the vertical cracks. To better secure the parapets into the structure, it was also decided to grout 20mm-

diameter vertical reinforcement bars at one-metre centres through the brickwork along the full length of the viaduct, a total of more than 2,300. Every third bar was 1,400mm long to reach the dentil corbels below the stone string course, the others were 1,200mm.

Thereafter, 20mm joints would be saw-cut through the parapets - two each side per span - to allow some shear movement, thus reducing the likelihood of cracks reappearing. To lessen their visual impact on the Grade II listed structure, the joints would be located alongside thickened sections of brickwork on the outer face of the parapets, symmetrically above each arch.

(Above) The rig can sit securely on the parapet without lateral restraints, the outboard equipment being counterbalanced by inboard weights.

On the inner face, galvanised steel angle brackets would be fixed either side of each joint, extending down from the coping stones into the stepped lower part of the wall where it would be inset. A complication here was the presence of a troughing route at the toe of the parapet on the Up side, which had to be temporarily relocated.

The brackets were also used at locations where the lean exceeded 40mm, making a total of 716 to fit across the structure.

First seed Confronted with the considerable task of delivering the design was Amco’s project manager Shaun Trickett. He approached specialist drilling contractors who took the view that three teams could probably achieve sixty 27mm-diameter

COPING STONES PARAPET

DOWN SIDE

STRING COURSE

L O A D PAT H

L O A D PAT H

LONGITUDINAL CRACKS IN ARCH BARREL

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UP SIDE

L O A D PAT H

REINFORCEMENT BAR/GROUT TROUGHING ROUTE

L O A D PAT H

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Mixing the grout for the reinforcement bars.

Hang in the balance

cores in an eight-hour shift using DD400 rigs. To complete, approximately twentysix 16-hour possessions would be needed, with a steep emerging cost of about £500,000. But this ‘traditional’ approach brought issues around working at height, HAV (hand-arm vibration) and the risk of the core breaking within the brickwork or pushing it over. The search immediately got underway for a better system.

Together, Shaun and John Keele, Amco’s plant manager, came up with a concept for a rig which would sit over the parapet.

It was based around three MBS piston drills - hardware with a long track-record in the mining industry for the likes of rock bolting. Working in collaboration with

Network Rail’s own project management team, an on-site test took place involving a single drill held by a quick-hitch and eighttonne mini excavator. This proved the starting point for a year-long process of development and refinement led by Chris Scott at Foulstone Forge.

As Rail Engineer has previously reported, Chris is a problem-solver, using hydraulics, pneumatics and ingenuity to achieve what was not hitherto practical, or to do so more efficiently. Whilst the level of complexity varies from machine to machine, his attention to detail is always absolute. On this occasion, he proceeded to explain Charles’ Law, describing why the airflushed drill bits are cool when withdrawn.

Weighing 900kg, the rig comprises a three-sided frame which hooks over the parapet, lifted on and off by a roadrailer but entirely independent in terms of stability. It sits on durable high-grip rubber wheels, adjustable in height to ensure the drills remain vertical despite the slope of the coping stones. Powering the front pair is a 3kW traction unit with an epicyclic gearbox, enabling the rig to self-advance between the refuges, located over every third pier. Guide wheels are provided on both side pieces, running along the copers’ upright faces and a string course.

The position of the wheels can be set from a place of safety using a lever and pin system.

Used to drill the holes are three Turbo Bolters, supplied by Minova, each one being mounted to a crosshead which travels freely up and down a vertical post, driven by a double-acting pneumatic ram with a pulling pressure limited to 40psi - sufficient for effective drilling but not enough to unintentionally lift the rig off the parapet. Despite much of the

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The drills, their travel mechanisms and air flush are controlled individually from a panel on a T8 trailer.

kit being outboard, the whole system will rest securely on the copers without any lateral restraint thanks to two counterbalancing legs on the inboard side.

Behind the RRV are two T8 trailers. On the first is a 4kW vacuum unit - to capture the expelled drill cuttings - standing alongside a panel from which the works supervisor can individually control the drills, their travel mechanisms and air flush. There’s also a ‘dead man’s handle’ which shuts everything off if mishap results in its release. Ancillary equipment is carried on the second trailer, notably the 500cfm compressor for the air supply, as well as lighting and a generator.

Bit by bit

One of the reinforcement bars is lowered into a hole whilst the drilling rig is moved across a refuge.

On-site operations were logistically hampered by the nearest RRAPs (Road Rail Access Points) being six miles away at Corby and Manton. This meant that two hours were lost at the start and end of each possession due to the required set-up and travelling time, although this was later halved when permission was granted to stable the RRV and trailers on the ACE siding at Manton, leaving all the equipment permanently rigged.

Rail Engineer | Issue 154 | August 2017

Initially, 25 possessions were arranged, most of them running from midnight on Saturday to 16:00 Sunday. Day and night shifts were established, overseen by foremen Tommy Johnstone and Colin Turner, whilst Paul Thompson and Lee Kaszar - who were already familiar with MBS drills from their previous careers down the mines - underwent training at Foulstone Forge to become licenced operators of the system.

On the rig’s first outing, the team achieved 120 holes in a six-hour shift and maintained this rate thereafter. When Rail Engineer attended, one ‘travel and drill’ cycle was typically being completed in three-and-a-half minutes, the grouting-in of the bars following on immediately behind. Despite the use of Minova polycrystalline diamond-tipped bits, the make-up of the wall proved a significant variable, with soft red brick, hard blue brick and 5mm-thick steel plates encountered. Over one particularly tough weekend, the team went through 60 bits.

Speculate to accumulate The brick-laden drudgery of Harringworth Viaduct’s construction period presents a harsh contrast with the comparatively seamless hole-drilling exercise progressed by Amco 140 years later. The former was delivered substantially by hand, many hundreds in number; nowadays these wearisome and repetitive tasks can be done by finger, pushing a button or pressing a lever. That’s how it should be, of course, greatly reducing the attendant risks.

But there is another bonus here, measured in time and money. By investing £60,000 in the rig, an overall saving was made of around £200,000; the drilling was finished several weekends early, such was the improved efficiency. And by adapting the rig to fit other parapets - a fairly modest job - there remains the potential to reduce future project costs elsewhere.

It might be uniquely spectacular, but Harringworth Viaduct is not alone in suffering problems with middle-age spread. There will be more to come.

Harringworth Viaduct.

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BRIDGES AND TUNNELS

Defending Poole Harbour

COLLIN CARR

S

ome people say that Poole Harbour is the second largest natural harbour in the world. Whether this is true or not, the harbour is clearly a lot bigger than most people would imagine. Although the overall tidal range is relatively small by UK standards, a large area of the harbour is drained at low water, revealing salt marshes and a rich array of mud flat ecosystems.

Spanning Poole Bay from east to west is a 1.4km, two tracked rail causeway, formed from a two-metre-high embankment. To enable tidal water to flow north to south, there is a three-span structure called Creekmoor Viaduct toward the east end of the causeway and another 3 spanned structure, Upton Viaduct, toward the west end of the causeway. The causeway itself dates back to 1842.

The Network Rail causeway crosses to the south of Pergins Island, a local nature reserve.

Upton Lake and Creekmoor Lake, to the south-west and south-east respectively, form a southern harbour area known as Holes Bay. For inspection purposes, the causeway is divided into six CERDs (Coastal Estuarine River Defence assets). They are, in fact, earthwork embankments which are protected on the southern face with pitching stone and mass concrete where most exposed to the tidal conditions. However, on the northern face within the bay, they are unprotected.

The surrounding land is very low lying and level, with very shallow slope angles typical of a brackish tidal basin. Tides are influenced by

Rail Engineer | Issue 154 | August 2017

the Isle of Wight and a double tide is notable on the ebb, giving rise to a unique drainage system.

Challenging access This means that the high tide periods last longer than the low tide periods. As a consequence, gaining access and carrying out maintenance and other construction work at low tide becomes far more challenging than experienced elsewhere in the UK. As would be expected at such a location, many

repairs have been conducted over the years, including localised placement of rock armour, sprayed concrete render and installation of concrete wave-walls at the crest of the causeway in more exposed locations.

In January 2014, Bridgezone (now Xeiad) carried out a cyclic detailed inspection of the causeway on behalf of Network Rail. Gavin Baecke, senior asset engineer (structures) for the Network Rail Wessex route, explained that a substantial number of defects were identified, including voids that were penetrating into the embankment by up to two metres.

In addition, certain lengths of the structure were being subjected to locally generated wind-waves, creating scour and lowering of the foreshore that exposed the toe of the

BRIDGES AND TUNNELS structure as well as the stone pitching. In the past, these areas had been repaired using sprayed concrete but these defects were deteriorating year-on-year and, therefore, it was decided that significant repair works were required.

Impact on the environment Other sections of the causeway, that are less exposed to wave action because of higher foreshore levels, were heavily vegetated, with large trees and bushes growing which could undermine the stability of the embankments.

Therefore, ahead of any major works, isolated trees had to be removed and the vegetation cut back so that the structure could be surveyed fully.

As this is a Site of Special Scientific Interest (SSSI) and a Wetland of International Importance (Ramsar convention on wetlands), Gavin pointed out that any planned works would have to be considered alongside their potential environmental impacts both during the repair works and for the long-term.

As a consequence, a detailed Environmental Impact Assessment had to be compiled for the Marine Management Organisation (MMO), including impact and mitigation measures for each stage of the repair work.

WSP, which is based in Exeter, was appointed as consultant to develop and review a wide range of engineering options taking into account environmental, engineering and economic merits. A short-list of options was compiled for Network Rail,

presenting a series of possible approaches.

Gavin explained that this piece of work, developed by WSP working closely with Network Rail and its framework contractor Osborne, has proved to be invaluable because they have now collectively developed a risk grading system on a scale of 1 to 5, which enables Network Rail to prioritise the work that needs to be carried out, with 5 being the highest priority.

Invaluable coastal expertise The additional value that WSP injected into this risk-prioritising process was to offer knowledge about the coastal erosion generally alongside the impact that climate change is having on such locations. For example, without being too scaremongering what will the coast look like around Poole in years to come? Could the whole town be exposed to flooding? Farfetched you might say - but is it?

One option being considered is to work with the local council on an initiative to protect the harbour by developing a salt marsh regeneration programme designed to be environmentally friendly and to provide natural protection to the coastal area and to the embankments of the railway causeway.

With regard to the shopping list of work required to address the defects identified as Grades 4 and 5, the ‘One Team Wessex’ project delivery team, formed of Network Rail and Osborne with, on this occasion, WSP as the designer, developed the most productive and efficient way of carrying out the work over the four-day Easter period and for two days on the following weekend.

The approach they adopted was efficient, low-key and very successful. Two road-rail vehicles were hired for the duration of the work. They organised two, ten-hour shifts that would overlap by two hours, thus minimizing night-time work and, therefore,

Rail Engineer | Issue 154 | August 2017

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BRIDGES AND TUNNELS the associated risk that such working could present in such a potentially hazardous environment.

Creating flexible possessions 30 workers were allocated to each shift and a depot was established alongside the sidings at Poole station, about 500 metres from the causeway. The possession at night was from the station and across the causeway.

This meant that the road-rail vehicles could move materials and equipment up to the causeway, creating worksite stockpiles.

Once everything was in place, the possession was shortened so that it only extended across the causeway. This meant that Poole station could then be fully operational for trains to run to Bournemouth and beyond, thus minimising disruption to passengers and the train operator - ‘One Team Wessex’ in action!

The Network Rail project manager for the work was Stuart Davis. He was clearly very proud that a team approach was adopted as this, and the form of contract adopted, enabled the scope of work to be completed, and emerging defects rectified, whilst ensuring that final costs were kept within budget.

The view was that this incentivised approach ensured that they were not only able to address all of the Grade 4 and 5 categories of work but also a significant amount of additional repair work as well. There were no accidents, either to people or the environment, which was pleasing given the location.

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The work carried out on this isolated tidal location, with its intermittent rail and boat access included, the following: »» Repairs to areas of mass concrete where the rendering had broken away and was missing; »» Installation of stone masonry sets where the existing sets had been washed away, exposing the vulnerable embankment core; »» Filling voids behind many of the masonry stone sets; »» Repairing the revetment slopes around the abutments of the two viaducts that were in poor condition - material had been washed away causing the revetments to slump and hollow out so that they were no longer offering the protection that they were designed for; »» Repairing and replacing loose flagstones offering toe protection to the embankment and mass concrete installed to the toe of the embankment, especially in the area of the two viaducts; »» Placing of grout bags in washout areas, especially in those vulnerable areas where the embankment elevation is quite low; »» Placing Portland Stone rock armour where

areas of unprotected embankment toe had been damaged by scour; »» Removal of trees and tree roots that had created weaknesses in the embankment shoulder; »» Resetting masonry sets that have become dislodged by tide and vegetation.

Over this short period of intense work, 20 tonnes of limestone blocks were installed plus 840 Rock Rolls, 180 tonnes of granular fill and 390 tonnes of gabion rock.

Talking to Gavin, Stuart and their colleagues gave a reminder that, not only is Network Rail responsible for a significant number of high profile coastal sites, but it also has a significant mileage of lower-profile coastal railway that requires significant care and understanding.

It is also a reminder that, just as the industry needs to keep abreast with current technology for signalling, track and rolling stock, railway engineers also need to understand the potential harm that climate change can cause to the railways in years to come. Projects such as Poole Harbour’s Salt Marsh Regeneration Scheme should be essential reading and understanding for all concerned.

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BRIDGES AND TUNNELS

Send for the skyhooks!

The reconstruction

of

Albrighton bridge

GRAHAME TAYLOR

T

he Victorian footbridge at Albrighton station is a fine structure. It’s Grade II listed and obviously everyone’s pride and joy. Carefully restored in 2013, it is resplendent in its fresh coats of paint, clearly visible from Station Road that passes beneath the station platforms.

Clearly visible eh?

Yup, you can’t miss it with its main span supports smack over the eastern abutment.

Now that’s fine if you’re looking for an historic footbridge from the road, but it’s not that fine if you have the task of replacing the bridge under the footbridge foundations.

The footbridge is in the way.

Rail Engineer | Issue 154 | August 2017

Time for reconstruction The original bridge under the railway between Wolverhampton and Shrewsbury was constructed in 1849. How do we know with such certainty? Well, it’s written in large letters on the cast-iron parapets that survive to this day. (In fact, the date on the beams is 1848, which is when they were cast rather than when they were installed.)

They, too, are everyone’s pride and joy.

They, too, get in the way.

Station Road underbridge is a relatively modest structure. It is heavily skewed and was reconstructed in the late 1890s. This, in turn was reconstructed in 1935. It carries two tracks and the 1935 structure consisted of a central girder and two outer girders with a troughing deck.

The station’s platforms were reconstructed at the same time, with trusty Dorman Long 24-inch deep girders supporting the precast concrete slabs.

In common with many similar structures, it was showing its age and the time had come for it to be reconstructed once again. But, this time, the track-carrying components were not everyone’s pride and joy. Rusting and dripping wet, it was time for them to go.

Amco is Network Rail’s framework contractor on this part of the network.

