The Rail Engineer - Issue 120 - October 2014

engineer the rail

by rail engineers for rail engineers

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OCTOBER 2014 - ISSUE 120

this issue q THE RUGGED REVOLUTION q INNOVATIVE SOLUTIONS q NEW TRAMS RUN IN BIRMINGHAM q INNOTRANS HIGHLIGHTS

Amalfi in

Lancashire

GREAT WESTERN ELECTRIFICATION Arrival of the new High Output Plant System

A VIEW FROM A BRIDGE

Extensive refurbishment for Selby Swing Bridge

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the rail engineer • October 2014

3

Contents

A view from a bridge Selby Swing Bridge, a heroic and iconic marvel of Victorian engineering excellence.

20 The rugged revolution

46 Defining Innovation Richard Parry-Jones, chairman of Network Rail.

48 New trams run in Birmingham

News Bakerloo extension plans.

10

Amalfi in Lancashire Return of the Chorley arches.

12

Great Western Electrification Arrival of the new High Output Plant System.

26

National Operating Strategy unveiled To improve capacity and performance standards.

32

Hitachi’s New Railway The £82 million development at Newton Aycliffe.

38

Drainage shall go to the ball Drains, all too often neglected?

44

A very brief, brief London Overground Capacity Improvement Programme.

54

Innovative solutions from Sheffield High-integrity stretcher bars.

60

Stepping up to the challenge A GRP double-height walkway platform.

66

The greatest show on two rails (or less) Nigel Wordsworth reports from InnoTrans.

68

On the turn in Berlin The editor’s take on InnoTrans.

72

Railways and Wetlands The importance of wetlands in flood management.

76

62

See more at www.therailengineer.com

We’re looking to highlight the latest projects and innovations in

Electrification/Power

Light Rail/Metro

in the December issue of the rail engineer.

Got a fantastic innovation? Working on a great project? Call Nigel on 01530 816 445 NOW!

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the rail engineer • October 2014

5

Editor Grahame Taylor grahame.taylor@therailengineer.com

Production Editor Nigel Wordsworth nigel@rail-media.com

Past, present and future but mainly the future

Grahame Taylor

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

Matthew Stokes matt@rail-media.com

Engineering writers chris.parker@therailengineer.com clive.kessell@therailengineer.com collin.carr@therailengineer.com david.bickell@therailengineer.com

Graeme Bickerdike thinks they look a bit uncomfortable. I’d be a little more direct. They look out of place, redundant, lost. And what are we both largely agreed upon? The Chorley arches that were taken down back in 2008 and re-erected close to where they stood for over 100 years. If they ever did anything structural they certainly don’t do it now.

As for being a piece of railway heritage that everyone can enjoy, study or gaze upon, well they’re completely out of sight from the general public. Something that looks just like the original, but is clearly not is sometimes called a pastiche.

david.shirres@therailengineer.com graeme.bickerdike@therailengineer.com jane.kenyon@therailengineer.com mungo.stacy@therailengineer.com paul.darlington@therailengineer.com peter.stanton@therailengineer.com simon.harvey@therailengineer.com steve.bissell@therailengineer.com stuart.marsh@therailengineer.com

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Part of

Now that I’ve got that off my chest I can be a tad more generous with praise for a repair scheme that has given a massive piece of Victorian engineering a good few more years of useful life. Stuart Marsh has been able to crawl all over and under the Selby swing bridge on what used to be the ECML until the Selby coalfield diversion back in the 80s. There are not that many of these structures around on the network and there is certainly no stock of spare parts. This is oneoff engineering. The equivalent of rocket science in its day, it has benefited from the installation of modern control systems to reduce the element of ‘clunk’ and ‘clang’.

There weren’t many swing bridge pintle bearings on show at InnoTrans in Berlin. But I suspect that might have been the only part that was missing and even then I can’t be certain as the show is so vast that somewhere in one of the halls there might have been a stand full of the blighters. Just about everything you needed to build, run and maintain a railway or a train was there - from tunnels to trackwork, from biodigestors to dishwashers, signal control systems to bogies.

Nigel Wordsworth spent an heroic four days tramping the floors to bring you a host of choice items. I used slightly less shoe leather looking at some of the more unusual exhibits.

And now a step firmly back to the UK and to the present day.

Collin Carr has been to the great western main line to look at HOPS operating from a HOOB. That’s a High Output Plant System which is fed and watered at the High Output Operations Base just to the east of Swindon.

The logistics are daunting with everything needed to be ready for each shift - in the right order in the correct quantities and the correct type. With the pace of electrification getting ever more intense, the pressure is mounting day after day. Collin looks at how they’re all coping.

How things change! Few have heard of Heighington. The line to Shildon and Bishop Auckland hung on a thread thirty years ago, its only claim to fame being that it included some of the earliest portions of railway infrastructure.

But it did survive and now Heighington is right alongside where new high-speed trains are going to be constructed. The Hitachi Rail Europe’s new rail vehicle manufacturing facility is an £82 million investment which by 2015 will have created over 700 jobs. Our article, contributed

by Story Rail, outlines some of the tricky engineering needed to connect up the site.

Another stretch of forgotten railway wound its way through the northern and eastern part of London. For such a populous city it comes as a surprise to find routes that had very few

trains, and those that ran were unreliable. This was the land of the north London line - a true Cinderella of the capital’s urban transport. But then a shining white knight appeared and almost overnight the north London line arrived at the ball. London Overground’s intervention saved the railway. But then success got in the way and the services overheated. “Five carriages”, demanded Boris and lo, five carriages have appeared - or at least they will do by the end of the year. We tell you how.

In Birmingham new trams are being introduced to increase capacity and to serve the newly extended system. They’re longer and wider and so there have been the inevitable nibblings at platform edges and parapets.

Nigel has been to see the new kit but let others do the 13-mile testing trek on foot.

Perhaps you’d get the impression from announcements about ROCs - Regional Operating Centres - that everywhere on the mainline network will be controlled by a ROC and that the takeover is imminent. Well, this isn’t exactly how it’s going to happen and David Bickell, with studied calm, tells us that there are quite a few places that will survive well into the next decade or beyond. But he also reveals that there are technologies emerging that will take us well beyond what we currently understand as railway signalling.

And it is these emerging technologies and innovations that Richard Parry-Jones, chairman of Network Rail, covers in an insightful article for us.

Innovations occur at all levels and in all shapes and sizes. It’s up to everyone to recognise and run with them.

It’ll be our future.

6

the rail engineer • October 2014

NEWS

Mighty ROC Network Rail’s plans to move control of the national railway to 12 Railway Operating Centres (ROCs) have been covered by The Rail Engineer on several occasions. The latest milestone in this programme was reached when the largest of the new ROCs was opened in York last month.

Hugh Bayley MP and Phil Verster, Network Rail route managing director, visited the new facilities and saw progress at first hand. With the fit-out complete, attention now

turns to staff training with the first team moving into the building in January 2015 as the ROC replaces the current route control building at the back of York station.

Further locations will migrate into the ROC over the coming years.

Once fully occupied, around 400 rail people will work there. This will be a combination of Northern Rail, East Coast and Network Rail employees with a maximum of 87 on shift at any time.

Phil Verster, route managing director for Network Rail, said: “The rail operating centre is the largest

Phil Verster explains the control system to Hugh Bayley MP. of just 12 proposed centres across Britain and will ultimately control signalling and rail operations on the east coast all the way from King’s Cross to the Scottish borders. York is the ideal place for the centre with rail links right across the country.”

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the rail engineer • October 2014

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Manchester Metrolink has ordered 16 new trams from Bombardier using funds from the government’s Local Growth Fund.

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The government announced in August that Manchester Metrolink was to receive £44 million to

improve the network, of which £34 million would finance the procurement of 12 new trams.

However, Transport for Greater Manchester (TfGM) said that “favourable exchange rates and buying in bulk” has allowed it to boost that order with a further four new trams.

Councillor Andrew Fender, chairman of the TfGM’s Metrolink committee, said: “As Metrolink expands and grows in popularity we know that our customers want extra services and extra room on trams, and that’s why we are looking to the future and making sure we can meet that demand.

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NEWS

the rail engineer • October 2014

East-West takes the next step The East West Rail scheme, which was described in issue 117 (July 2014), has taken a step forward with the award of a design contract to global engineering consultant Parsons Brinckerhoff.

The project, which involves upgrading and reconstructing underused and disused sections of railway, will re-establish a passenger and freight rail link

between Oxford and Bedford, Milton Keynes and Aylesbury for the first time in more than 40 years.

The first phase of the scheme

is already underway and is being delivered by a collaboration between Network Rail and Chiltern Railways. This includes the upgrade of the line between Oxford and Bicester and the connection of the Bicester Town to Oxford railway to the Chiltern main line by construction of 1km of new railway

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and the construction and doubling of more than 18km of track. Other works include the construction of new overbridges, underbridges and footbridges, closure of 37 level crossings, construction of a new station at Oxford Parkway and work to upgrade Bicester Town and Islip stations along with a new signalling system.

Now, Parsons Brinckerhoff has been awarded a contract of up to £8 million for the second phase of the scheme, which will see the railway line reinstated between Bedford and Oxford with spurs to Milton Keynes and Aylesbury. The contract includes timetable modelling, the design and alignment of track, civil engineering works to bridges and embankments, geotechnical investigation and survey works, studies on how the reinstated railway will impact on level crossings, station design, consents, ecology and environmental works.

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the rail engineer • October 2014

NEWS

Bakerloo extension plans After Thameslink, and Crossrail, and the extension of the Northern line to Battersea, London is now looking at the next major rail project­- the extension of the Bakerloo line from Elephant & Castle towards New Cross, Lewisham, Bromley and Hayes.

With the capital’s population expected to reach ten million by 2030, the extension will help support anticipated growth in south London by providing improved transport infrastructure and enabling regeneration in a number of the Mayor’s key Opportunity Areas.

As well as providing quicker, more direct journeys into central London, extending the Bakerloo line would also release capacity on the national rail network, enabling more services to operate from other destinations and helping to reduce overcrowding on National Rail services into London Bridge.

The proposed extension would run in a tunnel from Elephant & Castle to Lewisham.

Two routes for this have been identified - one via the Old Kent Road and another via Camberwell and Peckham.

Beyond Lewisham, the line could then link onto the existing Network Rail line using the South Eastern rail line to Beckenham Junction and Hayes via Ladywell and Catford. Finally, there is also an option to extend the line further on to Bromley town centre.

The cost of the extension is estimated at up to £3 billion.

Public consultation has just commenced and the findings will be presented in Spring 2015. If the go-ahead is given, and funding secured, construction could commence by 2023.

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the rail engineer • October 2014

GRAEME BICKERDIKE

Amalfi in

PHOTOS: FOUR BY THREE

Lancashire

the rail engineer • October 2014

Novelty struts

(Below) Adjustments are made to the FRP barrier above the retaining wall.

For non-civil engineering types, you probably need some context.

The Bolton & Preston Railway opened as far as Chorley in 1841, leaving a three-mile missing link between the town and Euxton Junction where it would join the North Union Railway, today’s West Coast Main Line. But ground conditions through this section were problematic, with running sands, glacial till and a high water table. Construction work suffered accordingly. Attempts to bore a tunnel under the Chorley-Preston turnpike road (or A6 as we now know it) “baffled every effort”, eventually resulting in the road being dug out and the tunnel formed by cut and cover.

Beyond its north portal, the line entered a cutting about 60 feet in depth. Whilst dry higher up, the excavation became wet and silty close to formation level, with large

“flying arches” - across the railway at 15-foot centres, their role being only to generate side thrust which would resist any lateral movement in the walls. Each strut comprised two masonry arches placed back to back, sharing the same stonework through their central portion which was topped with flags to keep the joints dry. Very neat.

In 1844, Professor William Hosking - a noted bridge design academic - cautioned that “the lower arch…might be thrown up by severe lateral pressure and that the same pressure would have a tendency to make the upper invert segments push up the tops of the walls against which they abutted.” But 164 years later, removal of the Grade II listed arches was not driven by defect, rather an urgent need to resolve a developing formation failure which had resulted in a 20mph speed restriction being imposed. They

(Inset left) The flying arches across Amalfi’s main street.

quantities of clay exposed which split from top to bottom as the weather got to it. Concerned by this expansion but keen to avoid the expense of erecting thicker retaining walls, engineer Alexander Adie introduced 16 struts - the

were replaced by temporary steel props but have been reinstated this summer, as required by the listed building consent, during a blockade of the Chorley-Euxton Junction line for track lowering, a precursor to wires going up.

F

Mrs B has long since resigned herself to my admiration of such things - even when off duty - but she gave a look that would crack vases as we walked up the narrow main street in Amalfi, past tasteful little jewellery shops and purveyors of Limoncello. “Blimey, looks like Chorley!” I announced. On reflection, that was pushing the envelope a little. But if you cast your eyes upwards, the Chorley influence was undeniable. Preventing the crowded houses from becoming ever more intimate were four flying arches.

PHOTO: FOUR BY THREE

or civil engineering types who enjoy a busman’s holiday, the dramatic landscape of Italy’s Sorrentine Peninsula offers much to enthuse about, having tested railway and road builders alike. On the line to Sorrento, the platform at Scrajo Terme Station is mostly in tunnel but its central section glimpses the outside world momentarily whilst traversing a narrow valley, revealing views over the bay towards Naples. Meanwhile the breathtaking southern coast road - best ridden with crossed fingers when Pepe is driving your coach - relies on an assortment of concrete structures for support as it precariously hugs the cliff-face.

Construction must have brought boom times for stores selling brown trousers.

13

the rail engineer • October 2014

PHOTOS: FOUR BY THREE

14

(Above) Weep holes are inserted below the retaining walls’ ground anchors.

(Top) Dropping the tracks by 500mm through the tunnel has created space for overhead line equipment.

Power to the people The North West Electrification Programme is tasked with installing overhead line equipment on routes connecting Liverpool, Manchester, Preston and Blackpool by the end of 2016. Delivery of this £400 million investment is split into five phases, the fourth of which takes in the line through Chorley. Regrettably Alexander Adie had not foreseen that electricity - just a scientific curiosity in the 19th century - would increasingly power trains in the 21st, so his tunnel was not proportioned with OLE in mind, a reality confirmed through a LaserSweep survey and ClearRoute gauge modelling.

Network Rail’s Advanced Structure Clearance Team has then been required to re-engineer it before the equipment could be accommodated.

Their remit also involved achieving W12 loading gauge for freight traffic.

Successful in tendering for the design-and-build contract - valued at £4.2 million - was Murphy; they procured the consultancy services of Amey to develop the final design.

A range of options were considered for the tunnel, including demolition, but cost and a moratorium on arch ‘notching’ drove the choice of a track lowering scheme. With this came the need for a blockade of the line from 19th July to 31st August, resulting in Chorley being served for six weeks by a weekday rail shuttle service from the south and buses from the north.

Given the impact on passengers, it was of course incumbent on Network Rail to maximise the opportunity afforded by the closure, so the River Chor aqueduct and Harpers Lane overbridge have also been replaced. Progress was made with an earthworks scheme to resolve a historic landslip adjacent

to the tunnel’s Chorley portal, involving a regrade and soil nailing.

Maintenance has made headway with many of those low-level highvolume jobs that can prove difficult in traffic - deveging, sign painting and the like. At weekends and overnight, the blockade’s southern limit was extended as far as Lostock Junction to encompass two more bridge replacements - fulfilled

by Story Rail - and a collection of Babcock track renewals.

These activities all added variables to the project’s critical path; some blocked the line from time to time, bringing further complexity to the planning of engineering train movements. There was no scope for slippage anywhere within the programme given the likely impact on logistics. As each overbridge site demanded road closures, considerable effort had to be invested in community drop-in sessions and liaison with local councils. It’s been a busy one for all concerned.

Team members even helped out as stewards for the Adlington carnival, the normal route of which had been severed by a missing bridge.

the rail engineer • October 2014

15

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the rail engineer • October 2014

PHOTO: FOUR BY THREE

The extent of the track lower can be gauged by floor level in the refuge.

Buying time Before any excavation in the tunnel’s southern approach cutting, the retaining walls had to be anchored back throughout their 230-metre length. Adie had built the walls on layers of engine cinders which he preferred to concrete in wet conditions, but their footings were shallow by today’s standards and certainly insufficient given the extent of the track lower which reached 492mm in the tunnel.

To stabilise the walls against overturning or sliding, around 200 Ischebeck Titan injection anchors each 15m in length - were inserted at 2.5m centres, this product saving time as a result of being self-drilling.

