The Rail Engineer - Issue 87 - January 2012 by Rail Media

January 2012

i s s u e

Blackfriars Back in Business THE NEW SOUTH ENTRANCE TO BLACKFRIARS STATION OPENED TO THE PUBLIC AND AT THE SAME TIME WELCOMED THE FIRST 12-CAR THAMESLINK TRAINS

ERTMS in operation

Considering Loughborough

Russian Renaissance

An IRSE seminar examines the progress that has been made in the UK, Europe and further aﬁeld.

Stuart Rackley reports on the £7 million improvements at his home town station.

Russian Railways’ (RZD) plans for the future, as David Shirres reports from Moscow.

written by rail engineers for rail engineers

available online at www.therailengineer.com

january 2012 | the rail engineer | 3

welcome Grahame Taylor’s

Operating notice First of all, on behalf of the team at the rail engineer, let me wish you all a very happy New Year. There were some auspicious dates for the Blackfriars project in the first half of last December. On the 5th, the new entrance opened on the South bank (of the Thames). On the 12th, Blackfriars became the first station to bridge the river and the first 12-car Thameslink trains began to operate through the station. We’ve been covering the project for quite a time and now Chris Parker looks back at what has been achieved. January means?..........snow? fare increases? No, it means the rail engineer twice-yearly coverage of the Institute of Rail Welding Seminar. Chris Parker tells us of the industry’s conversion to the idea of using mobile flash-butt welders to reduce the time taken for rail defect replacement. Eminently laudable – but I do recall trying to flog the idea 15 years ago. Clive Kessell pulls all the strands together and gives us a comprehensive guide to ERTMS. With level 2 in operation on the Cambrian coast there are still a few bugs to iron out. And there’s the perennial issue of proving train complete. Here’s a challenge to dream up something for the 21st century! Clive’s other piece this month deals with the rather chilling issue of cyber threats. Usually associated with multinational companies or with state secrets it might be tempting to imagine that the railways are immune from such a thing. But, as Clive reminds us, “Anyone who thinks that is in dreamland!” Just north of Chorley there used to be a sinister complex next to the railway known as the ‘Ordnance factory’. If you got too close or showed any sort of interest then armed guards would appear. Happily that’s all changed as the complex has been reborn (closed, flattened and built over) as Buckshaw Village. All it needed was a new station, which is where Mungo Stacy takes up the story.

Loughborough station doesn’t figure large in railway publications. But for Stuart Rackley, Loughborough town is home. How he landed up there is woven into his delightfully atmospheric piece on the station and the current extensive improvement works which are well underway. Matlock, the county town of Derbyshire is famous for its thermal springs discovered in 1698. Nowhere is there a mention of its pre-eminence in railway clearances and yet it is to Matlock that all data relating to Network Rail’s train/structure measurements goes. Nigel Wordsworth has been along to see how calculations that took days to perform can be done in seconds. Far more exciting than a hot bath. Rossiyskie Zheleznye Dorogi is probably better abbreviated to RZD. As Russia’s state railway, it is the world’s second largest rail network. In his second report for the rail engineer, David Shirres gives us an insight into the challenges facing RZD along with their ambitious plans. Look out for the GT-1 8,300 kW gas turbine locomotive which has recently hauled a 16,000 ton test train. One article we carried over from last month was our coverage of the IRSE Minor Railways Section conference at Kidderminster Railway Museum. Never write off a volunteer – and certainly not a volunteer signal engineer. These guys really know what they’re doing. The theme this year was ‘Signalling the Link’, or joining on to the National Network, something fraught with ‘challenges’. You can rely on Graeme Bickerdike to get uncomfortably close to the absurdities of the current mountain of rules and regulations. “Standing a red flag up in ballast without first turning off gravity” is just one that comes to mind. The Red Tape Challenge, a coalition brainchild, could lead to a huge bureaucracy making life even more complicated. Let it be our New Year’s resolution to prevent this.

Editor Grahame Taylor grahame.taylor@therailengineer.com

the rail engineer Ashby House, Bath Street, Ashby-de-la-Zouch Leicestershire, LE65 2FH

Production and design Adam O'Connor adam@rail-media.com

Telephone: Fax: Email: Website:

Engineering writers chris.parker@therailengineer.com clive.kessell@therailengineer.com collin.carr@therailengineer.com david.shirres@therailengineer.com graeme.bickerdike@therailengineer.com mungo.stacy@therailengineer.com peter.stanton@therailengineer.com steve.bissell@therailengineer.com stuart.marsh@therailengineer.com stuart.rackley@therailengineer.com terry.whitley@therailengineer.com Advertising Asif Ahmed asif@rail-media.com Nigel Wordsworth nigel@rail-media.com Paul Curtis pc@rail-media.com

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in this issue

Blackfriars, back in business 6 The new south entrance to Blackfriars Station has now opened to the public. ERTMS in operation 11 An IRSE seminar examines the progress that has been made in the UK, Europe and further aﬁeld. Opening Epping Station

From Australia we report on a major rail extension project by Metro Trains Melbourne. Considering Loughborough Stuart Rackley reports on the £7 million improvements at his home town station.

Russian Renaissance

David Shirres reports from a recent Railway Congress in Moscow on Russian Railways (RZD). Strategic aspects of Rail Welding 35 Chris Parker brings us the latest news from the Institute of Rail Welding seminar at the BOC site in Wolverhampton. Mind the gap For our surveying feature we examine Balfour Beatty Rail’s ClearRoute clearance software.

Cyber Threat 47 Cisco Systems and Rockwell Automation held a seminar to examine the risks of computer fraud and hacking. Clive Kessell reports.

forthcoming

features

Sister publication of Bridges & Tunnels, Electrical/Electronic Systems Signalling & Telecoms, Earthworks

February March

4 | the rail engineer | january 2012

news

IN BRIEF

STATIONS

Half-time score

Railway stations provide boost

Network Rail has released its interim results for the half year to 30 September 2011 which mark the midpoint of the ﬁve-year settlement running to 2014 (CP4). Network Rail’s investment in renewing the railway network and increasing capacity has increased with over £300m (20%) more invested in the ﬁrst six months compared to the same period last year. Comparing the six months under review to the same period in 2010, 92.8% of trains ran on time compared to 93.5% last year. Performance has been adversely impacted by increasing levels of cable theft. However, Network Rail continues to reduce the number of infrastructure failures.

Stop thief! Commenting on the high levels of cable theft, Dyan Crowther, Director Operational Services at Network Rail, said: “Britain is under attack from metal thieves. Every day hundreds of passengers and essential freight deliveries are being disrupted and delayed. We are doing all we can to protect the network; investing around £2m each year to fund extra BTP oﬃcers, using CCTV, forensic marking techniques and other technology.

A new study by Network Rail claims that investing in railway stations can provide a major boost for urban regeneration, drive up employment levels and increase property values by up to 30%. The company collaborated with international transport consultants Steer Davies Gleave to look at the economic value of investment in railway stations. The research shows that station investment can: • Increase property values in the immediate vicinity of a station by 30% or more, • Directly support the overall growth of city centre economies and deliver employment opportunities, • Enable stations to act as a gateway to towns and cities, improve the image of the location and make them

more attractive places to live, work and invest, • Act as a catalyst for wider regeneration. David Biggs, Network Rail director of property, said: “This report conﬁrms that investing in stations not only delivers improvements for passengers, but also boosts economic activity and leads to further investment in the local economy. “The continued growth in passenger numbers has allowed Network Rail to attract partners to regenerate the areas around major transport hubs. Birmingham New Street is a great example; we are delivering a radically new station gateway in partnership with the council and John Lewis, transforming the south side of Birmingham city centre.”

INFRASTRUCTURE

Tunnel boring machine unveiled

“We believe that the only way to signiﬁcantly reduce metal crime is to take away the illegal market and that more robust legislation and police powers are needed to achieve that.”

Station Tzar moves on As we look at Stations in a special Focus in this issue, it is worth noting that Mike Goggin has left his post as Network Rail’s Director of Stations and Customer Service and rejoined consultants Steer Davies Gleave. For the last two years Mike led a portfolio of activities that included the organisation’s station strategy for its 2500+ railway stations, the reform of the privatised station leasing model and consolidating the business’ approach to provision of passenger information. John Pengelly (head of franchised stations) is covering in the interim until a more permanent team structure is in place next year.

Crossrail, Europe’s largest construction project, has unveiled the ﬁrst of the eight tunnel boring machines (TBM) that will construct its new tunnels under central London. The 140 metre long, 1,000 ton, fully assembled TBM is currently undergoing factory testing after which it will be dismantled and shipped to London. On arrival it will be re-assembled at Westbourne Park ahead of tunnelling commencing from Royal Oak in March. The construction of the 13 miles of 6.2 metre diameter twin-bore tunnel will require the eight machines to undertake ten individual tunnel drives. The TBMs will run 24 hours a day, 7 days a week stopping only for scheduled maintenance. As the TBMs advance forward, precast concrete segments will be built in rings behind them. Construction of the concrete segment factory for the western running tunnels between Royal Oak and Farringdon is now complete at Old Oak Common. The plant will

begin manufacturing over 70,000 segments for the western tunnels from January. The new tunnels will form part of the 74 mile long rail line that will link Maidenhead and Heathrow in the

west with Shenﬁeld and Abbey Wood in the east. When completed, Crossrail will bring an extra 1.5 million people within 45 minutes journey of London and reduce cross London journey times.

january 2012 | the rail engineer | 5

news

STATIONS

Automatic metro PARlS MARCH 27, 28, 29, 20l2 Porte de Versailles

The oldest, and the busiest, line on the Paris Metro has been converted to fully automatic operation. Metro Line 1 runs east - west for a distance of 17km and carries 725,000 passengers each day to iconic stations such as the Louvre, Place de la Concorde, Champs-Elysées, and Arc de Triomphe. The line was automated without any major interruption to services, but the driverless trains are being introduced gradually and will run among manually-driven vehicles until December 2012 when the changeover is complete and all 49 vehicles have been converted. Siemens supplied the fully automatic train protection system, and the upgrade will result in shorter

headways and faster journey times than conventional driver-operated systems. Trains can now be spaced at 85 second intervals instead of the previous 105 seconds, and train frequency can be adapted ﬂexibly to suit capacity requirements, particularly important during special events. Train movements are controlled by the control centre, which was also supplied by Siemens. A total of 954 platform screen doors have been installed on all the lines’ platforms which will contribute signiﬁcantly to the smooth running of the line and enhancing passenger safety. Intercoms allow passengers to contact a supervisor at all times while onboard cameras allow operators to instantly assess live situations.

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Network Rail has announced £55m-worth of contracts associated with the Edinburgh Glasgow Improvement Programme (EGIP). Morgan Sindall will construct a new £25m station at Haymarket in Edinburgh to create a fully accessible station as well as an integrated train, tram, bus and taxi transport hub. Meanwhile, BAM Nuttall is to reconstruct or remove a number of structures around the central belt in a £27m project and Carillion will deliver a range of track alterations, also in the central belt, in a deal worth £3m. The contracts, all of which will see work commence in 2012, form part of the £1bn EGIP scheme. This will encompass the electrification of 350km of the existing rail network in the central belt, including the main Edinburgh Waverley-Glasgow Queen Street line, and provide opportunities to increase services and reduce journey times on routes between Alloa and Dunblane and Edinburgh and Glasgow. Funded by Transport Scotland on behalf of the Scottish Government, the new infrastructure is being financed through Network Rail’s Regulatory Asset Base. Scottish Transport Minister Keith Brown commented: “This £50m investment for the Haymarket Station Capacity Project and electrification takes us one step closer to revolutionising the rail network in central Scotland.”

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6 | the rail engineer | january 2012

stations

Blackfriars Back in Business writer

Chris Parker Finishing touches to the new entrance.

article is being written on an T hisauspicious day for Network Rail’s project at Blackfriars. Today, 5 December 2011, the new South entrance of Blackfriars station opened to the public for the first time, making the station the first new one on the South Bank in 125 years. On 12 December the North or Common entrance was due to reopen as well, making Blackfriars the first station to bridge the Thames. At the same time, the first 12-car Thameslink trains will begin to operate through the station. The first fruits of this complex and challenging project will then really become apparent to travellers using the station and associated routes. Lindsay Vamplew, Network Rail’s project director, and his team deserve hearty congratulations for getting this far, for they have been managing a demanding combination of challenges since work began in 2008/9. The project has involved, inter alia, a major river bridge, a main line rail station, a London Underground station, another underbridge over a busy thoroughfare, and the management of the realignment and upgrading of a busy railway layout and its signalling. All this has had to be managed whilst both railways remained operational most of the time and without disrupting traffic on the Thames below.

Planned works Readers will be aware from earlier articles that the planned works involved the provision of four new platforms at Blackfriars and the dedication of two through lines to Thameslink. Plans also included the rerouting of those two lines to the opposite side of the station from before so as to avoid conﬂicting movements with the terminal lines. To achieve this, the river bridge has been repaired, strengthened and widened

and the entire station has been rebuilt to occupy the whole bridge. A new South entrance has been provided on the south bank of the Thames to complement the reconstructed North entrance on the opposite bank. The Thameslink lines are capable of handling 12 car trains and will be able to deal with 24 trains/hour in each direction once the remainder of the Thameslink route has been brought up to this capacity.

january 2012 | the rail engineer | 7

stations Early stages

Double design

An early stage in the project, completed at Christmas 2009, was the replacement of the rail bridge just south of Queen Victoria Street. A major job anywhere else, this meant the provision of a new 350 tonne composite structure with a 22 metre span to replace the original Victorian bridge. In parallel with this, the Blackfriars underground station is also being refurbished and improved to cater for future demand and is expected to reopen in February 2012. The ďŹ nal two additional terminal platforms in the main line station are due to come into operation in May 2012, completing the project.

Such has been the complexity of it all that two design teams have been involved. Jacobs has provided the structural engineering input for the buildings works, whilst that for the bridgeworks has been provided by Tony Gee & Partners.

Steel fabrication has also been divided into two contracts, Watson Steel Structures being the main steelwork contractor and Bourne Steel providing the fabrications for the two new station entrances. Approximately 8,000 tonnes of steel has been used in the works in all. The main contractor for the whole scheme has been Balfour Beatty.

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8 | the rail engineer | january 2012

stations

Rooted in the past

Piers of the original 1886 St. Paul’s Bridge make convenient work stations for the new construction.

The site of the main line railway works has been a Victorian river bridge, and the whole of the site has its “heritage” literally underpinning everything. For example, when constructing foundations for the new underground station, the team encountered the remains of the original Victorian railway station. This heritage has created some interesting conundrums. For a start it means that almost everything has to be measured and made individually for a specific place in the bridge or the structure of the new station. Standardisation was not a concept that seems to have been applied when the bridge was built over the Thames, and this has meant mirroring the variations of the bridge structure in the new works in many ways. A key example of how this has affected things is given by the precast concrete units manufactured by Charcon for the construction of the new station platforms. No two units are exactly the same because of the variations in the geometry and dimensions inherent in the supporting bridge structure. Since the site is necessarily very confined, and because there were limits to the amount of weight that could be imposed upon the bridge, it was not possible to stockpile significant numbers of units anywhere on site. Charcon therefore had to construct the units to exact individual dimensions and deliver them to site for installation in precisely the correct order, as required by main contractor Balfour Beatty. To facilitate this, Charcon set aside a dedicated area in their factory exclusively for this project. A special self-compacting concrete mix was adopted in order that the units quickly gained sufficient strength to be handled without damage. Transport to site was constrained by the bridge location too, and so, like most other materials, the concrete units had to be delivered by water. In this case, they were moved from Tilbury to site on barges operated by Bennett’s Barges (like Charcon, a subsidiary company of Aggregate Industries).