They worked with designers Tony Gee and Partners to reconstruct the 1930s bridge, taking in the complex task of preserving the heritage material. David Millar was Amco’s senior project manager for the work responsible for both managing the design of the temporary arrangement and being the Contractors Responsible Engineer (CRE) on site when it was installed.

All bridges require an element of preparatory works - utilities to check and avoid, and site facilities to set up. However, because of the footbridge and the cast-iron parapets, this bridge reconstruction job had more than its fair share of challenges.

Audacious temporary works Time is strictly limited, even during an out-of-the-rules extended possession. The project was allocated a 73-hour possession but, even within this budget, there was little time to spend scratching around the foundations of the footbridge so that new cill beams could be installed.

The solution was to adopt some very audacious temporary works. A tower was erected tight against the side of the platform retaining wall, heavily weighted with concrete blocks. Beams were then threaded under the top landing of the footbridge, cantilevering out from the tower.

In all, some 19 tonnes of kentledge weights were used in the tower, and this was sufficient for the footbridge to be supported by the cantilever beams. This whole arrangement allowed work to take place below the footbridge footings.

The precious cast-iron parapets were carefully protected so that they would not be damaged in the main possession.

BRIDGES AND TUNNELS Precast, were shipped across to Lanarkshire Welding in Scotland, which fabricated the steelwork, for the trial erection.

Also included were the two new 56-tonne platform units, also fabricated

by Lanarkshire Welding, to replace the old platform that had been dismantled.

These mated up with upstands on the cill units, and were designed to connect up to the original 1849 cast-iron edge beams, a feature in the design that turned out to be very complex to achieve.

Applying Christmas’ lessons All this temporary work made the site very difficult to work in, so it was important to carry out as much work in the days prior to the possession without affecting the running lines.

Road and station closures With the station closed to passengers for two weeks, the platforms over the road were dismantled and the abutments on each corner were excavated as far as possible, with Amco teams working night and day shifts.

The roadway dips down steeply under the railway which meant that, in order to create a level working platform for the 1000-tonne crane, substantial quantities

of Navi Mats (350 in total) were needed to create a working platform for the crane and its outriggers.

All this preparatory work was carried out with a road closure that was taken two weeks before the Easter weekend.

This enabled materials to be stockpiled, except for the major items which were transported down from Scotland, after a full scale trial erection, and held at a nearby service station until required to arrive ‘just in time’.

These major items included the large cill beams - 65 tonnes each - and the two Network Rail standard U-decks, each also weighing in at 65 tonnes. The cill beams, manufactured in Ireland by Shay Murtagh

Network Rail’s project manager Stephen Townley was keen to draw on lessons learnt over the Christmas period when overruns had occurred on West Coast main line works. It was a deliberate tactic to make all components as large as practical - after all, there was a 1000-tonne crane available and it seemed logical to use its capacity to the full - and fitting together smaller precast items can often lead to delays, no matter how precisely the items have been constructed.

The main possession started at 01:00 on 15 April 2017. The first task was to remove the track, carried out by 1st in Rail. The rails were cut and drawn back to be reused, while the life-expired timber sleepers were scrapped.

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BRIDGES AND TUNNELS

With the track out of the way, it was time to remove the existing bridge structure, which had a central girder rather than being two separate spans. Having examined the logistics of cutting up the steelwork in-situ, it soon became clear that the easiest way forward was to remove the entire structure in one go. Again, Baldwins’ 1000-tonne crane was available, so why not make best use of it?

Sam Evans and Sons of Widnes undertook the demolition of the bridge and the handling of spoil and backfill materials.

Lifting beams were positioned below the deck and it was not long before the 87-tonne bridge was airborne. The record

Rail Engineer | Issue 154 | August 2017

drawings proved to be accurate, as the structure had been landed originally on cast bearings rather than being bolted down directly to the abutments.

Tonnes of spoil - plus cupcakes!

With the old deck out of the way, excavators set about reducing the abutments down to a saw cut that had been made earlier. Despite the ever-present temporary works, something like 300 tonnes of spoil was loaded away.

Once a level surface having been created on the old abutments, it was time to lift in the large cill beams. To get them to fit into the tight space available took

some ‘teasing’ of brickwork. Learning from previous experiences, this was not a surprise, even if it was a little frustrating on the night, and had been worked through in Delivery of Work in Possessions (DWWP) workshop sessions before the possession.

Taking 300 tonnes of spoil out meant something like 300 tonnes of new backfill had to go back in, all transported in bulk bags from a road-rail access point 200 metres east of the station. After that, the new spans went in without issues and the new platforms were landed on the cill beam upstands.

With the deck waterproofing pre-installed, the decks were handed to the pway team which made swift work of installing the track in time for signal testing and handback on time (with four hours to spare).

Along with the impressive list of materials and components used, it mustn’t be forgotten that substantial quantities of cake were consumed. It pays to give attention to the concerns of local residents, one of whom rewarded the workforce with an unending supply of cupcakes.

In the days following the possession, the platform surfacing, lighting and furniture were completed. So, too, were the final complex connections that fused the new construction with the last remaining elements of IK Brunel’s GWR cast-iron parapets.

After that, the temporary works were dismantled and the vista of the footbridge and the cast iron parapets has been restored to be everyone’s pride and joy once again.

BRIDGES AND TUNNELS

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BRIDGES AND TUNNELS

Holding back the tide

T

he railway network includes some stunning structures, built by the foremost engineers of

the day.

The list includes the Royal Albert Bridge between Devon and Cornwall (IK Brunel, 1859), the Royal Border Bridge in Northumberland (Robert Stephenson, 1850), Forth Bridge (Sir John Fowler and Sir Benjamin Baker, 1890), Glenfinnan Viaduct, Inverness-shire (Robert McAlpine & Sons, 1901), Ribblehead Viaduct on the Settle-Carlisle line in North Yorkshire (John Sydney Crossley, 1875) and the Twemlow Viaduct in Holmes Chapel, Cheshire (George W Buck, 1841).

There are even some modern ones. The Medway Viaduct (HS1, 2003), and Loughor Viaduct in South Wales (Carillion and Tony Gee & Partners, 2013) are good examples.

In a list published in 2013, Network Rail identified 28,451 bridges in its portfolio, excluding footbridges and culverts. It commented: “A bridge is defined as a structure with a span of ≥1800mm.”

Small and unseen But what of the ones under 1800mm? Often overlooked, and certainly not iconic, these are the drains and culverts that run under

Rail Engineer | Issue 154 | August 2017

the railway all over the country - around 30,000 of them, just on Network Rail infrastructure. They have to be maintained, they may well have water running through them either constantly or in times of flood, and any problems with them may well go unnoticed until it is too late.

Like most marine structures, culverts are simple, but can become damaged and dangerous with water erosion over time. A good example is the Cobb Valley Culvert in Anglesey, North Wales. This runs directly under the A5 highway and North

Wales Coast railway between Valley and Holyhead, adjacent to the Cymyron Strait. With water flowing through the structure at approximately four metres per second (nine mph), the high flows and poor conditions prevented any safe means of access to carry out inspections and repair works.

Kaymac Marine & Civil Engineering was commissioned

by Network Rail to control the powerful flow of water through the structure so that a structural survey and any remedial works could be carried out safely.

However, with the Irish Sea to the

BRIDGES AND TUNNELS north and the inland tidal lagoon to the south of the structure, there is constant flow, making this a challenging operation if not controlled correctly.

Water flows through the structure on both rising and falling tides, with slack water lasting only a very short time - around 10-15 minutes - so this was no easy job for the Kaymac team as the works had to take place at night during blockades of the railway line and within the short window at slack water.

Tidal challenge To control the water flow, Kaymac designed a steel guide and sluice gate system that would hold the water back and prevent any flow through the structure. Due to the volume of water that flows through the structure during the tidal cycle, the sluice could only be lowered and raised at certain states of the tide lest it became jammed in the steel guides or, potentially, damaged during the operation.

Although the sluice could be lowered and raised using pneumatic winches or manual chain pulls, Kaymac used a crane positioned on the A5 carriageway to ensure that the sluice did not become obstructed through possible un-balanced lifting as a result of using two separate winch systems.

Working against the clock during a Saturday night possession, the specially designed and fabricated steel guides were installed and a sluice gate lifted into position, ready for operation at slack water, using a 25-tonne crane positioned within the road closure on the A5. Slack water was at approximately 02:00 and there was a 10-15 minute window to lower the gate into place, which was successfully achieved.

A stop log system was then installed at the seaward side of the structure at relevant states of the tide throughout the week using a 10-tonne mobile crane working within the temporary traffic management set up on the A5. Following installation of the stop logs and the final sealing, the sluice gate was removed using two six-tonne air hoists during another Saturday night possession; a road closure was in place and a 25-tonne crane on site as a precautionary measure.

The whole structure became totally accessible and, after having been inspected safely by divers, re-pointing and fracture repairs were carried out.

On completion of the repair works, the sluice gate was re-fitted, allowing safe removal of the stop logs. The sluice gate was then raised at slack water, allowing free tidal flow through the structure. The upper steel guides permitted the steel sluice gate to be raised and then fixed into the open position until Network Rail requires further maintenance or inspection work to be carried out in the future.

In this instance, although working on a rail culvert, the Kaymac team called upon its expertise in marine engineering to assist. The company regularly inspects lock gates, installs cofferdams and carries out scour protection work, an activity which is also in demand around rail bridges over rivers and estuaries.

With facilities at Swansea, Bristol and in Kent, Kaymac is well placed to assist with all types of ‘wet’ work and specialises in innovation above and below the water line.

Rail Engineer | Issue 154 | August 2017

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BRIDGES AND TUNNELS

Alternative design

brings success

LEE BARRACLOUGH

C

arters Bridge was built in 1868 as a two span overbridge comprising steel beams supporting a timber deck. Constructed for the opening of the Lancashire Union Line, it is the only means of access for a farmer between two sections of his land.

By the 1950s, the mass brick abutments showed significant signs of deterioration and were propped by timbers. The distress is likely to have resulted from ground movements caused by historic mining. The superstructure was replaced in the 1960s by a pair of steel beams supporting timber decking. The brick abutments were partially broken down and replaced by bank seats at the top of the railway cutting.

The structure spans the Wigan to Huyton lines, which were electrified in 2012 in Phase 2 of the North West Electrification Programme. However, the structure was found to be understrength and the parapet was inadequate over the electrified lines.

So, in 2015, Network Rail commissioned Murphy and Tony Gee and Partners to design and construct a replacement bridge.

The GRIP 2 document (feasibility) stated that the bridge would be

Rail Engineer | Issue 154 | August 2017

replaced by a two-span steel composite structure supported in the existing abutments. This solution required extensive temporary works and would cause considerable disruption to the farmer’s business as it would have required a 10-week closure of the bridge.

Instead, the team developed a 39-metre single-span solution, to be constructed parallel to the existing bridge. This minimised the disruption to the farmer as the new bridge could be built while maintaining access using the old bridge. However, the design team was constrained in two ways - only two 29-hour closures of the railway would be permitted for the scheme, and the new structure would have to be installed over the electrified railway.

BRIDGES AND TUNNELS Ground conditions The bridge is situated on the Pennine Lower Coal Measures Formation (PLCM) of the Langsettian age of the South Lancashire Coalfield, composed of sandstone, siltstone, mudstone and coal beds.

Covering this solid geology there is a thin veneer, less than a few meters thick, of superficial glacial deposits (diamicton).

Due to historic mining activity in the area and the predicted presence of coal seams beneath the structure, a comprehensive site investigation was undertaken. The ground investigation comprised eight boreholes to depths of between 31 and 40 metres. A combination of rotary coring and open hole drilling was employed, with the objective of providing geotechnical information for foundation design and checking for the presence of worked or unworked coal seams beneath the structure.

The materials encountered in the boreholes generally corroborated the anticipated superficial and solid geology from the desk study, which had been developed based upon the examination of geological maps and borehole records in the public domain.

The proposed north abutment founding level was confirmed as being situated, in its entirety, in an eight-metre-thick layer of 'extremely weak' to 'weak' mudstone. The intact coal seams and various lithologies encountered in the four boreholes located on the northern side of the cutting could be readily correlated.

However, correlation of the materials encountered in the boreholes situated on the southern side of the cutting was extremely difficult, with boreholes only 10 metres apart showing significant differences in stratigraphy. These differences were explained at design stage by the presence of two mapped geological faults in close proximity to the location of the south abutment, one was noted to be 'uncertain'.

Irrespective of the aforementioned, the two boreholes closest to the position of the south abutment both gave the founding level stratum to be a 'medium-strong' sandstone of variable thickness.

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BRIDGES AND TUNNELS

Foundation design Having assessed the results of the geological survey, both abutments were designed with shallow foundations, the north abutment on mudstone with an allowable bearing pressure of 320kPa and the south abutment on a sandstone founding stratum with an allowable bearing pressure of 1,000kPa. Due to the variability detected in the boreholes, a risk was identified that the founding stratum could vary from that anticipated in design. Consequently, once the excavations were nearing founding level, they were inspected and mapped to confirm they complied with the minimum acceptable geotechnical conditions in terms of rock lithology, strength and degree of fracturing identified on the drawing.

Rail Engineer | Issue 154 | August 2017

Preliminary calculations were also undertaken for the south abutment to confirm that, in the event that the actual founding stratum was a mudstone, a workable shallow foundation solution could be found without the necessity to revert to piles.

Bridge deck solution Tony Gee developed a concept where the main weathering steel beams would be lifted into place with the stringcourse and parapet in place. This removed the requirement for temporary works over the railway during construction and allowed the bridge to be installed in a single 29-hour closure of the railway.

A 3D BIM model was used throughout the design process to facilitate buildability discussions

within the delivery team. This concept was developed by Tony Gee working in close collaboration with Murphy International (steelwork fabricator) and Shay Murtagh (pre-cast concrete manufacturer).

The two pairs of beams were fabricated with the stringcourse in two sections in the precast yard to allow delivery. These were spliced together on site and a small in-situ stitch section was cast in the stringcourse at ground level. The aluminium parapets were installed prior to lifting.

The entire substructure was designed to be precast as modular elements to limit lift weights.

Innovation To enable the pair of girders, stringcourse and parapet to be lifted as a single unit, the stringcourse was designed as a continuous upstand. This provided lateral stability to the main beam during installation. It required innovative collaboration between the fabricator and designer, ensuring the units could be fabricated in two pieces and then transported to site in Wigan.

To communicate the new bridge construction process effectively, a QR code was added to information posters.

This allowed site team members and site visitors to scan the QR code which redirected them to a website which had an interactive 3D installation model for the bridge. This displayed a userfriendly, step-by-step installation procedure enabling people to fully understand each stage in the construction process.

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BRIDGES AND TUNNELS

Environmental management and sustainability The environmental management plan (EMP) was developed at the earliest opportunity, ensuring that requirements of key stakeholders, including the operators of a buried fuel line which crossed the site were identified and addressed.

All legal requirements were met prior to the start of construction. This included obtaining a hedgerow removal notice from St Helens council to allow for the widening of the site access for the transportation of the crane to site. In addition, a T7 exemption was obtained which would allow for the crushing and screening of bricks from the demolished abutments on site. This diverted 500 tonnes of waste from landfill as the material was reused in the reinstatement of the bridge approach slopes and for use as hardstanding via U1 exemption.