With water ingress anticipated in significant volumes, sheet piles were driven down the face of each retaining wall to aid water management, effectively acting as cofferdams. The piles extended above the toe of the walls to prevent any wash-out of running sands. The approach mirrored that implemented successfully in the north cutting back in 2008, although additional anchors had to be installed there due to the planned excavation depth. To get ahead of the game, this work was mostly completed during the first of two 54-hour possessions prior to the blockade. The second saw the establishment of an over-pumping system which operated at capacity for prolonged periods.

PHOTOS: FOUR BY THREE

Managing the water ingress was one of the project’s biggest challenges.

From the bottom up Just 113 metres long, Chorley Tunnel features vertical masonry sidewalls with a segmental arch in sharply dressed stone. Below, built on a 200mm sandstone slab, is a brick invert - 550-600mm deep, measured vertically. Whilst ballasted track could have been engineered for electrification purposes, achieving W12 loading gauge through the tunnel necessitated a track slab solution to limit intrusion on the invert, although notches still had to be cut into it to create the space needed. Ground investigations had helped to build an initial profile of the invert - as best as you can using trial pits - but only after it was exposed and surveyed during the blockade could the depth of the notches be confirmed: mostly around 300mm, with 400mm as a worst case.

Stobart Rail, the p-way subcontractor, and Murphy proposed a precast concrete ladder system for the track slab rather than an in-situ pour, mostly due to time constraints. Shay Murtagh Precast manufactured the slab track or specialist ladder beams

each 4.525m long 2.257m wide, 34 no. upline and 34 no. downline with an overall length of 307.7m. Pandrol Vipa baseplates were specified to provide the high degree of fixity needed for clearances of at least 50mm and a minimum-width six-foot.

An installation methodology was developed to keep the length of open notch as short as possible at any one time. Starting with the Up line, work progressed cyclically - cut the notch, position the ladder beams, grout up - generally in 15-metre bays; this was reduced to 5 metres in critical areas where a deeper notch was required, thus ensuring any stresses were temporarily transferred into the adjoining brickwork. Thereafter the Vipas were fitted - their holding-down sockets having been precast into the ladder units - and new rail installed. Lessons learned on the Up side, in relation to such things as notch cutting and water management, allowed techniques to be refined when attention turned to the Down line.

PANDROL VIPAďšşSP CUSHIONS THE SLAB TRACK IN THE CHORLEY TUNNEL

The Chorley tunnel is among the oldest rail tunnels in the UK. Opened in 1843, it is now planned to be electrified with overhead catenary, requiring the track to be lowered by about half a metre.

It was decided that a structural slab was needed to support the existing masonry arch of the tunnel. Pandrol VIPA-SP was selected to cushion the structure from the vibration and impact generated by the increased speed and frequency of electrified trains. The low stiffness of the assembly is about 20 kN/mm, and the prefabrication of the modular track slabs allowed inserts to be accurately cast into the track slab and the baseplates fixed with ease prior to moving into the tunnel.

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the rail engineer • October 2014

The slab extends out from the tunnel by 20 metres at both ends to ensure approaching trains are absolutely vertical when they enter.

Beyond that is a 30-metre transition of variable formation thickness, comprising a 6N fill reinforced with a geotextile membrane. In stiffness terms, the Vipa baseplates are designed to emulate ballasted track so the effect of the transition will only really be felt over time as the adjacent ballasted sections become softer through normal track deterioration.

Whilst an open channel provides excellent drainage in the tunnel, renewal of the six-foot drain through the southern approaches has brought much-needed extra capacity.

As part of the earthworks scheme on the cutting’s east side, formal drainage has been installed above the portal and retaining wall to collect water coming down the slope. This is discharged into the central drain via an under-track crossing. These interventions should greatly improve longstanding water management issues and generally ease the maintenance burden.

Going home For almost six years, the flying arches had been sitting in cradles at Kirkham yard, secured behind palisade fencing. In advance of the blockade, they were brought back to site, disassembled, labelled and rebuilt in compression on new steelwork, a task undertaken by the skilled hands of masons from Bolton Stone Restoration. Each arch had been 3D-modelled in 2008 to ensure they could be returned as closely as possible to their original form.

...they were keen to retain this railway’s link with its Victorian roots and the engineering feature for which it is noted.

There are though hidden dowels and anchors within the joints to hold everything in place, securing longterm durability and robustness.

Key to the installation sequence was the need to maintain sufficient propping of the retaining walls. Strain monitors fitted to the temporary props identified any that were subject to compressive forces, suggestive of movement at the top of the walls. Using this knowledge, the team adopted a one-out onein approach at these locations; elsewhere it was three-out three-in.

Removal of the arches six years ago relied on a pair of road-rail vehicles working in tandem, however things have moved on since then. The lifting work for their reinstatement was done by a conventional 40-tonne mobile crane, modified to incorporate rail wheels. One of only two in the country, this machine - supplied by Road Rail Cranes - offered far greater capacity and flexibility than typical RRVs. It performed impressively, the consensus being that the industry will find many uses for it going forward; indeed it was also deployed to install the new River Chor aqueduct.

Don’t tell anyone I said so but the arches do look a little uncomfortable back in their old home. They no longer serve any structural purpose, sitting 750mm higher than before on new weathering steel struts; these do all the work and might yet have overhead line equipment clamped to their bottom flanges. With 25,000 volts on the way, substantial FRP protection barriers now run along the retaining walls. Together with blue-brick pilasters to mask the arches’ endplates, all this visual clutter inevitably detracts from the stonework.

But it’s all about compromise.

English Heritage was consulted throughout the design process and fortunately, given the £500,000 cost, they seem very happy with it. The arches are unique - there are no other examples of this type anywhere on the network - so they were keen to retain this railway’s link with its Victorian roots and the engineering feature for which it is noted. You can certainly buy into that perspective. They might bask in Italian sunshine but Amalfi’s flying arches are, by comparison, permanently in shadow.

@StobartRailLtd

GEORGE SMITH, SENIOR PROJECT MANAGER George joined the company in 2005 having previously been employed by Skanska UK where he project-managed numerous large-scale civil engineering projects including the Temple-Sowerby By-Pass and design and installation of the fixed telecoms network nationwide. Stobart Rail has been able to utilise this multi-disciplinary expertise on its own varying contracts for several customers.

“My first experience of Stobart Rail (then WA Developments) was using them on several of Skanska’s FTN contracts. I was impressed with the team’s positive and helpful attitude, always prepared to go the extra mile. Now, having in excess of eight years with the company, it’s been a positive career move, forever challenging and varied, at times quite exciting, and always rewarding”.

These have included the upgrade and extension of the runway at London Southend Airport and associated works, design and construction of a 350,000 sq foot distribution centre at Widnes and, more recently, the successful Chorley Flying Arches track lowering and slab track scheme for Murphy Group’s Rail Division.

Flying arches return to Chorley Having previously removed the stone arches with a steel substitute, Stobart Rail would like to congratulate The Murphy Group on the successful reinstatement of the original arches.

Working under subcontract to Murphy, Stobart Rail undertook the following:

· · · ·

500m of track lowering 150m of track slab and transitions Installation of new 6FT drainage and new preformed drainage channel Installation of over 240no soil nails up to 18m long.

All works took considerable co-ordination due to short timescales, limited access and extreme ground conditions.

Works were handed back successfully and on time.

Dave Richardson Plant Manager t. 01228 882 300 e. david.richardson@stobartrail.com Gary Newton Contracts and Estimating Manager t. 01228 882 300 e. gary.newton@stobartrail.com Andrew Sumner Business Development and Stakeholder Manager t. 01228 882 300 e. andrew.sumner@stobartrail.com

stobartrail.com

20

the rail engineer • October 2014

aview from a

bridge

Stuart Marsh

the rail engineer • October 2014

I

21

Selby Swing Bridge spans the tidal River Ouse.

t seems incredible - to be able to disconnect a section of double track main line, lift it, turn it through 90º and then return it to its original position with millimetre precision; and all this within the space of minutes. It would tax the ingenuity of most modern engineers and yet this has been happening on our national rail network, day in and day out, since the 1880s.

Selby Swing Bridge, which until 1983 formed part of the East Coast main line, is an heroic and iconic marvel of Victorian engineering excellence.

Now, after 125 years of operation, it has undergone the most extensive refurbishment in its history.

Victorian wonder Constructed for the North Eastern Railway in 1889 by Nelson and Co of York and the Cleveland Bridge Company, Selby Swing Bridge was a marvel of its day. It has five spans, with Span 1 being at the south end. Four of the spans are conventional, but the 40-metre long Span 4 can be rotated through 90° to lie parallel with the northern bank of the River Ouse.

Mounted on a massive bearing and turntable at the river’s edge, its weight is taken by 24 conical cast steel rollers running in an 8.8-metre diameter cast-steel race. The swing span is of an asymmetrical ‘hogback’ plate girder construction.

Its shorter landward section is loaded with 93 Dura 190x133mm ad_v1.qxd:Layout 1 25/06/2014

tonnes of cast iron weights to counter-balance the longer river span. The adjacent fixed Span 3 has a similar plate girder construction, but is symmetrical.

Originally, to operate the swing span, a mixture of water and glycerine (to prevent freezing) was pumped by steam engines and double-acting force pumps into two hydraulic accumulators.

Each accumulator had a 10-inch diameter plunger and a 17-foot stroke with sufficient weight to produce a pressure of 900lb per square inch. This high-pressure fluid powered two three-cylinder Armstrong hydraulic engines housed inside the control cabin directly above the swing span bearing.

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Partial modernisation came in the 1960s when electric powered hydraulic pumps replaced the Armstrong equipment, again housed within the control cabin. Hydraulic hoses fed two sevencylinder ‘Staffa’ motors mounted at bridge deck level. New control panels were installed at this time too.

Vertical shafts from the motors drive bevelled pinion gears around a circular rack fixed to the lower roller path. The operating sequence involves, firstly, the withdrawal of proving bolts by mechanical rodding. Hydraulic action is then used to pull back heavy tapered nose bolts at each end of the swing span and movable resting-blocks are also withdrawn.

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the rail engineer • October 2014

Right, new rail bearers of COR-TEN weathering steel.

A knuckle gear then raises each end of the bridge by a half inch to give clearance for the swing.

All of these operations, including the starting and stopping of the swing movement, have been manually controlled, involving some considerable operator skill.

The control panel, looking like something out of Flash Gordon, had an array of levers and lamp indicators for each individual part of the bridge operating sequence.

With no braking system provided, stopping the bridge exactly in the right place to engage the nose bolts was something of an art. Imagine the clang from 500 tonnes of moving metal hitting the end stop if there was an error of judgement!

Change of plan

Below, installation of Pandrol Vipa resilient rail fixings.

Things were set to change during 2013, when a refurbishment scheme costing £4 million was to have taken place, but then the Hatfield colliery slip happened. With the Doncaster - Goole route closed to all traffic, trains to and from Hull were diverted via Selby. It was, however, a blessing in disguise for the Selby Swing Bridge scheme, as Network Rail scheme project manager Darryl White explained.

“The original plan would have involved a six week blockade during the summer of 2013, during which we intended to reconstruct Span 1 of the bridge and strengthen Spans 2 to 5. We were also to replace the waybeams on Spans1, 2 and 5 and install steel rail bearers and Pandrol Vipa resilient rail fixings on Spans 3 and 4. In addition we would have grit blasted and repainted the entire bridge.”

With up to 130 trains a day now using the bridge a rethink was clearly required. “It is to Network Rail’s great credit that the extra time that became available was used to such good effect,” continued Darryl. “What was a £4 million refurbishment scheme became a £14 million project that has not only allowed us to raise the speed and weight restrictions on the bridge, but also to ensure that no further major maintenance will be required for decades.”

Darryl’s amended remit now included the reconstruction of Spans 1, 2 and 5 and the strengthening of Spans 3 and 4. In addition, all of the timber waybeams were to be dispensed

with in favour of steel rail bearers and the Vipa rail fixing system. On Span 3 this would also require the replacement of three cross girders which carry the rail bearers.

Significantly, the entire hydraulic system and its controls were also to be replaced. The time window for the scheme was, however, to remain the same as before at just six weeks. Multi-discipline main contractor Kier Group was appointed, having responsibility for all aspects of the project including the signalling and track works.

Timesaving The short timescale also involved a rethink on the methods to be used in repainting the bridge structure. Grit blasting would have required the use of a full EnviroWrap system and it also carried the high risk of grit and paint debris contaminating the bridge operating mechanism.

The solution has been to use an innovative system produced by Canadian company Termarust Technologies.

Rather than using grit, a water jet-wash operating at a pressure of 8000 PSI and a temperature of 90°C is used to remove the old paintwork. The paint debris takes the form of flakes which can be collected in a Terram membrane, allowing uncontaminated water to pass through.

“There are substantial health benefits to utilising this system,” Darryl expained. “Lead in the paint isn’t atomised, therefore the painting sub contractor does not require full air tight suit, face fit mask and breathing apparatus, or blood testing. This means that the operatives can be utilised more frequently, as there is no exposure to lead.”

Normal weather protection is sufficient for the process, rather than a complete environmental cocoon. The new coating applied to the bridge involved a wet-on-wet procedure with no curing time between applications, which again saved time. Whereas grit blasting and conventional painting would have taken six weeks the Termarust process took just two. In fact, this was crucial to the success of the entire project in its limited time window.

the rail engineer • October 2014

Blockade Preparatory work began as long ago as October 2013, but the main works commenced at 23:00 on Saturday 26 July. The bridge was then to remain closed to rail traffic until 05:25 on Saturday 8 September. Rather an exact and tight timescale, but such is the nature of modern rail engineering projects.

To facilitate access from dry land, Span 4 was swung to lie parallel with the riverbank throughout the blockade period. This necessitated work sites to be set up both north and south of the bridge. As part of the strengthening works, the swing span required jacking at both ends in order to lie exactly as it does when in its closed position - even this massive structure can flex a little under its own weight!

The riverbank is too soft to carry such a loading, so the preparatory works involved piling 24-metres down to the sandstone bedrock in order to support the lifting jacks. This in itself created a complication, because the exact location of under-bridge ducting wasn’t known.

Fortunately, of the three ducts one was empty, allowing underground mapping specialists Infotec Consulting to use their ‘PipeTrack’ gyrobased technology to produce a route and depth survey, accurate to within 5mm.

During the blockade, Selby station, immediately south of the bridge, was transformed into a terminus station. This

Temporary bufferstops and platform access bridge.

involved the installation of buffer stops and alterations to the signalling equipment. A temporary footbridge to facilitate disabled access was also constructed. On the north side of the river, the Potters Group rail freight depot has daily traffic, so here too a buffer stop was required. For freight trains to access the terminal it was necessary to employ top and tail working, using only the Up line from Gilberdyke Junction.

The preparatory works also included the strengthening of Span 3 to allow scaffolding to be under-slung from it. Because the river has a very strong tidal current there was perceived to be a risk of flotsam striking the scaffolding at high water. Protective booms were therefore

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deployed on both sides of the span. Once the scaffolding was in place, the cross girders could be assessed for deterioration and conditionled repairs. This was accomplished by visual inspection and ultrasonic testing.

In the event, only 10-15% of the cross girders required strengthening. With many crevices inaccessible for painting, the Termarust surface treatment in this area included the use of an oilbased penetrant to provide protection against corrosion.

During the first week of the blockade, Spans 1 and 2 were lifted out using a 500 tonne crane.

On the north bank of the river, Span 5 was similarly lifted using a 150 tonne crane. Cracking WATCH A BRIDGE INSTALLATION WATCH youtube.com/vpgroundforce A BRIDGE INSTALLATION youtube.com/vpgroundforce

24

the rail engineer • October 2014

and other defects within the brick piers were repaired before new plated spans were installed. Ousegate, a town thoroughfare, passes beneath spans 1 and 2 with very low headroom. As a result, these spans have carried a red bridge bash rating. The opportunity has now been taken to install concrete collision protection beams. This will reduce the bridge bash rating to double amber - a significant improvement.

Right, new control gear, hydraulic pumps and header tank.

It is a great credit to all concerned that the project was completed exactly to plan and the railway was ready for business right on cue. In fact, the blockade was given up early at 22:45 on 7 September and the first train to pass over the reopened bridge was an ECS (empty coaching stock) move at 06:44 the following morning.

The speed limit over the bridge has been raised to 25mph, this being the line speed at this location. After a four-week assessment period, weight restrictions are to be lifted and an OPPOSS Restriction, which has prevented freight trains passing each other on the bridge, will be removed.

Another benefit is the reduction in maintenance costs.

Network Rail estimates that the steel work of the strengthened Spans 3 and 4 will be maintenance free for 60 years. The new Spans 1, 2 and 5 will be good for 120 years, the hydraulics for 20 years and the paintwork for 25 years.

Far right, the reopening of Selby swing bridge.