Complex project Tony Westlake of Tony Gee & Partners reiterated the complexity of the project when I spoke to him. Whilst the partnership was engaged to carry out structural assessment and design work in relation to the strengthening and widening of the river bridge, Tony estimates that this probably accounted for only about half their work. The remainder of their efforts went into what he called “construction engineering”, including temporary works designs, the

assessment of existing/re-engineered structures to ensure that they can carry the loads imposed during construction (such as the loadings from the crawler cranes employed on each bridge span) and the logistical issues of getting prefabricated steelwork and other large items into the site in good time. It included careful analysis of the processes of deconstruction and reconstruction required in repairing and widening the existing bridge structure. This brought back into use the nearer columns of the redundant bridge piers, which have stood in the river alongside the bridge for many years, as supports for the widening on that side of the structure. As with the concrete platform units, and for the same reasons, the new steelwork was preassembled as far as possible off-site, this time at Thames Wharf, and again barges were used to bring materials to the site of work. The use of river transport had the additional beneﬁt of avoiding many lorry loads travelling over London’s congested roads.

Keeping trains moving Much effort went into deciding the right sequence for the prefabrication and erection to optimise the construction process. The need to keep trains running on both the National Rail and LUL lines throughout the project, with very few track possessions, required further care in the design and sequencing of the works. It was this that led to the decision to split the works into east and west halves, allowing the half not being worked on to carry the mainline rail services whilst the other side was dedicated to the project works. The eastern side was completed ﬁrst, then the switch was made to the west, and in 2011 it has been this second half that has been the focus of work. To help with this construction engineering process, the main contractor, Balfour Beatty, was appointed and brought into the project early, and assisted in the design process in order to increase the “buildability” and safety of the design.

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10 | the rail engineer | january 2012

stations

Pride of place

Installing the photovoltaic solar panels.

by Sanyo, will generate 900,000kWh of electricity every year, and are expected to supply about half the annual energy requirement of the station. The panels were a challenge to design. They needed to be especially lightweight because of the project’s need to avoid over-stressing the river bridge, but at the same time, due to security requirements, they had to incorporate shatterproof materials. Secondly, the “ﬂying staircases” of the south entrance are quite spectacular. Cantilevering from the main structure

The project team is particularly proud of three features of the job. Firstly, the 4,400 photovoltaic panels to be installed on the station roof will make the station the possessor of the largest solar array in London to date and the biggest solar bridge in the world. The panels, designed specially for the site and supplied

between a mezzanine above street level and the platform level above, they apparently have fantastic views of the river and surrounding area. Lastly, but certainly not least, the whole complex will be completely accessible for disabled travellers. Whilst this is the norm we expect of new projects, it is still relatively unusual for transport hubs in London. Network Rail and Transport for London will be delighted to see this site added to the list of upgraded locations that meet modern expectations in this way.

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january 2012 | the rail engineer | 11

feature

has been written about ERTMS (European Rail Traffic M uch Management System) since its inception some 10 years ago and much more will emerge as worldwide rollout proceeds. The signalling suppliers message is that a successful system has been achieved, the earlier problems during system design having been resolved. But is this true and are the benefits that were promised being realised? The IRSE staged a seminar on the 15 November to examine the progress that has been made in the UK, in Europe and further afield, and to assess how the system will be steered into the future.

ERTMS has already impacted on a number of railway rules and processes: • Tasks - How infrastructure and rolling stock is managed including interdependence of activities, data consistency and accuracy, competence assurance and management, • Services - Train operations especially in part-equipped areas including capacity gains and junction optimisation, • People - Behaviour, procedures and problem resolution, • The Future - rolling stock strategies, train control strategy, service and asset planning.

Progress review

ERTMS Proliferation

Firstly, a brief recap. ERTMS, with its two main constituent parts, ETCS (European Train Control System) and GSM-R (the rail adaptation of the public GSM mobile radio standard), is all about getting a train control system that will work seamlessly across borders. It has three levels of application: • Level 1 - a pan-European Automatic Train Protection (ATP) system providing improved train safety as an add-on to existing signalling systems, • Level 2 - a complete train control system including Movement Authorities (MA), full speed supervision and train protection with emergency braking. It uses a radio bearer but retains some lineside infrastructure, principally axle counters / track circuits for added position monitoring and control of points and level crossings, • Level 3 - a totally radio based control system with only the minimum lineside equipment and with the possibility of introducing moving block.

It is beyond doubt that ERTMS is making an impact in Europe and the wider world. Jacques Poré from Alstom revealed that since the ﬁrst pilot scheme in 1999, some 35,000 kilometres of route and 7000 vehicles have been equipped, 50% outside of Europe. Some 70 million kilometres of operation has been achieved, increasing by two million kilometres each month. Whilst Spain, Sweden, France and China are currently the biggest investors, perhaps the progress to date has been dominated by three countries. • Switzerland. After early trials on the Lucerne - Olten line, two lines are now equipped with Level 2 for regular usage: Mattstetten (Bern) to Rothrist (Olten) on a newly built infrastructure, and the Lőtschberg Base Tunnel line. These projects have involved 4 suppliers - Alstom, Bombardier, Siemens and Thales - thus testing out the interoperability of equipment. Used by both passenger and freight trains, the lines operate at high speed with 110 second headways • Italy. Four high speed lines and 112 vehicles are now equipped for 300kph operation with a 3 minute headway. Alstom and Ansaldo have been the main suppliers. • Netherlands. The dedicated Betuweroute freight line, linking Rotterdam through Germany to the rest of Europe, plus three high speed / general lines are now in full Level 2 operation using three suppliers - Alstom, Bombardier and Thales. 116 vehicles have been equipped.

Evolving Concept An introductory address by Peter Stanley, who has spearheaded the newly published IRSE ERTMS book, reminded delegates what ERTMS is and, perhaps more importantly, what it is not. Emerging as a set of Interface Standards to create interoperability of onboard and lineside sub systems, ERTMS does not lead to common equipment platforms or common functional control units, nor will it lead to the replacement of route setting and route holding.

ERTMS in Operation

writer

Clive Kessell

12 | the rail engineer | january 2012

The perceived advantages of ERTMS were summarised as offering improved safety with up to 40% capacity improvement, reduced operational cost through improved reliability and lower maintenance, ecofriendly technology, an open market using the unique standard to give better life cycle cost, and a natural choice for high speed lines up to 500kph. This gives a positive message. But is it just ‘Sales Speak ‘ to promote business for the principal manufacturers?

Swiss role

A more cautious note was given by Martin Sűcher of SBB. Obtaining consistent software versions from four suppliers and delivered to ten train companies has proved to be challenging. Upgrading software in the future looks to be equally problematic. The current position is that if one party wishes to implement a software upgrade, then everyone else has to as well. Backward compatibility will become essential as ERTMS roll out will make it impossible to have every element of track or train borne equipment in different countries and across international borders at the same level of software. System management becomes all important and a layered model for roles and responsibilities will be vital: a system manager to control European and country standards, an integration manager to oversee the application to train and trackside, an operating company (infrastructure manager or TOC) to control the supply of Products and Equipment. The overall experience in Switzerland has however been beneﬁcial with delay attribution being almost non existent - 115 minutes / month = 0.014 minutes per train.

The UK Experience The Cambrian early deployment scheme was reported in issues 74 and 79 of the rail engineer (December 2010 and May 2011). Nicola Furness of Network Rail and Peter Leppard of Arriva Trains Wales gave an insight into some of the problems found since full introduction in Spring 2011. The settling-in period saw train service performance plummet: down from 90% with RETB to only 60% with ERTMS. This latter ﬁgure has since improved. From an infrastructure perspective, management of speed proﬁle and gradient data, the understanding and categorisation of

SPADs / End of Movement Authorities, the control of ESRs and TSRs plus route barring for possessions have all needed new rules to be devised. Having the asset management data in imperial and ERTMS data in metric has not helped. The working relationship between infrastructure and train equipment maintainers was typically always to blame the other, but this has now got much better and an understanding of the total system requirement has emerged with good sharing of data. From a train operator perspective, the system is more cautious than RETB. Setting up movement authorities out of a loop for two trains at the same time is a problem, as is allowing two approaching trains to occupy a loop at the same time. The lack of incorporation of AHB / AOCL level crossing control signals into the ERTMS system can give conflicting information to drivers and this is a serious concern. When questioned as to whether these shortcomings will be rectified, it seems unlikely in the short term as all efforts are being made to get performance up without the complication of further tinkering. Retro fitting the Class 158 DMUs has been difficult with portions of ERTMS equipment being distributed all around the train. Getting the DMI display to be readable in both bright sunlight and at night took time to resolve. Cab equipment boot-up takes several minutes, which is a problem when splitting / joining trains at Machynlleth. It must be remembered that the whole purpose of the Cambrian trial has been to establish how ERTMS would work in a UK environment by using a low risk route. With hindsight, perhaps the Cambrian was not the

PHOTO: JONATHAN WEBB

(Below) Inside the control centre at Machynlleth and (inset) the system’s equipment racks.

The experiences of Switzerland have been watched closely by all. A positive message was given by Hansruedi Kaesar and Martin Zűrcher of SBB. Being a country at a crossroads in Europe, it needs to handle much transit traffic and obtaining increased capacity is a challenge. Passenger traffic has risen from 12 million to 17.5 million journeys between 2002 and 2010, with freight traffic also mushrooming. ETCS is seen as an essential part of getting the needed train paths. The evolving strategy is to equip new lines with Level 2 and existing lines with Level 1, this latter to be completed right across the country by 2018. However, the Swiss do not expect to equip all lines with Level 2 until 2060. This clearly states the perceived longevity of ERTMS, although it is acknowledged that the hardware will need periodic updates from time to time. Expecting present day electronic components to be available in 50 years time is wishful thinking. The training of drivers has produced useful ‘front end’ feedback on the system characteristics. Training is based around a mix of classroom tuition / simulation and ontrain experience. Feedback shows that drivers appreciate a feeling of improved safety, less concern about weather and having relevant information for the journey. Adverse comments are on understanding the complexity of the system with too many types of MMI display.

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best choice as the ERTMS rules for main line application are probably too restrictive for a line such as this. Nonetheless, useful data and experience is being gained which will be put to good advantage on the next application the northern end of the Hertford loop, intended as an integration test line.

The Future of Level 3 Peter Elestedt from Bombardier described the Level 3 trial in Sweden which was reported in issue 82 of the rail engineer (August 2011). This brave attempt to reduce lineside infrastructure to a minimum, using either radio or internet connectivity, should be watched carefully. Sweden intends to roll this out to many secondary lines where a 50% reduction in operating and maintenance costs can be

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14 | the rail engineer | january 2012

(Right) The in-cab ERTMS display.

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achieved. The testing of the system has been completed and it is now in use operationally. The vexed question of proving train integrity has to be resolved in the longer term as, without any track circuits or axle counters, the Level 3 system is not capable of doing this. It should be pointed out that signalling was never invented to keep trains coupled together - indeed, for much of railway history, train completeness was achieved by the signaller looking for the tail lamp! Much thought is being given to how integrity can be achieved without the complication of having to put some electronic device on the last vehicle. Ideas will be welcome as until this is solved, Level 3 has a limited future.

European TEN Corridors One must not forget just how important ERTMS is for improving the viability of the Trans European Network (TEN) corridors. Stefan Wendel, the Programme Director for TEN-T explained that the Rotterdam / Zeebrugge to Genoa route is one such line which is intended to have full ERTMS capability by 2015. Transiting 5 countries, this is seen as achievable except perhaps for a small gap in Germany. An Operations Working Group is setting about harmonising the operating rules, seen as an essential precursor to effective ERTMS operation. Joint cooperation is taking place between the EC, ERA, User Groups, NSAs and UNIFE to ensure the best possible understanding of ERTMS usability and to give a joint commitment on achieving baseline-3 software before ERTMS through-working commences.

Traffic Management It must be remembered that ERTMS has a third component, the Traffic Management System (TMS), aimed at optimising the throughput of train services. To date, little development has occurred on this. However, a total network roll out of ERTMS is to take place in Denmark based upon a business case of improved reliability and punctuality. Dr Felix Laube from Emch & Berger explained that by rolling it out quickly, and by being prepared to change the operating rules, the result should be a large increase in available train paths as well as a significant reduction in maintenance and staff expenditure. The cost will be €2.6 billion but this is cheaper than the civil engineering

work needed to create more infrastructure. The project is big enough to attract international competition so economies of scale will be realised. In short, the railway has to be ‘reborn’ and ERTMS is the ‘transformational force’. As well as the increased capacity, huge improvements in passenger information and customer service are foreseen, with the signalling system being in tune with train company requirements. Certainly a brave commitment and the world will be watching to see how this project proceeds.

Conclusions It is clear that ERTMS is here to stay. It has taken a long time to become a mature standard and even now there is plenty of ongoing development to be done. Much of the implementation so far has concentrated on high speed lines where infrastructure and rolling stock have been part of a single project. The Swiss have striven hard to get ERTMS proven on a mixed traffic railway and the UK (almost by default) has tested the effectiveness of the system on a rural line. It seems that there are three principal concerns that must be resolved in the near future: • The provision, control and management of software. Getting new versions in place that are backward compatible with earlier versions will be essential, • The capacity of GSM-R. It is evident that the present bandwidth allocation and circuit switched connections will not be capable of handling ETCS commands in high traffic areas. Even if packet switching were to be introduced (GPRS), it would not be a complete answer. The solution is likely to be structuring GSM-R within a future mobile radio standard (perhaps LTE) and to then capitalise on the greater data handling capacity that this would give, • The need to have different operating rules for different types of lines. The safety features needed for a high speed line may be inappropriate for secondary and rural routes, where more flexibility in train operations will be required. This IRSE seminar gave a realistic assessment of ERTMS. The system can now be judged as successful, which is just as well since there will be precious few alternative technologies to purchase in the future.

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16 | the rail engineer | january 2012

stations

Quiet!

Work in progress… Acoustic panels

are busy places. And when S tations refurbishment and alterations are taking place, and parts of the concourse and platforms have disappeared behind hoardings, the remaining areas get even busier. Now add into the mix the noise of those building works and the whole experience of using that station can become quite unpleasant. Wooden hoardings and wiremesh “Heras”-type barriers are all very well for keeping the travelling public away from the danger zone, but they do nothing to reduce the noise. Step forward Peter Wilson. As an engineer with 30 years of experience in acoustics, Peter has an unusually pragmatic approach to the specialist fields of noise and vibration. He also developed the IOSH competency training courses in both noise and vibration. Peter realised that a quick, simple and lowcost solution to this very pervasive noise problem was called for. Too expensive, and it wouldn’t be used. Too difficult to use, and the new technology would not be widely adopted to the benefit of customers, staff and contractors.

So Peter and his team developed a noiseabsorbing panel made up of two elements, a mass layer and a carefully designed acoustic absorbent layer. These not only attenuate the direct transmission of sound, but also reduce the sound reflected back towards the source to improve the overall performance. The two layers were then shaped into strong, flexible barriers and the Echo Barrier was born. These lightweight panels are very easily installed onto fencing using specially designed hooks and eyes. In fact, the first product launched, the Echo Barrier H1, was specifically sized to fit onto standard Heras fence panels, although it can also be easily fitted to wooden hoardings and other structures. The barriers are weatherproof and fire retardant, include reflective strips for night time safety and can also be printed with site messages or advertising.