Completed scheme The main beams and entire new substructures were installed in a single 29-hour possession using a 1,000 tonne crane. On completion, the stone for the crane berthing area was reused for the approach roads.

The scheme was successfully completed in May 2016 through close collaboration between the designer and contractor and by an innovative challenge to the GRIP 2 proposal.

The scheme was subsequently awarded Medium Project of the Year at the ICE North Awards 2017.

Darrell Matthews, North West regional director of the Institution of Civil Engineers, said: “The new Carter’s Bridge is a great example of how

Rail Engineer | Issue 154 | August 2017

civil engineers solve problems. In this case, an old bridge had to be replaced while causing the least possible disruption to the people who needed access to it and the railway that passed under it.

“The engineers achieved this by ingenuity in design and construction, including the prefabrication of bridge components off-site so they could be installed using a large capacity crane during a single 29-hour closure of the railway line.

“Meanwhile, the old bridge was left in place while the new one was constructed, after which the old bridge and the remains of an even older structure were demolished. The whole thing was delivered on time, on budget, with an excellent safety record and minimal impact on the environment.”

Lee Barraclough is associate director at Tony Gee and Partners. Additional material kindly supplied

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46

BRIDGES AND TUNNELS

MARC JOHNSON

Taking the

Northern line to Battersea

O

n the roof of the Northern line extension’s Battersea Park Road base is a decked terrace which looks out over the expansive worksite that now surrounds Battersea Power Station. One only has to cast one's eyes briefly around the site to get an idea of the well-tuned production line that’s required to excavate rail tunnels.

A large rectangular launch shaft sits directly below, surrounded by the precast concrete segments used to line the tunnels and the two cranes that are lifting them in. A conveyor system hangs off the side, transporting spoil from Helen and Amy, the two tunnel boring machines (TBMs) which are currently making their way towards Kennington station -

an interchange station for the Charing Cross and Bank branches of the Northern line.

Following tunnelling tradition, both TBMs have been named; one after British astronaut Helen Sharman and the other after aviation pioneer Amy Johnson.

The 3.2km extension will include new stations at Battersea Power Station and Nine Elms. The latter

is situated just down the road from the site of the former Nine Elms railway station. This had been a terminus station on the London & Southampton Railway during the brief 10-year period it was open between 1838 and 1848. Since then it has been the location of the L&SWR’s carriage and wagon works and a freight yard. Badly damaged by bombs during the Second World War, it was demolished in the 1960s and the flower section of New Covent Garden Market now stands in its place.

£1.2 billion project Serious calls for an extension of the Northern line to Battersea were first made in 2007, but it wasn’t until 2014 that the project received government approval.

Things moved considerably quicker after that and, later that same year, a joint venture between Ferrovial Agroman and Laing O’Rourke (FLO) was awarded the main construction contract.

The Greater London Authority will borrow up to £1 billion to fund the line’s construction, although the current cost quoted

by Transport for London (TfL) is £1.2 billion. The funds to repay

Rail Engineer | Issue 154 | August 2017

BRIDGES AND TUNNELS the loan will be recouped later on from the local developers set to benefit from the resulting surge in property prices.

The site around the iconic power station is substantial. To the left of the launch shaft is the Battersea station box, beyond that is the junction of the South London Line and Brighton main line. The huge regeneration project currently underway around Battersea, Vauxhall and Nine Elms - dubbed Dubai-onThames - will rely on the Northern line extension (NLE), and the TBMs are now operating 24 hours a day, seven days a week, to deliver it.

Articulation joints During a tour of the worksite, Jonathan Cooper, the project manager overseeing the tunnelling phase, explained the progress that had been made following the launch of the TBMs in March this year. These machines, supplied by French manufacturer NFM Technologies

from its factory in Le Creusot, are slightly smaller than those used for Crossrail’s tunnelling programme. However, NLE’s tunnels will still be wider than the existing Northern line tunnels to allow enough room to install an escape walkway.

From Battersea, the twin-bore tunnel will run beneath the Victoria line at Vauxhall and connect up to the Charing Cross branch of the Northern line at Kennington. Two permanent

ventilation shafts will also be constructed at Kennington Park and Kennington Green.

As well as running close to the Victoria line, the NLE passes just a couple of metres below the South West Storm Relief Sewer, which is located between the two new stations. As part of the preparatory works for the route, Amey installed eight articulation joints along a 55-metre segment of the sewer to allow it to flex as the TBMs pass beneath.

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Rail Engineer | Issue 154 | August 2017

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BRIDGES AND TUNNELS around 15 operators loading concrete segments into the TBM and overseeing its progress.

The TBMs move at a rate of around 50mm a minute and install around 20 precast concrete rings a day - altogether 20,000 segments will make up the tunnel’s lining. Each tunnel ring is made up of five segments and a key; software used to control the TBM can work out what segment it needs next up to three rings in advance.

300,000 tonnes of earth

Helen is now well on her way towards Kennington with Amy following on behind. Excavation of the station boxes at Battersea and Nine Elms is well advanced.

Later this year, both TBMs will stop short of the Kennington loop and the final breakthrough will take place during a closure of the Northern line at Christmas.

Learning lessons from Crossrail Tunnelling programmes are challenging engineering feats, particularly when historic records prove unreliable. In one case, a water well was discovered in the path of one of the TBMs, 10 metres away from where the plans showed it could be. In this kind of scenario, TfL and its contractors have to work quickly to get the tunnelling programme back on schedule and try to minimise any delays to the rest of the programme.

The London clay Helen and Amy are wrestling with is also very similar to the ground conditions that Crossrail’s engineers had to overcome. Indeed, Jonathan said the NLE project has looked to learn lessons from Crossrail.

Helen and Amy are served by six locomotives which help ferry people and equipment from the launch shaft into the tunnels. At any one time, each TBM will have

Rail Engineer | Issue 154 | August 2017

One of the most important parts of the entire process is the conveyor system that removes spoil from the site. The earth that is excavated is mixed with water and a foaming agent to make it more malleable and easier to transport.

Barges rather than lorries are being used to move spoil from the site, and TfL estimates that around 300,000 tonnes of earth will be excavated during the tunnelling phase. TfL’s figures suggest that transporting the waste on the back of a truck would have added 40,000 lorry journeys to London’s congested road network. Instead, the spoil will leave site via the Thames where it is being taken to Goshems in Essex, to be used to create arable farmland on a former landfill site next to Tilbury power station - a site that was also used to dispose of some of the material excavated for Crossrail.

2020 and beyond Both TBMs are due to complete their drives in the autumn, at which point they will be returned to the manufacturer and the fitout of the tunnels will begin.

TfL plans to begin the station fit-out in 2019 and hopes to complete the extension by 2020.

The NLE is viewed by TfL as part of its ongoing upgrade of the Northern line, which has included retrofitting the line with CBTC signalling and upgrading stations including Tottenham Court Road, Bank and Camden Town.

Beyond 2020, there are those who would like to see the NLE taken all the way to Clapham Junction, connecting one of the country’s busiest stations to the London Underground network.

Although it hasn’t been ruled out, TfL has said a further extension wouldn’t be viable without Crossrail 2, which includes Clapham Junction on its proposed route map.

A TfL consultation document for Crossrail 2 indicated that any further extension of the Northern line would rely on the project going ahead. Otherwise, the result could be even more congestion on Northern line services.

To give an idea of scale, Crossrail 2’s tunnels will be 10 times as long as NLE, which could well end up being the warmup act for London’s next mega project.

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50

BRIDGES AND TUNNELS

DARREN MCKENNA

The world’s longes t footbridge?

R

ailway engineers don’t often get the opportunity to dismantle and rebuild a piece of railway heritage. That’s why working on a well-known station footbridge in Anglesey was such an exciting project for Network Rail’s asset engineer and externally appointed structural designers. The work was carried out at the beginning of 2017 as part of the plans to build a bigger and better railway for passengers.

Llanfairpwll station is a popular tourist attraction due to the extended name it is often known by Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch which translates to “St. Mary’s Church in the hollow of white hazel near a rapid whirlpool and the Church of St. Tysilio near the red cave”. People visit the station to take photographs of the famous sign and often use it as a starting point to explore Anglesey and the North Wales coast.

Even the name itself is a piece of railway history. It was ‘invented’ in the 1860s to be the longest place name in Britain and to attract tourists. At 58 characters (only 51 letters as ‘ch’ and ‘ll’ are regarded as single letters in Welsh) it is the second longest place name in the world*. To make life simpler for passengers and for ticketing websites, the official name of the station is Llanfairpwll, with the three-letter code LPG. But back to the bridge…

Philosophy Whenever possible, when carrying out footbridge refurbishments, the Wales route removes any spans crossing the track and transports them to a controlled environment. Of course, this is only practical where a temporary footbridge can be installed on the site and the general logistics of the surrounding area allow for the hoisting and lifting of a bridge span onto a low level loader.

This philosophy is driven by three factors - the results of inspections of previous bridge refurbishments completed on the Wales route over the last five years, the importance for the control of salt contamination, especially in coastal areas, and the safety of passengers using stations during refurbishment works.

In addition, it was important to work with partners Arriva Trains Wales to ensure that the works were completed during the winter and spring in order to cause minimal disruption, with the station and surrounding area being such a popular tourist destination.

As it was Network Rail’s structural assessment programme confirmed that the footbridge in Llanfairpwll could not support the minimum required live loading of 5.0kN/m². Considering the station’s high footfall, this was a concern. Therefore, the buildings asset team, based in Cardiff, decided to restrict the number of passengers that could physically stand on the bridge span.

Prior to the Flying Scotsman passing through during 2016, Herras fencing was installed to the deck span to physically minimise the loaded width of the footway. A full repair and refurbishment was imminent, so the installation of this fencing was only deemed a short-term restriction.

A desktop study confirmed that the layout of the station allowed for a temporary footbridge to be installed and the existing span could be hoisted onto a low level loader and transported to a workshop. The footbridge trestles and staircases would remain on site, encapsulated with a scaffold system for full access and covered to protect the structures from the elements during the onsite refurbishment of these parts.

Network Rail tries to avoid any site painting works during the winter months, but negotiating access to the site with third parties took longer than anticipated and delayed the start date for the project.

*THE WORLD’S LONGEST Those wondering why Llanfairpwll station, at 51 letters (58 characters), is only the world’s second longest place name should visit a hill at Hawke’s Bay. According to Land Information New Zealand, the hill is called Taumatawhakatangihangakoauauotamateapokaiwhenuakitanatahu (57 letters) although there are even longer forms of the same place name with up to 105 letters. It’s 85-character version, Taumatawhakatangi­hangakoauauotamatea­turipukakapikimaunga­ horonukupokaiwhen­uakitanatahu, features in the Guinness Book of Records as the longest place name. But locals simply call it Taumata.

Rail Engineer | Issue 154 | August 2017

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BRIDGES AND TUNNELS The lift During January 2017, a temporary Layher footbridge was installed, complete with a temporary lighting installation and the required lux-level testing. This was all completed and in operation by 19 January.

The existing footbridge was closed and the footbridge structure was prepared for span removal. This included removing the handrails, lighting and the connection fixings securing the bridge to the trestle frames at either end.

The lift was carried out on a Saturday night under possession using a crane and slings. The bridge was slowly hoisted and manoeuvred towards a low level loader in the car park and transported to Centregreat’s workshop in Cardiff, 210 miles away.

The reveal Once the bridge span had been removed and the bare frame of the structure had been shot blasted back to bare metal, engineers were able to inspect the Victorian structure up close and appreciate the sheer simplicity of the bridge. The overall impression was quite promising and it appeared to be a relatively intact structure.

The inspection revealed that the bottom chord of the lattice truss had previously received strengthening plates, but it wasn’t until the plates were removed that the true extent of corrosion could be seen.

Once it was decided that a full renewal was required of the bottom chord, engineers worked alongside Centregreat’s steelwork fabricators to design and detail a new bottom chord that would reinstate the transfer of forces between the top and bottom chord of the truss.

Rail Engineer | Issue 154 | August 2017

Salt contamination

Unaligned colour scheme

Even with the strictest of site controls, it is very difficult for a contractor to control the level of salt contamination, particularly in coastal environments. However, the Wales Route did succeed with one footbridge refurbishment during the summer of 2016.

The site was located in one of the highest recorded areas for airborne salts and, for logistical reasons, the footbridge could not be removed off site, so the footbridge was constantly monitored, jet washed and retested to prove that salt contamination was within acceptable limits before the application of paint layers.

Although the footbridge span at Llanfairpwll was removed for refurbishment in a factory environment, the stairways and trestle frames had to remain. With full site encapsulation, the trestle frames and stairways were shot blasted back to bare metal ready for repairs and strengthening.

The contractor had to ensure that the soluble salt traces left on the shot blasted on-site structures were monitored and, where required, further jet washing was carried out and tested before each paint layer could be applied.

As well as repairs and painting, the main span of the bridge, the stair treads, risers and landings were totally replaced with structural GRP panels and treads, specially made by Polydeck using its unique foam core support structure which matched the new footbridge span. The GRP deck also provides a durable, aesthetically pleasing and slip-resistant walking surface

The specific requirement for the colour scheme was that it should not relate to any branding. Therefore the Railway Heritage Trust developed a suitable painting scheme for the North Wales coast. The architect at the time for the regional railways in the North West generally used dark green, beige and red. These colours, in particular the dark green and beige, worked well with a variety of materials and were well suited to rural locations.

The reinstatement By mid-March, the structures were completed and about to be reunited.

On 25 March, the refurbished span was hoisted and manoeuvred back onto its support trestles. By the 29th, the sparkling footbridge was completely trial lit with new energy saving LED lights, which would eventually be lit within the new handrail system.

The £395,000 project to upgrade and restore this historic footbridge was completed by mid-April. The benefits of the span removal, strict control of salt contamination and an understanding and respect for Victorian heritage were there for all to see.

All that was left to do was to dismantle the temporary footbridge and clear the site, ready for a new season’s tourists to arrive.

Darren McKenna is an asset engineer buildings fabric on the Wales Route of Network Rail.

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54

FEATURE

Waterloo and South West Route

Upgrade

MARK PHILLIPS

W

idely regarded as one of the best of the London termini for passenger circulation and amenities, perhaps up until the reconstruction of Euston, Waterloo station now finds itself undergoing a major transformation. Once again, as it has done several times before, the station must keep ahead of capacity demands, both those pressing now and future forecasts.

Looking back over time, it is possible to see how these present needs are only a continuation of an inevitable ongoing evolutionary process.

Prior to the present station, there existed a complex and confused arrangement of platforms, buildings, track layouts and passenger areas. These had evolved piecemeal, over many years, as the commuter belt expanded and the London & South Western Railway developed its services during the nineteenth century.

Towards the end of that century, the railway company found that, eventually, it had to take radical measures to cope with the increasing passenger numbers and the unsatisfactory operational aspects of the station. For example, fifteen of the platforms had to share numbers 2 to 10.

There would be trains on either side of a platform, but the unknowing passenger would find it difficult to be sure on which face was his train!