Mechanics Kier Group has subcontracted most of the mechanical, electrical and hydraulic engineering work to AMCO. Entirely new electrical and control equipment cubicles, twin hydraulic pumps and a standby generator have been housed within the ‘hydraulic accumulator’ building adjacent to the north end of the bridge. A one-metre high mezzanine floor will protect the equipment in the event of flooding. Stainless steel hydraulic pipe work reaches the bridge via an original stone-lined culvert.

Mechanically, the operation of the bridge follows the original principle. The two Staffa hydraulic motors have been refurbished and re-installed. As before, one motor alone is sufficient to operate the bridge. The gearing itself has been well maintained over the years and required little attention, but the bridge pintle (main bearing) was found to have been moving. It has been strengthened and fixed in place. Repairs were also required to cracks found in the pintle shroud.

The positioning of the moveable span is now sensed using opto-electronics and a soft start/stop feature means that the bridge automatically glides to an exact stop - no more clangs! The bridge operator now has a touch screen monitor rather than an array of clunking levers. It’s not all armchair operation, however, as the proving of the bridge position for signalling purposes still makes use of bolts that are worked by rodding from a 2-lever ground frame within the cabin.

For the signalling releases, the existing IFS panel has been retained.

The track across the bridge has been entirely replaced using high performance rail. At each end of the swing span the rails now have chamfered ends in order to reduce the gaps. As well as reducing maintenance, this also causes less noise as trains pass over the bridge.

Benefits So much for the nuts and bolts of the onsite work but, as with any large project, detailed consultation and planning was crucial. With such a limited timescale for the blockade, site constraints and the complex technical work involved, there could be no room for error. Three years of detailed planning, coupled of course with the close cooperation and efficiency of the on-site contractors, has now come to fruition.

Interaction Darryl White is justly proud, not only of the work itself, but also of his colleagues and contractors. A local man himself, Darryl was keen from the outset to involve the town community. Organised jointly between Network Rail, Kier Group and the train operating companies, drop in events kept the public informed.

Network Rail and Kier have also liaised closely with Barlby Bridge Community Primary School, which is located close by the bridge on the north bank. They gave a presentation on the project and organised a safety poster competition in which the pupils were asked to find the most creative way of getting across site safety messages to residents and visitors in Selby. The competition was won by 8-year old Wiki Czech who had her poster displayed on the worksite hoardings in Ousgate.

As a gift to the school, Network Rail and Kier have also built an outdoor learning centre with seating, a gazebo and new fencing. “It is great to be able to give something back to the local community that will make a difference for years to come,” Darryl commented. “We were also very impressed with the standard of the entries of the poster design competition, and the winner is a bright and colourful way of helping to remind people to stay safe near to the site.”

Perhaps this interaction will inspire at least some of those young people to take up engineering as a career. They could have no better role models than Darryl and his team.

Resplendent in its new finish, Selby Swing Bridge stands as a monument to Victorian ‘can do’ mentality, now dovetailed with modern innovation and engineering excellence.

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the rail engineer • October 2014

Great Western Electrification arrival of the new High Output Plant System

COLLIN CARR

I

n March 2012, Amey was appointed by Network Rail to deliver a five year operate, maintain and deliver (OMD) contract to electrify the Great Western main line (GWML) using a new high output factory train to be provided by Network Rail (issue 110, December 2013).

This Amey contract forms part of the Great Western Route Modernisation programme to increase speed and capacity on this part of the railway network and is valued at approximately £20 million/year.

The GWML contract requires Amey to electrify from Maidenhead to Bristol Parkway, Oxford and Newbury by December 2016, then through the Severn Tunnel to Cardiff by December 2017, with a possible extension of electrification to Swansea

by May 2018.

The Network Rail team responsible for developing the GWML electrification project has been determined to use the best and most modern equipment available to get the job done. To ensure this, a specification was developed over three years, based on current best practice in Europe. Through a competitive tender process, German plant manufacturers

Windhoff were awarded the contract to design and build a suitable high output plant system (HOPS). Network Rail, Windhoff and Amey have since been involved in the final design details and commissioning of HOPS.

Purpose-built factory train The £35million HOPS consists of 23 railway vehicles. It is a factory train, built in stages

by Windhoff and transported to this country over the last twelve months. In July, the final 13 vehicles reached the Rail Innovation & Development Centre at High Marnham for testing and commissioning.

The logistics associated with these arrivals have been significant. The Multi-Purpose Vehicles (MPVs) arrived by rail through the Channel Tunnel at Dollands Moor before being forwarded to High Marnham whereas the KFA

wagons, which are refurbished Network Rail flatbed wagons used for carrying steel piles etc., came in by sea to Immingham and thence by road to High Marnham. With up to thirteen vehicles on site at any one time, the testing and commissioning facility has been operating at full capacity.

Whilst this influx of plant and equipment has been underway, Neil Johnson, Amey’s project director, has been responsible for recruiting, training and developing more than 150 staff for the project.

Expanding OLE expertise Under the contract, Amey is required to ensure that there are enough skilled people to provide two train teams capable of covering six night shifts per week and associated maintenance and logistics operations. However, Amey is also charged with helping to develop an Overhead Line Electrification (OLE) skilled workforce for the future in the West Country. For Network Rail, this is a very important aspect of the contract.

the rail engineer • October 2014

27

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For many recruits, their training has included visits to Windhoff’s works in Rheine, Germany, and to the nearby testing site at Bad Bentheim, for training and familiarisation. More comprehensive training, testing and commissioning has taken place at High Marnham. This extensive and varied development has given the team the opportunity to understand how the train works and to become competent in its operation and maintenance.

Training and testing activities for this stage are designed to take trainees with general OLE installation experience, develop their plant operating skills and provide detailed knowledge and understanding of the nuances of the new Series 1 OLE range.

HOPS Consists Justin Davey, Amey’s principal project manager, explained that to accommodate the different stages of construction required to install an OLE system, HOPS has been designed as three distinct consists. Each is designed to address the particular construction requirements associated with the main elements of OLE. The first consist is designed for foundation construction and includes: »» A piling sub-consist (1A) of five vehicles, designed to drive a minimum of 16,000 steel

tube piles of varying depth and between 610mm to 762mm diameter; »» A concrete foundation sub-consist (1B) of five vehicles, required to construct approximately 2,000 foundations each one metre square by four metres deep.

The second consist is designed for the installation of the OLE structures and includes: »» A structures sub-consist (2A) of three vehicles, designed to install the main steelwork for 15,000 OLE structures;

PHOTO: CHRIS CHEESMAN

Consist 2B running auxilary wire at High Marnham.

28

the rail engineer • October 2014 PHOTO: ANDREW STEWART

Consist 2A arrives at the HOOB.

»» A small parts steelwork (SPS) and wiring sub-consist (2B) of five vehicles for installing SPS, including the unique Furrer + Frey single insulator cantilevers (SIC), the auto transformer feeder wire and the earth wire, and three further vehicles for installing contact and catenary wires.

The third consist (3) is designed for final works and for complex layouts, and includes two vehicles with wiring capability and platform.

The three-vehicle structures consist (2A) has now entered service on the GWML. At High Marnham, the 2A team erected, took down and re-erected (for additional practice), 54 OLE structures of varying sizes on the test construction site. These included 350mm x 350mm and 300mm x 500mm masts, twintrack cantilever booms, larger portal booms, and 14 baseplates and anchor struts in both compression and tension arrangements.

Innovative ground release shackle The Amey team on consist 2A has introduced a unique method for erecting masts using a ground-release shackle.

Alternative methods are to use a manipulator mounted to the crane, or to use conventional slings, which would then require operatives in a MEWP working alongside the mast to release the slings after installation.

In contrast, Amey’s innovative approach uses a shackle that can be released quickly, simply and safely by the operative pulling a release line from a position on the ground. This allows fine control in the placement of the mast, negates the requirement for an access platform, reduces the overall risks associated with the activity, and allows for an operating cycle time that is compatible with the high output concept.

The operating methodology has been successfully demonstrated to the Office of Rail Regulation (ORR) and to Network Rail and is now in use on the project.

Adjacent line open Each consist is designed to transit at a speed of 60mph on open lines. Within a possession, consists may travel at up to 20mph. In working mode, within a possession, HOPS modules are restricted to a maximum speed of 3mph.

A key element of the HOPS specification was that operations would be enabled with the adjacent line open (ALO). This requirement has been tested and, following a rigorous hazard log process and series of stage gates, ALO operation has been approved. Initial trials were undertaken on 1A and subsequently on 2A. Piling and steelwork erection operations have now been authorised under ALO conditions without the requirement for a speed restriction on the adjacent line.

This is a significant achievement for the project, allowing train operations to continue at up to 125mph on the adjacent line whilst construction activities are underway. It’s good news for the project, for Network Rail, and for

train operators.

Trials are now continuing in the Swindon area for the concrete foundations consist (1B).

Work is underway with the manufacturer and project team to optimise the concrete batching process and to modify the excavation and spoil-handling vehicles to permit efficient and safe operation under ALO conditions.

High Output Operating Base The HOPS train will operate from the High Output Operations Base (HOOB), a £7 million facility recently constructed by Amey and located in the transfer sidings to the east of Swindon station. Maintenance and logistics

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the rail engineer • October 2014

teams have been recruited and trained to manage and operate the base full time. In addition, a 140,000 sq ft distribution centre has been acquired and developed nearby, designed to house six weeks’ worth of OLE materials and components required for the project.

After several months of production shifts with the piling train, the materials and logistics teams have now become well-practised in delivering the daily turnaround of reloading, shunting and preparing HOPS for production shifts. The maintenance team has also been making good use of the new facilities, having recently completed the first major annual maintenance on consist 1A.

So far, the design of the HOOB has proved to be successful and it is functioning effectively.

However, the true test of the facility and team will come when all 23 vehicles are in service and need to be prepared and serviced for production shifts, six days a week.

Everything ready By mid-October, all the HOPS consists will be based at the HOOB. To ensure efficient delivery of the construction programme, the daily process of preparing each working consist of HOPS must be a finely tuned logistics operation. Each vehicle will need to be unloaded, refuelled, maintained and restocked

with materials, in the correct construction sequence, for the next shift.

Justin explained that, whilst the focus over the past few months has been the commissioning and final preparation of HOPS, everyone is acutely aware that the success of the project will depend heavily on the effective functioning of the planning, logistics, and design teams, and the materials supply chain.

To deliver ‘high output’ electrification, every aspect of the programme needs to operate according to high output principles.

The team has been using lean methodologies to maximise what can be achieved in the working time available. This has involved examining and gathering data about all aspects of the operation. Improving and standardising set-up and handback activities has enabled the team to increase the productive time on site, while optimising the construction cycle has ensured the team gets more out of the time available. Ongoing data gathering has allowed these improvements to be quantified and tracked.

Further initiatives are underway to continuously improve the information available before the shift starts, to ensure that the supply of materials is optimised through the life of the project, and that the maintenance of HOPS and its associated equipment is always sound and efficient. So far, everything suggests that the team are totally focussed on ensuring that this will happen.

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the rail engineer • October 2014

Manchester ROC.

DAVID BICKELL

National Operating Strategy Unveiled

W

hen Network Rail took over the national rail infrastructure in 2002, it inherited roughly 800 operational signal boxes deploying a wide range of technologies including lever frames, ‘entrance-exit’ (NX) panels and VDU workstations, built over a long period of railway history. The Stockport lever frames mentioned later in this article were opened in the 1880s!

With the age and reliability of the equipment causing concern, and Network Rail coming under increasing pressure from The Office of Rail Regulation (ORR) to reduce both operating costs and delay minutes, and to find yet more paths for an increasingly congested network, the National Operating Strategy (NOS) was devised. This sets out to improve capacity and performance standards, while at the same time cutting the day-to-day cost of running the railway.

Twelve ROCs Cornerstone of the project is the consolidation of train control to 12 Rail Operating Centres (ROCs) nationally. These will be the existing signalling control centres at Cardiff, Derby, Didcot, Edinburgh, Glasgow and Gillingham and new ones at Basingstoke, Romford, Manchester, Rugby, Three Bridges and York.

Network Rail recently opened the new ROC at Manchester. The Rail Engineer went along to hear Andrew Simmons, Network Rail’s technical director for the National Operating Strategy, explain the developments taking place.

Jonathan Harris, London North West (LNW) route output integration engineer, was also present and described the way in which the route is implementing the NOS. The first new workstation in this ROC, commissioned in July, controls the remodelled and resignalled line between Huyton and Roby on the original Liverpool & Manchester Railway.

This is a phase of the capacity improvement programme on the Chat Moss route to reinstate four running lines between Broad Green and Huyton Junction. Signallers use Siemens Controlguide Westcad MCR workstations to interface with Siemens Westlock interlockings.

Automatic route setting (ARS) has not been provided at this stage, although the system is capable of interfacing with it when signaller workload would benefit from its provision.

Adjacent to the signaller’s workstation is the technician’s Westcad monitoring workstation, enabling the signaller to engage quickly with the technician in the event of any unexpected technical issue. A framework contract is in place with Siemens Rail Automation to provide further workstations and interlockings as the ROC progressively takes over more routes.

Over the next 20 years, all of the railway in the north-west of England will be controlled from the ROC, bordered by Crewe to the south, Todmorden in the east, Carlisle in the north and the Welsh border to the west.

An off-line signalling workstation simulator is provided in a separate room for signallers to gain familiarisation of track layouts that they will operate in the ROC. The simulation software is TREsim for Westcad, developed by TRE in conjunction with Siemens Automation to provide support for training and assessment of signallers working at a Westcad workstation.

The timetable simulation includes the capability to set up incident scenarios.

Train and electrical too In December this year, Network Rail, TransPennine Express and Northern train controllers will relocate into the ROC and work together in the same large open-plan office as the signallers. Traction electrical control is due to be included in 2016. When fully operational, up to 400 staff will work in the centre.

Jonathan Harris was keen to stress that the wellbeing of staff is paramount. A lot of work has gone into making it a pleasant place to work with the best possible facilities including break-out spaces and a gymnasium. Old photographs of heritage railway infrastructure add a link with past railway operations in the Manchester area. The safety-critical nature of operations within ROCs is always a key consideration with all facilities provided throughout the building.

Morgan Sindall constructed the three-storey steel-framed building built at Ashburys on a brownfield site hitherto used for various industrial activities. A variety of specialist design and construction methods were used including laminated, strengthened glass panels and curtain-wall cladding.

The building is highly insulated, with a ‘green roof’ planted with sedum vegetation to absorb rainwater. Although it has been designed for resilience with blast-proofing, multiple power supplies and 24-hour security, consideration is being given to hand-over for continuity in the event of a high-impact event. It is not technically difficult, given IP-based links, to hook up controls to another building. However, one of the more difficult issues is ensuring suitably qualified staff are available to take over at an alternative location.

the rail engineer • October 2014

33

Gillingham signalling centre.

West midlands recontrol LNW has a second ROC at Rugby which is currently under construction.

Resignalling and recontrol in the West Midlands is gathering pace - the Walsall PSB (power signal box) closed last year whilst Wolverhampton goes later this year. Birmingham New Street and Saltley PSBs are scheduled for closure within the next three years.

As an interim measure, control is being transferred to the West Midlands Signalling Control Centre at Saltley. Built as a Network Management Centre for Railtrack’s ill-fated West Coast ‘Passenger Upgrade 2’ (PUG2) programme of 140mph running with cab signalling, the robust bomb-proof building is not re-configurable to suit the staffing requirements of a ROC. Once the whole of the West Midlands hub has been fully recontrolled to Saltley, a business case will be prepared on the basis of the benefits that the ROC and Traffic Management will bring, at which time control will be transferred to Rugby with the Saltley building remaining to house the interlockings.

Physically moving the hardware of existing SSIs (solid state interlockings) from old control centres into a new ROCs incurs significant installation, test and commissioning costs. An alternative solution is the remote interface (RIF) to be installed alongside the SSIs at the old signalling centre, which then communicates with the ROC using a modern protocol that is fully compliant with the CENELEC standards for safety related communications.

However, maintaining old buildings to house this equipment also incurs costs and a balance has to be struck.

Signal box to ROC With nearly 500 signal boxes still left in service today, the migration to ROCs is determined by several factors upon which a business case is made on a route-by-route basis including:

»» Remaining life of the signalling asset such as interlocking/panel/comms/ power supplies/cabling/signals/points/level crossings; »» Maintenance costs of keeping old signal boxes in service; »» Head count reduction; »» Benefits of introducing traffic management (TM); »» Programme to fit European Train Control System (ETCS); »» Introduction of Automatic Train Operation (ATO); »» Advantages of extending a larger area to get bigger performance benefits.