London Underground Balfour Beatty Rail was quick to pick up on the new product and use it on projects for London Underground. Clipping Echo Barrier panels onto barriers markedly reduced the noise from their work and inconvenience to both neighbours and the travelling public. As Martin Higgins, Project Manager at Balfour Beatty Rail commented: “This product, and what it allows us to do, has had a considerable positive impact on our reputation and on our procedures. It will prove a valuable asset moving forward in ensuring that we are able to respect the communities in which we do our work, and are able to work more efficiently and effectively.” The configuration or layout of acoustic barriers with respect to the relevant noise source is a key factor in achieving the required noise reduction. There are two simple principles involved. The first involves maximising the sound ‘shadow’ cast by the

barrier by positioning the barrier correctly. The second is that the performance of any barrier, whether a temporary construction or a brick wall, is always signiﬁcantly less at lower frequencies. This effect is created by a combination of the barrier geometry and the laws of physics. Technically, lower frequency sound has a longer wavelength which reduces the effective height of the barrier, creating a smaller acoustic ‘shadow’. As well as supplying the product, Echo Barrier can advise on how best to use it. So if a particular application involves unusual noise signatures or geometries, or the need to be able to guarantee speciﬁc noise levels, they can provide a full range of additional technical support services.

Other benefits And passenger comfort is not the only benefit. As one London Underground project manager observed: “The costs of the noise control measures range from £2,000 to £6,000 per weekend. Considering that a noise abatement notice could jeopardise a £1 million contract for a weekend track renewal project, the mitigation costs are very low.” The benefits of using Echo Barrier have also been recognised by no-less an organisation than the Noise Abatement Society. At their 11th annual awards, which acknowledge innovative ideas that have made a positive impact on the reduction of excessive noise in the community, Echo Barrier was highly commended in the Technology category, sponsored by the Institute of Acoustics. So next time you walk past some station rebuilding works, listen out for the Echo Barrier!

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january 2012 | the rail engineer | 17

stations

writer

Mungo Stacy

Bucking the Trend transport schemes that support housing growth. This funding, conﬁrmed in August 2009, had a two-year spending deadline, giving the project urgency. Project partners Lancashire County Council, Chorley Borough Council, Network Rail and Northern Rail have collaborated closely. Richard Watts, Rail Projects Manager at Lancashire County Council, explains that the project board included representatives from all four parties: “We brought together senior people and gave leadership from a high level. The people there had the authority and clout to make it happen”.

the face of I ncontinental economic meltdown, two diametrically opposed alternatives present themselves. The ﬁrst: retrench, cut and struggle on with less. The second: in a reﬂowering of Keynesian macro-economic thought, invest to promote growth. Recent developments in the Northwest have favoured the latter course. On 3 October 2011, Buckshaw Parkway became the latest addition to the national rail network. This new station serves a major development at Buckshaw Village in Lancashire with direct services to Manchester, Preston and beyond. The £6.8M project developed Network Rail’s modular station designs to deliver the station platforms, buildings, access and car parking on time and within budget.

Ordnance Buckshaw Village is a massive brownﬁeld development on the 395 hectare site of the former Royal Ordnance Factory. A masterplan was created as the munitions works wound down in the 1990s, and proposed new residential and industrial zones. Realisation of the plan is well underway. To date, around half of the planned 4,000 houses have been built and facilities include a new primary school, community centre, sports pitches and doctors’ surgery. A new railway station has long been integral to the masterplan for this new community.

County Councillor Tim Ashton, Lancashire County Council’s cabinet member for highways and transport, said: “It’s really important that with every new and emerging development like Buckshaw Village we make sure there is a sustainable public transport system for residents and commuters to use.” Councillor Peter Goldsworthy, Leader of Chorley Council, added, “The new station is something that residents and businesses have told us is really important for Buckshaw so I’m delighted that the work of Chorley Council has helped make this a reality.”

Collaboration The project is being delivered by Network Rail but the funding comes entirely from third parties. Chorley Borough Council is funding £3.5M from a Section 106 agreement with the former landowner, BAE Systems. Developers Redrow and Barratt also worked in partnership to transfer the land for the station to Network Rail and facilitate the construction stages and other developers, including Orbit, took account of the needs of the station in their plans. However, a £3.3M funding gap remained. Lancashire County Council successfully targeted the government’s Community Infrastructure Fund which was an ideal source, speciﬁcally designed to fund

Integrated transport From the outset the scheme has been about more than just a station: it is a mini transport hub. The forecourt has taxi spaces, a ‘kiss-and-ride’ drop-off point and a bus stop. The main link-roads through Buckshaw Village have dedicated cycle paths, and the station has 10 cycle lockers and space for 40 cycles on the stands. As beﬁts a ‘Parkway’ station, Buckshaw provides signiﬁcant car parking with 200 spaces plus the regulation 5% or 10 disabled spaces. Parking is free, similar to the other parkway stations on the Manchester to Preston line at Horwich and Lostock.

There are no internal columns as the building is single storey.

18 | the rail engineer | january 2012

Platform parameters Construction continues without interrupting services.

The platforms are 150m long to allow 6-car formations to use the station. The planning permissions and construction details permit future extension for 8-cars. Step-free access is provided to the station building and platforms from the car park by careful grading. A 24m-span footbridge links the platforms, with step-free access via the striking terracotta-tiled twin lift shafts. The station building has a complementary appearance and provides ticketing facilities, toilets and covered waiting space.

Modularised

Design is based on the modular station concept.

Network Rail’s October 2007 Stations Strategy envisages a consistent, recognisably high quality being created by new and standardised station facilities. To meet this aim, Network Rail’s design for Buckshaw Parkway proposed using elements from the modular stations initiative. Several stations have trialled the modular concept, including Greenhithe, Mitcham Eastfields and Corby. Since these flagship examples opened in 2008-2009, a steady stream of station redevelopments such as Uckfield and Berkswell have used similar details. Initial costings of the standard station modules put the price beyond the available budget. A value-engineering exercise maintained a delicate balance between trimming 30% off the costs whilst maintaining full political support.

stations

Significant savings were realised by optimising the station building. A tenet of the modular concept is that the designs offer flexibility for each station to meet the needs of passengers, operators and the community. In this case, the standard 12m by 12m building footprint is provided and the aesthetics remain the same as the other modular stations: distinctive red-tile cladding with white louvres above, flanked by full-height glazing. However, only a single storey is provided rather than the double-height offerings seen, for example, at Corby. Further design work allowed rationalisation both of the interior layout and also the structural arrangement with the removal of intermediate columns.

Operation The station is operated by Northern Rail and is staffed seven days per week. Lee Wasnidge, Area Director for Northern Rail, said, “The ticket oﬃce is manned from ﬁrst train to last and there is a waiting area and disabled access to ensure people using the station are well looked after. The new station doesn’t affect the number of trains stopping at Chorley or Leyland with three trains an hour in each direction stopping at Buckshaw Parkway for most of the day.” County Councillor Mark Perks, who is the ward councillor for the area, added, “It’s been a key milestone for local people and it’s great that we have a direct rail link from Buckshaw Village to cities such as Manchester”.

All Northern Rail services will stop at Buckshaw Parkway and some, but not all, TransPennine Express services. Manchester’s main stations, Piccadilly and Victoria, are reached in 40 to 50 minutes. Blackpool has a similar journey time, and Preston is within 10 minutes. Typical off-peak routes are Blackpool North to Manchester Victoria, Preston to Hazel Grove and Blackpool North to Manchester Airport. This line is well-used and has short journey times between stations, making on-train ticket checks diﬃcult. Revenue protection is accommodated by channelling all passengers through the station building.

West Coast upgrade The West Coast upgrade in the early 2000s incorporated critical enabling works for the new station, without which it is unlikely that the station would have been viable in the planned location. These interventions included capacity improvements by redoubling the link to the main line at Euxton Junction, and revisiting the signalling overrun and operational assessments to remove the need to stop at two red signals on the junction approach. Once the West Coast upgrade was completed in December 2008, the overall service pattern was radically altered. This timetable change also introduced additional dwell time for local services at Chorley station, compensating for the future extra station stop. Importantly, this gave ﬂexibility to open Buckshaw Parkway without needing to coincide with a timetable change. The station is not the ﬁrst at this site. Until 1965, a halt served the Royal Ordnance Factory. Situated on a fairly straight and level section of track, tweaks of only 75mm lift and 25mm slew were needed to achieve a true straight alignment and grade prior to constructing the new platforms. However, even this minor adjustment needed to be run out over 1km to present a smooth alignment for trains travelling at speed; fortunately the tamp stopped short of the main line at Euxton junction.

january 2012 | the rail engineer | 19

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Out of the ground A competitive tender resulted in contractor Volker Fitzpatrick winning the design and build project. They had the advantage of using designer Tata Steel, who designed the first trial modular building which was erected at Ringwood, Hampshire, in 2007. Site remediation was carried out previously from 2000 to 2003 by BAE Systems Environmental Ltd when 160 hectares of the brownfield site were treated. Martin Whyatt, Network Rail’s project manager, says, “In comparison to other projects, that meant we could be reasonably confident there was no unexploded ordnance”. Challenging ground conditions remained, though. Within months of contract award in October 2011, the initial investigations showed weak ground and it looked as though the platforms would need to be piled, dramatically increasing the programme and cost. Additional investigations were undertaken, says Martin Whyatt, and enabled a more straightforward concrete raft foundation to be justified. Levels were constrained by two features: the railway and the village link roads, with a vertical difference of around 2m between them. Over 26,000 cubic metres of fill were placed to build up the car parking and access to match the platform level and provide stepfree access. With up to 45 truckloads of fill arriving per day for three months, it was a major environmental

credit that this was all recycled material sourced from the Buckshaw development site, and no surplus material was sent to landfill. The government funding with its financial year-end deadline meant that the cash-flow had to be tailored to ensure suitable expenditure by this date. Long-lead and high-value items were procured early. Groundworks were then the main focus until around June 2011 before the station proper began to emerge. The most visible symbol of progress was the new footbridge, lifted into place during an overnight possession on Sunday 10 July 2011.

Lifting in the new footbridge, July 2011.

Open to service With the genesis of the project nearly two decades ago, it is a reminder that transport investment is a long-term consideration rather than a rapid response to a banking crisis. However, provision of the station should certainly help to achieve those Keynsian aims, with investment in infrastructure helping to stimulate production in the region. And at the local level, the addition of the station is one more step in the transformation of Buckshaw Village from a development site into a fully ﬂedged community.

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20 | the rail engineer | january 2012

stations

suburban railway network in T heMelbourne, Australia, covers 830 kilometres of track. Metro Trains Melbourne (MTM) is the current franchise holder with an agreement lasting eight years from 2009. MTM is a joint venture of the Hong Kongbased MTR Corporation (60%), John Holland Group (20%) and UGL (20%). It operates 150 six-car train sets which together cover more than 30 million kilometres each year.

The 21kilometre long Epping line was opened in 1889 and runs from the citycentre Flinders Street Station north to Epping. At one time the line went all the way to Whittlesea, but due to a lack of demand it was closed from Thomastown in 1959. The 3.5 kilometres to Epping was restored in the 1960s when the line was electriﬁed. In 2008 a further development plan was announced to increase the capacity of the existing line by doubling 5 kilometres of line and by extending it by 3.5 kilometres back to South Morang. This South Morang Rail Extension Project is being delivered by an alliance between the Victorian Department of Transport, Metro, VicRoads, John Holland and AECOM. South Morang Rail Extension Project

Grand opening On 28 November, the new Epping Station, which has been relocated a short distance, opened to passengers as the ﬁrst trains ran on the newly-commissioned dual track section that took in four stations over 5 kilometres. The achievement followed an extended four-day occupation [no train services, overhead power isolated] and huge team effort as the alliance project team raced to deliver on time. Metro customers using the new Epping Station on day one.

Opening Epping

Key Features • Doubling of track covering 5 km and four stations • 3.5 km extension of new dual track to a new premium terminating station (planned to open April 2012) at South Morang with free all-day parking for 450 cars, drop off area, taxi rank, a bus interchange and bike cages • Three new premium station buildings including new relocated Epping Station, new terminating interchange at South Morang, plus a second platform and pedestrian overpass at Thomastown Station • Upgraded road/pedestrian level crossings, new road overpass bridges and new rail bridges • Signal power equipment upgraded from 240 volt to 1000 volt • Signalling system upgraded CBI from SSI to Australian-ﬁrst SMARTLock • Four new stable sidings constructed at the site of the former Epping Station • Upgraded maintenance facilities for signallers, maintainers and train drivers • Early works commenced March 2010, main construction from October 2010.

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22 | the rail engineer | january 2012

The former Epping Station platforms have been bulldozed (left) for new train sidings, while tracks under the road lead to the new Epping Station.

The senior project manager from MTM said, “despite a Saturday deluge the concerted approach and detailed planning by all involved parties met its target. “Station staff were able to ﬁnalise their set up in the new building during the weekend while their nearby old structure was being demolished to make way for four new six-car set train stabling roads,” said Simon Vaughan. “Signalling, overhead, track and electrical teams worked tirelessly to put the ﬁnal touches in place so the test train could run through early on Sunday on the new section of dual track extending 3.5 km to a new terminating station and transport interchange that will open for use by mid-2012,” he said. “That afternoon we had an intensive run of train drivers getting familiar with the new dual track in the existing corridor, ready for passenger services from early Monday.

stations

“An Australian ﬁrst was the installation, testing and commissioning of the SMARTLock computer-based interlocking (CBI) system designed speciﬁcally as a successor to Solid State Interlocking (SSI) for all signalling applications.”

the ﬁrst customer services out of the new Epping Station as scheduled on Monday. “This has been a terriﬁc project team effort that also has required close dealings with and support from all operational areas of Metro to achieve this goal,” Andrew said.

Consultation

Praise from on high

Relevant stakeholders within Metro were regularly consulted to ensure designs, construction, operation and maintainability considerations were covered, according to Simon. “The consultation process with MTM not only included the risk assessment process, but there were also workshops during the design phase to define the design strategy. These covered everything from track and signals and access maintenance to power upgrades. “We ensured Metro had input to coordinating the delivery of the project, with key internal operational readiness and commissioning committees engaged at 12weeks, five weeks and three weeks prior to this stage’s final commissioning.” Metro Chief Executive Officer, Andrew Lezala, congratulated all who had contributed to a fantastic result in getting

Victoria’s Minister for Public Transport, Terry Mulder, joined the chorus of praise: “It’s great to see the newly-duplicated track and two new stations fully operational and delivered ahead of schedule. “The newly-duplicated track will provide improvements in on-time reliability and performance for the Epping line. The new stations will provide a signiﬁcant upgrade in facilities for commuters,” the minister said. In the coming months the project team will wrap up the AU$400 million project with the commissioning of the new train stabling roads and completion of the new terminating station at South Morang. Once driver training is completed, Metro plans a timetable change to introduce added services on the line to meet the rising demand for public transport in Melbourne’s rapidly-growing north.

The impressive Epping forecourt and station entrance at street level, alongside the bus interchange.

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24 | the rail engineer | january 2012

stations

Better access better stations Pitsea bridge installation.

the past few years, the rail industry O ver has seen an increase in station improvement projects across the UK. These include the development of concourses and canopies, and the provision of drop off areas and car parks. The needs of commuters have changed, and consequently many stations are no longer deemed to be of suﬃcient quality for today’s modern society. Even with a number of projects running at one time, it is certainly not a case of one size ﬁts all, as each refurbishment requires a different approach to ensure the best results can be delivered within the given budgets and timeframes. It is also important to limit disruption to rail passengers and those living in the surrounding area. In addition to minor upgrades to improve the station environment for train passengers, there are also some national

schemes behind the more extensive refurbishment projects. One such programme is ‘Access for All’, a Department for Transport funded scheme being delivered by Network Rail to create step-free access from station entrances to platforms and described in Issue 84 of the rail engineer (October 2011). Leading civil engineering ﬁrm J. Murphy & Sons Limited has been successful in its tendering for much of this work on a number of stations nationwide.