Waterloo was well known for the difficulties in getting information about departures. In Jerome K. Jerome’s famous

Rail Engineer | Issue 154 | August 2017

and amusing book Three Men in a Boat (1889), the station was satirised as the protagonists, frustrated in their inability to find their train to Kingston, had to bribe an engine driver to take them there. The train that they had illicitly acquired was actually the Exeter mail.

It is in part thanks to the ramshackle nature of the previous station that the L&SWR directors were incentivised to make a fresh start on the site. In 1901, chief engineer JW Jacoub-Hood was sent to the USA to study the design of terminal stations. The new Waterloo, which was constructed between then and its grand opening by Queen Mary in 1922, largely followed his plans, which provided a straightforward and spacious station on a difficult site.

The new design featured a broad passenger concourse running across the ends of all twenty-one platforms, along with a new roof, passenger amenities and railway offices in a long frontage block across the whole area available for station redevelopment.

Throughout the twentieth century, Waterloo station was a common sight in feature films and also in newsreels during both World Wars, with servicemen and those greeting or waving them off thronging the familiar concourse. The magnificent clock, which still hangs centrally over the concourse, is often in evidence.

On the theme of armed conflict, the Victory Arch, which is a notable architectural feature at the west end of the concourse, opposite to Platforms 19 and 20, is, because of its position, sadly unnoticed by the majority of passengers hurrying through it to gain access to or from the station. The architectural context of this will become clearer later in this article.

The station went through periods of further development in the 1920s and 1930s with the electrification schemes, but remained largely unchanged until the construction of the International terminal which opened in November 1994, reducing the number of platforms available for ‘domestic’ use back to nineteen.

FEATURE

Time for development The incentive for the present upgrading is the need, once more, to provide significant extra capacity at the station and throughout the Wessex Route. The opportunity is provided primarily by the five redundant former International platforms, which are now being pressed into use for domestic services.

Since the relocation of Eurostar services from Waterloo to St. Pancras International in November 2007, platforms 21 to 24 have lain dormant awaiting a new purpose (Platform 20 was put back into use for domestic services in 2014). The former International terminal ticketing, checking-in and security facilities have become an empty space, isolated from the rest of the station.

A most imaginative project to revitalise this part of the station, and also to provide the key to capacity enhancement for the whole route, is now rapidly approaching completion.

Following similar thinking to that which created the fit-for-purpose rebuilt Waterloo in 1922, the International platforms are being shortened at their buffer-stop ends so that there is space for a broad and adequate passenger concourse in front of a new gate line with departure board displays above.

During the period in which these platforms were in operational use for Eurostar services, the passenger checking-in area was below the level of the platforms themselves. The radically refurbished area now includes a new concourse bridge, which connects the original platform concourse to the new one for Platforms 20 to 24, at a stroke unifying the new “Domestic� platforms with the original nineteen and greatly facilitating passenger circulation. The lower level, below this new

Rail Engineer | Issue 154 | August 2017

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FEATURE bridge, will become part of a retail area to be developed. There is an aspiration for it to rival the similar developments at London St. Pancras International and Birmingham New Street.

The five new platforms will open for temporary operational use between 5 and 28 August whilst there is a closure of Platforms 1-10. After that, Platforms 21-24 will remain closed until December 2018.

Platform 20 will remain open permanently.

Aesthetics Virtual reality imaging and artists’ impressions of the redeveloped area at two levels around the new concourse bridge show an enhanced passenger circulation and retail environment, with new architectural features which will show off the 1990s International roof structure to great effect. It can also be seen from the imaging that the Victory Arch will be displayed far more effectively as part of the overall ambience than it ever has been previously.

Another major structure to be incorporated into the redeveloped area of Platforms 20 to 24 is a new link roof, which will form continuous cover between the iconic International roof and the original station roof trusses. The structural glass wall, which previously separated the International from the domestic stations, was taken down as part of the modifications for the new concourse.

Rail Engineer | Issue 154 | August 2017

Capacity demands

Capacity solutions

Network Rail’s Wessex Route is one of the busiest and most congested parts of the railway network. In 1997, soon after privatisation, there were 108 million passenger journeys annually on the whole South West (Wessex) Route. Currently, that figure has more than doubled to 234 million per year. Furthermore, a baseline passenger survey study made in 2013 forecast that between that date and 2043 there would be an increase of 40 per cent.

Those statistics refer to the whole SW (Wessex) Route. For Waterloo station alone, the statistics are perhaps even more significant. Here there are more than 99 million passenger journeys per year, up from 58 million in 1998. More people use Waterloo station than Heathrow airport.

To respond to these pressing demands for increased capacity, Network Rail and South West Trains, in partnership with the Department for Transport, have developed a strategy known as the Waterloo and South West Upgrade. The primary key components of this upgrade are: »» Redevelopment of the previous International terminal and platforms; »» Extension of Platforms 1-4 to accommodate 10-car trains in place of the present eight-car units; »» Platform extension at 10 outlying stations - Feltham, Chertsey, Camberley, Egham, Virginia Water, Sunningdale, Ascot, Martins Heron, Bracknell and Wokingham; »» Track and signalling alterations on

FEATURE the approaches to Waterloo to create longitudinal space for the platform alterations; »» Thirty new five-car Desiro class trains; »» Improvements in access to the Bakerloo, Northern and Jubilee tube lines from platforms1/2 and 3/4 and from the former International terminal.

Investment, implementation and programme The upgrade represents an £800 million investment, approximately half of which is accounted for by the conversion of the International platforms and terminal into their new use. Also included in this overall budget, apart from the other platform extensions and associated track and signalling alterations, is the provision of thirty new five-car trains.

The infrastructure alterations and new build are being carried out by the Western Capacity Alliance, which is a consortium of Network Rail, Aecom, Colas Rail, Mott MacDonald and Skanska.

The overall programme commenced in 2016 with the initial redevelopment stages of the International platforms. They have been shortened at their far ends to take 12-car trains rather than the much longer Eurostar trains for which they originally catered.

When these platforms are ready for use by Windsor line services on 5 August this year, Platforms 1 to 10 will be closed

between then and 28 August. This closure will allow Platforms 1 to 4 to be extended to accommodate 10-car trains and Platforms 5 to 8 will be modified. The proximity of switch and crossing configurations outside the station means that the extension of the platforms cannot be achieved without significant modification of the track layouts approaching these platforms and their associated signalling.

Much of this alteration to the approach infrastructure was accomplished over the 2017 Easter weekend. Arup has designed an innovative track layout, including tandem switches on concrete bearers, to achieve compactness in the limited area available for reconfiguration.

An even more severe closure, of Platforms 1-14, between 25 and 28 August, over the Bank Holiday weekend, is needed in order to complete the track and signalling alterations necessitated by the platform extensions.

Extension of the platforms at the outlying stations is now complete apart from the work at Feltham, which is complicated by the proximity of a level crossing.

The end result of this, the largest investment for decades, will be an increase in peak time capacity into Waterloo of 30 per cent. That’s room for an extra 45,000 people each morning and afternoon.

Working with the travelling public The need for these major closures and the effects of them on the train services has been well publicised to customers throughout the South West area through a comprehensive leafleting campaign and the provision of other local information such as station posters, commercial adverts and media announcements. Passengers have been given very detailed advice about how to modify their travel plans economically

and to avoid frustration whilst, at the same time, being told of the long-term benefits of the capacity upgrade. The publicity campaign also aims to reduce the demand for travel during the closure periods in order to further minimise the potential for overcrowded services.

Using the results of surveys carried out by Transport Focus, Network Rail has been able to confirm that 84 per cent of customers polled were fully aware of the work to be carried out in August, which is the most disruptive period in the whole programme, and 62 per cent are supportive of the need for the work. Also, encouragingly, there has been a good response to the exhortations to minimise travel. During this period 34 per cent of respondents will work from home or a new location, 24 per cent will take annual leave and only 50 per cent “will continue to use the train”.

Rail Engineer | Issue 154 | August 2017

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FEATURE

Swanage Railway

Reconnected

T

he preserved Swanage Railway in Dorset featured in issue 86 (December 2011), which described the control and communications systems and featured the three signalboxes at Swanage, Harmans Cross and Corfe Castle.

The article hinted of the intention to extend services to Wareham on the Bournemouth-Weymouth main line, maybe as early as 2013. That was overoptimistic but, since 13 June this year, a regular service has started, the first time since 1972, when BR closed the line, that timetabled trains have run over this section.

Freight services had continued from Worgret Junction, where the branch joined the main line, to Furzebrook for trains associated with the extraction of oil from nearby wells at Wytch Farm oilfield. This was fortuitous, as it maintained the connection to what was then considered a long siding.

The Swanage Railway gradually re-built the line back from Swanage to, firstly, Herston Halt, then to Harmans Cross, and finally through Corfe Castle to Norden. This was established as a railhead for people to park and take the train to Swanage, where traffic congestion was a major concern.

In 2002, the final length of track was laid to join the newly created railway with the Furzebrook siding, thus permitting the occasional special train to visit the line.

However, without proper signalling with the main line, there could be no semblance of a regular service.

So why has it taken so long to re-establish the full route for passenger trains and what has been required? Rail Engineer went to meet Mike Walshaw, the project manager for the signalling system between Norden and Worgret Junction, to find out the detail.

Rail Engineer | Issue 154 | August 2017

Basic signalling requirements The Swanage Railway uses traditional signalling practice with signalboxes containing mechanical lever frames, semaphore signals, and electric token and tablet machines for the single line sections.

The mainly volunteer operators are familiar with this operation and it was decided to maintain something similar for the Wareham extension.

However, with the Poole to Wool main line being re-signalled using modern colour light signals and track circuit block, interfacing the two technologies was always going to be something of a challenge.

CLIVE KESSELL

The line from Corfe Castle to Norden was originally worked with a train staff, allowing only one train in this short section.

At Norden, a run round loop exists for the steam service loco to run round its train, and is a continuing requirement.

This method of train staff working would not be appropriate for any onward service to Wareham and thus, when the new Corfe Castle signalbox was commissioned in 2011, the section was converted to NSKT (No Signaller Key Token) operation with train crews being responsible for the token activity at Norden. This set the scene for the creation of a new NST (No Signaller Token) section from Norden to Worgret Junction for the extended service.

The new token section extends from the barrier-controlled level crossing named ‘Norden Gates’, on the London side of Norden Station, as far as Network Rail’s colour-light junction-protecting signal at Worgret Junction (PW5750). To place the

FEATURE London-end token machine on the branch line short of the junction would mean stopping trains there to pick up or give up tokens, which was deemed impractical.

Instead, two token machines are provided at Wareham Station in enclosed location cases at the east end of both the Down and Up platforms. Swanage trains normally use the Down platform but trains can access the Up platform via a crossover should South West Trains’ Weymouth-bound services be running late.

The Poole to Wool section, including Worgret Junction, is controlled from the Dorset Coast Panel at Basingstoke SCC (Signalling Control Centre). This has a carefully designed interface such that the signal leading on to the Swanage branch cannot be cleared unless a token has been taken out for the section to Norden Gates, a workable solution.

electrically interlocked with each other with indicators to show the status of each item.

The line from Norden Gates to Corfe Castle is track circuited and there is a Train Approach Treadle for trains approaching from Wareham to alert the crossing keeper that the barriers need lowering.

Specially adapted Tyers Electric Key Token machines are installed at Norden Gates, plus the two at Wareham, together with 30 newly manufactured tokens for the section. A small number of ground frames to access sidings along the route are unlocked by insertion of the token, including one location which is the roadrail access point for the railway. Should there be a ‘shut inside’ requirement for any of these, then the token has to be returned to Norden Gates by a responsible person.

Design and procurement of equipment

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Much equipment was required to allow this extended operation. A newly created level crossing at Norden Gates (see later paragraph) meant that a crossing keeper’s cabin had to be provided. Although this looks like something acquired from another site, it was actually purchased in kit form and is based upon the erstwhile Lyme Regis ground frame cabin - it was erected in a single day.

Signals to protect the crossing are of the semaphore stop type with electric motor operation, together with fixed semaphore distant signals. The cabin has no levers, operation of the signals and points being by rotary switches on the block shelf,

A 30-pair 0.9mm copper conductor cable has been buried between Corfe Castle signalbox and a signalling-equipment interface with Network Rail, catering for both signalling and telecommunication needs. It connects into a similar Network Rail cable to give communication with the token instruments at Wareham. Direct-line telephones link Corfe Castle signalbox with Basingstoke SCC and the three token machine locations. There are also dial-up phones at Corfe Castle signalbox and Norden Gates, connected to the Swanage Railway telephone network and the BT national network.

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excursion special used the line, handsignal flags and moveable barriers were acceptable for controlling the rail and road traffic. However, now that a regular service is being introduced, and with the density of road traffic, it was necessary to provide a full Manually Controlled Four-Barrier (MCB) crossing.

Such a crossing can be very expensive.

However, the Swiss company Schweizer Electronic produces a ‘complete’ package based upon an industry-standard PLC (programmable logic controller). The kit comprises all four barrier machines and booms, the flashing light ‘wig-wags’, the audible warnings, plus a lineside cabinet which houses the programmed PLC with all of its line connections and standby power supply. The manual crossing control buttons are contained within a small console mounted on a plinth in the crossing keeper’s cabin.

Whilst the package is a complete entity, it has to be interfaced to the operational railway which, for Norden Gates, proved to be quite complicated. The design was carried out by a signalling expert from another heritage line.

In the Down direction (from Worgret Junction), the control is relatively simple.

The crossing is protected by the electrically operated home signal (No 32), which cannot be cleared unless a token for the Norden Gates to Corfe Castle section has been released (by the Corfe Castle signalman), the barriers proven as lowered and the crossing proven as clear.

For the Up direction (from Swanage), it must be remembered that the steam service operates only as far as Norden.

There, the locomotive needs to uncouple and proceed to the Engine Release Spur,

Rail Engineer | Issue 154 | August 2017

off the main line leading to the level crossing via a set of motorised points, before running round its train. This procedure does not require the presence of the crossing keeper or the barriers to be lowered, even though the loco gets very close to the crossing. Its movement is controlled by an electrically operated shunt disc signal (No 5), which can be set to clear automatically after a timing sequence.

The token for the Corfe-Norden section is then used by the train crew to unlock two ground frames so they can change the loop points at each end.

The through train service needs a different procedure. On approaching Norden station, either by the occupation of a track circuit or, for stopping trains, by the platform staff operating a ‘train ready to start’ (TRTS) plunger, the prompt for the barriers to be lowered is given. The crossing keeper will have set the points for the level crossing

and the Corfe Castle signalman will already have released to him a token for the Norden to Worgret section.

The crossing keeper, when prompted, lowers the barriers and clears semaphore signal No 4 for the train to proceed over the crossing and on its way. Tokens are exchanged with the loco crew by the crossing keeper, who has been provided with token-exchange platforms to facilitate this operation.

There is a need to minimise the time that the barriers are lowered, hence the different prompts for barrier-lowering to achieve as short a time as possible. Barrier raising is manual, by pushing a single button on the console.