A key benefit of the ROC programme will be the introduction of a traffic management system. For example, with the creation of the Ordsall chord line enabling trains to run direct between Manchester Piccadilly and Victoria, it makes sense for this complex area to be controlled by one centre with the benefits of TM to regulate what is already a challenge for signallers today, even though not all the signalling infrastructure is life expired. Thus the transfer of control from Manchester Piccadilly and Manchester North Signalling Centres to the ROC will result in significant efficiency gains and is planned for the next five years.

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34

the rail engineer • October 2014

Manchester ROC.

In contrast, the five lever-frames at Stockport and the Manchester South Signalling Centre have many years life left. The regulation of traffic in the Stockport area is unlikely to significantly improve with TM from that which is achievable today. Accordingly these boxes are scheduled for transfer to the ROC with full resignalling to a TM system in the late 2020s.

Another example is Merseyrail where the Sandhills IECC (integrated electronic control centre) and associated SSIs are not life expired and, as it is largely a self-contained suburban railway with limited benefit from TM regulation, the migration is expected to occur in the 2030s.

The locations and number of the ROCs were chosen by taking into account the best fit for efficient management of defined geographical areas of the network, availability of railway owned land, integration of Network Rail route controls with those of the train operators, proximity with the operational railway to facilitate running of cable routes, comms and data links, and places with good public transport and road access for staff.

That is about to change significantly.

The functionality of the new TM systems will introduce an unprecedented degree of integration between railway departments.

A simple example will illustrate this. In GNER days, York was noted for trains standing at signals outside the station whilst the booked platform was occupied, despite the fact that other suitable platforms were available, thereby incurring unnecessary delay with repercussions of late running and reactionary delays.

GNER stated that it was not policy to make platform alterations as this inconvenienced the passenger, particularly those with heavy luggage. This argument doesn’t really stack up given that the signaller can anticipate such a situation some 20-30 minutes before arrival of a train and arrange for the platform alterations to be displayed in good time.

However, GNER did have a point. Neither Automatic Route Setting nor the signaller are empowered to unilaterally make platform

Traffic management (TM) Centralising control is nothing new. NX panels controlling large areas were built in the 1960s-80s and were staffed with signallers and ‘area controllers’ sitting at the back whose role was to oversee traffic movement and make strategic regulating decisions. Unfortunately, the full benefit of centralised control was never fully realised as, in the pre-digital age, the various departments involved in running the railway functioned in separate offices with limited interdepartmental communication.

Thales TM train graph.

alterations. Such a request has to be put to the Network Rail controller, then the train company controller, then the station dispatch team, and the response fed back the same way to the signaller by which time the train has probably already come to a stand outside!

Decision-making such as this requires data from a variety of sources: will the train fit the alternative platform? does the driver know the road? are the dispatch team resources flexible enough to cope? is disabled assistance needed? is there a catering trolley involved? will this platform be needed for another train which might be then be delayed? and so on.

This is where TM comes in. TM links together a wide range of data associated with managing the timetable, train dispatch, issue of movement authorities, network availability, incidents & delays and service information. It continuously monitors the running of the railway, highlighting the effects of timetable perturbation, and provides options to help minimise delays.

the rail engineer • October 2014

Managing incidents and delays Whilst a lot of work goes on behind the scenes to ensure that infrastructure and trains are made ever more reliable, and the extent of delays from external causes such as fatalities and the weather is minimised, such primary delays cannot be totally eradicated. In response to these events, the TM system will enable the running of the railway to move away from a ‘reactionary’ or even a ‘non reactionary’ mode to fully proactive decision making. When an unplanned event occurs, TM allows planners to use a series of tools to choose the optimal solution to reduce reactionary delay minutes.

As signallers, technicians, train controllers are all in the same room, easy communication, bearing in mind relevant safety critical communications procedures, means the immediate decisions to re-route a train will be supported by all the relevant stakeholders. Even those not in the room, such as station dispatchers, will have access to the process via tablets/ smartphones. Once the planner has selected the most suitable option the TM will do the rest and instruct the interlocking to set routes according to the revised timetable plan.

When TM is introduced, the signaller’s workstation will become part of the TM pod, replacing the traditional ‘entrance-exit’ route setting interface. TM gives a 20 minute window for the signaller to make assessments before a revised plan kicks in as selected by the planner.

While TM can make immediate judgements to work around issues, it primarily takes a step back into timetable planning and allows the plan to be changed on the basis of a variety of data such as platform occupancy, trainset diagrams, when diesel trains need to be re-fuelled, crew rosters, drivers route knowledge and routes out of service. Algorithms will be developed and refined over time.

The business case and focus for TM is based on reducing reactionary delays by 20%. Additionally TM will help optimise network capacity and improve the accuracy of passenger information.

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35

East Midlands Control Centre, Derby.

Wider benefits Key to achieving the TM business case is its conflict identification and resolution capability. As more ROCs are fitted with TM and linked together, so the benefits spread. For example, the right decision on whether to give priority to an on-time local stopping train and further delay a late-running Penzance-bound cross-country train at York may be taken after viewing the predicted outcomes on the rest of the network. At present, there is a tendency to give priority to trains running on time at the expense of those ‘out of path’ to minimise the visible Schedule 8 penalties.

Network Rail has selected the Thales ARAMIS (Advanced Railway Automation Management and Information System) TM system for installation at the Romford and Cardiff ROCs. Contracts for the national rollout of TM will be subject to future competitions and will involve all traffic management framework holders.

ARAMIS is already in service in other countries including Germany, Austria and Portugal. The system has been evaluated by a team of representatives from Network Rail and the train companies using the London-based Model Office with significant input from other industry stakeholders.

36

the rail engineer • October 2014

ERTMS display in the test train.

The tools that TM presents to the planner can best be illustrated by some of the key screens used by the ARAMIS system. The Line Graph displays the track layout indicating train position, timetable deviation, set routes and planned route while the Train Graph is a real-time graphic function that shows planned, actual and predicted train paths and highlights future conflicts between trains, and between trains and possessions and other critical resources such as train crew.

Returning to earlier comments about platform allocation, the Platform Docker informs the user about actual and predicted arrival and departure times of all trains at a station as well as track usage, interconnection dependencies and conflicts.

The Connection Graph shows the actual arrival and departure time of all trains at a platform and the relationship between trains such as between a terminating train and its next duty.

There is also an Incident Management Tool which allows a live view of the status of an incident to be viewed and updated, by those involved in managing the incident.

On-train systems As well as controlling conventional signals, the ROCs will also interface with the latest and future on-board systems in the driver’s cab. The European Train Control System (ETCS) is one such system which is already being implemented.

The cab display shows movement authorities generated by the TM system via the safety interlocking. Network Rail has successfully simulated Level 3 (moving block) at the ENIF (ETCS National Integration Facility) test site.

Capacity is a weakness of main line multipleaspect signalling.

For example, when faced with yellow aspects, drivers brake the train in anticipation of a red light ahead. However the red may be due to a train ahead doing a station stop. Having made the stop, this train is now accelerating away. Even so, the following train will continue to slow down until the first train clears a signal overlap some distance ahead. Consequently, the gap between the trains has widened considerably.

With ETCS, each train knows exactly where it is and provides this information back to the control centre continuously. Hence ETCS Level 3 will permit trains to close up in a safe manner since there is no longer the constraint imposed by a fixed block system. The technically challenging issues are train integrity and ‘end of train’ position.

This topic is currently the subject of research to develop a safe system. The initial East Coast ETCS fitment plan includes an option to fit Level 3 between Drayton Park and Moorgate.

Another train-borne system, Automatic Train Operation (ATO), receives movement authorities from TM via the ETCS system and calculates the optimum speed profile of the train. Already in use on several London Underground lines and the DLR, Network Rail’s first application will be on the Thameslink route by 2018. Siemens Class 700

trains will be fitted with ATO which is ideal for high capacity railways.

To help the driver keep to time, a driver advisory system (DAS) is fed with the working timetable for the train. It then calculates the optimum speed that will ensure the point-to-point timings of the timetable are matched by the performance of the train in a fuel efficient way. However, when connected via the TM system, the speed profile can be adjusted to take account of conditions ahead - availability of a path at a junction, or the platform at the terminus.

The system can also tell the driver when the train needs to reach a junction or station at the right time without having to stop and restart at a red signal, thereby clearing the junction more quickly and also saving fuel. It’s a double win.

Connected DAS, which does not require ETCS, is being trialled at Airport Junction this year and will be rolled out to Thameslink and South West trains.

All the exciting technological developments described above have tremendous potential to improve the efficiency of the railway and reduce delays in the years to come. Many traditional roles such as signaller and timetable planner may well evolve as the programme develops.

Naturally, Network Rail sees staff and stakeholder engagement as vital for the success of the project but there is a great enthusiasm to get on with the programme and realise the benefits.

Thanks go to Network Rail’s Selina Clarke and Jim Lynch, NOS communications managers; Andrew Simmons, technical director for NOS; Jonathan Harris, LNW route output integration engineer; and Alex Tapsell, operations and interface manager.

Mark Smalley, sales manager with Thales, and the evaluation team who demonstrated the Thales TM Model Office, were also invaluable for their help in preparing this article.

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38

the rail engineer • October 2014

Hitachi’s new railway

T

he Darlington to Shildon line running through Heighington has a special place in railway history because it was here in 1825 that George Stephenson’s Locomotion No.1 began the world’s first passenger service using steam locomotives.

Heighington signal box dates back to 1872 and is one of the earliest surviving signal boxes in the country - only four are thought to pre-date it. It is a well preserved listed structure and retains an increasingly rare pre-First World War lever frame.

As a notable site in the early development of passenger trains, it is perhaps entirely appropriate that Heighington should feature at a key stage in their latest evolution and in years ahead this location will surely come to enjoy renewed fame as it is the chosen location of Hitachi Rail Europe’s new Rail Vehicle Manufacturing Facility.

Nearly 900 carriages will be made in the new factory that is part of a major development being undertaken by Merchant Place Developments at Merchant Park, Newton Aycliffe in County Durham. The facility’s production capability will include high-speed trains, commuter trains and metro trains, and will be home to an on-site research & development facility and test track. Representing an £82 million investment, it will be operational from 2015, creating 730 jobs along with a further 200 jobs during construction.

Reception sidings leading into the new rail vehicle manufacturing facility.

New factory - new track Story Contracting is working with Network Rail to deliver the site’s new rail infrastructure. This multi-disciplinary design and build scheme includes the construction of 7,000 metres of new sidings and a new 1km long overhead electrified test track, along with reconfiguration of the existing branch line at its connection to the site. Story is also completing the extensive civils and earthworks that are needed to accommodate the new track layout, as well as providing the wide range of structures that will support the new overhead line and signalling infrastructure.

Story Contracting appointed Hyder Consulting to carry out the design of the track, civils and OLE during the development phase, well before works began on site. This was fully co-ordinated with the signalling design delivered by Network Rail’s Signalling Design Group. The design phase was managed collaboratively, with Network Rail providing the scheme designated project engineer and Story providing the contractor’s engineering manager.

A key design consideration was future proofing the installation to ensure that it would fulfill all of Hitachi’s potential, but currently unknown, production needs within its new facility. This included ensuring that gauge clearances and electrification provisions were compatible with all potential European markets, including light rail systems.

Story Contracting maximised opportunities to re-use arising materials on site. This was achieved by working with the local Network Rail maintainer to identify rails and sleepers that could be re-used either in the reconfigured branch line, or within the new test track. Redundant switches and crossings components were also identified as being serviceable and a recovery methodology was developed so that they could be dismantled and removed for re-use elsewhere on the rail network.

Assembling new S&C.

Newts galore Early ecological studies revealed that the site was positively teeming with fauna, including the presence of a designated newt kingdom along much of the footprint of the new embankment works. Story worked with Natural England to implement a comprehensive segregation and trapping programme to ensure that the relocation of several species of newts, amphibians and even glow-worms was carefully finished before any construction works began.

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40

the rail engineer • October 2014

One of the first tasks completed on site was the removal of a redundant accommodation overbridge. This had been built to span the existing single line and therefore wasn’t wide enough to cross the new twin track railway that would be created by the addition of the new test track. Story Contracting’s project manager, Simon Turner, said: “The DAE1/12 overbridge created a bottleneck on the site and its removal was essential to enable the scheme to progress.

We dismantled the structure during Rules of the Route possessions to avoid any disruption to the railway.”

The sidings are being built next to the new factory within the development site and also connect onto the slab-mounted rails that are Widening the embankment for the test track.

laid within the building itself. Construction of the sidings requires careful co-ordination with Shepherd Construction, which is building Hitachi’s new facility and is also providing the water test plant and other test infrastructure.

The sidings are connected to the branch line through a new reception siding and a ladder of twelve AV7 turnouts. The reception siding also provides the connection route from the site onto the new test track. To create a controlled environment for putting new trains through their paces, the test track needs to be straight and level and, as it is 1km long, the only place that it will fit is along the existing rail corridor immediately adjacent to the existing branch line.

Slewing the railway Simon Turner noted: “Fortunately, the branch line at this location is a single, bi-directional route that has been laid on an embankment that once carried a twin-track layout. While this provides much of the additional space needed for the construction of the test track, the difficulty we overcame is that the branch line is built on the west side of the embankment, and this is the same side as the assembly facility. We can’t cross trains over the branch line to get them onto the test track so this means our solution is to create the space we need by uplifting the branch line and moving it across as part of the overall track reconfiguration.”

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42

the rail engineer • October 2014

To ensure separation between the railway and the test track, the embankment has to be widened by around four metres.

Reception sidings under construction.

Even with the branch line moved towards the east there still isn’t quite enough space to fit the test track. Unlike a standard twin-track railway, the separation between the two tracks needs to be wider than for a typical six foot. This is to create a suitable separation between the operational railway and the test track so that it can effectively become a part of the overall Hitachi site.

To achieve this, Story is widening the existing embankment along much of the length of the test track route. The extent of the widening varies but is typically around four metres. This is achieved through a slope regrade tied into the existing embankment and widened at the base onto newly purchased land. Several culverts along the length of the embankment were extended to suit the new profile and considered deployment of gabion basket retaining walls overcame topographical features that prevented use of the widened base detail.

Once the earthworks are complete the test track construction will progress with the track materials brought in by rail during Rules of the Route possessions and offloaded directly into position. Through careful planning of the construction sequence the entire installation of the test track will be carried out without causing any disruption to the adjacent railway.

Three-way collaboration The works are being carried out in coordination with VolkerRail, which is providing OLE and signalling installations, and DeltaRail, contracted to commission the signalling at Tyneside IECC and Heighington signal box.

To deliver this complex scheme effectively, an integrated management team was established with Network Rail providing co-ordination and client interface, and Story and VolkerRail project managers providing all delivery planning. This is brought together through a series of weekly construction meetings and monthly programme reviews.

Simon Turner noted: “This level of coordination is essential for the success of the project. The signalling alterations require new location cabinets installed by VolkerRail on bases built by Story, then all of VolkerRail’s wiring is installed into containment routes that are buried

by Story. Achieving all of this in the middle of a major civils and track scheme alongside a live railway demands huge levels of coordination between everybody on site.”

The major elements of the branch line reconfiguration, including the installation of a CVs 13 crossover and EVs 21 turnout along with the signalling changeovers, are planned for three consecutive 54-hour weekend possessions in November 2014. All of the other works on the site are being carried out either using standard Rules of the Route possessions or under line blockages to safeguard all staff from railway operations while working during the day. This ensures that the works are able to progress continually without disruption to normal railway operations.

Simon Turner concluded: “The works are planned for completion in March 2015, well ahead of the Rail Vehicle Manufacturing Facility’s opening date. This is a major project that demands a fully integrated solution to ensure that the structures, earthworks and track installations are able to be delivered seamlessly and without disruption either to the operational railway or the construction of the new factory.

Once complete this will be a fantastic facility, whose legacy will benefit passengers across the nation for many years to come.”

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the rail engineer • October 2014

Drainage SHALL

D

go to the ball

rains. Despite being essential, they are all too often neglected. The whole subject is the butt of jokes and raised eyebrows question whether a ‘drainage engineer’ is actually an engineer at all.

Drains really are the ‘Cinderella’ of rail infrastructure. Unseen and unloved, drains may operate effectively for decades without any maintenance, until the gradual build-up of silt creates a blockage, or until some other intervention, for example ballast cleaning or cable installation, causes a drain to collapse.

And when the rains come, and the floods, drainage engineers are suddenly in demand and there’s not enough equipment to go around. Anyone who has walked through a tunnel in water up to their knees, or has looked along a formation wondering where the track went and where this canal has come from, knows just how important drains really are.

Effective drainage Good maintenance practice is essential as well. Trackbed drains fill up with ballast, leaves, silt, rubbish that has blown off station platforms and all types of crud (that’s a technical term).

The Railway Drainage Systems Manual (yes - there really is one!) states: “The effective control of water is essential to the safe and economic management of railway infrastructure.