Horley Station Murphy delivered an extensive work programme at Horley Station in Surrey as part of the ‘Access for All’ scheme. The project involved the construction of three lifts from the ticket oﬃce to platform level, together with the associated power services upgrade. The station improvements needed to be completed in a way that not only provided the desired results, but was also sympathetic to the style and look of the existing buildings. The project was carried out over a period of 52 weeks - an extension to the intended 34 week schedule due to the discovery of a redundant aviation fuel main within one of the lift shaft bases! Lifts to serve platforms one and four were constructed as standalone units, while the lift to island platform two and three utilised

an existing brick shaft. All three lifts are operated hydraulically, with a new lift motor room located to the rear of the brick shaft. The existing station electrical supply needed to be upgraded to power the new lifts. This also supported improvements to both CCTV and lighting, making the station look brighter and feel safer to passengers. While designing and installing three lifts may seem relatively straightforward, the Horley Station refurbishment is a classic example of different approaches being required even within the same project as each lift shaft and motor room had its own individual challenges. Prefabrication of both the steelwork and cladding was carried out off-site, allowing the lift shafts to be constructed in a shorter time despite the tight space constraints and limited access. In addition to reacting to issues as and when they arose on site, Murphy was able to foresee potential problems early on in the planning process, such as the restricted level of access to platform four. To address this, Murphy worked with Network Rail to change the original design use of auger piles to steel tube piles. This alteration eliminated the need to remove excavated material and reduced the amount of concrete needed, both of which meant that the work became much more straightforward and was not hindered by only having irregular access to the platform.

january 2012 | the rail engineer | 25

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As night-time working was a crucial element in completing the project with minimal disruption to passengers, it was important to achieve cooperation from local residents who might have been affected. Murphy worked closely with those living nearby, keeping them informed of dates and times that the work would be carried out over the period of seven months. This regular communication ensured the project was not interrupted by objections - in fact, not one complaint was received.

Pitsea Station At the end of 2011, Murphy completed a £2.5 million design and construction contract for Network Rail to provide step free access improvements at Pitsea Station near Basildon in Essex. Three new lift shafts and staircases have now been installed, which creates an accessible route from the station entrance to and between all of the platforms. Murphy was also responsible for the associated platform, ground works and M&E works. The works were carried out while the station and its platforms were still fully operational. With an average of 6,000 passengers passing through it every day, it was not possible to close even part of the station. Careful consideration was given as to how to manage the site to deliver the best results within the given time frame, but with minimum disruption. This was achieved with track possession and isolations, which allowed for the work to be carried out without affecting train services during normal daytime hours. Temporary installations, such as footbridges, also reduced inconvenience for station users. Mirroring the success of the project at Horley Station, the Murphy team was able to keep the disturbance to passengers and the surrounding community to a minimum. Feedback and client commendations demonstrated that this was achieved, and again there were no complaints made during the programme of works which were carried out with zero accidents and RIDDOR free.

Berkswell Station While ‘Access for All’ schemes are having a notable impact on stations across the UK, it is not just extensive renovations that can make a difference to passengers and the usability of today’s railways. Such was the case at Berkswell Station, located just outside of Birmingham at Balsall Common near Solihull. Being on the commuter route into Birmingham city centre, it is a

popular station with more than 200,000 passengers using it every year and Network Rail wanted to improve the environment for both station users and railway staff. In addition, the disused station master’s house was to be demolished as it was becoming an eyesore, and it was not financially viable to repair and maintain the building. One of the biggest improvements was the upgrade of the ticket office. The existing single storey, wooden ticket office had been built in approximately 1912 and was now in poor condition and did not meet current standards for the provision of staff facilities. To ensure the construction could be completed with minimal on-site time, Murphy designed and installed an innovative, modular-build type. The new ticket office is a steel frame clad building, which has given the station a 21st century feel and appearance. In addition, a separate low height accessible counter allows disabled passengers to use the station much more easily. Other improvements include the removal of old passenger ramps, with reconfigured access to make it easier for passengers to get onto the station. Murphy also fitted new handrails and fencing round the entrance, again reflecting the modern feel of the improved station, and new cycle storage.

The year ahead Murphy is continuing to work closely with Network Rail on a number of key projects; in addition to station

refurbishments, there are a number of bridge and electriﬁcation schemes that will run throughout 2012. As well as general refurbishment, better accessibility and usability of stations is clearly an important requirement of modern society. The ‘Access for All’ scheme will be running until 2014, so there are still many more stations that will be improved and upgraded over the next two years which will beneﬁt thousands of passengers.

(Above) Berkswell ticket oﬃce and (inset) Horley lift shaft.

26 | the rail engineer | january 2012

stations

The Question of

Congestion luminaries as Chris Green and Mike Goggin in attendance, we were never going to lack substance. Chris gave valuable kudos to our cause and following the publication of his hugely impressive ‘Better Stations’ report he gave the conference great gravitas as its chair and lead speaker. Mike Goggin has been a constant source of support during the entire time we have been operating. His ambitions to simplify and enhance the passenger experience have been instrumental in our philosophy. The conference at ExCel is our most ambitious to date. But with the help of our sponsors, ATOS and Rail Media, the conference will provide another huge opportunity to challenge and debate issues such as Congestion, Retailer Integration, Ticketing and Wayﬁnding.

writer

James Fitzgerald (the Future Of Station Design) F OSD stages an annual conference and a series of events that have one key aim - to help create a better passenger experience for all travellers. By sticking to this mantra it is now a respected industry event with a highly sought-after Steering Committee and enviable bank of contacts and partners. After its successful debut at the London Transport Museum in May 2010, FOSD has become a trusted and innovative mouthpiece for the sector. With a hugely successful second conference (50% more delegates and exhibitors came to the German Gymnasium in May 2011), the organisers and production team are hugely optimistic about their next event at ExCeL, London on the 25 May 2012. Bill Murray, Managing Director, cheerfully states that “After the ﬁrst series of networking events and presentations it was clear this was a meeting of minds. With such

Extra event “We have also launched an additional chapter of the event and given it the title of ‘Smart Cities, Clever Towns.’ Here we are looking at the importance of the integration of the transport hub into our everyday lives. We are keen to link Rail, Sea and Air with a debate that explores a uniﬁcation of the modes. This is probably the most exciting element to the next conference and illustrates our aim to create an improved overall experience in transport hubs of any kind. We will host our awards ceremony again and showcase deserving transport champions. Inspiring designers, retailers, engineers and construction workers will all be subject to a public vote and the winners will receive the accolade they deserve. I am over the moon with the praise for the efforts of the FOSD team.” Loraine Organn of Chiltern Railways commented that the last conference was “An excellent opportunity to meet a large number of people, share ideas and listen to inspirational speakers”, and Craig Tucker

from TfL stated that it was “An extremely valuable opportunity to analyse a better infrastructure.” FOSD also welcomes a new member to the Steering Committee for the 2012 event. Julie Ryan, Head of Marketing and Sales for First Capital Connect will join committee members Julian Maynard (Maynard Design), Gavin McMurray (Merson Signs), Tony Keating (SSP UK), Eric Holland (UKTI), Hiro Aso (John McAslan + Partners), Elaine Stewart and Tony Lacy (Atos), Mike Goggin (Steer Davies Gleave), and Nigel Wordsworth (Rail Media).

This year’s theme Key themes this year for the rail element of the event will be ‘Wayfinding’, ‘Passenger Flow’, ‘Safety & Station Support’, ‘Planning and Station Design’ and ‘Attention to Retail’. Conference workshops this year will concentrate on Wayfinding in terms of signage design life and its relationship to TOC duration and future Wayfinding information channels. Passenger flow, congestion, station support with the focus on safety, protection of assets, capacity, dwell time and ticketing will all feature heavily. With regards to planning and station design, FOSD prides itself on its design panels. It attracts architectural heavyweights such as McAslan’s Hiro Aso, and Robert Thornton, Network Rail’s principal architect, is regularly seen at events. It’s exciting to see these industry figures interacting and exchanging ideas and that is when these events really come to life. The retail panel ‘Attention to Retail’ will look at the vision for a new retail offer at both Network Rail and TOC managed stations. By looking at the entire process, including maintenance and management, FOSD provides a unique and insightful perspective on how to create a better traveller experience.

january 2012 | the rail engineer | 27

stations

The launch of the Future of Station Design conference 2012 welcomes a new partner - Garrandale, a company that, for over 40 years, has provided innovative and cost effective engineering solutions throughout the UK. Their current success has been driven by a desire to anticipate as well as solve problems. By working within Rail, Aerospace, Energy Generation and even the European Space Agency,

Garrandale has worked hard to secure a reputation as one of the safest pair of hands in engineering support. They are the UK’s fastest growing rail vehicle depot service suppliers and are now becoming a force to be reckoned with internationally. The Rail Alliance and Railway Industry Association are just two of the many organisations that have beneﬁtted from their assistance and support.

FOSD are delighted to be working with the Derby based company as they too share the belief that passenger safety, comfort and the overall experience should always come ﬁrst. Ultimately the involvement of Atos in the structure of the new two day event has been key for FOSD. Both Tony Lacy and Elaine Stewart have driven from the front and by engaging their entire team, have given us a greater insight into how they solve and evolve. With guidance from Rail Media and support from enthusiastic delegates, FOSD 2012 looks set to be the ultimate industry event for all involved. FOSD 2012 “The Question of Congestion” and “Smart Cities, Clever Towns” will take place on 24 and 25 May 2012.

The FOSD 2012 launch at the Champagne Bar St. Pancras Station.

e bill@fosd.eu w www.fosd.eu

28 | the rail engineer | january 2012

stations

writer

Stuart Rackley

Considering

PHOTO: RICH GRUNDY

Loughborough

One day, without prior warning, passengers were stopped from going under the bridge by the appearance of a sign stating, “passengers must not pass this point”.

a dark and stormy night. Yes, really, I titwas was, when I first arrived at Loughborough station very late on a Sunday night during the winter of 1963. I had just been appointed Locomotive Engineer at what was then the Steel Company of Wales, Abbey Works, Port Talbot and I was required by my employer to learn something about 34 shunting locomotives that had been supplied by Brush Traction to the steelworks for internal movements of trains weighing well in excess of 1000 tonnes. Having travelled from South Wales to Loughborough via Derby - a 5 or 6 hour journey as I recall - my first recollections of the station were not too favourable, especially as the last taxi into the town had just departed. However, the post of Locomotive Engineer was my first railway-orientated job so Loughborough station and my subsequent career were inexorably entwined.

Move to Loughborough Twenty odd years later, and in the continuing pursuance of my railway career, I moved my home to Loughborough on 2 January 1984, the day that the Miners’ Strike started, led by the (in)famous Arthur Scargill, and during the next 16 years I travelled to London from Loughborough regularly on the Midland Main Line. During that period the station changed very little - indeed, it has hardly changed at all since it was built by the Midland Railway in 1872 as a two-platform station located on the Up and Down Fast lines. Being typical Midland Railway architecture, the station buildings are Grade II listed. Access to platform 1 (Northbound) is directly from the station forecourt and ticket

oﬃce, platforms 2 and 3 (Southbound) are via a footbridge or a white-light controlled barrow crossing at the north end of the station where passengers who are unable to use the footbridge are escorted across the tracks (line speed 110 mph) by station staff. At one time, Loughborough actually boasted three railway stations: The current main line station situated about two thirds of a mile to the east of the town centre and previously known as Loughborough Midland; Loughborough Central, now used by the Great Central Heritage Railway, and Loughborough Derby Road, the terminus of the Charnwood Forest Railway which was closed to passengers in 1931. Loughborough is the fourth most heavily used station on the Midland Main Line and East Midlands Trains predict further signiﬁcant growth resulting from the expansion of the University.

The nineties The A60 trunk road to Nottingham crosses the railway at a point about half way along platforms 1 and 2. For well over 100 years this presented no problem to passengers who safely negotiated the fairly narrow archway to make their way to the southern end of the platforms. As far as I can ﬁnd out, no passenger was ever injured during this time. But then “elf and safety” took command and suddenly one day, without prior warning, passengers were stopped from going under the bridge by the presence of a member of staff and the appearance of a sign stating “passengers must not pass this point”. The scrum resulting from the multitude of passengers trying to join an 8 car Inter-City 125 set using only the rear 4 coaches was probably a far greater risk to them than walking under the bridge had ever been. However, I digress.

january 2012 | the rail engineer | 29

stations

In 1993, the never-completed Ivanhoe Line - a project designed to link Nottingham, Loughborough, Leicester, Coalville, Ashby de la Zouch and Burton upon Trent - resulted in a new and very short platform (No 3) being constructed on the Up and Down Slow line. At this time, there was a golden opportunity to lengthen platform 2 northwards, thus removing the A60 bridge problem and to build a reasonable length platform on the Up and Down Slow line that could have been used as an emergency route in the event of the Up Fast being closed for any reason. Sadly, neither the funding nor the political will was there so nothing happened. (But see what happens later!).

• Refurbished platform canopies, improving the station ambience, • Platforms 1 and 2 extended northwards to 235 metres, capable of accommodating 10-car Meridian trains and removing the current boarding restrictions related to the A60 road bridge, • Resurfacing of existing platforms, • National Station Improvement Programme works including renewed CCTV, 51 cycle parking spaces, refurbished customer

Work underway A visit to the work under way during November 2011 revealed remarkably good progress on the station works. As is always the situation with any scheme involving the public and Local Authorities, there are a large number of stakeholders, all of whom want their particular claims to be heeded. In this case, Leicestershire County Council (LCC) took on the project management of the travel plan; identifying key stakeholders,

Olympics Fast forward now to June 2009. Loughborough University and the Japanese Olympic Committee signed an agreement that Japan’s Olympic teams would use the University’s world class facilities for training camps and ﬁnal preparations for competitions up to and including the 2012 Olympic Games in London. Nine months later, in April 2010, The British Olympic Association announced that Loughborough University had been chosen as the training base for the GB team ahead of the 2012 Olympics with over 500 athletes being hosted in the town. Clearly the existing transport infrastructure would not have been able to cope with such an inﬂux and it is to the credit of Network Rail, East Midlands Trains and the Local Authority that in June 2010 a series of projects designed to improve passenger facilities at Loughborough Station were announced, all of which were planned to be completed in time for Team GB’s pre-2012 Olympic training at the University. A complete revamp of the station costing £7 million was planned to include • A new fully-accessible footbridge and lifts funded from the Access for All scheme,

Once the new footbridge has been installed, the old bridge will be moved to the Midland Railway Trust at Butterley Station.

toilets, waiting rooms and ticket oﬃce and updated customer information displays, • In conjunction with Charnwood Borough Council’s Eastern Gateway Project, improved access to the station, 87 additional car parking spaces with “Park Mark Safer Car Parking” accreditation, along with an improved and extended bus interchange and taxi rank. • With all work scheduled to be completed by Spring 2012.

30 | the rail engineer | january 2012

stations

Loughborough and Thomas Cook

Platform construction is conventional with concrete copings backed by tactile warning pavings.

establishing a steering group and arranging and chairing meetings. Apart from LCC themselves, stakeholders included Network Rail, East Midlands Trains, Charnwood Borough Council, Travel Watch East Midlands, Loughborough University, Charnwood Pedestrian User Group, Charnwood Cycle User Group, Rail Future, Leicestershire and Northamptonshire Rail Action Committee and Kinch Bus (the operator of services to the town centre and other local destinations). To add to the problems of the project management, many of the stakeholders involved had no budgets for such a major set of works and the ownership of the land outside the station where most of the development was to take place was partly in the ownership of Network Rail and partly with Charnwood Borough Council.