Since the primary reason for the crossing is road access to Wytch Farm Gathering Station, BP generously contributed to the cost of the system, for which the Swanage Railway is very grateful.

FEATURE Trains and rolling stock Because the trains to Wareham operate over Network Rail tracks, they must have main line certification. This entails the provision of AWS/TPWS, GSM-R radio and on-train data recorders, as well as having the correct wheel profiles and maintenance certificates.

The Swanage Railway has a Class 117 three-car diesel unit and a Class 121 single (bubble) car, both being earmarked for the new service. Whilst preparatory work has been undertaken, unfortunately it was not possible to complete the work for the 2017 trial Wareham Service. Coming to the rescue has been West Coast Railways, which has hired out Class 37 and Class 33 diesel locos to top and tail a hired four-coach set. West Coast staff are in attendance to familiarise Swanage train crew with their locomotives.

Now that the service has started, Swanage crews drive and manage the train and this arrangement will remain in place for 2017.

Next year should see Swanage Railway’s own DMUs operating the service.

Commercial considerations The 60-day trial service has seen respectable loadings so far, although it is recognised that a certain novelty factor exists. The trains provide four services a day

until 3 September, running at two-hourly intervals on Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Saturday and Sunday. The turn-round time at Wareham is only nine minutes, so as to minimise any potential interference with South West Trains’ services. Fitting this in with the two-train steam service to Norden, which operates every day in the Peak Timetable, is carefully planned, with trains crossing at Corfe Castle or Harmans Cross as appropriate.

At Wareham, a separate Swanage Railway ticket office has been set up near to the main entrance and the platform indicators are programmed to show the Swanage services. It is hoped that the service will become a regular feature of

the area’s transport plans, offering new opportunities for locals and holidaymakers in the Bournemouth, Poole and Weymouth localities. In 2018, 90 days of operation are planned.

Some future plans Norden Gates is manned by a crossing keeper, who has to be on duty all the time the Wareham service operates. Thoughts are therefore being given to controlling the level crossing remotely from Corfe Castle by CCTV monitoring, which will give greater flexibility.

At Wareham, there are sidings on the London side of the station which could be used for stabling Swanage trains in between South West Trains’ services. Currently, a barrier-controlled foot crossing over the tracks prevents these sidings from being used, but Dorset County Council is planning to provide a disabled-access footbridge over the line which will bring safety benefits all round. Once in place, this could lead to steam services over the extended line.

Operating a service beyond Wareham, perhaps to Bournemouth, is a vision that some have, giving travellers greater access to Swanage. It would mean the Railway becoming an Open Access Operator, so it is very much a long term plan.

Mention must be made of Dorset County Council, which have been very supportive in the reinstatement of the entire railway and which may influence things into the future.

For now, congratulations to the Swanage Railway for its new venture as it joins the North Yorkshire Moors and the North Norfolk Railways as lines which have negotiated running heritage railway trains over Network Rail tracks to a station operated by a franchised train company.

May this venture be very successful.

Thanks to Mike Walshaw, Mike Southey and to Fraser White for taking time to explain the operation of the extended line.

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Manchester Metrolink

a world-class tram system COLLIN CARR

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igures recently released by the Department for Transport (DfT) indicate that England’s tram networks have reported their highest passenger numbers and vehicle miles since records began. 267.7 million passenger journeys were recorded in 2016/17, which is an increase of 6.2 per cent on the previous year and, according to the DfT, the highest figure recorded.

In addition, since 2006/07, passenger journeys have increased by 49.9 per cent.

Things are definitely looking up for tram systems across the country, with new extensions being built and planned on many of the networks that now exist.

One of the tram systems included in the DfT analysis was Manchester Metrolink. Transport for Greater Manchester (TfGM) has spent over £1.5 billion to expand and develop the network since 2008 when MPT, a joint venture of VolkerRail and Laing O’Rourke (MPact) in consortium with Thales, was awarded a design, construct

Rail Engineer | Issue 154 | August 2017

and maintenance contract to deliver lines to Media City, South Manchester, East Manchester, Oldham and Rochdale, as well as a new depot facility at Trafford Bar.

The MPT consortium The scope of the works is shared between the Laing O’Rourke/VolkerRail (MPact) JV, which is responsible for the design, construction and maintenance of the civil engineering and track, and Thales which takes care of all the electrical works. In addition, Thales has a contract direct with TfGM for the Tram Management System.

Whilst delivering this initial phase, MPT worked closely with TfGM, as owner of the Metrolink network and overseer of the expansion works, to define a scope for future lines.

As a result, a second phase of extensions was awarded early in 2010, extending the South Manchester line to East Didsbury and the East Manchester line to Ashton, together with increasing the capacity of the Trafford Bar Depot.

Further extensions were awarded later in 2010, comprising a new line to Manchester Airport and town centre routes for Oldham and Rochdale.

Second City Crossing Following this, in 2014, the contract for the Second City Crossing was awarded to the MPT consortium. This represented a critical phase of the development of Metrolink

FEATURE following the successful completion and delivery of the 14.5km extension to the Manchester Airport line. In total, over 60km of new track and 57 new tram stops were completed across this rapidly expanding network.

The completion of this work would realise TfGM’s aspiration, which started back in 1982 when the metro link concept was first mooted, to create a “world class transport system” for the people of Greater Manchester.

A huge challenge However, this phase of the programme was not going to be easy since it included removing a significant bottleneck in the centre of the city. It also involved working around listed buildings, cherished by Mancunians and English Heritage alike, and minimizing any disruption to the many high-profile businesses along the proposed corridor for the tram extension.

The length of the second city crossing is 1.3km, extending from Victoria railway station, down to Exchange Square and through St Peter’s Square, before joining the existing network at the DeansgateCastlefield stop. Each location presented huge challenges for the engineers, particularly the section through St Peter’s Square.

Running down one side of St Peter’s Square are the Manchester Central Library and the Town Hall, both treasured listed buildings.

In the middle of the square there was a Cenotaph and a stone cross, alongside an existing one-platform stop for the tram.

The Square also acts as a thoroughfare for thousands of people every day.

The approach adopted by MPT was to agree a nine-week closure of the square in 2015, followed by a period of single line working using a simple wooden token system for tram operations, and then another nine week closure the following summer to complete the re-modelling.

One-team approach Fortunately, the MPT consortium and TfGM had cultivated and developed a one-team approach which was proving to be very effective, thus enabling such a potentially disruptive arrangement to work efficiently and without conflict.

During the closures, new S&C layouts were installed at both ends of St Peter’s Square.

The existing platform was demolished and two new platforms were constructed.

Precast concrete units, each weighing 10 tonnes, were cast off-site and installed overnight using a tower crane that was

working on an adjacent site. In addition, the elegantly designed platform canopies, fully equipped with cameras, public address systems, information screens and lighting, were constructed off-site. This ensured that work on site was kept to a minimum, leaving it uncluttered for the thousands of people who walk through the square each day.

Although the Cenotaph, built in 1924 and 12.8 metres high, was not a specific part of this project, it had to be moved to a new permanent position behind the Town Hall.

It had been designed by Sir Edwin Lutyens, as had, amongst other fine buildings, the London Cenotaph and the Midland Railway War Memorial in Derby. His original drawings were used to dismantle the structure and reconstruct it - an approach preferred to jacking up the structure and moving it to the new site.

The stone cross was repositioned and a time capsule was also buried under the new flagged pedestrian area alongside the tracks.

Between St Peter’s Square and Exchange Square, on Cross Street, is a fairly modern building called the Cross Street Chapel.

The new tram route runs down the centre of the road and, many years ago, there was a different chapel which had a graveyard that extended into the road and below the path of the tramway. Records suggested that there were probably about 123 people buried in the graveyard, so they all had to be carefully/ respectfully moved as part of the project.

Archeologists were called in to oversee this sensitive operation and, when they started to carry out the excavation, they came across bodies that were stacked on top of each other, probably family members of all ages. The final count was 270 bodies, which were carefully exhumed and reburied elsewhere.

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FEATURE Ahead of schedule The first phase of the Second City Crossing was finished in December 2015.

The newly upgraded tram stop in St Peter’s Square was ready by August 2016, with the whole work becoming fully operational by early 2017, well ahead of schedule.

New additional depot facilities at Trafford Bar were completed, with increased stabling for the new M5000 tram fleet that had replaced the older T68 trams.

The depot was constructed on a former industrial site, where buildings had to be demolished and the ground thoroughly investigated and treated. A new stabling area has been constructed alongside a maintenance building with a tram wash and sand plant plus six kilometres of ballasted track.

The integrated team has won a cluster of awards for its achievements, including the Light Rail Project of the Year Awards (over £50 million) for 2015 and 2016, as well as the 2015 National Rail Award for Civil Engineering Achievement of the Year and the Major Civil Engineering Project of the Year over £50 million at the 2015 British Construction Industry awards.

There are many more, but what of the future? What are the plans for this everexpanding tram system?

In terms of the new Trafford Park line extension, valued at £350 million, preliminary work has already started and the plan is to complete it by 2020. Detailed BIM designs are well underway and underground utilities are being renewed, relocated or modified to improve access.

Careful planning, coordinated by the MPT utilities team, is arranging to share use of the traffic management and service trenches. It is definitely a complex programme of work.

Vegetation is being cleared and embankments extended. Land purchase is a key element in this phase, as TfGM is determined to ensure that this new extension will not deplete existing transport routes. This is

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particularly relevant given that the line will have a stop adjacent to Manchester United’s 75,000 capacity stadium.

The new line will follow a sharp curve alongside the ITV studios. Understandably, ITV, which is continually filming on its sets (including Coronation Street), has stipulated that vibration and noise are kept to a minimum, so there are some interesting challenges to address here.

Close to the studios is the Imperial War museum, while the route ends at the rapidly developing Trafford Centre - all of which need to maintain their access.

There is little doubt that this extension will be much appreciated by the thousands of commuters who work in this fast-growing business area. It will also strengthen and underpin TfGM’s vision and aspiration to provide a public transport service that encourages people to leave their cars at home.

It is an aspiration that bodes well for the future of Manchester. A future in which Manchester Metrolink will feature prominently, thanks to the expertise and skills that the MPT consortium and its supply chain has developed over the last nine years, working together in this busy, bustling and growing environment.

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Thameslink the final countdown

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ith just a few months to go, including two major commissionings, the rebuilt, remodelled and resignalled London Bridge becomes fully operational on 2 January 2018. The Thameslink service resumes through the high level station via the new segregated alignment between Blackfriars and Bricklayers Arms Junction, engineered into the remodelled layout as a key objective of the project together with the introduction of Automatic Train Operation (ATO) overlay to ETCS. This highly complex and challenging capacity-improvement project, conceived by British Rail’s Network South East back in 1990 when passenger numbers were rapidly outstripping the capacity of Thameslink’s inaugural service of six trains per hour, is nearing completion on time and budget.

Network Rail recently invited Rail Engineer along to hear project director Mark Somers describe the plans for the final two big blockades taking place this year, and to meet the team fitting out the track, signalling and electrification at the southeastern approach to the station.

Already complete To date, all six terminal platforms at the low level are open and through-Platforms 7, 8 and 9 are currently in service for Charing Cross trains. Whilst Costain, the contractor rebuilding the station, continues to work on preparing Platforms 1 to 6, and the remaining one third of the street level concourse below is off limits to the public, Cannon Street services are passing non-stop through Platforms 1 and 2.

Essentially, all major demolition and construction works are complete at the high level with all the new bridge decks in position. Behind the hoardings, escalators and lifts are being installed in readiness for the complete concourse opening in January 2018, with retail unit fit-out and other concourse and passageway works continuing through to May 2018.

Rail Engineer | Issue 154 | August 2017

DAVID BICKELL

FEATURE

August blockade On Saturday and Sunday 26/27 August, the Cannon Street and Charing Cross lines close, as do low-level Platforms 10 to 13, to facilitate a major signalling data changeover and commencement of the track remodelling described below. Lowlevel services will use Platforms 14, 15 and line 11 only, as lines 9 and 10 are shut to provide protection for the adjacent track slew works.

For a week from Bank Holiday Monday 28 August, the Charing Cross lines remain shut but services are restored to Cannon Street (trains again running non-stop as the concourse below isn’t ready) and all the low-level platforms. During the period that Charing Cross is closed, Southeastern trains will run from Lewisham to either Blackfriars, Victoria or, via Linford Street Jn and the curve formerly used by Eurostar, into the Waterloo International platforms that will be temporarily reopened for the duration. By Saturday 2 September, all track, signalling, and traction feeder section testing will be complete, allowing test trains to run during this day, with any snagging attended to overnight once the possession has been re-taken. All lines are to open on Sunday 3 September.

Charing Cross services are currently using lines 3 and 4, facilitated by temporary slews near London Bridge and at New Cross respectively. These slews will be removed during the blockade, and Platform 6 brought into service.

At the country end of the station, new switches and crossings (S&C) will be installed in order to connect Up lines 6, 7,

and 8 to Platforms 6 and 7 (Down), and 8 and 9 (Up), thereby providing full flexibility in the final configuration of two platforms for Charing Cross trains. Previously, at the London end of the station, with Platform 6 unavailable, a temporary crossover was provided to allow Platform 8 to be used in either direction to suit the tidal flow (typically Up in the morning peak and Down during the evening). This crossover is being removed.

At the New Cross end, no new S&C is needed where the Kent Fast lines will be re-aligned to pass through the new Bermondsey Dive-Under (built by Skanska), meshing into lines 6 (Down Charing Cross), line 7 (Charing Cross Reversible) and line 8 (Up Charing Cross).

Lines 3 and 4 will then be taken out of use and resignalled in the original direction with line 3 reverting to its original purpose of Up Canon Street, and line 4 becoming the new Down Thameslink. A new signal gantry is to be craned in during this phase of the work.

Assets commissioned/decommissioned during this period include: »» S&C point ends: 19 new, 2 removed, 20 clipped and padlocked; »» Plain line: 9.7km installed (lines 6, 7, 8), 8km removed (lines 3,4); »» Signals: 37 new, 23 recovered; »» Track circuits: 65 new, 36 recovered; »» AWS: 36 new, 18 recovered; »» TPWS TSS/OSS loops: 45 new, 25 recovered; »» Location cases: 24 new; »» Disconnection boxes: 63 new; »» REBs: 13 new.

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Christmas 2017 From Saturday 23 December 2017 through to the morning of Tuesday 2 January 2018, all the Cannon Street, Charing Cross, Thameslink core, and high-level platforms lines will be closed.

The low-level remains open except on Christmas Day and Boxing Day. Line 3 reverts to its original purpose of Up Cannon Street whilst lines 4 and 5 become the Down and Up Thameslink respectively.

The new Down and Up Thameslink lines will mesh into the platforms 3, 4, 5 and 6 at London Bridge and utilise Platforms 4 and 5 for Thameslink services. These lines run atop the Bermondsey viaduct and on to New Cross Gate via Bricklayers Arms Junction.

The final line through the Bermondsey Dive-Under, called the Southwark reversible, also comes into service, and remodelling, resignalling/re-control will take place at Blackfriars. Extensive data changes are necessary overall to update the interlockings, GSM-R, workstations and to fully enable ETCS/ATO. The Thameslink core stations will be fitted out with platform ramps to allow for level access onto the carriages of the Class 700 trains. Waterloo International will open again temporarily for the diversion of Southeastern trains.