“Many of the problems which arise in the track bed occur where track drainage is not operating effectively. Water trapped below the ballast saturates and reduces the stiffness of the track bed (which can result in top and line faults that affect ride quality), and early deterioration of ballast (characterised by the formation of wet beds and broken rails).

“Poor drainage can disrupt signalling - track circuits can fail if the formation is too wet.

“Railway Drainage Systems collect water from the track and adjacent catchments and discharge it to outfalls. To be effective, railway drainage systems have to be designed and built to appropriate standards, maintained regularly and, when required, improved.”

So there it is in a nutshell.

Network Rail, as the infrastructure owner, is responsible for most of the nation’s track drainage, all under the beady eye of the Office for Rail Regulation (ORR).

“Effective maintenance and renewal of drainage assets must also be a key feature of Network Rail’s forthcoming delivery plan for CP5 … ORR is pressing Network Rail to deliver these improvements as soon as possible.”

Bringing technology to the party So that’s where specialist contractors such as Complete Drain Clearance come in. A division of Complete Environmental Service Ltd, this company has sixteen years’ experience of working exclusively on the rail infrastructure.

Due to its very nature, nearly all of the work is done within possessions. It is therefore important to get maximum benefit from the possession time, whether that may be a weekend night or a mid-week shift.

Complete Drain Clearance (CDC) runs a fleet of four-wheel-drive vehicles which have been purpose built by its own staff to clear ducting, catchpits and wet beds in the most efficient and effective way. They can access the track in minutes and an accompanying road/rail water bowser means that no time is lost collecting water.

Two technologies are combined in each machine. Air movers (vactors), rated at 3,500 cfm (cubic feet per minute), are capable of sucking ballast continuously, clearing catchpits in seconds.

Water pumps, which operate at 1,500psi, deliver 40 gallons of high pressure water per minute, flushing drains with great ease.

CDC’s machines are designed to simultaneously jet and vactor, offering considerable time saving benefits.

This state of the art technology is complemented by dedicated, highly trained staff, most of whom have been with the company for years and are committed to the company ethos of being the best.

Paperwork, paperwork As in any form of engineering, the job is not finished until the paperwork is complete. CDC offers an in-depth report that summarises all aspects of the project and any further work that needs to be done.

the rail engineer • October 2014

This report includes: »» A summary of completed work and any further action that is required; »» Detailed diagrams of the work site including up-to-date information about the work being done; »» Before and after photos; »» Work time sheets and reports.

Combining the best technology with the best support and the best people ensures that customers always obtain the maximum benefit from possession time, which is particularly beneficial for shorter, mid-week possessions.

Looking to the future To complement its alreadyeffective rail drain clearance operation, CDC is planning to offer an even more comprehensive service in future. This will include the repair of collapsed drains, using the latest ‘no-dig’ techniques, and culvert relining. This will be achieved using a combination of direct investment and strategic partnerships with other ‘best in class’ organisations.

This all-in-one service should be well received by the industry.

As it is, the combination of enthusiasm for the work and ground-breaking technology has earned the company much praise.

As a Network Rail project manager put it recently: “Since using your machine we have been able to maintain drains which have not been working effectively for many years.

“The ability to bring the machine along the tracks has allowed us for the first time to get powerful machinery to the remotest of railway locations.”

That’s not isolated praise.

Anthony Rowland of Network Rail was tearing his hair out at a site at Sutch Lane, Lancashire, before Complete Drain Clearance brought their big vactor to site.

“This location has been a real problem to us and we have had other drainage companies attempt to resolve the problems at this site but to no avail,” he said afterwards. “CDC staff attended the site at short notice and were able to reassure me that they

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Whilst carrying out the work I had regular updates of the progress made, also since the completion of the work the follow up information has been fantastic.”

45

So perhaps now the rail industry is starting to appreciate the importance of using the best kit and contractors to undertake essential drain maintenance. Then there won’t be so many soggy stories here in The Rail Engineer.

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46

the rail engineer • October 2014

The rugged

revolution T

Small dimensions, BIG capabilities

he railway is an aggressive environment.

Ask any group of track workers. They have waterproof clothing, safety boots, goggles and gloves, torches, sun block, dustproof masks, ear defenders. You name it, and the railway worker needs it.

So if engineers need this level of protection, what about that engineer’s electronic equipment?

Tablets, laptops and phones - they also hate dust, rain and rough treatment. Little wonder, then, that said devices sprout protective covers, rubber cases and impact-resistant shells.

The editorial tablet, as a case in point, is in an excellent housing by Peli. It is impact resistant, sealed against the ingress of dust and water, and the whole thing weighs twice as much as the bare tablet and is twice as thick.

Conventional devices struggle to operate outdoors. Or to withstand the bumps and bruises of a train cabin. And stay connected to data and applications, wherever they need to be accessed.

The answer lies in a breed of mobile technology known as ‘rugged’ computers.

The market leader in rugged computing is Panasonic. For two decades, its Toughbook range of mobile PCs has delivered unparalleled performance in the toughest of conditions.

Dedicated design

More recently, the Toughbook range has been joined by the Toughpad family of rugged tablets.

And three new additions to this line-up have particular value to anyone looking for specialist mobile technology for rail.

The first is the 7” Toughpad FZ-M1. This Windows 8.1 Pro (downgradable to Windows 7) device is compact and lightweight, but it’s also IP65-rated for water and dust resistance, features military-grade shock resistance, outdoor-readable screens and can operate in temperatures ranging from -20ºC to +60ºC. Looking beyond the fundamental issue of durability, the Toughpad FZ-M1 features integrated - rather than bolted on - serial and LAN port options, along with optional 2D barcode reader and NFC (near field communication). The breadth and depth of its connectivity means that it’s capable of performing a multitude of tasks at the point of service, with passengers, on the platform or aboard a train.

Which is why there is an increasing proliferation of ‘rugged’ laptops and tablets throughout the rail sector. Designed from scratch to beat the hazards of the railway, they herald what many see as a digital revolution. But why is their impact so significant? And where are they truly proving their value?

Take a fit-for-purpose mobile computer into many rail environments and the possible advantages are clear. Passenger service on the platform and in carriage becomes quicker, more accurate and more easily delivered. Maintenance engineers at the trackside can access and relay critical information to and from the point of work. Cumbersome paperwork is eliminated for drivers in the cabin. Ticketing is more speedy. Rail possession time reduced. The risk of regulatory penalties mitigated.

But not many laptops or tablets are capable of meeting the challenges of the rail sector.

Toughpad tablets

Following close on the heels of the FZ-M1 are two devices that are even more compact than their larger Toughpad sibling, but also more durable. These two 5” handheld tablets with voice - the Windows-equipped Toughpad FZ-E1 and Android™-powered Toughpad FZ-X1 - take ruggedness to new heights (and depths!).

A three-metre drop onto concrete won’t phase either Toughpad. Nor will up to 30 minutes under 1.5 metres of water. Battery life is good as well hot-swap design gives up to 14 hours’ continuous operation and 1,000 hours’ standby time, and a one-hour quick charge function means the speediest of pit stops.

But where the FZ-E1 and FZ-X1 really lead the way is in communications. With Dual SIM and LTE/4G technology, along with loudspeaker and noise suppressor, they’re the very first Toughpad tablets to deliver voice capability. So their potential applications in the rail sector expand beyond anything that has gone before.

The ultimate digital companion All three Toughpad devices form part of an ‘eco system’ of specialist docks and mounts that mean they can travel safely and securely alongside rail engineers.

The flexible configuration of Toughpad tablets and their high-brightness, sunlight-readable screens mean they’re the ideal trackside toolkit.

Digital technical manuals and drawings stored on the tablets allow assets to be managed on-site; and video and photographic imagery can record and share information to inform appropriate repair work. Which is where rail possession time and the risk of regulatory penalties are both reduced.

Add in the fact that they can perform outdoors, even in the rain or by a gloved hand, and you have the ultimate digital companion for rail.

Panasonic recommends Windows.

DRIVING A DIGITAL REVOLUTION IN RAIL

From trackside to driver’s cabin, paperwork is being eliminated, service is being streamlined and efficiency enhanced throughout rail operations. And playing a large part in this digital revolution are Panasonic’s rugged Toughpad tablets. Including the new 5” Toughpad FZ-E1 and FZ-X1, the first available with voice connectivity, and the pocketsized FZ-M1 with Windows 8.1 Pro and 7” outdoor display, they’re the ideal companion for mobile rail workers, whatever the environment.

FZ-M1 (featuring Intel® Core™ i5 vPro™ processor), FZ-X1 and FZ-E1

To learn more about the remarkable abilities Toughpad tablets can offer: Email panasonic.toughbook@ttmc.co.uk Call +44 (0)1273 765 114

Intel, the Intel logo, Intel Core, Intel vPro, Core Inside and vPro Inside are trademarks of Intel Corporation in the U.S. and other countries.

www.toughbook.eu

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the rail engineer • October 2014

RICHARD PARRY-JONES

Defining innovation T

here is a spectrum of innovation. At one end of that spectrum there’s micro-innovation, which you might call kaizen or continuous improvement, where everybody has little opportunities to make small improvements to the way that they work. The power of that is enormous but it’s accumulative. It needs deployment across the entire organisation as it’s more of a way of working than a ‘big light bulb’ type of idea.

And at the other end of the spectrum there are transformational interventions, such as digital communications. Usually those are technology driven, or at least technology enabled. So, for example, I would describe this as a macroinnovation, something like just-in-time delivery systems.

You may say, “Where’s the technology in a just-in-time delivery system?” But the way you implement that system relies, to a certain extent, on technology - particularly with certain supply chains.

The more obvious macro-innovations are things like electrification, new approaches to rail and switch designs and, of course, the impending signalling changes. Those are transformational macro-changes.

So how is Network Rail going to deliver changes in CP5 and beyond? I think a lot of what we have to do in CP5 is to put the foundations in place for the good things that are going to happen in CP6.

It’s absolutely about innovation, but it’s about micro-innovation as much as about macroinnovation.

At route level The headline-grabbing ideas are always macroinnovations. However, a huge amount of the improvements we’ll make are the ones that don’t attract the headlines but are more about people working on improving how they work every day.

Innovations, of course, offer plenty of

opportunities but also offer risks, and so one of the challenges with innovation is how you manage the risks. How do you manage the risk in such a way that you can spot the potential failure modes in advance of you implementing them? You have to put corrective actions to the potential failure modes and controls in place, protection controls and assurance controls, so that as you make those changes, you’re doing it in a controlled way.

It’s very much this movement into the direction of actually capturing and harnessing more of the employees brain power as well as their hand and muscle power to contribute to the business.

Many of our routes are already starting down this journey.

Phil Verster (route managing director LNE), for example, is championing this in the North East.

It’s all about getting down on the shop floor, giving people the tools and encouraging them to figure out ways of how they can improve the efficiency and the effectiveness of their business.

Sometimes they can go so far with everything that’s inside their control, but then they discover actually there are things that they rely on from other parties that are causing them not to be able to make the next available improvement.

What’s really important is that the management then steps into the space and says, “Thanks for the update, that’s great, you’ve done this and that, I can see this is a problem, I’ll take it on to help you go and fix it.” That way, you generate a huge belief that we mean this because they can

see management taking action to help them, and that’s really important.

The other thing that’s really important is that management spends time to promote good practice. Sometimes it’s easy to talk about innovation but if leaders then go off and do something else then the workers are very depressed and will quickly work out that management doesn’t mean it. But when we spend time on it, we’re telling people we think it’s important. So the leaders that are doing this work are role-modelling the importance of innovation.

I went up to Manchester recently to judge Martin Frobisher’s innovation competition day. He’d put up a few prizes and organised a big marquee.

There were individual stands with two or three people round each. I walked around them all. They each had five minutes to get their point across we timed them.

Martin (area director LNW) helped me judge and we went around all the displays and there was a fantastic fund of ideas. The best ones, in many cases, were the simplest. For example, one of them came up with a special kit containing everything to make temporary, quick fence repairs so that, when you’re out there, you’ve got all the right tools in place to get the temporary repair done - you can always do a more permanent job later. He developed it for his own use and now he’s sharing the idea.

There were other ones that were a little bit more technical but still fairly simple. One was an ultrasound sensor on two plastic poles and a lamp.

As well as having a lookout, you put these two poles up to mark the boundary between the safe and unsafe parts of a site. If anybody breaks the ultrasound beam, all hell breaks loose with lights and sirens. It’s all very cheap, all off the shelf parts,

the rail engineer • October 2014

and has no big lead time. It’s a great idea.

This just happens to be one of the more high profile examples but I think we are making huge progress on realising that the next step of this journey has to embrace this innovation across the spectrum.

The pace of change We’ve got to be very careful, though, that we don’t flip from being too slow to too fast. There are some reasons why we are very cautious, which I don’t need to explain, and I think actually that the record we’ve managed to achieve in the UK railways demonstrates that we haven’t got it all wrong by any means.

If you do the international comparisons on efficiency, on punctuality, on safety and so forth, we’re in pretty decent shape as a railway system and as an innovative operator. Therefore I’m very careful not to say that what people have been doing is all wrong - it isn’t. But I do think we can do better. While we want to accelerate the pace of innovation, we need to make sure that we complement that by putting in place the right set of controls, so that we are able to innovate faster but without increasing any level of risk that we take in terms of what the customer faces.

We can take some business risks, but we always protect the customer from the consequences of those risks. Yes, we might spend a bit of money on a project or two that doesn’t work out but, if you look at the portfolio of things we undertake, because of all the positive outcomes, we are willing to take some risks and have a few unsuccessful projects. We understand that is one of the overheads of being innovative.

But you have to put in place introduction protocols, and criteria, and good judgement on the part of the people doing that, to make sure that those risks are contained. We understand them, and we deal with them before they get deployed to the point where they impact on our customers.

Internal or external innovation I think innovation from outside is really successful where there’s partnering going on, collaboration, with somebody at the operational level.

A really good example is micro-piling. We’re working with a fantastic supplier on this. We’re working on it together, developing it together, and so there’s ownership inside the company from the team that’s using it and sponsoring it.

There’s a really good understanding of what’s needed, both from the clients’ side and from the supplier, so by the time it’s got some traction in the first applications, it’s a lot easier to absorb into and get broad deployment.

So we’re open to partnering. I think that David Higgins, in his time here, did a terrific job on putting in place the whole attitude of the way forward is collaboration. It’s not about: we know what we want, put it out for a bid, choose the cheapest supplier and off we go. That is not the modern way of working. The modern way of working is here’s a broad outline of what we want, talk to us about how you can solve our problem and tell us what price you want to offer for it.

This is really true, of course, of the major infrastructure projects because we can see huge proficiency savings if we allow the people to come in early in a project and help us co-design it. But that applies right down to microinnovation, if people collaborate then the path to implementation is a lot smoother.

I heard a tale of a bridge replacement job which a contractor was tendering for a couple of years ago. They said, “Well, we’re naturally going to put in an offer in accordance with the specification. However, we can think of an alternate way of doing it that could to save half a million pounds. But then it becomes a non-compliant bid and they just won’t accept non-compliant bids.”

Their opinion was that our mind was closed to the non-compliance, even if it saved money.

That’s the process that used to exist before the early supplier selection and then collaborative development of design specifications which we’re now following. Simon Kirby led the implementation of this in Infrastructure Projects. I’m not saying it would never happen now, because we’re a very big organisation, but I think the model that we’re pursuing today is very different.

49

One of the areas where we are doing a lot of work is in the modular construction of hardware, the transition from everything being built in-place to modular pre-fabricated solutions, the so-called ‘plug and play’. The economics have shifted very much in favour of doing that because, even if it’s more expensive than the traditional route, it’s quicker. With the problems we have getting access to the railway, these types of construction methodologies are going to be hugely attractive from a financial point of view.

So I’m very excited about that, and I think we’ve got lots of examples of where we’re using more pre-fabrications, and those really come about by working together. It only started to come in towards the end of CP4 so we are still at the beginning of that journey.

High output The other big thing is, of course, the high output machines - whether you’re talking about plain line renewal or whether you’re talking about the overhead lines that we’re going to do on the Great Western electrification. Again, these are big innovations. Some of them are not easy to implement and it’s a tough learning journey.

These machines are big investments. They are the right way forward, but you have to build into the plan sufficient time to debug, develop, fine tune, refine.

For example, in my previous life (at Ford motor company), when we started manufacturing a new model, it took us about five minutes to produce each car.

So we thought: “How are we ever going to make money producing a car every five minutes?” The answer was, we had six weeks to improve our production methods and get it from one every five minutes to one every 52 seconds.