Loughborough station has a particular claim to fame dating back to 1841. A man named Thomas Cook hit upon the idea of using the Midland Counties Railway to transport a group of about 500 temperance campaigners from Leicester to Loughborough, 11 miles away, for their next quarterly meeting. So, on the evening of 5 July 1841, the ﬁrst ever rail excursion took place. Cook arranged for the railway to charge one shilling (5p) for the return journey that also included food. Cook was paid a share of the fare charged, as the tickets, being a legal contract between railway company and passenger, could not have been issued under his own name. Following the success of this venture, Cook soon saw how proﬁtable the idea could be on a much larger scale. He organised a trip to Liverpool in August 1845 and realised that if there was

something of interest for people to see, they would travel to see it. The rest, as they say, is history. A plaque to commemorate the event is displayed on the front wall of Loughborough station.

A listed structure

Platforms 1 and 2 will accommodate 10-car Meridian sets.

The station works are reasonably straightforward. A new footbridge with integral lifts has been installed to the north of the existing Midland Railway footbridge. This latter item, which is a listed structure, is to be moved to the Midland Railway trust at Butterley station. Network Rail and the Railway Heritage Trust are offering financial assistance towards rebuilding the bridge that is planned for completion in 2013 allowing Platform 2 at Butterley to be reopened. It is fitting that a piece of Midland Railway history should have its final resting

place at a Midland Railway museum. In conjunction with the platform extensions, signalling has been altered on the Up and Down lines to provide new platform starting signals. An additional banner repeater has been installed and one moved. These are linked to platform starting signals. As soon as the new footbridge and lifts are operational, the barrow crossing and white light signal associated with it will be removed. Platform construction is conventional with concrete copings backed by tactile warning pavings. The remainder of the surface is tarmacadam which is also to be used in the areas of the existing platforms to present a uniform appearance along the complete length of the station. The coping stones are supported on specialist oversail blocks and the whole structure is constructed on concrete blockwork walls on a concrete base. Platforms 1 and 2 will accommodate 10-car Meridian sets and Platform 3 will be able to take 7 car formations. Interestingly, the extensions to platforms 2 and 3 are more or less identical to those which were deemed impossible in 1993 - what a difference in attitude by those in charge! The purpose of the extension to platform 3 is to use the up/down Slow line when the Fast

lines are closed for engineering work or other operational reasons. It is a small step forward in delivering the 7 day railway which is seen by Network Rail as a key output for a world class railway. Concurrent with the station upgrade is the completion of the Eastern Gateway project mentioned above - a £20 million Charnwood Borough Council-led scheme that has massively improved the appearance and the approach to the station by means of a completely new road, appropriately named Station Boulevard. Also included in the project is the building of 91 affordable new homes, an office/hotel development and improved access to a local industrial estate. Two residential streets have been closed to through traffic, considerably improving the quality of life for the residents who previously suffered from traffic at all hours and illegal parking. The modernisation of Loughborough station is not simply an improvement. It is an example of what can be done with the positive thinking shown by Network Rail, local authorities and other stakeholders that benefits rail travellers, the local populace and the reputation of the town where I have happily lived for the past twenty seven years.

Confidence in station management and control With the RailCom Manager suite - RailSecurity, RailAsset, RailControl and RailInfo siemens.co.uk/rail

RailCom Manager is a suite of modules which offers improved operational efficiency. RailSecurity allows station operators to respond rapidly to incidents through integrated control of all safety systems including CCTV, public address, help points and fire alarms. RailAsset monitors the condition of assets to plan preventative maintenance and prevent costly

failures. RailControl provides safe control of electrical traction power networks including electrical isolations and alternative feeding arrangements. RailInfo is a flexible open system delivering real-time passenger information to ensure accurate and efficient journey planning, a real benefit when passenger numbers increase during major events.

Answers for mobility.

32 | the rail engineer | january 2012

feature

writer

David Shirres

Russian

Renaissance Siemens Velaro High Speed Train currently operating at 250 kph between Moscow and St Petersburg.

(Below) The Innovation Train’s High Speed Rail Coach. (Right) The Innovation Train.

hey know how to celebrate in Russia. T The Second Russian Railway Congress may not sound like much of a party but its celebration of Russian Railway’s (RZD) successes for the estimated 3000 present, not to mention the pop concert afterwards, was quite an occasion. It was held in the Manezh Central Exhibition Hall outside the Kremlin Walls built in 1817 for the Tsars to exercise their horses in the Russian winter. The congress outlined RZD’s plans for the future, and its importance in the development of the Russian economy, with many speakers acknowledging the work of RZD’s personnel in often harsh conditions. The Congress was, however, much more than a large scale away-day for railway employees. Also present were government representatives, investment bankers and European railway companies to hear of RZD’s large scale investment plans which cannot be wholly funded from RZD and the Russian federal budget. Addressing this shortfall was the theme that dominated the Congress.

Rossiyskie Zheleznye Dorogi Rossiyskie Zheleznye Dorogi (RZD) is the world’s second largest rail network with 85,200 km of track, 43,100 km of which are electriﬁed. It is also one of the world’s largest employers, with a total workforce of 975,000, and each year carries 1.3 billion passengers (40% of Russia’s passenger journeys) and 1.2 billion tonnes of freight, about half of which is coal and oil. This is 42% of Russia’s freight including pipelines, or 82% excluding pipelines. RZD and its subsidiaries have around 20,000 locomotives and a million wagons. Annual income is around £200 billion and it consumes 5% of Russia’s electricity.

Government ministers at the Congress emphasised RZD’s crucial contribution to the development of the Russian economy. With vast distances where there are few roads and climatic extremes, Russia depends on RZD for the movement of goods and exploitation of its natural resources. Although industry deregulation has encouraged airline growth, RZD’s passenger market share is 40%. There is an intensive network in the European part of Russia with high-volume suburban systems. Thus, to a far greater extent than for any other G8 country, Russia’s economic success depends on the performance of its railway.

The 23 year plan On April 11 2007, RZD presented its $US 390 billion two-stage strategic development plan to Russian president Vladimir Putin. This plan is in two parts, ﬁrstly to completely modernise rail transport by 2015 and thereafter a major expansion with the construction of around 20,000km of new lines up to 2030. Key features of the plan include: • Measures to restructure RZD and privatise its subsidiaries • Upgrading existing lines to improve track quality and removal of traﬃc bottlenecks with more and longer passing loops, freight depots and lines to relieve capacity • Acquiring 23,300 locomotives, 996,000 freight cars and 29,500 passenger coaches • Constructing 20,000 km of new railways, including 4,600 km lines to promising

january 2012 | the rail engineer | 33

feature mineral deposits and industrial centres • High speed expansion by accelerating long distance passenger trains with new rolling stock, reconstructing existing lines between key regional centres for trains at 160 to 200 km/h and building 350 km/h high speed routes along selected corridors • Developing international freight transit corridors • Creating 40 Terminal Logistics Centres. The issues associated with rail freight improvements were reported in Issue 86 of the rail engineer (December 2011). High speed passenger expansion includes dedicated 350km/h routes from Moscow to St Petersburg (650 km), Nizhny Novgorod (460 Km) and Krasnoe (456km). As well as making a key contribution to the Russian economy, international events such as the 2014 Sochi Winter Olympics and Russia’s hosting the 2018 World Cup are a driver for the construction of these lines and associated rail infrastructure.

Meeting of the 3000 Speaking to the assembled 3000, Vladimir Yakunin, President of Russian Railways, reported on progress with the development plan to date. In doing so he summed up the rail industry reforms over the last four years during which time RZD had been transformed from a territory-based organisation to one that was now focused on business activities with some of its subsidiaries privatised. He acknowledged that the global economic downturn had a significant impact, delaying implementation of the development plan by about four years and requiring pay cuts. He acknowledged that this had been a difficult time for RZD’s employees and paid tribute to their work in often difficult conditions.

The Congress included 40 presentations covering a wide variety of topics. Many, including Minister of Transport, Igor Levtin, stressed the railway’s vital importance to the Russian economy as did presentations from the Natural Gas and Chemical industries. Several speakers echoed Vladimir Yakunin’s praise of RZD employees and stressed the importance of Training and Development initiatives. One such being the 26 children’s railways in Russia that give school children evening classes that qualify them to operate trains on the school’s narrow gauge railway. Although generally upbeat, some speakers did stress the requirement for improved operating eﬃciency citing freight trains being delayed, often for lack of locomotives and long distance trains of empty wagons crossing each other. Perhaps of greatest interest to the rail engineer readers were presentations from European railway companies and on RZD’s Innovations.

The European Dimension Introduction of world-class technology is considered by Vladimir Yakunin to be a “cornerstone” of RZD’s railway investment policy, and European rail companies such as Siemens, Bombardier and Alstom are all active players in Russia. At the Congress, Dietrich Moeller, President of Siemens Russia, described how the Siemens Velaro high speed trains provide RZD’s ﬂagship high speed services between St Petersburg, Moscow and Nizhny Novgorod running at 250 km/h. These services were inaugurated in December 2009 and have carried more than 4.7 million passengers and are RZD’s most proﬁtable trains. In addition RZD has just placed an order worth over EUR 2 billion with Siemens for 1200 Desiro RUS commuter train coaches. Chris Antonopoulos of Bombardier explained how Bombardier’s EBI Lock 950 and associated signalling systems had been

Congress in session and (inset) Vladimir Yakunin.

34 | the rail engineer | january 2012

feature is required, and contrasts this to the Soviet approach of not wanting to know your neighbours. As examples, he mentioned RZD’s contract to build a high speed line in Libya, which included construction of North Africa’s only welded rail plant, and the freight line that RZD built in North Korea. He spent some time explaining the rationale of the proposed 400 km broad gauge line from Kosice in Slovakia to Vienna. This will give access for Russian rail freight to the centre of Europe without a change of

11,000 hp GT-1 Gas Turbine locomotive and cut away model of the GT-1.

developed for use throughout RZD’s infrastructure. This led to Bombardier becoming RZD’s strategic partner for rail control systems with resultant technology transfer to Russian manufacturing plants to RZD’s and Bombardier’s mutual beneﬁt. Alstom’s Allegro trains, a derivative of the Pendolino, commenced service between St Petersburg and Helsinki in 2010 running at 220 km/h. In addition Alstom has a strategic partnership with Russia’s TransMashHolding for the development of freight locomotives. One result of this is the joint production of electric passenger and freight locomotives featuring asynchronous AC motors. Since their alliance the two partners have received orders for 700 locomotives worth EUR 3 billion. On the infrastructure front, Antonio Marin, President of ADIF, Spain’s rail infrastructure company, described the development of Spain’s 2,776 km high speed network, the largest in Europe and how ADIF was part of the consortium building the 444 km high speed line between Medina and Mecca in Saudi Arabia. ADIF has signed collaboration agreements with RZD and clearly hopes for a role in the development of Russia’s high speed network.

Innovation at the Congress A number of presentations mentioned specific innovations to improve efficiency. These included low maintenance freight car bogies and the use of satellite navigation for train control. However, with diesel fuel and electricity amounting to 16% of RZD’s operational costs, it was not surprising that most innovations mentioned at the Congress concerned energy efficiency. Energy-saving measures that were described at the Congress included energy efficient lighting, the use of heat pumps in buildings, improved traction supply control, automated locomotive traction control to minimise energy use and the introduction of asynchronous AC motors which RZD Vice President, Valentin Gapanovich, predicts will save 16 million kWh per year. Perhaps the most intriguing innovation discussed was the GT-1 gas turbine locomotive which was introduced in 2007 and has an 8,300 kW gas turbine, fuelled by liquefied natural gas, powering a 6000 rpm synchronous generator. It is made up of two units, with a total weight of 300 tonnes. One unit has the gas turbine and the other has a 17 ton LPG tank giving the locomotive a range of 750 km. In September 2011 the GT-1 hauled a

test train weighing 16,000 tons at a test track outside Moscow. The locomotive required the development of cryogenic equipment and a heat exchanger to handle and recycle natural gas. GT-1 is 30% cheaper to run than a diesel locomotive as Russia’s abundant natural gas is half the cost of diesel oil.

The Innovation Train As part of the Congress, a visit was arranged to RZD’s Innovation Centre and Train at Moscow’s Riga Station. The innovation centre was opened in 2007 to demonstrate technical developments and innovations on Russian Railways. On 3rd August this year, RZD commissioned a travelling exhibition train which consists of three oﬃce/residential coaches and eight exhibition coaches including displays on high speed rail, rolling stock, railway infrastructure, and energy eﬃciency. As well as being a showcase for RZD’s technology it is also intended to develop technical creativity amongst pupils and students. The train is scheduled to make 45 stops in Russia’s 15 regional railways over a two month period.

Meeting the Boss Engineer, Chemist, Diplomat, Government Minister and now President of Russian Railways, Vladimir Yakunin is an impressive character. One highlight of the Congress was the opportunity to interview Yakunin in English. He explained how he felt the Congress to be an important event enabling employees, foreign partners, bankers and railway companies to learn of the issues first hand as well as creating the necessary confidence in Russia’s railways. Vladimir Yakunin’s vision is to develop and significantly expand the railway network to support Russia’s economic development with key priorities being the creation of a High Speed network and the development of freight lines in North West Russia and Siberia. He considers that a global approach

gauge and will significantly boost freight transit traffic across Russia. He advised that there is political support from all countries involved for this project which is estimated to cost €5 billion and will include a new freight terminal in Vienna. He believes that it will take 3 years to construct the new line and services should start in 2016. The involvement of foreign rail companies is part of this global approach. In particular, Yakunin felt that foreign expertise in high speed rail network construction will be essential. However, he does not consider there are many opportunities for foreign companies to work on RZD’s conventional infrastructure, other than in the provision of on-track machines. Finding the required investment will be a big challenge. The development plan to 2030 requires 14 trillion roubles (£286 billion) at 2007 prices and there is currently a 400 billion rouble shortfall. However, Yakunin expressed confidence that this will be met through the issue of bonds, private finance and possible tariff increases.

Russia’s Railway Renaissance If all goes to plan, and providing that the funding issues can be resolved, in less than 20 years time Russia’s already vast rail network will have increased in size by 23%. It will include a 1600 km high speed network and will have replaced all its traction and rolling stock. Delivering this railway renaissance will be a huge challenge. RZD will no doubt be looking for continuing involvement from European rail companies, and it remains to be seen whether UK rail companies will be able to take advantage of the opportunities offered by Russia’s ambitious investment programme. This article was written after being invited to attend Russia’s Second Railway Congress by Russian Railways (RZD) whose assistance in the preparation of this article is greatly appreciated.

january 2012 | the rail engineer | 35

feature

PHOTO: VOLKERRAIL

Strategic Aspects of Rail Welding writer

Chris Parker of Rail Welding’s seminar at T hetheInstitute BOC site in Wolverhampton on 15 November 2011 had a slightly less technical ﬂavour than usual and, as the title suggested, focussed on strategic matters instead. However, there was a special session in the afternoon on developments in ultrasonic testing of rails and rail welds. The day, chaired by Mick Downing of Sky Blue Welding, commenced with a presentation about the National Skills Academy for Rail Engineering (NSARE), delivered by Chief Executive, Gil Howarth.

Gil described the current setting for NSARE, referring to an initial industry plan drawn up last October by Network Rail, ATOC, RFOA and RIA. It emphasises key issues relevant to the training requirements of the rail industry, including the continually increasing demand for rail services of all kinds, the very large planned programmes of investment and renewal, and the significant efficiency savings that are being demanded. It concludes that the existing workforce needs to be significantly re-skilled - 30% more professionals will be needed over the next 5 years and the number of apprenticeships offered annually will need to double.

Innovation Roger Griﬃths of Network Rail spoke about his company’s Innovation Strategy. This is driven by the demands of the ORR and the McNulty report, and the general industry resource shortfall. Network Rail recognised a need to clarify and simplify its approach to innovation to maximise the beneﬁts to be gained from its own people and its suppliers.