On 2 January, all lines will be available for the full service.

Rail Engineer | Issue 154 | August 2017

Installing S&C Balfour Beatty is the principal contractor undertaking the track and civil engineering work. From London Bridge to Bricklayers Arms, the railway is elevated on masonry arches interspersed with metallic and brick arch road bridge structures, so, in order to keep loadings within acceptable limits, it has been necessary to utilise the much lighter Kirow 250 cranes in tandem lift mode. Tandem lifting with the smaller cranes required the development of a new Lightweight Lifting Beam, saving weight as opposed to the standard Modular Self Levelling Beam and meaning that tandem Kirow 250 cranes can lift a concrete bearer FVS switch panel without using props, which speeds up installation.

Design philosophy that all S&C will be located on straight alignments has substantially been achieved and most S&C is of ‘modular’ design and delivered using the Kirow Tilting Wagon System. This modular S&C is being

procured, via the Network Rail Route Services organisation, from manufacturers Vossloh Cogifer UK and Progress Rail.

All engineering trains, provided under Route Services haulage contracts, generally operate out of Hoo Junction Yard and, occasionally, Eastleigh. Network Rail Infrastructure Projects ensures that these critical logistics resources for plain line and S&C renewals are carefully managed and de-conflicted across the country around major bank holiday weekends.

Electrification Life-expired 100/106lb conductor rail has been replaced with new 150lb/yard rail. New Controlled Track Switches (CTS) have been installed at key locations to enable isolations to be effected remotely without staff needing to operate hook switches and, where appropriate, some hook switches have been replaced by track isolating switches which are operable from the line-side rather than on track.

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FEATURE A new DC traction substation has been built within the arches at London Bridge to replace the existing Track Paralleling Hut (TP Hut). Impedance bonds are Bombardier B3 3000 Impedance Bonds to Spec BR 863 Type 3.

S&T systems Modifications and extensions to the Cannon Street, Charing Cross and London Bridge central workstations, involving extensive data changes, will be undertaken during the blockades. The workstations are of the Siemens Controlguide Westcad PCbased control and display system.

Provided by Network Rail Telecommunications (NRT), fibre optic data communications networks utilise the Fixed Telecoms Network (FTNx) and, using Cadlock protocol and Cisco routers, link the Westcad at Three Bridges Rail Operating Centre (TBROC) with the Westlock interlockings located at the London Bridge equipment room.

To ensure resilience, a virtual private network has been created, known as Thameslink Signalling Private Network (TSPN), which provides for alternative paths between the ROC and London Bridge equipment room. Fibre-optic cables link the Westlock interlockings with the new Westlock trackside systems zone controllers located within the REBs. These are connected by conventional hard-wired cables to signals, points, AWS, TPWS and other equipment.

Bombardier EBI Track 400 track circuits are used for train detection with Cembre rail terminations. Unipart Dorman integrated lightweight signals (iLS) are used as these have a narrow three-degree beam, well suited to the multiple parallel

Rail Engineer | Issue 154 | August 2017

tracks on the approaches to London Bridge where SPADs have occurred in the past through misreading or readingthrough.

Vortok Modular AWS inductors are provided. The lid of the electromagnet is white instead of the usual dark green, to reduce solar gain as protection for the ECU that is provided to maintain the maximum current draw to 1.6 amps, balancing current draw against temperature to maintain flux density. This is to protect the Westlock trackside system which directly drives the AWSs. In-bearer Rail Point Clamp Locks are used with the hydraulic actuation systems provided by SPX Rail Systems. Signalling power supplies are 650V DC dual end-fed with auto reconfiguration, Class II. Relocatable Equipment Buildings (REB) house much of the lineside equipment.

Some existing signal gantries have been re-used, with strengthened foundations and tie rods, giving improved access for

staff including the bolt-on galleries for new signal heads, manufactured by Lundy and installed by Balfour Beatty.

Innovative CEMEX EG53 and GV54 cable management sleepers enable DC traction and signalling cables to cross the track without cluttering up the ballast cribs and removing the risk of tampers damaging cables.

Stretcher bars In the aftermath of the serious derailments at Potters Bar (2002) and Grayrigg (2007), Network Rail embarked upon a national rollout of an innovative new design of tubular point stretcher bar (TSB) that has been designed to manage the forces that can be applied to a switch layout by the passage of a train or by the operation of the point operating equipment. The tube is designed to allow the length to be adjusted, and the stretcher bar fitted in the first position also features kicking straps that limit the amount the switch rail can rise.

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FEATURE Improving access

At the end of each bar, the motion units are articulated to allow the stretcher bar to deal with switch creep and twisting when switches are thrown. If flange back contact occurs, the orange polymers within the motion unit absorb the forces without causing damage to the rest of the system.

The retaining plate applies a compressive pre-load onto the polymers.

If the points have been run through, the retaining plate in the motion unit will bow towards the four-foot and the tube will bend upwards slightly.

There are five different types of tube, and four different types of motion units to suit the type of rail section used and the point operating equipment it is being fitted to. TSBs have been fitted throughout the project and are supplied by Howells Railway Products, Progress Rail Services UK and Tinsley Bridge Rail. A kit of specific tools is provided by Lawton Tools Rail Products and is used in conjunction with existing torque wrenches.

Enhancing reliability A fault in the signalling system at London Bridge may quickly lead to a long queue of trains with thousands of passengers delayed, not to mention Network Rail incurring substantial Schedule 8 penalty payments. Whilst the new TBROC workstation controlled signalling today has much the same ‘entrance/exit’ (NX) route setting functionality as the 1975-vintage NX panel, technological improvements provide for a more reliable railway by means of the duplication of digital systems, and provision of remote condition monitoring (RCM) to pre-empt potential failures that may stop trains.

Setting routes in the large old relay interlockings involved electrical circuit paths spanning many relay contacts. Any single high-resistance relay contact could stop the job. However, there are three individual processing lanes within a Westlock Central Interlocking Processor (CIP), providing

Rail Engineer | Issue 154 | August 2017

triple modular redundancy. This means that, should one processing lane fail, the control function can continue to operate as normal with no interruption to the train service, safety being maintained by mutual agreement of the two ‘good’ processing paths.

For external equipment such as points and track circuits, RCM monitors pump pressures of Clamp Lock points and certain electrical parameters of EBI track circuits. The results are reported to the maintenance unit’s back office, where a data analyst (known as a flight engineer) can initiate a fault log in the event of deviation from normal values.

Nevertheless, the harsh unremitting environment of the railway is such that point and track circuit failures do occur from time to time. Installed on the Thameslink line of route, and all controlled signals in the resignalled area, is the innovative ‘Proceed on Sight’ aspect known as the POSA signal.

In the event of a track circuit failure, the signaller may over-ride this by selecting a POSA route, which displays two flashing white lights at 45º to the driver who may proceed cautiously, thereby obviating the delay incurred in stopping at a red signal and contacting the box for permission to proceed.

A track circuit failure may also prevent route locking from releasing behind a train, thereby holding points in the wrong position for other trains. A special Electronic Point Route Locking Release permits the signaller to free and move points in such circumstances. Alas, there is no quick fix for lost detection on points, which will require rectification before any signal reading over the points can be cleared.

A visit to the lineside reveals a lack of the usual S&T equipment location cases and REBs. With eleven intensively used parallel tracks on the approaches to London Bridge, access for faulting and maintenance is challenging. Thus, the equipment is concentrated into a series of REBs which are located within the arches of the viaducts beneath the tracks (with the exception of one REB which is at track level at the site of the long-closed Spa Road station) and provide technicians with a weatherproof environment away from the live railway.

EBI track circuit transmitter and receiver units are mounted with protective covers in the four-foot. Signalling Lock-out Devices (SLODS) are provided throughout the London Bridge area to enable access to track-mounted equipment by blocking one line without the need to set up complex protection for crossing and recrossing multiple tracks.

ATO goes live With the infrastructure ATO equipment and ETCS level 2 data incorporated into the new interlockings going live in January 2018, the capacity improvements are complete to meet the 20tph (trains per hour) milestone in May aligned with the timetable change, with traffic management deployed later in the year and a period of introduction running prior to realisation of the full 24tph service.

During May 2018, the Lewisham area, along with the Hayes line, is scheduled to be re-controlled to a new workstation at TBROC. In Easter 2019, the Angerstein area, including lines from Charlton and Woolwich to London Bridge via Greenwich and North Kent East Junction, will be resignalled and re-controlled. Finally, in 2020, the remaining Hither Green area controlled by the London Bridge Area Signalling Centre will be re-controlled to a further new workstation, allowing the box to be closed after over forty years in service signalling trains in this highly complex area.

Thanks to Mark Somers, project director; Simon Pears, project engineer; and Alexandra Swann, communications manager for Thameslink, for their help in the preparation of this article.

14/09/17

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12:15 Lunch / Networking / Exhibition THE WAY FORWARD 13:15 HS2: Laura Russell, Sustainability Manager, HS2 13:30 CROSSRAIL 2: Nick Giesler, Consents and Environment Manager, Crossrail 2 13:45 NORTHERN HUB: Baker Hicks 14:00 Panel discussion and Q&A

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WHAT’S NEEDED NOW? 10:50 SDSG: Anthony Perret, Head of Sustainable Development, RSSB (Invited)

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74

TRACK

Lightweight slab track

BARNABY TEMPLE

revitalises Ordsall Chord bridge

N

ew Bailey Street bridge, Salford, carried two tracks on timber waybeams, supported on a traditional wrought iron deck (see below). This deck consisted of deck plates supported on rail bearers, with cross girders spanning between side beams and a central box beam. Part of the deck was no longer in use and had been capped in concrete.

The revised track layout of the Ordsall Chord scheme no longer requires the bridge to carry two tracks. Instead, it will carry a single line, with a raised vertical rail alignment and altered horizontal curvature (radius 280 metres), transitioning back to straight at the Western end of

the bridge. The bridge had to be preserved, but also strengthened to meet modern standards, and the primary initial challenge was how to fit a track system to the new geometry without overloading the bridge. Ballasted track was thereby ruled out and the concept envisaged was some

form of baseplated track, with concrete plinths combined with a concrete deck slab.

Waybeams were not feasible due to the curvature and space available, but the idea of having something that could still be removed/replaced more easily than a fully integrated in-situ concrete plinth was of interest to both track and structures maintainers. With the geometry involved, and to meet modern standards, the track would of course still need to be securely fixed.

Innovative approach The ideas and aims were passed to the project team and the designer for the bridge, Tony Gee & Partners, to consider alternatives. This led to Rhomberg Sersa being approached for proposals based on their extensive experience of precast modular track forms.

As a part of the Northern Hub Project team (with Network Rail and Skanska/BAM as well as the Northern S&C Alliance with AmeySersa), Rhomberg Sersa Rail Group was then employed to develop a low height, low weight slab solution for New Bailey Street bridge.

Rail Engineer | Issue 154 | August 2017

TRACK

Working with Tony Gee and supported by Vienna Consulting Engineers (VCE), the Rhomberg Sersa team developed a variant of the IVES Slab Track Plinth System that is intended for bridge decks.

In this case, the plinth had to be slimmed down to meet the height constraints and deal with the planned tolerances.

A plinth could still have been created in-situ but, to maximise off-site works, allow the crossfall on the bridge deck to work easily, and provide for simple removal and replacement, a precast solution was adopted.

The use of Vossloh DFF304 rail supports, in combination with the precast system, provided a second level of tolerance absorption - a key factor in achieving the desired construction accuracy. This meant that the accuracy of the IVES Plinths positioning could be to civil engineering tolerances, while the DFF304 and rails can be adjusted in three dimensions above the IVES Plinths to deliver the required accuracy in rail positioning - an intelligent and versatile solution!

Planning construction To meet the aspiration of simple removal and replacement of the plinths, a method of fixing was developed that uses vertical reinforcement as anchor dowels. Combined with under-grouting, the dowels ensure secure fixing of the precast elements to the bridge deck. Removal can be achieved either by over-coring these anchors and shearing/ splitting, or by wire cutting through the grout layer under the blocks followed by core drilling to remove the fixings. Either approach would allow one or more plinths to be removed and replaced if they were to be damaged.

g ineerinack g n e g n Bringi nce to slab tr e l l exce nstallations i

Rhomberg Sersa - Slab Track The UK’s leading slab track design and build specialist

// Rhomberg Sersa Rail Group have introduced SLAB TRACK AUSTRIA (STA) to the UK infrastructure, Winchburgh Tunnel, Queen Street Tunnel, Gospel Oak to Barking Reduced Construction Times Cost effective Maintenance Free Low Construction Height Future oriented modular slab system Rhomberg Sersa Rail Group I T +44 300 3030230 I carl.garrud@rhomberg-sersa.com I www.rhomberg-sersa.com

Rail Engineer | Issue 154 | August 2017

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TRACK During construction, the key challenge was core-drilling the deck slab since it was heavily reinforced - a replacement process would have been more straightforward! Each aperture had to be accurately located, with the aid of drilling templates, to match the plinth geometry.

For future sites, cast-in pockets or slots could be considered.

Once positioned, the IVES plinths were then lifted to height using spindles and, after installation of shutters, they were secured with a high specification grout, poured through the plinths, to fill the voids under them and surround the spindles and anchors.

The Vossloh DFF304 baseplates and rail were then placed onto the plinths and lifted/aligned using the Rhomberg RhoFAS rail alignment system which also holds track gauge and rail inclination.

Once the rail was to its final design position, grout was poured to fix the supports.

Rail Engineer | Issue 154 | August 2017

For one of the transition zones, there was sufficient depth for a Rhomberg V-TRAS steel transition module to be fitted. These modules ease the change in effective track stiffness that occurs between ballasted track and ballastless track on a structure. This reduces track geometry deterioration rates, thereby minimising the need for future unplanned ballast packing adjacent to the bridge. Tony Gee

designed a sill beam onto which the V-TRAS bearing was fixed and, because of the formation width and curvature, gabion ballast retaining walls were used to stabilise the track on its new tighter radius. Combined with measures specified by WSP for the rest of this now CWR curve, such as restraint plates, this track system should minimise the maintenance needed on this important zone.

TRACK Key interfaces All UK slab track projects contracted to Rhomberg Sersa in the UK (see past issues of Rail Engineer that covered Asfordby Tunnel, Winchburgh, QST, GOBE) are delivered by Rhomberg Sersa UK and Rhomberg Bahntechnik; a department specialising in slab track technology and installations. Its Austrian teams have extensive installation experience which allows Rhomberg Sersa UK to bring best practices and technology from Continental Europe to the UK infrastructure, increasing productivity and quality while reducing costs.

As ever on a project of this scale (Northern Hub), interfaces were a challenge; WSP (formerly Parsons Brinckerhoff) had been contracted to undertake the p-way design and Tony Gee the bridge and civils designs. BAM/Skanska was undertaking the civils works, Northern S&C Alliance (AmeySersa/Network Rail) the pway works with Rhomberg Sersa tackling the slab track that interfaced across all packages.