We’re on the same journey here, it’s just over a longer timeframe. I think Steve Featherstone is doing a nice job for us on renewals on raising the productivity and the output of our machines. He has come up with lean methods and is looking at better ways of working, as well as machine reliability. He looks at all the root causes, what’s causing us lost output, planning, getting the machines on site, access for the trains, all the things that can wrong and working diligently on every aspect of it to grind out waste.

For example, and again this is all about innovation, the approach is a mixture of two strategies. One is where we can get longer possessions to get better productivity and to get better outcome, to reduce the overhead of the setup and takedown, as we did at Warrington and on Wessex. But we’ll never get enough long possessions to do all the work we need to do.

So, at the same time, the team is figuring out ways of working in parallel rather than sequentially so that we can get more pre-work done before we actually open up the site for doing the work.

Once the machine is up and running, we can make it go a bit faster but that’s not where the big opportunity is. The big opportunity is making sure that, when we get access, everything’s in place. All the materials are in place, all the people are there, all the machines are there before we start threading new rail. So we cut out five or six sequential operations and make them parallel.

50

the rail engineer • October 2014

For example, we can put in temporary devices a week in advance then, when we’re actually on site, we just throw a switch. We’ll tap into the knowledge of people who’ve been doing this for a long time, and then bring a few experts in to help them do things. That’s a good example, actually, of the combination of micro- and macro-innovation.

We’re essentially on the path of increasing mechanisation and automation, and the reason for that is not dissimilar to what’s happened in the manufacturing sectors. By applying technology to the design of machines and to the control of machines, we can get higher productivity, we can get higher output, and often we can get a better quality outcome, a more repeatable better quality outcome.

Looking after our people

Research and development

Of course, I don’t personally believe that any of this will ever replace workers. Instead, it moves workers higher up the value chain so that the machines are doing more of the basic work, and the workers are doing what humans are really good at which is the dexterity work and the work that requires human intelligence.

We’ve got to reduce the amount of time people are doing a particular operation. Over the length of their career, they’ll probably need to move on to a less arduous physical job at some point because of the physical stress involved. So what can we do?

Well, for example, we’ve got some very nice little fixtures now that takes some of the back-breaking work of actually holding grinding machines and that provide more precision to the grinding operation.

So those are early examples, we are still working on others.

This kind of research is important for our future.

When I first started in this job, I campaigned for a research and development fund. We weren’t successful in getting all of the money we asked for, but I’m not surprised and I’m not disheartened.

For CP5, we have a fund of £50 million so we’ve got sufficient money we can get started. It does require us to match the funding, but there are plenty of opportunities for us to do that. We’ve got a project portfolio assembled to spend that money on.

I think it’s really important, if we want to have a sustainable railway, to invest in R&D. If you look at the amount that we were investing as an industry in R & D, it doesn’t really compare with the benchmarks. We are at a very low level, well below 1% of revenue.

In the automotive industry, we’d typically spend 3.5% of revenue and that’s because we were a

Ordsall chord.

very big company indeed. We were approximately 15 times bigger than Network Rail, so we had economies of scale. In the aerospace industry and in the higher value industries, and I think railways is a high-value, technically-intensive industry, the benchmarks are typically somewhere between 3 and 6%.

So the conversation I started was: let’s have a big argument in a few years’ time whether it should be 3 or 6%. But can we at least move it from 0.3%? And make a start before we have that big argument?

So we have made a start, we have good support from the ORR and from the DfT. We also have a lot of interest from BIZ because, as we’re spending all this money on the railways in the UK, there’s a real opportunity for the UK if we invest wisely.

Now, there’s no way Network Rail can fulfil its duty of responsibility by favouring UK suppliers, causing the railway to be inefficient compared

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52

the rail engineer • October 2014

with the choices we have for international suppliers. Of course we can’t do that, but that doesn’t mean we can’t look at ways of encouraging UK suppliers to be competitive and to be successful in those bids in a fair and open way. So we are supporting initiatives such as the transport Catapult, which has been set up

by BIZ and by the TSB, by co-funding projects using the money that we have to help bring in more government money and other partners’ money.

We’re also bringing in the SMEs, because one of the great things about the catapults is the lovely catalyst for academia, the SMEs and the big tierones and OEMs to work together.

International reputation We also have innovations outside the catapults and other spaces. We have academic partners, we’re continuing to build those up, and we’re gearing up to benefit from European funding.

The European railway industry tended not to talk to us very much, but that’s changing quite a lot.

We’ve had people coming to the UK to learn about our rail interface expertise for quite a long time but, interestingly enough, we’ve got people coming to talk to us now about our asset management approaches.

People have discovered that we’ve actually got quite an innovative approach to asset management that is much more scientific rather than based on some very simple intervention intervals or ‘find and fix’ which is the alternative method that some companies use. We still use find and fix, but we also have an overlay of monitoring degradation rates and looking at how we predict when we will have to intervene. Remote condition monitoring (RCM) and deployment is a part of that, but it is only the beginning of harvesting the benefits. After the beginning of RCM, you find out where your problems are and you intervene before they fail.

But as you build up all the data, you start to see the characteristic curves so that you can actually see what’s happening long before you reach the threshold of failure and you can then design your

maintenance intervention techniques.

When you’re doing renewals or enhancements, you can feed that information forward to the supply base and say, “Actually we want to change the design spec because now we know a bit more about the degradation rates.”

I think that we are leading the European railway industry in this. I don’t have the data to be certain, but the empirical evidence is that people are coming to us to learn, and that’s a good sign.

We are able, with our very small consultancy company, to win contracts against significant and very competent international bidders, again demonstrating at least some evidence that we’ve got a position of commercial advantage to some of our clients.

Being demanding The best customer a supplier can have is a demanding customer. So, for us, the best customers we can have are demanding train operating companies, because ultimately they make us better. The more demanding customers are, the better you become. You may curse them at the time, but they make you better.

And so if we become a more and more demanding customer to our supply base, we’ll be a bit of a nuisance and there will be lots of challenges although, to be honest, the Brits like a challenge. We have lots of great engineering companies in the UK and we will help them win business not only with us but around the world, so that’s the opportunity for UK plc with this innovation agenda.

Even when the equipment is not made in the UK, such as high-output plain line machines, we have a possessions and access regime that these machines are not designed for. They’re designed for much longer possessions, so we are having to be very innovative about where we deploy them to get the value out of them. At some point in the future I would like us to be in a position where we are more influential in the design of some of these machines, and are able to shape their specification in a way that is helpful not only to the UK, but also to the rest of the European industry.

I’m interested in discovering ways of changing the spec that they can not only sell to us on a customised basis, but also sell to all our other customers. Why am I interested in that? Because then everybody shares the overhead of the R&D, tooling and development work on that machine.

So we’d enjoy lots of economies of scale by buying machines from Germany, Austria and Switzerland because they’ve been designed for use across the European railway network, and we’d get much cheaper machines as a result.

Also, if we can continuously improve those machines and adapt them to our more restricted access environment, they might be more interesting for other rail networks as they become busier.

As to who operates this expensive equipment, I think that depends on the business case and on the length of our relationship. We are moving more and more towards longer-term relationships with our suppliers, both for renewals as well as for enhancements. We went to a lot of trouble to make sure that there was good continuity and visibility moving from CP4 into the beginning of CP5, and that has worked out very well.

This forward visibility isn’t just for five years.

The control period process gives us a high degree of certainty over five years, but doesn’t mean we know nothing about the next five years. Of course it doesn’t. We know quite a bit about the following five years because many of the projects that are approved for CP5 are ones that will not be completed until CP6. So we can be reasonably sure when we submit the initial plans for CP6 that many of those projects that are in the middle of implementation will continue to be funded.

Alongside this, we have a long-term technical strategy that is shaping our view of how innovations should develop. The work that we did on the initial industry plan for CP5 went way beyond five years - it was a forward-looking plan of which CP5 was merely the first tranche.

Richard Parry-Jones, chairman of Network Rail, was in conversation with Nigel Wordsworth Renewals at Watford.

A very 54

the rail engineer • October 2014

brief brief

GRAHAME TAYLOR

the rail engineer • October 2014

H

igh-level project remits can be brief, pithy, straight to the point. In fact, that’s what you would expect. That’s what you would hope for. A clear direction, no ambiguities, no doubts, no wiggle room.

So, how’s this for a succinct high level remit? One that consists of just two words. “Five carriages,” says Boris. Yup, that’s it. A £330 million project defined in just two words. What about timescales? Any word on how fast these ‘five carriages’ need to be in service? Twelve months! Although the high-level remit has doubled in length, it’s still remarkably brief.

A bit more detail So what is this all referring to... and who’s Boris anyway? It refers to LOCIP - there’s a clue in this acronym - London Overground Capacity Improvement Programme. It’s that part of the rail network in and around the capital that’s been for years a Cinderella railway. Well, it was until a few years ago when the running was taken over by London Overground.

Before that, it had suffered from years of stagnation and unsympathetic franchising arrangements. The service over the North London Line and the East London line had been awful on a good day. Perhaps memories fade, but there were stories of dingy stations and trains that didn’t run. It was all pretty dire.

55

Silwood Sidings.

56

the rail engineer • October 2014

PHOTO: R/DV/RS

A shame really, because there was always potential. These were the cross-town routes avoiding the city centre.

With the arrival of London Overground there was considerable investment. Stations became attractive, and trains ran - and ran on time - with new rolling stock.

Passengers returned - again and again. In fact, the London Overground system has become a victim of its own success. Trains are full, and this is impacting on an impressive performance record because dwell times at stations are being extended.

This is why Boris - that’s Mayor-of-London Boris for anyone from out of town - made the high level decree that the current four car trains shall be five cars. And that these extended trains shall be running on the East London line by the end of 2014, and on the rest of the London Overground system by the end of 2015.

Getting started Once the echoes from the two (or four) word remit had subsided - and that didn’t take very long - what was the next move? The London Overground team picked up the challenge, worked up an initial scheme to GRIP 2 (feasibility) to get preliminary budget authority.

They then went out to the market to source a technical adviser to work with them on an accelerated development plan and to support them through delivery of the scheme.

(An ‘accelerated development plan’ is a euphemism well known within the railway industry. It means doing something quicker than what appears, at first sight, to be possible.)

This is where CH2M Hill came on-board. In the tendering process, and drawing on previous experience with accelerated programmes in the London area, the company emphasised its collaborative approach to complex projects - it sees collaboration as a way of doing business. “It’s how we get successful outcomes” observed Sue Kershaw,

Director Rail, Europe. “If you’re operating in silos, there are too many opportunities for divergence.”

“What we put to the client was that CH2M Hill gives a programme management capability and this was certainly needed to support the whole development process. What had to be done was known, but work had to be carried out in parallel rather than in sequence.”

So, what was involved?

Well, those longer trains would cause issues, both when they were running around and also when they went off to bed at night. They have to be stored when they’re not in service, so sidings have to be longer and they have to be maintained in depots that are long enough to take them.

Finding stabling sidings in London is no easy task.

There’s not a great deal of spare land in the capital and certainly not the shape needed for extra rolling stock. The Silwood Triangle did appear to be suitable although it was already in use by the infrastructure maintenance provider.

And, in common with many sites that have had railway use over the years, there was always the possibility of contaminated soil conditions. Being on the project’s critical path there was real urgency to make progress on the extra sidings at Silwood.

The existing maintenance depots at New Cross Gate and Willesden were geared to four car trains and so extra capacity had to be grafted on at each. With little spare room this meant carrying out work in live depots without overly affecting their existing output. Daily liaison was vital.

Then there are the stations There are 60 stations on this network. All had to be surveyed to establish whether any work had to be carried out to accommodate longer trains. Lengthening was required at 27. Of the remainder, some were long enough

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the rail engineer • October 2014

Sidings (and lamp posts) at Silwood

Silwood sidings.

Laying track at Silwood.

already, some needed platforms to be refurbished and some had to be adapted so that SDO (selective door opening) could be used.

All the work on the platforms affected how passengers flowed in, around and out of the stations. CH2M Hill’s experience in managing passenger flows meant that designs could keep pace with the emerging anticipated traffic flows.

With limited access to sites because of scarce possessions, carrying out surveys was always a challenge.

A designer needs a survey to firm up on a scheme, but needs a scheme to specify the parameters of a survey classic chicken and egg. As project manager David Davey wryly commented: “Just about every type of survey technique was used from the latest cloud technology to the basic trundle wheel. One of the advantages of London Overground being closer to a vertically integrated organisation is that this gives a certain amount of flexibility around access. They understand what is needed.”

Generally, the procurement strategy for the scheme was for packages of work to be let under design and build arrangements. This was certainly the case for the platform extensions, Silwood sidings and the two depots.

But there was a snag when it came to signalling design. It was very difficult to get the market interested because the programme was very tight and the packages themselves weren’t that large.

To guarantee a very aggressive programme delivery, CH2M Hill’s contract was varied so that the signalling designs could be done in-house. This involved not only the detailed designs for the signalling packages but also providing design support for the commissioning weeks and weekends.

The design and build contract to construct Silwood Sidings, awarded to Cleshar in June 2013, took the scheme from GRIP stage 5 through to 8. Pell Frischmann undertook the multi-disciplinary design for ten roads for stabling the newly extended five-car trains. The project scope included new permanent way, accommodation, acoustic barriers and fencing around the sidings, DC traction power, low-voltage power supplies, lighting (lots of lighting) and CCTV, PA and other communications systems.

The Cleshar project team managed the design and construction of the ten new roads, including a turnout from the mainline and a crossover between the existing mainline tracks. 3.5km of new track was laid. 350 lighting bollards, 320 lamp posts, 105 bulkhead lights and associated cabling and cable route management systems were installed.

The design and installation of the sidings posed significant technical and logistical constraints in the tight brownfield inner city site. The project team worked closely with the LOCIP delivery team and, by the time that the traction power systems were commissioned in May 2014, there were over 180,000 hours of labour recorded in the delivery of this project. The new facility was officially opened at the beginning of September.

TfL’s director of London Overground, Mike Stubbs, was happy with the way things had gone. “To provide 25% more capacity we needed to extend most of the platforms.

However, some such as Canada Water could not be economically extended to allow all doors on a five-car train to open. Thus we have introduced Selected Door Opening to ensure at four of our 83 stations only those doors open where there is a platform. In addition, we have also introduced Correct Side Door Enabling.

“There have been some significant engineering challenges, for instance at New Cross Gate we have extended our rolling stock maintenance shed by 20 metres and, to do this, we had to carefully pile around seven different utility services, including electric cables feeding 120,000 homes in South London.

“It is a significant challenge to deliver this capacity enhancement programme which we are delivering in a relatively short time and I’m very proud to lead the excellent team that is delivering it.”

The end of the year is not far off and indications are that the rolling stock, with its new additions of the fifth vehicle in each set, will be ready to run on the East London line as promised. Construction of the extra carriages is proceeding at Bombardier’s Derby works. Systems integration for the first few trains will also be undertaken in the Midlands and thereafter the extra carriages will be delivered to New Cross Gate for integration there.

The first five-car trains will be in service by the end of this year with the fleet complete by the third quarter of 2015.

But, looking ahead and anticipating a successful completion for the rest of the project, what of the future in the mediumto-long term? Just as London Overground’s enhanced services attracted all those extra passengers not so long ago, it’s a sure bet that the fifth carriage will start to fill up pretty soon.

So perhaps the next high level remits will be equally as pithy. Six carriages! Eight carriages! But by then, maybe this Boris guy could be somewhere else.

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the rail engineer • October 2014

Innovative solutions from Sheffield

S

tretcher bars are important components in the design of any set of points. They are the bars that lock the blades into place relative to each other. The whole blade assembly then moves as one unit.

The stretcher bars have to permit adjustment, so that the points can be set up properly, but then be locked to prevent movement.

If the assembly goes wrong, as has happened on a couple of occasions, the results can be disastrous. Two major accidents over the last twelve years were put down to failure of this assembly, although in one case the direct cause was actually retaining bolts rather than the stretcher bars themselves.

Be that as it may, the whole assembly has been under Network Rail scrutiny for some time as ways were sought to improve both the design and the inherent reliability of the system.

Now, Network Rail has begun implementing a new design of high-integrity stretcher bars. Design and development of the new bars, which for the first time use tubular components, was undertaken in collaboration with Balfour Beatty Rail.

Rigorous testing

A new stretcher bar in situ.

Once design was complete, Network Rail went out to tender and appointed just three manufacturers for the new product. Being safety critical components, they had to go through several years of testing and refinement prior to entering manufacturing stage.

The new tubular stretcher bars, which consist of a tube with articulated motion units, will replace both ‘fixed’ and ‘adjustable’ stretcher bars in new and existing installations. The tube has been designed to allow the overall length to be adjusted - one 360º rotation of the bar changes the length by 4mm. The motion units are articulated to enable the stretcher bar to cope with relative slip and twisting when the switches are thrown, while the bars furthest from the pivot also feature kicking straps which limit the amounts the switch rail can rise.