PHOTO: AMEY

National Skills Academy

The innovation process focuses on the needs of the company’s customers, following the sequence “Think-Explore-Prove-Do” before checking “Did we deliver?”. Setting the strategic agenda are four Innovation Portfolio Groups. Each covers a speciﬁc area of the business and controls the innovation process. The company has embarked upon a process of targeted engagement with its own staff through “iStorm”, a special area of the in-house intranet which links together people and groups with common interests and ideas. In addition, a dedicated section of the company website is designed to engage with suppliers and steer their innovative activities by offering guidance about the company’s needs and allowing people to submit innovatory proposals. The website currently holds 19 open challenges to innovation, and has received over 250 supplier submissions. Proposals

adopted to date, such as the weld repair of tri-metal zones of cast crossings, have shown high rates of return.

Mobile ﬂash butt welding (MFBW) Third up was another Network Rail speaker, Sean Heslop. He spoke about “Network Rail’s Deployment Strategy for Flash-butt Welding” which aims to make MFBW the preferred site welding methodology for Network Rail’s infrastructure. Sean described the history of MFBW, including how early machines had limited mobility and could not stress the rail, how the choice of weld method was based solely upon welding cost and how major concerns about possible damage to the infrastructure, in particular electrical damage to S&T systems, inhibited full application.

A welding demonstration at the Amey Apprenticeship Academy.

36 | the rail engineer | january 2012

feature It is crucial to use the correct number of passes and the right cycle times, and these parameters vary depending upon where on the rail the repair is to be made; for example gauge corner repairs need different treatment from repairs on the top of the head.

The requirement to reduce significantly the time taken for rail defect replacement drove the need to re-examine the situation. Recently introduced methods, e.g. repair welding of certain defects, were good, but more needed to be achieved. A big change was the introduction of MFBW machines that could stress the rail. An acceptance procedure was developed for stressed flash-butt welds and trials were instigated for welding heads. Work was undertaken to make best use of MFBW, to improve mobility of the machines and to reduce the costs of welds. One area of concern was the cost of moving the machines between sites, which could amount to 25% of the shift cost. “Network Rail MFBW” was developed - a package including working practices, performance specification, and crew specification and competences. The objective was to be able to go into a site, replace a section of defective rail, stress the rail, and get off site again within 2 hours. Sean described the challenges that had to be met by the project, including obtaining the funds needed and convincing the sponsors that the project was a winner. The outcome was an order for four machines with the option for six more later. Those ten machines will cover 30% of Network Rail’s welding needs. The specification is for the welding head to pull up to 400mm, with external tensors to take this to 1000mm, while welding rails with a depth differential up to 3mm. Provision of MFBW services will be managed by a dedicated in-house organisation. Welding machines will be based within a given geographic area, rather than on a route or asset basis. This was shown to be the best way to reduce time lost in travel between sites. One machine is to be brought into service at a time, with two dedicated teams for each. The first MFBW is due in service in March 2012, with the other three following sequentially. If these are a success, others may be purchased under the option in the contract.

PHOTO: VOLKERRAIL

PHOTO: PELI PRODUCTS

Europe 1 - RAILECT

Tram rail resurfacing The fourth speaker was Tamas Sandor of ESAB with “Resurfacing Tram Rails by Arc Welding without Pre-heat”. Tamas explained that tram rails need to be welded without pre-heating because the rails are normally embedded in materials which cannot be exposed safely to pre-heating temperatures. Possession times available on tramways are too short to permit the digging out and restoration of the embedding material. However, rails are almost always basic grade, susceptible to the development of brittle martensite if welded without preheating and without controlled cooling. Recently developed techniques use the heat generated by the weld deposition process itself to control the martensite formation. When a sidewear scar is repaired by applying several passes of weld deposition, the heat of the second and subsequent passes of the welder anneal the metal effectively enough to prevent signiﬁcant risk of brittle fracture in service.

Christopher Spree, of Spree Engineering, spoke about the European Commission RAILECT project. Involving eight partners from across Europe, including TWI and Network Rail, the objective is to fill the gap in the market for a quick, full volumetric assessment of aluminothermic rail welds using a simple, clamp-on assembly of phased array ultrasonic transducers to produce an image and analysis for comparison with a specified standard. Full coverage and sensitivity for the whole weld should be achieved without needing to move the probe. Modelling using ES Beam and CIVA software enabled the design to be fine-tuned. The resultant device has eight phased-array transducers, weighs less than 10kg, and takes 20 minutes to scan a full weld. The data produced is easily interpreted (there is also a proposal to incorporate automatic defect recognition software and UK firm and project partner KCC is working on this). The device does need to be moved once to give full coverage of the weld, having to be turned 180˚ to provide dual sided inspection. The full rail section is then covered including all of the foot. The system has been verified against other detection methods, but more work is required to develop and agree critical defect sizes and acceptance criteria. Consultations have been carried out with industry stakeholders and the next steps for the project have been identified and agreed.

Full volumetric analysis Geismar UK also have ideas about the testing of rail welds. Dr Neil MacCuaig included these in a presentation about the new GS70 tester, which was also displayed to seminar attendees in the BOC laboratory during the lunch interval. The GS70 was developed to address the gap in the market already described by other presentations. Geismar appreciated that rail infrastructure operators had concerns about the diﬃculty and expense of the manual ultrasonic examination methods that were the only non-destructive means of checking welds. It was not practicable to check all welds by these methods, it was diﬃcult to comprehensively and

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38 | the rail engineer | january 2012

feature consistently document the tests and it was hard to differentiate between “good” and “bad” when defects were detected. The quality of testing was heavily operator dependent and current systems only recorded evidence of defects detected, being incapable of recording evidence of their absence. As a result it was impossible to be certain of the quality of the tests that were done, there was no possibility of an “audit trail” and there was always the concern that amongst the welds not tested might be some that had hazardous defects. The new tester gives full volumetric analysis of a weld, flash-butt or aluminothermic. It has 70 probes in five banks which conduct a complete examination of the rail section. The process is fully automated, and involves moving the unit only once, a short distance along the rail between the two scans (forward and reverse) of the examination cycle. An automatic check for full acoustic coupling before the examination cycle begins inhibits the examination from proceeding if a problem is detected. All data and alarms are displayed to the operators in real time, and are fully digitally recorded. Results may be analysed at once if a qualified operator is present, or undertaken off-site using the digitised record. The equipment incorporates facilities to carry out an immediate manual verification of any detected defects if this is desired. Sub-critical indications are recorded, allowing the comparison of results with earlier findings and permitting the detailed monitoring of the development of any subcritical defects over time. This should permit pre-planned removal before they reach a size where emergency action is necessary.

Balfour Beatty Rail Ultrasonic testing was also the subject of the talk by Bob Sawdon and Sam Broujeni of Balfour Beatty Rail entitled “Recent developments in the ultrasonic testing of rails and welds”. Their vision for the future embraces an RRV-based ultrasonic system and adoption of a “stop and verify” approach which will get away from the hazards and costs incurred in sending staff to manually verify defect reports from train borne UT systems. It bridges the gap between pedestrian and train borne systems, reduces costs and leads to higher productivity on lower category lines.

The Balfour Beatty Rail 8000SX ultrasonic rail flaw detection system, produced by RTI, is the fourth generation of a system that was developed for Australian heavy haul railways. Critical defect sizes there are very much smaller than those applicable on European networks, driven by higher axle loads and annual traffic tonnages. The system shows the operator the whole of any defect in one picture. Its “Flawview” system automatically recognises and displays defects and will identify them at submillimetre sizes if required. It incorporates “SmartCal”, an automatic calibration system that deals with temperature changes and variations in rail depth without manual input, as well as GPS location. The outputs of different probes can be displayed in different colours and results are digitally recorded. The system in the UK is mounted on an RRV based upon a Land Rover Defender 130 and can inspect rails at up to 45km/h (though in the UK at present, RRV operational rules reduce this to 32km/h). Train borne variants are also available. The 8000SX has detected porosity in aluminothermic welds which were verified by destructive examination, so there is the possibility that, in future, it may be used for the examination of aluminothermic welds.

january 2012 | the rail engineer | 39

feature

Europe 2 - MonitoRail A speaker from TWI Ltd introduced the seminar to another European Commission project, MonitoRail. Carmen Campos Castellanos, the project leader, described how the EC FP7 programme has funded this work on the possibility of looking along the rail ultrasonically to detect defects from a distance. It was recognised that the rail industry needs to be able to non-destructively examine the whole of the rail proﬁle, including all of the rail foot. Current techniques at best reach only the area of

the foot directly beneath the web. As was shown later in the day, rail breaks initiated by foot defects are becoming significant and a cause of concern to railways. There are clear safety and economic benefits to be gained from an ability to look at long lengths of rail from a single examination point. The MonitoRail project concentrated on achieving full volumetric examination of significant lengths of a rail from a single location, obtaining full defect detection in all areas where defects are likely. Challenges to this investigation are the environment of operation, the restricted access available to the rail, the interfaces with engineering and operating staff and the way in which features of the rail and track (such as pads, clips etc) attenuate the ultrasonic signal. For this reason, guided waves are used which are lower in frequency than those used in conventional ultrasonic testing, a technology which is already commercially used to examine pipelines. However, the geometry of rails makes their examination more complex. The project was preceded by theoretical modelling and experimental verification, considering the rail in 3 separate sections, foot, web and head. The foot has been given priority for the reasons already mentioned. The optimum wave mode to use to examine the rail foot has been determined as well as the best location for the transducer. Experimental trials were carried out with good results at TWI Cambridge on a section of plain rail. Further

trials have been made on a Network Rail sample complete with pads and clips. Results are encouraging. The next steps include improving the quality of the propagated wave, determining the full effects of items such as clips and how to ﬁlter these out, improving signal analysis in other ways, carrying out further empirical validation and then repeating these processes for the rail head and web to complete the means to examine the whole rail.

Network Rail’s ultrasonic strategy The day’s ﬁnal speaker was Brian Whitney of Network Rail who is also the current chairman of the Institute. He outlined his company’s strategy for the ultrasonic testing of rails. Having considered why the company should test rails ultrasonically at all, and described what needed to be detected, Brian considered in some detail Network Rail’s needs and priorities for the present and the future. Inspection technologies need to give accurate defect location data so reported defects can be easily found when the time comes to repair or replace them. Test outputs must be consistent and repeatable, often this is more important than absolute deﬁnition, and the applicability and limitations of any method must be fully understood.

40 | the rail engineer | january 2012

(Right) Ultrasonic Test Vehicle and equipment.

Any inspection strategy must take account of many factors including route criticality, the position of the defect in the rail, the probability of detection, the track access and the test method. Network Rail’s strategy demands early and reliable detection of common defects, improved management of high risk defects, moving from “find and fix” to “predict and prevent”, earlier detection to permit the action to be taken to be less onerous, and improved management of factors such as poor track conditions and wheel flats. Conventional ultrasonic testing alone may not be enough; high track forces need to be understood and controlled and data must be gathered from many sources and combined to give the full picture. Track support conditions are a significant driver of the rail failures that remain now that the “easy” successes in rail failure management have been achieved over the last 5 - 10 years. Steep dip angles, voiding and abrupt track stiffness changes are examples of significant contributors to failure. Changes such as the introduction of a dip angle limit are already resulting in a reduction in failure rates. Technological developments Brian mentioned included the Sperry RSU, which has similar capabilities to the Balfour Beatty Rail 8000SX described earlier, work being done on the detection of rail foot defects, and the removal of poor track conditions based around the company’s Route Asset Management Plans. Brian discussed a significant list of planned ultrasonic test unit (UTU) developments, particularly the purchase of a fourth example. This will be used to permit each

feature

of the existing UTUs to be withdrawn in turn for refurbishment without diminishing the programme of inspections. Afterwards, it will be used to allow coverage by UTU of the lower category lines now dependent upon pedestrian testing, a process which Network Rail wishes to eliminate wherever possible. A significant addition to the UTU fleet will be the Sperry Railfix system, which automatically takes high definition photographs of any detected defect and despite all the testing, management of rolling contact fatigue continues to be important and increasingly involves preventative action as well as detection, monitoring and removal. Brian’s talk brought the day’s proceedings to a close. The Chairman

thanked the hosts, BOC, for their excellent hospitality and for making workshop space available for the demonstrations. This blend of formal presentations and informal workshop demonstrations has become an attractive feature of IoRW seminars held at BOC and delegates were pleased with the variety of subjects that had been covered during the day.

january 2012 | the rail engineer | 41

surverying writer

Nigel

Wordsworth

Mind the gap! is in constant motion. A nyNotrailway just the trains and the passengers, but the infrastructure too. The track moves in its ballast. Ballast moves on the trackbed. Even the ground moves - as it dries out in summer, gets soaked from frequent applications of British “weather”, and even suffers from frost heave.

All this movement can cause two types of problem. The quality of the track itself can suffer, and for that reason infrastructure owners such as Network Rail have a robust inspection regime. The New Measurement Train, inspection cars, sensors mounted on passenger trains and even teams of men are regularly checking the quality of the track. The other effect of movement is when the actual position of the track changes. Even movement of an inch or two can cause real problems because a railway runs on one thing….

Clearances We are not talking about the clearances that caused great upset for the Highland Scots in the eighteenth and nineteenth century, but the small amount of distance between a train and its surroundings. Maintaining acceptable clearances is vital to the safe operation of any railway. Sometimes, particularly as railway companies try to get larger and larger trains onto Britain’s crowded network, those clearances can be quite small. And if they go to zero, or even negative, disaster can strike.

42 | the rail engineer | january 2012

surveying

The picture of passengers running for cover from a cloud of ﬂying concrete fragments as a train hits a platform edge at 125 mph doesn’t bear thinking about. But it could happen. There has even been talk of an underground train emerging from a tunnel with the heads of all the rivets on its roof rubbed off. All when clearances disappear.

Surveying So every day on the railway there are groups of people in orange coats, hunched over strange-looking machines full of lasers and mirrors and lenses which are perched on top of tripods, surveying the line. Others have small trolleys packed with GPS sensors, more lasers and complex computer equipment. There are even whole trains, like the Structure Gauging Train, that tend to come out at night (lasers work better in the dark). All this effort is to measure the position of the tracks accurately with respect to surrounding structures. How far are the rails from that platform edge, or tunnel portal, or OLE gantry? The surveyors aren’t worried about clearances, those will come later, but actual position and distances. The entire railway network is effectively broken down into slices, typically at 5 metre intervals. Inside each slice, the distance of the rails from any close structure is recorded, and in some instances checked, and measured again a few months later. Nothing must be left to chance. And every day, when the measurements have been taken, where do all these surveyors send their data?

Matlock

ClearRoute

Every measurement taken goes, via Network Rail, to the county town of Derbyshire, nestling at the southern end of the Peak District. Here Balfour Beatty Rail maintains the national database for structures and vehicles. Vehicles are included because the database of structures on its own wouldn’t be much use. Knowing the position of a platform edge is pointless, unless you then factor in the size of the train running past it to see how much clearance there will be. So the experts at Balfour Beatty Rail work with that data and use it to determine the minimum operational clearances between vehicles and structures. This analysis is undertaken using…

Balfour Beatty Rail’s market leading ClearRoute software was ﬁrst developed ﬁfteen years ago. It compared the known size and shape of every railway vehicle in the country and correlated it to the position of trackside structures to determine the clearances. Over the years the programme has been constantly upgraded but recently the Matlock programmers have totally revised and rewritten it to create ClearRoute 2, which is fully compatible with the latest Windows operating systems and has many other new features.