The need for low construction height solutions that are capable of resolving tolerance challenges is clear.

Combined with the need for keeping added weight to a minimum, the prospect of using this form of solution on refurbished bridges brings an option to the network’s bridge engineers and asset managers. The interface with the bridge deck can easily be adapted to suit a range of scenarios.

Furthermore, the need for low height, robust, fast-to-build solutions for slab track replacement or refurbishment can also lead to solutions such as these.

Barnaby Temple is head of engineering at Rhomberg Sersa UK.

Rhomberg Sersa V-TRAS

ing gineer rack n e g n Bringi nce to slab t excellenstallations i

Innovative solution that deals with the transition between fixed structures and ballast // Deals with settlement and stiffness associated with adjoining trackforms

Universal application for transition from any fixed structure to ballasted track Improved ride quality and reduced dynamic forces Can be retro fitted to existing structures Rhomberg Sersa Rail Group I T +44 300 3030230 I carl.garrud@rhomberg-sersa.com I www.rhomberg-sersa.com

Rail Engineer | Issue 154 | August 2017

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78

TRACK

Innovation& inspiration CHRIS PARKER

Rail Engineer | Issue 154 | August 2017

TRACK

T

he Institute of Rail Welding (IoRW) was founded 15 years ago by Railtrack as one of the more positive outcomes that followed from the shocking Hatfield train crash in the year 2000. The idea for the IoRW is attributed to Simon Hardy, then one of Railtrack’s track engineers and now working for the ORR. The Institute has been a great success, and has contributed significantly to the massive reduction in the number of weld failures and broken rails that has been achieved on the rail network.

The Institute was the result of a collaboration between Railtrack and The Welding Institute (TWI), without whose expertise in welding the venture would not have succeeded. Fortunately, the IoRW initiative was taken forward by Railtrack’s successor, Network Rail.

The affiliation of the IoRW with TWI also has the benefit that it is able to offer its members professional registration with the Engineering Council at the appropriate level - EngTech, IEng or CEng. The celebratory conference was held in York, in association with Network Rail and the National Railway Museum. The morning consisted of a number of demonstrations related to rails and rail welding, and took place at Network Rail’s new complex in the Engineer’s Triangle.

Demonstrations French supplier CTF and Network Rail jointly demonstrated CTF’s Translamatic 152 wire feed arc welding repair system.

This is capable of carrying out automated repairs to worn rails and S&C components, taking as little as one hour to repair a typical crossing. This includes the crossing nose and both wing rails, and leaves the crossing ready for finish grinding before being returned to traffic. The whole welding cycle is controlled by the software in the control unit - the operator selects the appropriate cycle for the task in hand before leaving it to complete the weld automatically.

CTF Translamatic rail repair welding equipment.

CTF offers a full package of equipment to power and support the welding unit, including a caterpillar-tracked transporter with a built-in three-phase generator which feeds the inverter that supplies the welding current.

Thermit GB was another demonstrator that has an interest in the use of higher voltage power on site. Its Smart Weld aluminothermic welding system, incorporating Smart Weld Jet, Smart Weld Record and Smart Weld Ace, uses atmospheric air instead of oxygen to burn the propane fuel to pre-heat the rail ends for welding. Like the CTF system, this one is controlled by computer software, ensuring that the flame is perfect and that correct timings and temperatures are adhered to. All the weld pre-heat parameters can be entered into the Smart Weld app using Bluetooth to connect the pre-heater to a mobile device for this purpose.

The actual weld is made using Thermit’s already well-known systems, so those details are entered via bar codes on the materials used. The associated water mist weld cooling system ensures faster, controlled cooling of the weld after shearing, and will save around 15 minutes on the time taken to complete a weld. This could be very valuable under restricted track access conditions such as are increasingly common on the UK’s rail networks.

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TRACK Railtech, another French company, was also showing off its latest products in Network Rail’s new workshop, specifically designed and built for welding training.

Its HWR rail defect repair system uses aluminothermic weld technology to repair a rail after a defect has been removed by cutting out a semi-circular piece of the head. Railtech also offers computer control of the process, this time via its 'gas box' control box, which governs the pre-heating process.

The Railtech team also demonstrated completion of a weld, including the Startwel ignition system and new hybrid felted weld moulds. The latter make it quicker, easier and more reliable to seal the moulds to the rails, and can be easily modified to compensate for rail wear.

Hybrid grinding German rail equipment manufacturer Robel showed its 13.49 modular rail grinder together with the associated power pack, model 70.02. The grinder is for weld finishing and similar rail profiling operations, whether associated with rail joining or rail weld repair. The grinding head depth is precisely controlled and the head pivots about the rail on a fixed frame, enabling accurate control of rail profile achieved.

The power unit is a hybrid device which stores energy from the idling grindstone and releases it during grinding. This allows the power pack to have a smaller motorgenerator unit. Although the combined weight of grinder and power pack is greater than a conventional integrated unit, but each unit separately is light enough to be

Setting up Thermit weld moulds. safely lifted by just two people. The power pack also has the potential to drive other Robel machinery such as weld shears.

Innovation Trueflame was also present, displaying a wide range of equipment for welding, gas cutting and related purposes including specialist PPE for welders, BV1000 accessories and wire feed systems.

British Steel showed its Zinoco corrosionresistant rail, and demonstrated how this coating can be removed where welding is required, and then replaced afterwards.

There was a small demonstration from TWI of a rail and weld ultrasonic inspection system which deploys a 64-element head generating a divergent beam. The system for analysing the returned signals allows inspection of a much larger volume of the rail than previously possible, and so can obtain equivalent results

Thermit Smart Weld demonstration.

Rail Engineer | Issue 154 | August 2017

to a conventional ultrasonic flaw detection system whilst scanning at 30mm intervals, compared with the normal 1mm interval. As conventional ultrasonic rail flaw detection trains can travel only up to 40mph, this might be a major benefit.

Network Rail’s John Hempshall showed Rail Engineer the ESAB wire feed welding equipment similar to the units specified for the company’s new maintenance trains. These will be the ESAB Warrior welding set and the 301ABS wire feed unit - a neat device that is fitted into a briefcase-sized ABS case.

Inspiration After lunch, the day continued with presentations by several speakers. The first was David Godley, head of engineering capability at Network Rail. He has only recently taken on this new role, working for chief engineer Jon Shaw. He gave his keynote address on the theme “Innovation & Inspiration”.

David referred back to 17 October 2000, the day of the Hatfield derailment, and spoke of the great changes that have followed. Rails have changed, with CEN60 replacing CEN56 for most main line applications, and aluminothermic welding has also improved significantly - thanks to the IoRW, suppliers and others.

As a keen cyclist, David used the analogy of a bicycle wheel, strong and light as long as it is not abused by, for example, excessive stresses caused by potholes. Rails are the same, and cannot be expected to survive if abused by poor track conditions or significant wheel flats.

David also explained a little of his new role, managing engineering capability across all the engineering disciplines in Network Rail. He and his team are putting into place an “authority to work” process,

TRACK based upon individual competence, and taking this back from the human resources function into engineering where it belongs.

There will be a single competence framework for all professional engineers and asset managers in the company.

He described the need to focus upon safety, compliance and performance, and the imperative to maintain a balance between these three, rather than letting any one of them dominate at the cost of the others. He also covered business-critical rules, and the conflict between eliminating human error from systems to make them safer and the risk that, if this is taken too far, humans become too reliant upon the system protecting them. If that occurs, then disaster may follow through failure to spot a system weakness or flaw, or through human error over-riding the system in some way.

Looking at derailment numbers per annum by failure type, S&C failure is still the greatest risk. Following the latest improvements in welding and rail defect detection and rectification, rail break statistics are now dominated by breaks caused by foot damage and flaws.

David spoke of other initiatives, such as the skills assessment scheme and the six ways to maintain competence, the plain line pattern recognition project and the introduction of under-sleeper pads.

He concluded with some of his ideas about the future of society and of rail.

Reflections on the past Brian Whitney, chair of the IoRW management committee, followed, presenting some of his reflections on the past 15 years. Brian has to take a great deal of credit for his own contribution to the IoRW and the successes Network Rail has had in significantly improving its rails and rail welds performance in this period. He was far too modest to say this, of course, but it is worth saying here.

Brian described, as we have heard before, the dramatic fall in rail break numbers since 1998/9, from 952 in1998/9 to the latest figure of only 94 in 2016/7, the lowest ever result.

He referred to the Bushey derailment (abvoe) on16 February 1980, caused by a failed weld, which went undetected until the sleepers under it collapsed badly enough

RailTech preheating in progress.

to derail an express train. Fortunately, despite some serious injuries, no one died. He looked at the report of the formal inquiry and the causes identified by this.

These ranged from technical items like the incorrect positioning of the moulds when the weld was made, to organisational and administrative matters such as the lack of adequate resources and insufficient supervisory attention.

The need for a greater sense of craft pride and skill was mentioned, very relevant to David’s fear of making things too dependent upon some inhuman system and making people feel they are no longer responsible or in control. Records, skills and training, standards and auditing were all mentioned as issues. These matters are all just as relevant today, despite all the improvements that have been made.

Brian moved on to consider the record of rail welding. Like the rail break record, this is excellent, with the trend from 504 failed welds in 1979 to only 13 in 2016. This despite the vastly increased percentage of the network that now has welded rails (CWR). Furthermore, the 2016 figure also includes welds in S&C whilst the earlier statistic is for plain line alone.

The proportion of rail breaks occurring in aluminothermic welds was around 25 per cent for many years, but in the last four or five years this has begun to fall, now standing at 15 per cent. This is better than elsewhere in Europe. Brian considers this is due to better equipment and techniques introduced in the UK in recent years.

With rail defects dropping significantly, other issues are being shown up. Weld alignment problems are assuming greater significance, for example. Dipped welds lead to dynamic forces which cause ballast attrition and, potentially, failures of rail and/or sleepers. Misalignment laterally or rotationally causes wheel/rail contact forces that lead to rolling contact fatigue damage to the rails.

Rail Engineer | Issue 154 | August 2017

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TRACK Defects or damage in the rail foot are becoming the most significant rail failure initiators, now that the other ones have been largely eliminated. Since these are hard to detect by the currently available technologies, it is difficult, at present, to remove them before they cause a rail break.

Failures of arc-weld rail repairs are similarly hard to detect until they lead to rail failure.

Brian emphasised the importance of using available tools to identify in advance where there may be a problem and deal with it before a failure occurs. Thus, the use of LADS (Linear Asset Decision Support) and track geometry data may point out, say, a dip in the rail where there is no joint. Aerial inspection can be used to examine a site to help identify why a track fault exists or why track geometry is deteriorating abnormally fast. The challenge, as ever, is making management information out of the huge quantities of data available.

Brian concluded by reading out a message from one of the other people who helped to establish the IoRW so successfully - Tim Jessop, retired former Associate Director of TWI and founding Executive Officer of the IoRW. Tim spoke of those who helped start the Institution, Simon Hardy in particular, and of those who came a little later, Brian Whitney, Bill Mosley and Bob Sawdon. He expressed his pleasure at the progress that has been made and sent his best wishes for the future.

Thermit Smart Weld preheating unit. problems elsewhere, chiefly because of a demand that they should be able to stress as well as weld.

Bob described the steps taken to confirm what it was about this complex design that was leading to the difficulties experienced before his arrival. Eventually, it became clear that it was the system incorporated in the K945s to allow the head to open by 400mm as compared with the 150mm opening of the normal K920 head used elsewhere.

Bob described the steps that are being taken to modify the machines to eliminate this problem and make them perform. The seventh unit has been modified through a proper engineering change management process and full welding approval testing has been done. It will now be used to relaunch MFBW within Network Rail.

Solving MFBW design flaws Next to speak was Bob Hervey, project manager for mobile flash-butt welding (MFBW) at Network Rail. He spoke of the history of the technique in the UK, going back as far as the Sersa machine of 1986.

From there, he briefly outlined his history with the technology, including his past vow never to go near it again!

Despite that, he ended up taking on his current role a little while ago, and has since been trying to understand the problems associated with Network Rail’s MFBW machines, to correct these and to get the machines working as productively and effectively as they should.

When Bob arrived in his role, the machines that had been purchased were giving problems. Acceptable welds were rejected by the computer welding management system, welds were being left incomplete, and there were occurrences of loss of signal and system failure.

Designated K945, the machines were specially built for Network Rail. They were far more complex than other machines from the same stable, used extensively without

Rail Engineer | Issue 154 | August 2017

A Golden Age “The Golden Age of Rail” was the title chosen by Daniel Pyke, product marketing manager of British Steel - the company renamed by Greybull Capital when it bought the long products division of Tata Steel UK in 2016. British Steel now produces about 600 kilotonnes of rail per annum in around 100 different rail profiles, and can roll rail lengths in excess of 100 metres.

Daniel considered whether we are now in the Golden Age of Rail, examining what was meant by a golden age, looking at statistics on rail passenger travel, freight tonnages and network growth around the world. The UK, he said, is doing far more with little new network assets, whilst delivering the sort of improvements in such things as rail break statistics that earlier speakers had outlined.

The rail-related challenges that the railway faces include rail wear, plastic flow, rolling contact fatigue (RCF) and corrosion. British Steel has solutions to assist in managing these issues. HP335 rail steel is designed to reduce wear and RCF, and reduce grinding

requirements, plastic flow and corrugations, while Zinoco rail coating prevents corrosion and increases durability, and is itself resistant to damage.

Although Daniel considered that this may be the Golden Age, he stated that it is imperative the railway continues to improve in order to maintain competitiveness in the future, implying that tomorrow will be even better than now!

And finally…

It fell to Chris Eady, associate director of TWI and interim executive officer of the IoRW, to round off the day.

While other speakers had looked back at the first 15 years of the IoRW, Chris looked to the next 15 years, speaking first of the proposed IoRW Strategic Action Plan 2017-25. This has four themes: »» Support for Rail Infrastructure Controller decision-making; »» Development/implementation of Rail Welding best practice; »» Delivery of Rail Welding personal competence; »» General education/awareness of rail welding.

He spoke of the challenge of success - if rail welding becomes so well managed that rail welds cease to be a problem, how does the railway ensure that funding, resources and attention continue to be given to it to make sure that it continues to be problem free?

Chris continued by looking in more detail at the strategic themes and how IoRW might take them forward in order to meet this challenge effectively. In his opinion, immediate action needs to be taken concerning application standards, research priorities and strengthening relationships with rail industry bodies like RDG, RSG, RIS, NSAR and PWI. All of which will ensure that the Institute of Rail Welding will be around for at least the next 15 years.

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84

FEATURE

DAVID SHIRRES

Biggest challenge yet

W

ith its focus on innovation, there’s always something new at the Institution of Mechanical Engineers’ (IMechE) Railway Challenge, especially as the competition had a record twelve entries this year.

The challenge was held over the first weekend in July and was managed by the Institution’s Railway Division, with around twenty volunteers running the event. Under the guidance of a steering group led by Professor Simon Iwnicki, the Division produces the competition’s rules and a performance-based locomotive specification. This is changed each year to encourage modification of previously entered locomotives.

The IMechE provides a small number of staff to administer the event, arrange the facilities required and seek sponsorship.