Tinsley Bridge Rail is one of just three suppliers to have been selected by Network Rail to manufacture the new design of tubular stretcher bars. It has been developed to give greater safety, improved performance and a reduced whole-life cost. In addition, it is simpler to install, requires less maintenance and is designed to withstand the rigours of the twenty-first century rail network.

Requiring high levels of manufacture and quality assurance, this project followed a rigorous process to ensure that the completely-redesigned safety-critical equipment could be successfully introduced onto the passenger-carrying railway. It was developed and tested under the most challenging conditions, safely supporting 91 million tonnes of traffic in a testing environment before being introduced onto the UK rail infrastructure.

“The group has a solid track record of working with world-class companies, but to be one of only three manufacturers in the UK to be chosen by Network Rail is a real achievement,” said Tinsley Bridge’s managing director Mark Webber.

Automotive and military experience The engineering group, which is over 150 years old, originally manufactured vehicle suspension springs and now manufactures anti-roll bars for truck producers such as Volvo and Renault, rolling stock parts for railways, and suspension components for military vehicles. It has a turnover of £16 million and employs 180 people.

“Our automotive and military experience in the highrisk, zero-tolerance environment of truck suspensions gives us the right skillset to transfer to the safety critical rail project which demands the highest levels of quality and precision,” Mark Webber explained.

the rail engineer • October 2014

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Earlier this year, the group announced a £5 million investment in redeveloping its manufacturing facilities in the city, boosted by a Regional Growth Fund grant secured with the help of Creative Sheffield. Work on phase one of the new factory and offices at the Shepcote Lane site started last May.

60 minutes fire protection Tinsley Bridge Rail has also developed a lightweight fire barrier which is potentially life saving. FabBloc60A stops the transfer of heat from its source to the underside of the aluminium decking or floor of a railway carriage.

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The FabBloc lightweight inner layer is a 100% aramid fibre yarn, in a non-woven blanket form that absorbs the heat, keeping the upper decking cool and reducing heat transfer to the floor above.

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the rail engineer • October 2014

New trams run in

Birmingham

NIGEL WORDSWORTH

The Midland Metro opened in 1999, running for 13 miles between Wolverhampton St Georges and Birmingham Snow Hill. Unlike most tram systems, only the two stops at the Wolverhampton end of the line were on streets, the rest were all on closed railway line. At Snow Hill, the trams run into Platform 4 of the station, and 11 of the 25 stops roughly correspond with former stations on the railway to Wolverhampton Low Level.

the rail engineer • October 2014

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Sixteen AnsaldoBreda T69 trams were ordered to run the new service. They were quite short at just over 24 metres long, and 2.44 metres wide. They had a capacity of 150 people and a 70% low floor with raised seating areas over the bogies.

A new depot was built on former sidings at Wednesbury, next to the Great Western Street stop.

First extension Although an extensive tram network had originally been proposed, the single line remained as-built until June 2012 when work commenced on an extension at the Birmingham end. The line was to be diverted around Snow Hill station, releasing platform 4 back to heavy rail, and then on to Birmingham New Street station at Stephenson Street with intermediate stops at Bull Street and Corporation Street.

Additional trams would be needed for this extension.

Taking advantage of this opportunity, the decision was taken to increase capacity by replacing the entire fleet with twenty new 32.4 metre long trams that would be 2.65 metres wide (an industry standard) and carry 210 people each.

The order for 20 new Urbos 3 trams was placed with Spanish manufacturer CAF with an option for an extra five.

As well as work on the new extension, the wider trams meant that platform edges had to be modified. Omnicom carried out a video survey of the existing line which revealed that the track would have to be slewed on some bridges as parapets were quite close to the envelope used by the new vehicles. As an interim measure, speed were introduced.

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A major part of the work took place at the Wednesbury depot. The stabling area was more than doubled in size, as was the main depot building itself. In addition, a new, secondary building was constructed on the far side of the stabling area. This would initially be used by CAF to work on the trams once they arrived from the Spanish factory.

Fred Roberts, metro extension manager for operator National Express, explained that Morgan Sindall had been contracted to enlarge the depot while Balfour Beatty was building the extension to New Street.

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the rail engineer • October 2014

The track layout in the new sidings includes a turning facility. Although the Metro is an end-to-end route, so trams never need to turn, this new facility will allow trams to be reversed from time to time, so equalising wear on wheels and tyres.

The new, larger building has also permitted the Atlas wheel lathe to be brought inside – previously it was outside in a tent!

As the trams are longer, more jacking units will be needed to raise the whole vehicle. These have been supplied by CAF and will replace the existing set.

(Above) The building on the left is used by CAF to prepare trams on arrival.

(Right) Sand was used to simulate passengers during braking trials.

Two-part delivery The trams have five articulated sections, with wheels mounted on stub axles beneath the two ends and the central section. They are delivered from CAF’s factory in Spain on two articulated low-loaders. The two parts, one of three sections and one of two, are offloaded at a short siding and coupled together before being dragged by a road-rail shunter to the assembly shop. There, the two parts are coupled properly – they have couplings at roof level as well as under the floor - and the electrical systems are connected and tested.

Once back in one piece, the functionality of the brakes, CCTV, lighting and driving controls of each tram is tested.

The first one to be delivered underwent additional type testing including EMC (electro-magnetic compatibility) testing supervised by Atkins. This made sure that the trams would not only operate trouble-free on the network but also wouldn’t interfere with heavy rail systems at Snow Hill and New Street.

Once that first tram was approved, and had done a little running inside the depot, it was released onto the network at night. Initially, it was accompanied by engineers walking alongside as clearances were checked and performance monitored. Covering 13 miles at walking pace was slow

work, but eventually the entire route, and all of the crossovers, was checked and approved.

Sand and more sand Then more testing could take place. Fully-laden brake tests required a full load of passengers, which was thought to be risky so sandbags were used instead. That explains the pallets of builder’s sand to one side of the new workshop.

Sand is used on the trams as well, for the sanding systems which ensure good wheel adhesion in bad weather.

the rail engineer • October 2014

Sheffield based Mechan has supplied two sand carts to the project which will be used to replenish stock on the trams. The two carts, manufactured by Klein Anlagenbau AG in Germany, are of different specifications as one is an ‘all terrain’ model which can still be used even if there is snow and slush on the site.

The contract included supply of the garage for the two machines and a storage silo for the sand. Having mobile machines increases the flexibility of the operation over the previous fixed installation, particularly important with the new, larger fleet.

Before being accepted from CAF by Midland Metro, each tram has to undergo 1,500km of fault-free running.

This has to be carried out on the network, and the only available time is between 00:30 and 04:45 on weekday nights. However, all of this testing also presents a good opportunity for driver training.

With getting on for a dozen trams now in the country, services started in September. So far, four have run at any one time but that number will increase as more of the new fleet is fully tested.

The option to order five more trams could well be taken up as three further extensions to the network have recently been discussed and partially approved. Funding is in place for a further extension in Birmingham to Town Hall and Century Square, which will open in around 2018.

From there, the line will be taken out to Edgbaston via Fiveways. At the Wolverhampton end, there are plans to take the line to Wolverhampton station, connecting with main line rail at that end as well.

Funding is also in place to examine other options, including a route to Birmingham Airport.

So perhaps Midland Metro will need even more trams in the future.

65

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the rail engineer • October 2014

Stepping up to the challenge

I

n any maintenance environment, the issues of access can prove problematic. However, engineers love a challenge so these difficulties are not insurmountable.

Essex-based access specialist Step On Safety has just completed work on what are reportedly the longest and largest GRP (glass-reinforced plastic or fibreglass) access platforms in the UK and possibly the world. They have been installed at Southern’s Selhurst depot in Greater London and will be used by the train operator for future train maintenance.

The installation of the two permanent access platforms will enable rail engineers to safely maintain the HVAC (heating, ventilation, and air conditioning) units on top of the train operator’s Class 377 carriages whilst also allowing the switchgear inside the door wells to be maintained at the same time.

The challenge The team at Step On Safety were tasked with designing a GRP double-height walkway platform which would have easily-identifiable, specific access points where the doorway and HVAC units are situated, covering a three, four and five car scenario.

For the roof access, Step on Safety created a bespoke GRP self-closing safety barrier system which will allow the maintenance team to work safely from within an enclosed space while working on the carriage roof.

Being GRP, it has some natural benefits over traditionally-used materials. The materials are completely non-conductive, meaning that there are no issues with them being used in the area of the overhead conductor wire. They are also lightweight (around 65 per cent lighter than steel) so the existing maintenance platform walkways would not be overloaded.

The company was able to design, supply and install the solution within ten weeks of receiving Southern’s approval. Senior site supervisor Norman Hyrons explained some of the difficulties that they had faced.

“Due to the scale of the build and the speed, the biggest challenge was getting parts delivered on time. As a company we carry large quantities of stock so, in most cases, it wasn’t a problem. Having said that, this was a mammoth structure and managing the parts was a full time job for the team back at head office.”

The total possession time was eleven weeks, and that included snagging. Step On Safety had a team of four to six on site at any given time installing two structures, each 100 metres long. Both were double-decked, giving access to the two work areas, so that was a total of 400 metres of GRP flooring along with all of the associated stairs, gates, ladders, and landings. A total of 9,000 rivets were used in the assembly.

the rail engineer • October 2014

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Adjustment on site As in any project, the engineers didn’t escape panic-free.

The steps were built off-site in Essex and then shipped to Selhurst. When offered up, they were found to be too short!

However, the installation team took it all in its stride.

“Part of our job as specialist fitters is to make slight adjustments, alterations and fabricate on site,” Norman Hyrons explained. “It’s what we do. In this case we had to re-angle the steps and rebuild them, making the bottom step longer so that it would form a perfect fit.

It didn’t cause any noticeable delay as time for making adjustments is factored in.”

In fact, next time the team undertakes a job of this size, more of the structure will be manufactured off-site. “We fabricate on site all the time,” Norman commented. “But something this big needs to be totally fabricated in the workshop. There’s just not enough room to fabricate on site when you are building a structure this big.”

The installation was completed on time within the eleven-week window. At the end of the last day, the sense of pride in what had been achieved was evident in the team and the experience gained will undoubtedly benefit them in their next big build.

As for the maintenance engineers that now use the huge new platform, it is already making their life easier. As in most depots, Selhurst maintenance engineers had been used to individual portable stairs and platforms that they had to negotiate into position as they worked their way along each carriage. Now, aside from reducing the hazards

and risks, the permanent solid-state platforms are saving time and effort for those working from them, affording safer access to multiple carriages more readily.

Phil Somers, Southern’s Selhurst depot manager, was certainly very pleased. “This project is innovative and a GRP first for us for something of this size. In the past, we would have probably used steel for such a large structure, but this was a project that required to be completed within a tight timescale and GRP ticked all the boxes.

Operationally, it went smoothly and we are impressed with the results and the time it has taken to complete.”

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the rail engineer • October 2014

The greatest show on two rails (or less) Bombardier's Innovia Monorail - this one is for Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.

E

very even-numbered year, the world’s railway industry gathers in Berlin for InnoTrans. This immense trade show covers 28 halls, many of them on two floors, and there are complete trains on show on the sidings outside.

Visitors must be prepared to walk. There are three internal shuttle bus routes, but it is still possible to walk long distances. Just getting from one appointment in hall 1.2 to the next in hall 10 can take nearly 15 minutes.

So let’s get the statistics out of the way.

InnoTrans 2014 attracted 2,758 exhibitors from 55 countries. Their displays covered 102,843 square metres and 145 vehicles were featured on the outside tracks.

There were 138,872 trade visitors from more than 100 countries. They saw 140 products that were making their world debut and a host of more-established products. Entire halls were devoted to train interiors, and power systems, and tunnelling, as well as railway infrastructure and technology.

So why go?

But, putting side all of those statistics, what is the significance of InnoTrans?

Well, to put it simply, everyone who is anyone is there. If a regular exhibitor decides not to exhibit one year, everyone thinks they’ve gone bust. If a major exhibitor downsizes their stand one year, then they are obviously in trouble.

Being seen is as important as what is being shown.

Bombardier is a case in point. With the largest stand in hall 2.2 (that’s upstairs in hall 2) and further displays on five tracks outside, it is a major presence at the show. But are all the visitors looking at the technology on display? No, they are chatting to Bombardier staff and visiting the on-stand bar. Outside there are certainly visitors looking at the trains, but inside it is all about contacts meeting new ones and re-establishing old ones - not about looking at new motors or signalling equipment.

NIGEL WORDSWORTH

The same thing is happening at Alstom, and Siemens, and all of the other major companies.

They take great care in choosing their exhibits but hardly anyone looks at them - at that level it is all about meeting people.

Further down the food chain, and the story changes. Here, the product is all-important.

All around the exhibition, people are peering at exhibits, and having them explained, and trying to grasp new concepts. From LED lighting modules (Nightsearcher) to data loggers (DeutaWerke), stands are busy with enquirers.

The new Frecciarossa 1000 high speed train was a big attraction.

the rail engineer • October 2014

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Contracts and press conferences Major contracts are announced. Of course, all the work was done in advance, but InnoTrans is a great time to announce a new contract with the world’s rail industry press in attendance.

Stadler Rail announced that the Finnish rail operator Junakalusto Oy had placed an order worth 200 million euros for a further 34 Flirt trains. On another stand, an agreement was ‘signed’ between Deutsche Bahn and the Polish manufacturer Pesa for the supply of 26 Link trains for Bavaria valued at some 100 million euros. Representatives of Alstom and Vossloh signed a contract with a value of eleven million euros to equip Vossloh locomotives with the latest train control systems (ETCS).

And it’s not all about product. Deutsche Bahn and the French rail operator SNCF signed an extension to their joint venture agreement for high speed, cross-border services with TGV and ICE trains which will now run until 2020.

Also, the Japanese Toshiba group and the train operator Singapore Rail Engineering set up a joint venture to market propulsion systems to mass transit operators.

As well as stands, and displays, and trains, there are also press conferences. InnoTrans has a fine press centre on the third floor of hall 6 - with security on the door to keep the rif-raf out. Here, as well as a dedicated press-only wifi network, various companies arrange to give formal press conferences with simultaneous translation, press packs, PowerPoint displays and all the trappings (free coffee and biscuits).

All aboard the new class 700; (L-R) Charles Horton (GTR), Andy Pitt (Cross London Trains), Patrick McLoughlin (Secretary of State for Transport), Jochen Eicholt and Steve Scrimshaw (both Siemens)

Only the most hardened journalist would attend all of them, but even so they can surprise occasionally. Halfway through a predictable presentation on Bombardier’s worldwide performance, chief executive Dr Lutz Bertling suddenly started discussing innovation and research & development. He teased his audience by refusing to give figures for expenditure over the next few years, but he said that “we are not speaking about 50 or 100 million - we are speaking about real money”.

As Bombardier were displaying the Innovia monorail, and Primove battery-powered buses, they are already developing some interesting technologies so it will be interesting to see what they come up with.

The British presence Secretary of State Patrick McLoughlin was at the show on the first day. He took part in the launch of the Class 700 - Siemens’ new train for Thameslink of which three carriages were at the show. He also toured a few other stands but had a marathon session planned for the second show. Unfortunately, he was unable to go through with that as he was called back to London, disappointing some 70 companies he was due to meet. He had a cabinet meeting to attend, but the wisdom of letting down 70 companies in the rail sector, not to mention International guests at Wednesday night’s reception, to discuss a matter which had absolutely nothing to do with transport must be questioned.

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the rail engineer • October 2014

The reception was organised by the Railway Industry Association (RIA) on behalf of UK Trade and Investment (UKTI). In the Secretary of State’s absence, Clare Moriarty, Director General Rail Executive at the Department for Transport, was the principal speaker. “I had a whistle-stop tour of very large numbers of UK companies, and they had brilliant products,” she told The Rail Engineer afterwards. “It was fantastic to see they have good products and they are constantly innovating. And there are companies which are absolutely out there at the cutting edge with different kinds of materials but thinking about new kinds of uses.

“Some of the companies I spoke with are here because they have done very well in the UK market and they haven’t got into exporting and they are starting to say that actually, there is a world out there. It was fantastic to go around this afternoon with Robin Barnett, our ambassador to Poland, because he was saying to them ‘Have you thought about central Europe?’ And some said that they had - there’s

a company called Kilfrost who manufacture deicing fluids and they have got contracts in Russia, because, if you do that sort of thing, that’s the place to do it.

“But there are other companies who haven’t thought of those sorts of opportunities and there’s lots of places for them to go. In central Europe the combination of the scale of investment they are making and the relative maturity of the existing industry - there are definitely opportunities there.”