So what does ClearRoute do? Put simply, it checks whether a train, of known dimensions, can run down a particular piece of track without fouling any structures. The majority of vehicles in current service on the railway are included in the database, as are all those ﬁve-metre slices of infrastructure, and ClearRoute compares a chosen set of vehicles against selected infrastructure. However, it is not quite as straight forward as that. Every train has a known shape, that’s simple. On curves, the ends of the carriages will swing out one way, and the centre of the carriage will swing the other, so that has to be taken into account. That’s geometry. Now add the suspension characteristics of the train. How will it sway at speed? What effect do different speeds have? And how will that change if the train is full? Or empty? And if the track has a cant, how will that affect the suspension, and the sway and tilt of the train?

january 2012 | the rail engineer | 43

surverying Calculations

Users

All these factors can be taken into account using ClearRoute 2. Train manufacturers supply very detailed information on each vehicle and the program uses that and compares it, slice by slice, with the infrastructure database. The result is a clearance distance between the train and the structure, all around the kinetic envelope of the train. Going back to basics again, if any clearance is too small, or zero, or even negative, then the train can’t run down that track, at that speed, and in that load condition. However, if the calculations are done again, at a lower speed, what does that show? Is the result the same? Or improved?

ClearRoute is licensed to both train operators and Network Rail. The former use it to make sure that ﬂeets can be safely used on both their regular and diversionary routes. And if equipment is moved from one route to another, or cascaded from a different operator, everything can be checked out before it even takes to the tracks. Freight operators use ClearRoute in a similar way to make sure that their regular freight wagons won’t have any clearance issues. And they can also use it for those awkward loads of irregular shape, and make sure that a selected route is safe to use. If it isn’t, and the load cannot be transported any other way, then various options can be worked out. Is there an alternative route? If the load will foul a structure to the side of the track can it be taken the wrong way on the adjacent line? If it fouls the opposing track, can it be transported if that track is blocked to traﬃc for a short distance? There are many permutations which would take ages to work out using the old-fashioned method of drawings, plans, a pencil and a calculator, but not with ClearRoute.

Results ClearRoute 2 can therefore answer several important questions. Can a particular train be safely used on a particular line? Is speed an issue, so that it has to be restricted in certain locations to prevent excessive sway that will affect safety? This is important information for the train operator. It will also help the infrastructure owner to understand what needs to be done to resolve any problems. How much does the track have to be moved / slewed / lowered / lifted to restore safe clearances? Will doing that cause other problems, such as interfering with other lines? Or hitting other structures on the other side of the track? The program has a useful “what if?” capability that can be used to simulate changes which can then be assessed.

ClearRoute was asked the question, and a path developed that took the unusual route of going via Ashby de la Zouch and Burton on Trent. Unexpected, but safe and practical. Thanks to the Balfour Beatty Rail’s specialists in Matlock we can now see underground trains out of the rail engineer‘s oﬃce window in Leicestershire!

Structure Survey Editor Of course, the national database, and the results that can be obtained from it, is only as good as the data that is fed in. Surveyors need to check their ﬁgures before submission as a spurious entry could markedly affect the overall result. One wrong number can show a clearance where there isn’t one, or stop a train running when there is actually plenty of room. For that reason, Balfour Beatty Rail has introduced Structure Survey Editor. This new program allows the user to prepare data before handing on for use in ClearRoute and ClearRoute2. Sophisticated viewing and editing facilities enable this to be done fast and eﬃciently. The data can be used directly by ClearRoute and ClearRoute2 or indirectly if the data is submitted for inclusion in the National Gauging Database.

Underground Overground One interesting example is the problem of transporting new underground trains from Bombardier’s factory in Derby, and the test track at Old Dalby in Leicestershire, to London. An underground train is small, but it is also low and, below a conventional frame height, it is relatively wide and out of gauge.

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44 | the rail engineer | january 2012

dis

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feature

Middlesbrough’s iconic Transporter Bridge.

writer

PHOTO: FOUR BY THREE

Bickerdike

ling plan

Graeme

was genuine dismay in parts of the T here North-East when Auf Wiedersehen, Pet re-emerged from TV oblivion in 2002. Not because of Jimmy Nail’s singing (second only to Dennis Waterman’s) or the infliction of Tim Spall’s pantomime Brummie accent. No, it was the apparent demise of Middlesbrough’s landmark Transporter Bridge which the rogue builders took apart for shipment to Arizona where it served to connect a tribe of Native Americans with a casino across the canyon. Rarely has the willing suspension of disbelief proved quite so taxing. More persuasive though were the CGI techniques that showed the bridge in various states of dismantlement. Demolition is a tricky business; in some respects even more so than assembly. Explosives and hydraulic breakers find favour today - soulless substitutes for the showmanship of Fred Dibnah who felled mill chimneys by fire, dropping them onto postage stamps with little regard for his own safety. Oz, played by Nail, and his sidekicks fictitiously followed an intricate dismantling plan on the Transporter Bridge, taking its 2,600 tonnes of steelwork apart rivet by rivet, ensuring that it was always in balance and thus didn’t fall in on itself. Though a wrecking ball might feel more appropriate, that latter approach could start to relieve the pressure imposed by the railway’s onerous regulatory structure built over many years from small components. During November, the Red Tape Challenge a government initiative that aims to “crack down” on unnecessary directives - turned its attention to the rail sector, seeking views on almost 200 regulations that have a bearing

on it. Do they, it asked, provide vital protection or are they ill-conceived and badly implemented? It says much about today’s processes that many of these regulations have not been despatched as a matter of routine. There’s no shortage of agencies seeking to thicken the bureaucratic soup; fewer have a focus on reducing it. There are, for example, regulations in force covering closures on lines which no longer exist, as well as various exemption orders that have already expired. Why have these not been automatically eradicated?

Lessening the cost burden The Red Tape Challenge is a coalition brainchild, launched by David Cameron back in April. It gives members of the public “a chance to have their say on more than 21,000 regulations that affect their everyday lives.” These ﬁt within six themes covering employment law, pensions, equality, the environment, company law, and health and safety. Whilst recognising that regulations play a vital part in the legislative framework that underpins rail operations - “effective and

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46 | the rail engineer | january 2012

feature of defence from a wayward train - which by then has passed the protecting signal at danger and possibly exploded three dets is a saggy cloth in the four-foot. Have you tried standing a red flag up in ballast without first turning off gravity? And at the behest of RAIB, the industry felt obliged to invest time and effort contriving a definition for the term ‘approaching train’ (yes, you read it right), presumably to benefit those who don’t understand the concept of running rails. Five bullet points poured forth for trackworkers to forget. There is a cultural focus on the written word - for many it’s a comfort blanket, for others an auditing tool. Innovation and efficiency will only be unleashed when that mindset changes and the institutional resistance to less/fewer eases.

(Left) What do you see ﬁrst - the highvisibility clothing or the red ﬂag? (Below) Regulation and bureaucracy has contributed to the slow adoption of new technology. PHOTOS: FOUR BY THREE

eﬃcient regulation can reduce administrative burdens” according to the campaign’s website - it asserts that poorly thought out or badly implemented directives can impose unnecessary costs on the industry. Few would argue with that. But reaching an informed judgement on the need of any single regulation surely demands an understanding of what led to its implementation. Who’s best placed to do that? The Department for Transport continues to explore how it can simplify its prescription of rail outcomes and services - a painfully slow business it seems - and how best to take forward Sir Roy McNulty’s Rail Value for Money Study. Cutting costs is the goal, alongside innovative means of delivery and a more eﬃcient network. This will demand a loosening of regulation - keeping its burden to a minimum whilst ensuring enforcement is both effective and fair.

All encompassing It’s worth scrolling through the list of regulations to help understand just how far they reach. Amongst them are the Railways (Ashford) (Exemptions) Order 1998 which frees parts of Kent’s network from certain statutory requirements when closures are proposed, whilst the Railways Act 1993 (Consequential Modiﬁcations) (No.5) Order 1996 makes amendments to legislation covering bridges as a result of rail privatisation. Then there’s the Locomotives etc Regulations 1906 (Metrication) Regulations

1981, amending the Locomotives & Wagons (Used on Lines and Sidings) Regulations 1906 by substituting metric measurements for their imperial equivalents, and not forgetting the Railtrack plc (Rateable Value) (Wales) Order 2000 (W.22) which prescribes the rateable value of Railtrack’s hereditament in a central list from the ﬁnancial year 2000/1. Yes, there are a lot of regulations and it’s easy to make a mockery of them. Very easy in fact. But how much of a problem are they, gathering dust on shelves? Whilst many restrain strategic decision making, very few have a practical impact on the day-to-day running of the railway, making the Red Tape Challenge a red herring in some respects. It’s the lower level stuff that can be really stiﬂing: prescriptive rules and standards stuck in the last century, tick-box bureaucratic requirements, a lethargic product acceptance process that strives for ‘perfect’ to the detriment of ‘better’. None of it keeps pace with today’s technological opportunities (to be fair, how could it?), not enough of it empowers competent people to exercise professional judgement, and too much of it is disproportionate to the risk it seeks to control.

Granular examples The case for deforesting spent regulations is self-evident - it should happen as a matter of course. Some projects plant three trees for every one that’s felled; perhaps the railway could withdraw three rules for every new one written? But this is where risk aversion makes its presence felt. Despite a supposed decluttering exercise, RSSB’s latest Rule Book still requires a COSS to place a red ﬂag/light on the approach to his site of work when taking a line blockage. The roots of this instruction go back years, predating proper high-vis clothing by a considerable distance. Today, gangs of men bedecked in luminous orange command the attention of drivers by their very presence and yet their last line

Solid foundations? Post McNulty, there is a collective acceptance that doing nothing is not an option. “An expanding railway also has to be an efficient railway”, insists Graham Smith, Secretary of the new Rail Delivery Group (RDG). “Many of the barriers to that greater efficiency can be found in the bureaucracy, red tape and regulations that delay, or even prevent, improvements to Britain’s railways.” Arranging the removal of those barriers will be a key role for the RDG, testing its mettle and leadership credentials. And what of the Red Tape Challenge? The public response to its rail sector focus was patchy, perhaps reflecting the broader disengagement with politics. Many of the comments spoke in defence of pension regulation: “the provisions are sacrosanct” said one, “I would take to the barricades to defend them.” Others supported the regulatory status quo. “The key issue is not how many regulations there are or what they cover but how they are interpreted by the regulatory authority.” Another concluded that “the present rail safety regime is effective and fit for purpose, and little or no public benefit would arise from chopping away chunks of the legal structures which support and guide it.” On the whole, probably not what was expected or hoped for. A cynic might suggest that the campaign is little more than window dressing, allowing government to claim that it has listened and acted when a raft of defunct regulations are consigned to the bin. Will the Disability Discrimination Act - which inflates the cost of stations and rolling stock - disappear? Might the Great Crested Newt find itself more exposed? Unlikely. But the Red Tape Challenge does have symbolic importance formally conceding that regulation now reaches too deep and urging agencies to loosen its straitjacket. Middlesbrough’s Transporter Bridge still offers flights across the Tees aboard its gondola, defying the virtual efforts of the Auf Wiedersehen gang to bring it down. Erected in just two years, it survived to celebrate its centenary last October. The railway’s regulatory structure - whilst equally elaborate - cannot afford to prove quite so durable. w www.redtapechallenge.cabinetoffice.gov.uk

january 2012 | the rail engineer | 47

wiﬁ

security

computer

feature

technology

operations

cyber crime network

information

worm

secure

back door

ﬁles

data

theft

vulnerable unauthorised

chaos

protocol

hacker

terrorism

Cyber Threat trojan

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Clive Kessell

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is unusual for an article in the rail I tengineer not to contain a railrelated engineering story. Yet this subject needs to be heeded by all, since ignoring the message could be catastrophic for any business. Rockwell Automation and Cisco Systems organised a seminar in London last November to examine the risks of computer fraud and hacking. No-one is immune from this peril but sensible precautions can and should be taken to minimise the risk.

vulnerable to cyber threats. The cost of cyber crime is estimated at £27 billion per year with consequential industry losses of around £21 billion - big numbers.

Background

What exactly is cyber crime?

Stand-alone data systems are a thing of the past. Unfettered access to data is a modern business requirement and interconnected network devices are needed to provide a free ﬂow of information for manufacturing convergence. All industries are involved - utilities, telecommunications, ﬁnance and transport being perhaps the four main ones. Many use control systems that operate key infrastructure but such systems have long lifecycles, typically upwards of 20 years. Products age in that time and become increasingly

Threats cover a range of sources and reasons: access control, theft, manmade disasters, unauthorised employee action, malicious intent and others. Some threats have hit the headlines and been given high proﬁle names - Conﬂicker and Zeus have targeted business systems while Stuxnet and Duqu have attacked industrial control systems. Large companies have proved to be vulnerable, Lockheed Martin and Sony to name but two. Targeted attacks are a reality. The ‘hacker’, in the widest

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48 | the rail engineer | january 2012

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sense of the word, starts with a long and detailed lead-up to plan, reconnoitre, target network and web based applications, and ﬁnally attacking and exploiting, this latter being done quickly.

feature

Security

PHOTO: SHUTTERSTOCK.COM

It’s easy to say, but what does it really mean? How many people really understand it? “Do you know what you don’t know?” might be a simple adage. Does someone want to steal information and/or technology, both electronic and human? Security threats are real and breaches are the norm. Organisations must be prepared to accept risk since it cannot be avoided. Many firms employ security experts but their effectiveness can be suspect. They must be able to explain risk and particularly network security risk. The merits of wireless versus wired networks are often debated. The perception is that wired is safer but rogue access points can exist undetected. Detection is easier with wireless as it will be picked up. Security vulnerability is not usually bug related but much more to do with design and equipment. For any asset, it must be established what is to be protected; source code is a typical response, this being a particularly difficult item to protect. Different levels of management give different answers. Open or closed access to the internet causes argument; if blocked, then people will find a way round it, thereby breaking the rules. If open access is

Combating the threat The Centre for Protection of National Infrastructure (CPNI) exists to research the risks, reduce the threat and protect critical national systems. It seeks to give authoritative advice to 13 industry groups of which railway signalling, air travel, space systems (GSM and GPS) and telecommunications are four. It produces publications in the form of Recommended Practices and Good Practice Guides plus an analysis of the top 20 critical security controls. A web site www.cpni.gov.uk is there for all to access. That said, what practical measures should an industry or business be taking? Security is all about managing the variables which, if carried out correctly, can enhance uptime and thus profitability. Industrial security must be designed as a defence in depth and implemented as a system. Security is not a bolt-on item. Multiple layers of protection are needed to provide security countermeasures in components and systems so as to shield potential targets. Typical requirements are: • Proven and consistent coding practices, • Firmware update behaviour, • No ‘backdoors’ or hidden passwords, • Prevent disruptive operations at run time, • Minimise open TCP / UDP ports, • Web server hardening, • Ethernet protocol suite testing for optimum TCP/IP practice, • CIP Protocol compliance testing. An access control sequence will logically be: check physical security; CPU lock in place; read/write tags in place; defined constants; main controller blocks not user accessible; firmware signing; digital signatures authenticated; IP and know how protection in place; custom routines authorised and authenticated.

Telemetry permitted then employees must be trained and trusted. All outbound web visits must however be blocked to protect against Malware from bad infected sites.