Rail Engineer | Issue 154 | August 2017

This activity is led by Sandra Balthazaar, the Institution’s education manager, who is charged with inspiring the next

generation of engineers, including through outreach activities in universities.

This year, the competition was sponsored by the Railway Industry Association, RSSB and Wabtec.

Regular readers may recall that Rail Engineer has reported on every Railway Challenge since the first competition in 2012. Each year, the competition is held on the three-kilometre track on the Gretton family estate near Melton Mowbray, operated by the Friends of the Stapleford Miniature Railway (FSMR).

FEATURE

LOCO SHED

HAVEN CAFE

STATION

HAVEN BRIDGE

TOP CURVE PLATELAYERS

CARRIAGE SHEDS

COLBY’S CULVERT LAKE SPILL WAY

TUNNEL

BADGERS BEND

SCALE (METRES) 0

150

RIVER EYE

300

It is essentially a miniature version of the Rainhill trials, in which apprentices, students and graduates are required to design and build 10¼” gauge locomotives to the competition’s specification. These are then subject to track-based challenges to test energy storage, traction, ride comfort, noise, maintainability and reliability. In addition, there were presentation challenges for design, business case and innovation.

JENNY’S BRIDGE

There is a maximum of 150 points for each challenge, except for the energy challenge which scores up to 300 points.

Brunel’s locomotive This year Brunel University provided something that was both new and unexpected: a piston-driven locomotive (above) with coupling and connecting rods driving four axles. The pistons were driven by compressed air at eight bar, admitted

by computer-controlled solenoid valves.

For a high starting torque, the design was for an eighty per cent cutoff (the point in the piston stroke at which the inlet valve is closed) on starting, reducing to forty per cent at maximum speed.

For the energy storage challenge, the pistons store compressed air in an auxiliary tank which is then used to power the locomotive away from a standing start.

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FEATURE To allow the locomotive to get around the sharp curves at Stapleford, the locomotive axles have a 20mm lateral float, achieved by keying them into both the axle bearings inner races and their cranks, which would otherwise have restricted the axle float.

Also new this year After a ten-hour journey from Germany, a team from the department of mechanical engineering and mechatronics (or Fachbereich Maschinenbau und Mechatronik) of FH Aachen University of Applied Sciences gave the competition its first non-UK entry.

The FH Aachen locomotive was to have been hydrogen powered. However, for various reasons, it was not possible to use the locomotive’s hydrogen fuel cell, leaving only the batteries to power the loco.

A battery health monitoring system, that counts coulombs (the unit for electrical charge, equivalent to one ampere-second) in and out, was considered by the SNC-Lavalin team to be its first UK railway use. Another first for the challenge was the array of five 50watt solar panels fitted to the entry from the University of Southampton and Siemens.

The locomotive from the University of Birmingham and AEGIS Engineering Systems was also powered by a hydrogen fuel cell.

However, this was not a new development as Birmingham entered a hydrogen-powered locomotive for the inaugural Railway Challenge in 2012. Their innovation this year was to use a silicon carbide inverter as one of their two power converters. This offers high efficiencies, and so requires less cooling, and also produces less electrical noise, reducing the requirement for smoothing capacitors and offering significant weight saving on a full-size locomotive.

University of Birmingham and AEGIS engineering systems locomotive under test.

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The teams The challenge rules state that those eligible to enter must be either a student on a university engineering course, an engineering graduate within two years of graduation, a member of a monitored professional development scheme for less than two years or an apprentice.

The teams are generally a mix of students in their final two years, whose work on the challenge is part of their degree course, or rail company graduates for whom the challenge is part of their training programme. Three teams were collaborations between academia and industry: University of Southampton with Siemens; Bombardier with the University of Derby and the University of Birmingham and AEGIS Engineering Systems.

At the University of Sheffield, the team comes from the Railway Challenge at Sheffield (RCAS), an extracurricular studentled club within the mechanical engineering department supported by the university. As such, the team is made up of all university years and students get no course credit for the work on their locomotive. As the five final-year students in the Sheffield team now have positions within the rail industry, such enthusiasm brings its own rewards.

From the eleven teams which made it to Stapleford, there were about a hundred competitors in total, with women making up a fifth of those taking part.

A challenging operation The Stapleford Miniature Railway has a station with various sidings and a turnaround triangle. From the station, an 800-metre single line runs down a 1 in 80 gradient to a 1.2km balloon loop. This year’s competition plan required each of the entries to run

FEATURE around this loop three times, with the FSMR also running steam-hauled spectator trains on the Sunday.

This was a challenge that needed a detailed operational plan, with the flexibility to deal with locomotive failures. Bridget Eickhoff of RSSB, as the IMechE’s operational controller, had the job of ensuring the challenge ran smoothly.

After unloading, the plan for the first day, Friday, was to complete scrutineering to confirm that each locomotive had been built to the specification and that it could safely compete. This consisted of a series of static and dynamic tests to confirm, for example, whether the locomotive had the required braking performance. To complete scrutineering, a locomotive had to collect the required set of seven stickers to demonstrate satisfactory compliance with all the tests.

Half the teams also attempted their maintainability challenge on the Friday.

This was a timed test that required them to remove and replace a wheelset, performed under the strict eye of the judges who paused the test at appropriate times to ensure it was done safely.

Saturday and Sunday On the Saturday, the remaining maintenance challenges were completed and teams were given an opportunity, one at a time, to test their locomotives on the railway.

They were closely followed by the rescue locomotive, the FSMR’s model Warship diesel-hydraulic locomotive powered by a 1600cc Ford Cortina engine, which was ready to effect a speedy recovery if needed.

Saturday was also the day for the business case challenge. Teams had to present themselves to a panel of judges to make the case as to why a hypothetical customer should buy their creation. Nerve-wracking stuff!

Sunday was the day for spectators to witness the track-based challenges. The operational plan required the first spectator train to leave at 09:30, closely followed by team one’s train and the rescue locomotive.

Once these trains were in the balloon loop, the spectator train returned to the station, allowing team two’s train to depart for the test area.

In this way, the plan was to run a spectator train and two test trains every hour. In the event, only eight locomotives were able to

Southampton and Siemens undergo their maintenance challenge as Simon Iwnicki looks on from behind.

A full set of scrutineering stickers - teams needed these to be allowed to compete.

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enter the track-based challenges and it took 4½ hours for them to undertake their tests.

Only one required assistance from the rescue locomotive.

Non-runners and casualties Every year, just getting locomotives to the line is a challenge in itself. University students don’t even meet up until October, so getting a locomotive (or upgrades to a previous one) designed, built and tested by the end of June is a real struggle. Every year, one or more teams are still finishing off their entries in the sidings at Stapleford, that’s if they turned up at all!

This year was no exception. Of the twelve entries, Manchester Metropolitan University was unable to attend and Alstom had arrived at Stapleford with a non-operational locomotive. It had blown a power inverter and a replacement could not be sourced in time. Nevertheless, the team acquitted themselves well in the maintenance and business challenges.

The joint Bombardier and University of Derby team also had problems with the power electronics on their locomotive and, despite much effort, could not get it operational for the track challenges.

Brunel University’s piston driven locomotive was, according to chief judge Bill Reeve “unquestionably the most popular locomotive that has ever turned up”. Its test run on the Saturday certainly attracted

Rail Engineer | Issue 154 | August 2017

interest although a problem with its solenoid control prevented it exceeding walking pace, so it was also unable to undertake the track challenges.

Of the remaining eight locomotives that did, there were two casualties. The ride comfort challenge is measured over one kilometre and must be completed in less than six minutes. Due to fuel supply problems, the Transport for London (TfL) locomotive was unable to achieve this time.

However, once this issue had been resolved, it was able to undertake the remaining track challenges.

FH Aachen’s locomotive also failed during the ride comfort challenge. Its autotensioned toothed belt drive looked to be more reliable than the chain drives that had been a significant problem during previous competitions. Unfortunately, the belt itself had parted. Although Reeve expressed his admiration for the impressive manner that the team quickly got their locomotive working with one powered bogie, this was not enough and the FMSR rescue locomotive had to assist FH Aachen back to the station.

A president with no regrets Carolyn Griffiths is both a railwaywoman and the IMechE’s new president. At the prize ceremony, she considered herself to be “living proof that railway engineering is really very interesting”. Although she hadn’t planned to be a railway engineer, it was

something she had done all her working life.

As she told everyone: “I haven’t left and I’ve no regrets.”

In making this point, she was echoing Bill Reeve’s comment to the competitors that the “whole idea of this event is to encourage you to see railway engineering as a career”. From the sheer effort and enthusiasm displayed by the teams, he was hopeful that the challenge would succeed in this aim.

The first prizes were for the sponsored challenges, starting with the RSSB’s innovation challenge. Bridget Eickhoff presented the certificate for this challenge to the University of Birmingham/AEGIS team.

The design challenge was sponsored by Wabtec. Brush Traction’s engineering director, Chris Myatt, found himself presenting certificates to three teams rather than one. As head judge Bill Reeve explained, the judges considered that the entries by Huddersfield, SNC-Lavalin and TfL were all exceptionally good submissions with nothing to choose between them.

The Railway Industry Association (RIA) sponsored the business case award. Its technical director, David Clarke was pleased for RIA to sponsor this as it reflected all the things the association likes: encouraging people into the rail industry, skills and innovation. Proving that it’s possible to win something without a working locomotive, the award went to Alstom for a business case that was described as “outstanding”.

FEATURE volunteers, support from the Gretton family and FSMR members whose enthusiastic help is also invaluable.

But what of its future?

Since 2012, the number of locomotives attempting the track challenges have been three, four, four, four, five and eight. This indicates that increased numbers can be expected next year.

Subject to confirmation, the 2018 Railway Challenge is expected to be held on Saturday 30 June and Sunday 1 July with scrutineering on Friday 29 June. The IMechE will open the entry list on Monday 23 October and the first 16 entries will be accepted.

Thus it seems likely that “biggest challenge yet” will apply to this competition for some years to come.

Track challenges In awarding the track challenges, judge Malcolm Dobell noted that Birmingham and Southampton/Siemens had respectively won the energy storage and traction challenges by a large margin. He advised that the maintainability challenge had been won by Sheffield and the ride comfort challenge by SNC-Lavalin, which also won the noise challenge. However, following a judges’ review, it was realised that this should have been a joint award with Warwick.

Reeve announced that the judges wished to give two special awards to teams that had particularly impressed.

These went to FH Aachen, for its initiative in getting to Stapleford from Germany, and the Brunel for its popular and novel locomotive.

Stressing that the judges were open to all forms of traction, Reeve commented that the judges couldn't help but notice that, when adjusted for load, the outstanding traction performance was FSMR’s 2-8-4 steam locomotive. Hence, it was felt that a special load-adjusted traction award should be presented.

Dobell then announced the results in reverse order, finally revealing that SNC-Lavalin had won overall. However, it had been a close-fought competition. Out of a maximum of 1,500 points, the scores for the top three teams were: Huddersfield (889); Birmingham/ AEGIS (1041) and SNC Lavalin (1087). These teams had also jointly won the reliability award.

The Railway Challenge can only take place with the support of sponsorship from RIA, RSSB and Wabtec, the Railway Division’s

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Everyone a winner IMechE president Carolyn Griffiths acknowledged that whilst there had “clearly been some heart-rending moments, all the teams had been successful”. She felt that designing and building such prototype locomotives in a short lead time was a “phenomenal achievement”. She was sure that the practical experience gained by the teams, as well as learning about business economics, project planning and time management, would prove invaluable.

In this respect, everyone was a winner. So was the railway industry as a whole, since the challenge must help attract young engineers to the railway industry.

Organisations interested in entering the 2018 Railway Challenge should contact the IMechE’s Sandra Balthazar at S_Balthazaar@IMechE.org.

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Rail Engineer | Issue 154 | August 2017

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CAREERS

Contractor’s Engineering Manager – CEM The CEM would be responsible for managing and directing all engineering governance and assurance across a complex and challenging scope of multidisciplinary civil and rail works. The role will cover design and engineering development as well as on site construction delivery. An Engineering Manager should be confident, self-motivated and a strong team player, who would have acquired adequate knowledge and experience in practicing the following Network Rail Standards:

• • • •

NR/L2/INI/02009 (Engineering Management of Projects).

NR/L3/CIV/003 (Engineering Assurance of Design & Construction).

And other relevant standards as referenced in the above two.

CDM 2015.

REQUIRED SKILLS

• • •

Day to day management of all project level engineering activities, including assessment of permanent and temporary works design, works requirements and the appointment of suitable resource to satisfactorily complete those works.

Manage delivery of guidance and service support to contribute a clear view for delivering design management and engineering.

Provide operational, strategic and contractual advice and service to bid preparation and project management when associated with design management and engineering.

CALL 0208 859 7706 OR EMAIL MAGGIE.CORNER@MCHUGHLTD.CO.UK

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Location: New Eltham | London

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Selection and appointment of Contractor’s Responsible Engineers (CRE’s).

Review of all Designs to ensure coordination between design disciplines.

Final review and acceptance of all AFC documents.

Responsible for ensuring that all changes in client / company standards are captured, reviewed and briefed.

THE CANDIDATE To be considered for the above post, ideally the candidate should have the following:

• • • •

HND, B.Eng, M.Eng or equivalent degree in civil engineering.

5 years minimum experience in a rail civil environment.

Previously acted as a Network Rail approved CEM or a member of ICE with CEng Status would be advantageous.

Ability and desire to work under pressure to meet business objectives, without compromising Safety and Compliance.

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£50k-80k pa depending on experience and qualifications with benefits package including a vehicle.

CAREERS

Contracts Manager or Senior Project Manager

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REQUIRED SKILLS

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Benefits: £45k-65k pa depending on experience and qualifications with package including vehicle

Client Management

In order to meet the job requirements the individual will also have a proven ability to:

Project Delivery and Line Management

•

Business Unit Management and Operations Management

• • • • • •

People Management

THE CANDIDATE It is envisaged that the successful candidate will ideally be educated to HNC level and able to demonstrate true leadership skills and proven experience of working for a recognised Contractor on Civils Minor Works and Civil engineering schemes within the UK Rail sector.

You will be able to work to tight deadlines within a pressurised and technically challenging rail environment, be able to manage and deliver customer expectations and possess a proven track record in delivering projects on time and within budget whilst also developing and progressing your team.

You will have experience of Minor Works and have previously worked on civil engineering projects that should have included Station upgrades including, Access Walkways, together with Bridge and Structures repairs and refurbishment, Foundations and Support Structures and Earthworks.

• • •

Oversee frameworks, projects and personnel (preferably within the UK rail business) To recruit and manage varying levels of staff Manage and develop a team of technical staff Successfully deliver technically complex projects on time and to budget Develop business plans and successfully deliver against them Manage the profit and loss of the area To communicate and work at all levels within organisations from Board level to support staff Expertise in identifying and implementing business process structures and improve business operations and delivery Create and deliver excellent presentations and written documents Have an understanding of safety, reliability and other risks that could affect the business

CALL 0208 859 7706 OR EMAIL MAGGIE.CORNER@MCHUGHLTD.CO.UK

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