Paul Heardman, Consul-General in Munich, was equally enthusiastic. “Competition is tough and companies know that. For most products there are strong competitors out there so we always say to British companies thinking about the German market that it’s the case of trying to work out the USP (unique selling point), particularly if they are competing against local German companies, of deciding what helps them stand out, thinking about using UKTI to help them find a local distributor, and of building up the long-term contacts.

“It’s very rare that a company just turns up and signs a contract in the first meeting. It’s based on patient work over weeks and months, which is obviously time consuming, but German companies expect that and they are looking for trust as much as the quality of the product.

“There is some excellent innovation in the UK, and it is part of our job here in Germany to help British companies work out the opportunities and then showcase that.”

Popular displays British stands were certainly busy. Rowe Hankins was displaying an enhanced range of speed sensors which are now accurate down to -60ºC rather than the -40º of the earlier model.

The company was also showing three and four-channel sensors, again an improvement of the two channel ones which have been on the market for some time.

Business manager Geraint Davies also reported that, during the show, Rowe Hankins signed a representation agreement with Parts Supply Centre of Japan.

Perpetuum was showing its range of selfpowered remote condition monitoring sensors.

Powered by the vibrations from the train, these wireless devices report on bearing and wheel condition, allowing early intervention at service and helping to prevent failures. Company president Roy Freeland was very pleased with the support his team had received from RIA and UKTI in preparing for the show, and stand staff kept disappearing for meetings as several commercial opportunities were coming to fruition over the course of InnoTrans.

Brits were also looking around the show. One was Marcus Meyers, programme and portfolio manager for FutureRailway, who was particularly concentrating on innovation. He was impressed by a new toilet from Welsh company PCC. In addition to impressive technology, the company had a clear vision of the business benefits which

the rail engineer • October 2014

Don’t forget the young people

added up to tens of millions of pounds of the life time of the product, little of which had to do with sales price or use of the toilet.

Given a planned FutureRailway Investment Innovation competition in propulsion, Marcus spent a couple of days looking at propulsion systems, power units and traction motors. Three products stood out in this category. The first was the Cummins 4,200hp QSK95. Although too powerful for UK use, it is a fine example of incremental innovation delivering a world class product with a clearly articulated business case based on reliability, fuel saving and environmental compliance.

The Chinese company CSR had a 600kw permanent magnet traction motor currently used in ultra high speed trains that is only 600mm wide, while German manufacturer Voith was showing an interesting traction package for use in trams. The innovation was putting the traction motor to the side of the wheels rather than in between them, allowing for lower floors and easier maintenance.

Another reception, on the Thursday night, was hosted by the Young Rail Professionals.

Adam Stead, chairman, spoke with The Rail Engineer. “We have had lots of young railway professionals from other countries join our website as members. InnoTrans is one of the ways in which we can reach them and deliver the benefits of networking together. This is a chance to meet people from all over the world and see how young people are developed and network within their own countries.

“For example, I’ve met with a group of young people from an engineering school in Paris who have their own smaller equivalent of Young Rail Professionals but are now interested in how they form an industry-wide organisation.

We’ve also had the Australasian Rail Association interested in how we can support them to form a YRP in Australia.”

Also at the reception was David Kramer, Chairman of Jonge Veranderaars (Young Innovators) from The Netherlands. “The JV has the same aims as the YRP - to promote the sector and contribute positively to its image by promoting cooperation between companies. We are part of a larger network called Rail Forum and it is the CEOs of those companies that are saying to us ‘You’re not kicking us enough, you’re not telling us what we’re doing wrong enough.

So it’s basically about networking and getting

71

the companies to work better together.

“I came to InnoTans because of my interest in the train side and also because of this networking event. I think it’s really important that the young people of Europe work together more across country lines and really start to see the system as an integrated whole as opposed to every country figures it out and hops it all works out in the end.”

Which really gets to the heart of what InnoTrans is all about. Yes it’s an exhibition, and a big one, and many companies spend a fortune showing off their latest products. But really it’s about networking - meeting people - and making the global rail industry larger and more coherent and the world a smaller place.

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the rail engineer • October 2014

On the turn in Berlin GRAHAME TAYLOR

The editor’s take on InnoTrans

A

utumn came abruptly to Berlin this year, or so it seemed. The transition from balmy late-summer sunshine in the UK became all the more distant after travelling through that miserable passenger experience known as Schönefeld Airport. A nice shiny new international airport has yet to be opened. It’s several years late and all a bit of an embarrassment. The Germans acknowledge that they haven’t done airports very well.

But they do do an excellent line in major railway trade shows. Every two years the enormous Berlin Messe, quaintly referred to in English as the Fairground, opens its many doors to visitors to InnoTrans. The triumphant press release boasts that “no less than 2,758 exhibitors from 55 countries took part” and that by the time the doors closed something like 100,000 trade visitors will have tramped their little legs off.

The size of the show becomes evident as one leaves the Messe on the free bus shuttle service to Schönefeld.

Setting off on the hour the bus picks up travellers from the many stops around the perimeter. Twenty minutes later (!), it finally leaves the Messe.

The fairground occupies 26 cavernous halls, some of which are on three levels. Outside are sidings crammed with rolling stock. Most of the buildings are fairly recent, but there is a glimpse of history at the Northern entrance which leads through the Hall of Honour, a very strident structure built in the ‘fascist architectural style’.

The Chinese have arrived Has Innotrans changed over the years? Well, off course it has. It has reflected the ups and downs of economies and also the emergence of China. Six years ago, the Chinese were observers. Today there are Chinese trade stands throughout the exhibition. They build railways, they signal them and they build their own trains. They have an entire infrastructure of suppliers and many were at Innotrans.

Maybe the oddest was the CSR stand - a large, brash affair with an enormous curved screen occupying most

of the stand displaying an almost-continuous, unsettling, hallucinogenic promotional video featuring, among other things, carriages with three bogies and a freight locomotive emerging Excalibur-style from under the sea.

The prize for the longest company name probably goes to the China Railway Large Maintenance Machinery Co Ltd Kunming. Quite what they’ll do if they also look after small maintenance machinery - or anything else - is unclear.

Large and small It wasn’t easy to judge which company had the largest stand. Undoubtedly, Bombardier’s stand - or establishment - was very big. But for large and bright there was no doubt that Voestalpine was miles ahead.

Something like more than one hundred high intensity spotlights in the ceiling gave a safe haven to anyone suffering from vitamin D deficiency after being kept under cover for four days.

Perhaps the smallest stands were to be found in the Tschechishe Republik, a province of the Czech Republic.

Among these hutches, little more than an arm’s width from side to side, were such mysteries as ‘disintegration tools’.

Elegance and less elegant Out on the sidings there was the general collection of large, cluttered and fairly ugly locomotives. On the other hand, the quiet understated elegance of the UK’s class 68 must have been close to being the best looking, along

the rail engineer • October 2014

with the Class 700 emu for Thameslink. The UK structure gauge may be small, but it does force us to have rolling stock without ‘stuff’ stuck in the tops and sides.

All the sidings were completely full - to such an extent that the roadways were turned into honorary railways to accommodate a variety of trams. An interloping bus was on show but, in an attempt to show off some of the underside, it looked as if the vehicle had encountered a sudden rough shunt. (pictured right)

Retro Out amongst all the new kit there was a coach which looked decidedly retro. And indeed it was. Carriages superbly refurbished by Zos Vrutky of Slovakia retained all the features of a bygone age - seats by each window, room to swing a cat, luggage space. Remember luggage space?

Componentry in the halls was almost exclusively new, but again, there was at least one company that makes a successful business of rebuilding expensive traction equipment. This was Associated Windings of Ireland which rescues armatures and motor windings and rebuilds them to ‘as new’. (pictured left)

The trouble with language Entertaining sales gimmicks abounded. Grando-Massin of Belgium says that “it does it in foam and rubber.” Telefin, a telecommunications company from Italy, was promising free ice cream - but only after 3pm. MTC wants us to “feel the way, not the railway.” Whatever the slogans, they’re all encapsulated in the new QR code format. In fact, the floor plan of the Messe is probably one huge QR code.

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the rail engineer • October 2014

serious, and loud selling. The stands were all large, devoid of much apart from the company names, and mainly consisting of catering establishments.

There are pitfalls in the over enthusiastic use of marketing straplines at an international exhibition especially if it involves translation. Now, at this point it has to be acknowledged that the Brits don’t do translation.

They stick with English and, if you can’t understand, then hard luck. So the following is by no means a criticism, just a reminder of linguistic subtleties that can be destructive.

A manufacturer of vacuum disposal systems probably wanted their strapline to say something like: “Engineered for hard work”. But there are many meanings of the word ‘work’ in English, from ‘hard graft’ down to ‘barely functioning’. And it was this latter that their chosen slogan seems to refer. Sadly, they proclaim that their machines are “Engineered to work.”

Meetings, meetings Each of the halls had its own sounds. They ranged from the almost-silence of the power supply hall - everything was conducted in whispers in the midst of silent battery packs and rectifiers - through to the sudden roar of hall 25, the infrastructure hall. Predominantly occupied by blokes, the noise seemed to be from sales staff doing

Meetings were going on everywhere - behind smoked glass screens and in mock-up carriages with the participants sat in compartments. There was even a group disturbed when the revolving toilet cubicle door opened to reveal them all huddled - standing at least - inside.

Trade delegations Another prize - this time for the most puzzling piece of track kit. This was a hefty assembly attached to a short demonstration piece of track on the Progress Rail stand. It looked like a crossing, but it didn’t ‘cross’. It aimed straight at a set of buffer stops. Many were scratching their heads.

the rail engineer • October 2014

75

It was in fact what they call their Lift Frog. It’s a cunning and heroic way of allowing very infrequent crossing moves to take place on a line that is predominantly heavy haul on one line. It eliminates the need for a frog (crossing) assembly in the main line that would otherwise be pounded day after day. Maybe they should call it a ‘Frog Hopper’ or a ‘Leap Frog’ - but, again, there could be problems in translating from British English to American English - for Progress Rail is an American company based in Alabama. Their stand was just next door to the American Trade delegation - large, bright and …very American.

Some way away in another part of the exhibition the Brits had their trade stand. Not quite as large, a little less bright and ….very British. Fronting up for the Rail Alliance was Colin Flack known to many as the compere at the RailStaff awards. His take on the proceedings?

“Two shows ago - that’s 2010 - there was quite a bit of caution around. Last time - 2012 - it was about 50/50.

Some gloom and some optimism. This year? Everyone’s doing deals. I’ve just signed up two new members this morning! It’s a completely different atmosphere!”

And finally Before we leave InnoTrans there is just one more prize to award. The ‘Brass Neck’ award. This doesn’t go to the guy with the camera and the callipers at the stand of a well-known bogie manufacturer, or to the guy with the screw driver in one of the siding exhibits - obviously making sure that a fitting was safe and secure. No, it goes to an anonymous recipient under a tram clicking

away with his camera. Anonymous because all that could be seen of him were his feet sticking out from underneath.

So, see you back in Berlin in 2016. They’ve already fixed the date and maybe, by then, Schönefeld Airport will just be an unfortunate memory.

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the rail engineer • October 2014

'Up' line Brede.

MELANIE OXLEY

R

ailways pass through some of the most important habitats in the British Isles, including extensive wetland areas, many of which are protected under European and UK law owing to their high value for biodiversity. These sites are often difficult to access, so a railway carriage can provide a comfortable viewing platform.

One lovely example is the Brede Valley, traversed by the Marshlink line between Hastings and Ashford which is operated by Southern Railway. This stretch of beautiful Sussex countryside, primarily grazing marsh interspersed by a species-rich ditch system, extends westwards from Winchelsea station to Doleham station, lying between two steep ridges of the rolling High Weald.

Railways and wetlands of southern Britain

Sussex ditches The Brede Valley supports an abundance of insect, plant and animal species. Some are locally or even nationally rare, and this contributes to the area being recognised as having significant importance to the county and its designation as a Site of Nature Conservation Interest (SNCI).

The part of the valley floor lying less than five metres above sea level is known as the Brede Level. It was formed through a combination of two processes, one manmade and one natural. First, a gradual silting of the mouth of the river occurred, resulting in reduced water inundation. Secondly, the salt marshes making up the area were drained, using a mesh of ditches, to form freshwater grazing marshes, extending east to Romney Marsh in Kent.

These ditches are replenished, and their water quality is maintained, by the many freshwater springs that issue from the slopes of nearby sandstone ridges to the north.

This oxygenated water supports an exceptional diversity of aquatic plants and animals, including notable plants such as flowering rush, burr chervil, strawberry clover and corn parsley. They are also home to rootless duckweed, a nationally-scarce species, the UK’s smallest flowering plant and a local

speciality. That is a lot of accolades for a tiny plant that you would find very hard to spot from your carriage window!

Winchelsea is the starting point from which to explore the Brede Valley. Winchelsea station originally had two platforms, but in 1979, the line was singled and only the Up platform is now in use. The former Down platform and station building are now a private house. There is an active campaign for the selective redoubling and electrification of this line which has survived many attempts to close it down, including the Beeching Cuts of 1963. The station remained un-modernised and gas-lit well into the 1970s.

However, future plans include an extension to HS1 on this route.

Berkshire waterways The Great Western Railway, serving London, Berkshire, Devon and Wales, passes between the rivers Kennet and Avon, right in the centre of southern England, through a tremendously important wetland habitat of carr and fen.

The Kennet is a tributary of the River Thames: the lower reaches of the river are navigable to river craft and are known as the Kennet Navigation, which, together with the Avon Navigation, the Kennet and Avon Canal and the Thames, form a concentrated network of waterways separated by lowland wet woodland.

The River Kennet has been designated as a Site of Special Scientific Interest (SSSI) from near its sources west of Marlborough down to Woolhampton. This is primarily because it has an extensive range of rare plants and animals that are unique to chalk watercourses.

Viewed from a carriage on the Great Western Railway, it is possible to do a little wildlife

the rail engineer • October 2014

Betony & water forget me not.

spotting. Roe and muntjack deer, foxes, hobbies, buzzards and kites can readily be seen. Smaller birds such as blackcap, willow warbler and chiffchaff can also be spotted in shrubs close to the line and, if you have very keen sight, you may even spot a kingfisher.

Somerset meadows Further west on this journey, the Great Western Railway travels through the Somerset Levels and Moors, an extensive area of low marsh comprising 650km2, crossing the river Parrett and its tributaries. As a result of the wetland nature of the Levels and Moors, the area supports a vast variety of plant species and is an important feeding ground for a range of birds. The Levels and Moors include 32 Sites of Special Scientific Interest, of which 12 are also Special Protection Areas (SPA).

Redshank DM.

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Chaffinch male.

an important part of a scheme by the Parrett Internal Drainage Board to restore and manage ten floodplains in Somerset. In spring, the water is drained away to enable the land to be used as pasture during the summer.

Naturally, water-birds and waders, such as red sandpiper, are attracted to the area in the wetter months.

The importance of wetlands in flood management is being incorporated into regional plans. As valuable Sustainable Drainage Systems (SuDS), wetlands provide both storm-water attenuation and treatment. They detain water-flow for an extended period, allowing sediments to settle, and the removal of contaminates, by facilitating adhesion to vegetation and aerobic decomposition. In the UK, we have favoured agricultural gains over environmental services, which is what these unique flood meadows and moors effectively achieved over aeons for Somerset, until the 1970s when radical deep drainage was introduced to facilitate arable farming. With extreme incidences on the increase owing to climate change, this appears now to be a foolish move, since arable fields shed silt into the waterways and do not perform either filtration or attenuation during heavy persistent rain.

The importance of sensible wetland management was highlighted in the spring when serious flooding damaged railways in southwest England, and blocked train lines at Bridgwater and Fordgate, forcing the Bristol to Exeter service to be halted. It is not only wildlife that will benefit from a more respectful approach to natures’ processes; our rural and urban economy, so dependent on an efficient railway infrastructure, also stand to benefit.

Melanie Oxley is a marketing executive with The Ecology Consultancy

Rose-bay Willowherb SS.

The Levels, formed from a submerged and reclaimed landscape, consist of a coastal clay belt only slightly above mean sea level, with an inland peat belt at a lower level behind it. They have been managed, until recent years, as seasonal flooding meadows. Reinstatement of this tradition is seen as part of the solution to the serious and prolonged flooding of the area witnessed in the spring of this year. In this regard, wetlands of all kinds can help mitigate climate change events.

In local areas, allowing flooding once again has been successful. Work was undertaken to upgrade sluice gates, watercourses, and culverts to enable seasonal flooding of Southlake Moor during the winter, diverting water from the Sowy River onto the moor. Moorlands act like sponges to soak up water; here the moor holds 1.2 million cubic metres, and is therefore

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the rail engineer • October 2014

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