Traditional networks for control of utilities and transport undertakings, linked remote sites to control centres using PSTN and leased lines, VSAT and scanning radio. These

had low data rates and were mainly for monitoring purposes. Security was obtained by obscurity with air gapped networks, little encryption, proprietary protocols and limited control. Things have changed in the past decade, with ADSL, MPLS, satellite broadband and GPRS on 3G being the norm. The cost of bandwidth has plummeted. High speed networks and multiple points of presence (PoP) are available countrywide. Ethernet and IP are the dominant standards and most instruments and outstations are IP enabled. A greater demand exists for operational information, re-routings and initialisations, physical security with CCTV monitoring and workforce management. All this needs higher bandwidth and a ‘one size ﬁts all’ solution is not applicable. Sites need to be prioritised with a standard solution for each tier of control. Duplicated links between control and site - maybe a private line and the internet, maybe a ring architecture - with virtual private network (VPN) ‘tunnels’ added for security. In all of this cyber security is vital, the approach architecture being:

defend

extend

prevent

comply.

Severn Trent Water is a typical utility where robust telemetry is vital. Comprising 100,000 kilometres of sewers, 46,000 kilometres of water mains and 6,500 operational sites, all serving 8.7 million people, inadequate control can be disastrous. Asset failure is inevitable but the impact is dependent on management preparedness and can be shown: • Unaware Incidents Just Happen • Routine Minute by Minute Control • Planned Reactive Planned Response • Elements of Proactive Beat the Future • Mainly Proactive Calm Resilience • Proactive Decisive Actions Based on Fact

january 2012 | the rail engineer | 49

feature

Proactive equates to optimal investment, robust risk management and condition monitoring to know failures are likely before they happen. Sources of information may come from telemetry, SCADA and customers, the latter being an exercise in relationship management. The corporate world and the process control world have merged, which has exposed threats and challenges that need understanding. Experience has shown that in a network such as Severn Trent, information security can be enhanced by regular anti-virus patching, periodic penetration testing (usually by an ‘in-house hacker’), security testing, system monitoring and ﬁrewall provision. In parallel with this, user awareness and security training needs to be conducted, it being a surprise that so few ﬁrms carry this out. Change management and system / performance testing may need to be improved as might system life cycle management - a little and often rather than major changes being preferred. Updating to use the latest set of common standards is good advice noting that old programmable logic controllers (PLC) are particularly vulnerable. Getting the Supply Chain department signed up to a culture that builds security thinking into the procurement process is important. Lastly, if the end customer does not ask for security, the chances are it will not be provided.

What message for rail? It might seem to some that all of this is irrelevant to the rail industry. Anyone who thinks that is in dreamland. Maybe the business systems of Network Rail and the train operating companies are the easiest targets but it is their operational systems that carry the highest risk. Functional safety, operational integrity, IP protection, plus product availability and quality should be in the mind of every railway engineer. The sheer cost of bespoke designs is driving the industry to use more and more standard solutions. Professional help will be needed both to get the right protection in place and to react when an incident occurs. This help may involve legal, public relations, product and security experts. This seminar should have been a wake-up call to those who attended with an unspoken message to pass on the information down the chain. Whilst both Rockwell and Cisco were inevitably putting forward their solutions to the problem, the risks were well explained and anyone who ignores them does so at their peril.

PHOTO: SHUTTERSTOCK.COM

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50 | the rail engineer | january 2012

feature

STAMP and other

acronyms

(Right) A 5.1m post is raised or lowered using a hydraulic ram and (above) new signals are complemented by a modular junction indicator system. PHOTOS: VMS

writer

Peter Stanton Rail held a Signalling Suppliers’ N etwork Technical Conference in the Royal York Hotel on the 16 November 2011. This was one of a series of conferences which aim to bring together the signalling function and associated interests at joint events to encourage, communicate with and brief suppliers. Delegates were welcomed by Ken Peters, Principal Engineer - System Design, who introduced the programme and the ﬁrst speaker. Alan Kitchen, Senior Programme Engineering Manager, Infrastructure Projects, delivered an encouraging keynote speech. His audience became used to the expression “STAMP” (Signalling Tools and Methods Programme), which will provide the basis for future developments as engineers in project teams assess the use of design tools. Alan pointed out that the software will be free but not, of course, the hardware. The watchwords will be “Design to Cost”, and an eye will be kept open for unnecessary and unfunded enhancements as the direction for designers was to “Strive for Simplicity”! A desire to reduce points with more signals, and the gain from increased lower speeds, were both emphasised. The Network Rail devolution process was covered as was the huge challenge as the company moves forward into control period ﬁve. Following this intriguing keynote, there followed a range of subjects delivered by both Network Rail experts and suppliers.

ORBIS First off was Mike Howard, Enterprise Architect - Technical Information Management at Network Rail, with a fascinating insight into ORBIS (Offering Rail

Better Information Systems). This was presented as a positive culture of management information and was designed to meet the needs of the newly-devolved organisation. Its aim is to make information available in all forms including a mobile access and a local view to avoid site visits. Modern mobile phone technology will make this generally available to staff. We were then treated to a session on modular signalling presented by Ken Vine, Applications Engineer, Investment Projects. Ken’s subject can be summarised as an

integrated system of products and processes which enables the resignalling of secondary routes at a lower unit cost than other current methods. Fundamentally, this requires a challenging target price per signalling equivalent unit, a 24 month programme from the start of scheme development to commissioning, and all achieved through standardised designs and more off-site construction and testing. It is accepted that elements of the system, both process and hardware, can be used in other applications if they can give a cost saving.

january 2012 | the rail engineer | 51

feature Plug ‘n’ play “Plug and play” followed. It is a wellknown expression nowadays, but in this context it refers to the use of plug couplers in signalling and related installations. This is seen as a real cost-cutter for signalling and electrification although some changes to the signalling works and installation handbook methodologies will be required. Cables will be pre-assembled with standardised plug arrangements available from several suppliers. The final part of the session before lunch was an excellent presentation by Peter Dickson of iLecsys on materials innovation for trackside cabinets. He emphasised that composites are not the simple fibreglass (GRP) with which we have been familiar with over the years, but a much more advanced material without the shortcomings of the earlier product. Modern composites are very stable and resistant to damage and impact. An entertaining video was shown in which an FRP cabinet was subjected to attack by everything from a crowbar and sledgehammer to a shotgun blast, culminating in even a dose of petrol and flame, which indicated the ability to stand up to total abuse! The material has also been used for a footbridge as a core design.

Standard design catalogue Following a very useful networking session, the next presentation was on standard designs. The crux of this section was to understand the desire for a Network Rail standard design catalogue, or “ProjectWise.” These designs would be

accessible externally, and delegates were shown examples of current development where there is a full suite of approved B and C designs from the relevant Network Rail standards. The process is helped by “Gatekeepers” in the various Network Rail departments. This led onto views from Phil Hickey of Unipart Rail who also referred to Plug and Play, and instances in which product development anticipated the elimination of trackside hard wiring and the reduction of possession times - a most laudable goal. Tahir Ayub, Senior (Asset) Design Engineer, Infrastructure Investment, moved on to the area of signalling power supply design and outlined the development of proposals for the use of class II equipment at the trackside. The class II-based design solution is to be implemented into new-build signalling power distribution systems, existing signalling power distribution systems and legacy signalling power distribution systems - standards are under development for these latter two. Tahir anticipated that there will be considerable savings, not least in material costs. Next up was another acronym, ELPOD (ELectrical POwer Design). This is a process for design, installation and testing which utilises tools for the exchange of designs, power supply architecture selection and design platforms. Its intention is to reduce the burden on power design engineers, rationalise the current number of design tools in use, improve accuracy and equipment optimisation and increase

productivity. The philosophy is to input data only once, use it many times and allow the portability of designs. Finally the day’s host, Ken Peters, looked back to 2006 and the history and progress of the STAMP project. Principal objectives included better access to data, automatic data exchange and designer aids. This was followed by a concise summing up by Alan Kitchen which sealed the end of a most useful and interesting conference - all to the better for the industry.

(Above) Changeover of signalling equipment can be done live at the PCIU and can be installed quickly and cables attached. PHOTOS: SIGASSURE

Point your device at www.rail.co

52 | the rail engineer | january 2012

feature writer

Ian James Allison

Signalling

the Link

Redundant materials

Kidderminster Railway Museum.

12th November 2011 saw the S aturday Institution of Railway Signal Engineers, Minor Railways Section (MRS) hold their biennial technical seminar at Kidderminster Railway Museum, next to the Severn Valley Railway (SVR) in Worcestershire. It’s an appropriate venue with audible heritage reminders throughout the day; the hiss of steam and thud of slam doors; the café below the lecture hall with an ebb and ﬂow of banter that coincided with the departure of trains; the kids on outings knocking seven bells (literally) out of the block instruments in the museum below. It was all very atmospheric. Some sixty ﬁve members and guests from various minor railways around the UK attended the sponsored, free-to-attend event with the overall theme being “Signalling the Link”. With the President and Chief Executive of the Institution present, Major Ian Hughes acted as the master of ceremonies and formally introduced a wide range of speakers, arranging for questions at the end of each session.

David Helliwell, MRS Chairman, gave an introduction to the Section and the event. He was followed by Ian James Allison, Founding Chairman of the MRS, who outlined the history, achievements and highlights of the Section over the past two years. Martijn Huibers, MRS Secretary, spoke about “The disposal of redundant Network Rail materials and the way forward”. With the real prospect of a signiﬁcant amount of equipment being made available by the largest heritage railway in the UK (Network Rail), it was appropriate that protocols were in place to manage this. Martijn appealed to the minor railways to participate in a scheme that would allow surplus equipment to be made available to colleagues. He also gave details of the planned Section visit to the Netherlands in July 2012. With a wealth of practical knowledge from the ‘inside’, Charles Weightman, Network Rail HQ, spoke about “Making the connection to Network Rail from other railways” with detailed examples of how this has been achieved or planned for the future. Following the mid-morning refreshments, the proceedings expanded the day’s theme. Dominic Beglin, Peak Rail S&T, (and of which more of later in the day) spoke regarding “The project to connect Peak Rail to the National Network (Pitfalls - Problems Plans)” whilst Craig Donald, North Yorkshire Moors Railway S&T, gave an insight into “Signalling the Link between NYMR and NR, what has been achieved to date and the future plans for future development”. Off piste, Grahame Taylor, Tern Systems Ltd, gave a rapid-ﬁre summary of his TERN system, a simple, cost effective processorbased aid for Train Controllers and a story

that has been running for the last 25 years. A live demonstration using GPRS ran through the day on the TERN trade stand. Quentin Macdonald, Quaestus (Poppleton) Ltd, had a tale of two links and the issues encountered along the way with Network Rail at Cae Pawb - the ﬂat crossing on the Welsh Highland Railway - and at UK Coal’s Butterwell open cast site.

Time-critical deadlines A buffet lunch courtesy of the event’s sponsors was provided following questions and all members and guests were afforded plenty of time to indulge. There were opportunities for viewing the museum and station, the trade stands and the Kidderminster (SVR) Signal Box before returning for the afternoon sessions. After lunch Kevin Weston, Longleat Railway S&T gave an account of the installation of “A Level Crossing for a Narrow Gauge Railway”. It’s not just the main line network that has to deal with time-critical deadlines. Kevin showed that many considerations are common to all railways regardless of size. Ian Hughes then outlined the progress towards a Minor Railways safety passport which is 100% in line with HSE guidance speciﬁcally for the minor rail sector. Much closer to home - in fact, within a few hundred yards - John Phillips, Severn Valley Railway S&T, gave his take on the nearby Network Rail Resignalling and the “Interface to the SVR” demonstrating the challenges and changes required to achieve correctly signalled routes between the two railways.

Guideline Documents As master of ceremonies, Major Hughes ran the proceedings with an iron hand and not a minute was lost, to the extent that the

january 2012 | the rail engineer | 53

feature afternoon tea queue arrived early at its destination, wrong-footing the caterers for a moment. A select number of exhibitors occupied the prime position next to the tea queue. The steady, not hurried, pace of tea pouring ensured that everyone had time to see every stand. On show were Señalización Ltd, Henry Williams Ltd and Green Dragon Rail Ltd. Stuart Marsh of Signal Aspects Ltd was there with an array of LED devices along with his narrow gauge point machine that had been heroically manhandled up the ﬁre escape. Following refreshments, the proceedings continued with the Section Chairman David Helliwell, who is also the MRS Document Coordinator. He spoke about the production and management of Guideline Documents associated with signalling and telecommunications, the progress achieved to date and how different railways and individuals could assist in the development; In a ﬁnal reference to the theme of the day, David Barnes, Spa Valley Railway, spoke about how the railway was reopened between Groombridge and Eridge in Kent and how this project was achieved.

Golden envelope Then came the award ceremony complete with golden envelope. Mike Tyrrell, MRS Award Organiser, introduced this year’s ﬁnalists for the Volunteer S&T Technician of the Year award. This is designed to encourage greater interest in railway signalling and telecommunications within the volunteer sector whilst increasing the awareness of the IRSE and its Minor Railways Section. With the support of the rail engineer magazine, the award is administered by the Minor Railways Section of the IRSE and is targeted at volunteer S&T individuals from minor and heritage railways who are over the age of 16. They must be actively

working in the maintenance, installation, testing or design of S&T equipment and systems. The winner receives nominal ownership of the Winner’s Trophy for the period of one year and £100 in cash, a commemorative certificate and commemorative miniature trophy together with one year’s free membership of the IRSE at an appropriate grade. They will also be awarded attendance at a leading Industry Training School for relevant identified training and the opportunity to work with other S&T staff on other minor/heritage railways for experience and further understanding. The Section is grateful to Charles Hudson MBE, for donating a single line train staff as the trophy and John Francis, for chairing an independent committee to review all the applications for the award and to select the award winner. Out of a wide range of candidates the finalists were Dominic Beglin of Peak Rail & Churnet Valley Railway, Shawn Sanders of the Great Central Railway and Michael Sargent of the Bluebell Railway. John Francis provided background about all the three finalists at this event, after which Charles Hudson opened the envelope and announced Dominic Beglin as the winner before awarding him the prizes.

Postscript A closing address was given by Claire Porter, President of the IRSE, about the successes of the Section and the potential to develop further in the near future. The Section is also grateful to the sponsors of this event, Signal Aspects Ltd, Señalización Ltd, the rail engineer Magazine, Henry Williams Ltd, Green Dragon Rail Ltd, TERN Systems Ltd and Centregreat Rail Ltd.

(Left) - Dominic Beglin, Volunteer S&T Technician of the year holding the trophy and (right) Stuart Marsh of Signal Aspects exhibiting his narrow gauge point machine.

For further details about the Minor Railways Section and future planned meetings and events, please go to the Minor Railways Section of the IRSE web site or contact the Section Secretary at: e mrssecretary@irse.org

The professional Institution for all those engaged or interested in railway signalling and telecommunications and allied disciplines.

Institution of Railway Signal Engineers »

The principal forum for the exchange of information on all aspects of railway signalling and telecommunications

An international organisation with 4,400 members in over fifty countries worldwide

A range of membership categories from Associate to Fellow allows anyone with an interest to participate

www.irse.org Meetings • Technical Visits • Seminars • Awards • Textbooks • Magazine

54 | the rail engineer | january 2012

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IconisTM is a centralised supervisory system that gives you complete visibility and control over your network operations. Constant, simultaneous information on all trains and stations in a single screen set. The system increases the reliability and traffic flow across your network by pre-empting conflicts and improving incidence recovery time through the provision

of accurate information and real time positioning of services. Iconis has been successfully implemented world-wide across complex networks and integrates ATS, SCADA, Passenger Information and Security, providing conflict management, train graphing, re-planning, decision support and a range of other features to ensure the smooth running of your network.

• Automatic routing for routine work • Fast problem-identification and solution • Smart operation and incident tracking • Scalable and configurable, simplifying complex systems

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!!"#$%"&$"'()*"((&&""""+,-./0+1,233+,10.345+.,06+,-.""""77760+1,233+,10.345+.,068.9 Signalling Solutions Limited, Borehamwood Industrial Park, Rowley Lane, Borehamwood, Herts WD6 5PZ