the rail engineer • June 2013
Editor Grahame Taylor grahame.taylor@therailengineer.com
Production Editor Nigel Wordsworth nigel@rail-media.com
Production and design Adam O’Connor adam@rail-media.com
Engineering writers chris.parker@therailengineer.com clive.kessell@therailengineer.com collin.carr@therailengineer.com
From six trains to twelve days... It’s electrification, power, plant and equipment this month and can’t you tell! Not unexpectedly, we’ve included a wide review of the latest road/ rail machinery. These are spectacularly varied bits of kit able to carry out a wide range of operations. Thankfully their safe use is now taken seriously, no longer regarded as operational ‘toys’. But still there are mishaps as a recent incident has shown. Maybe we’ll find that, in the process of their metamorphosing from road to rail, they can take on an unexpected and unsafe temporary identity.
david.bickell@therailengineer.com david.shirres@therailengineer.com graeme.bickerdike@therailengineer.com mungo.stacy@therailengineer.com peter.stanton@therailengineer.com steve.bissell@therailengineer.com stuart.marsh@therailengineer.com
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Part of
Issue 104 - tre June 2013.indd 5
But first, our cover story by David Shirres unravels the mysteries of press releases and political spin surrounding the Edinburgh-Glasgow Improvement Programme (EGIP). Now you see it, now you don’t. First it was going to be six trains an hour, now it’s not. But there will be longer trains, so that’s OK then. All in all, it doesn’t seem like a bad deal in the end, especially with a transformed Glasgow Queen Street station. Many articles these days are prefaced with remarks emphasising that electrification is back on the menu. As Peter Stanton reports in his piece about wiring up the Midlands, it was only a few years ago that the way forward was behind a diesel engine. How times have changed! The response of the industry to the new initiative has been to develop ever more imaginative ways of getting round the problems imposed by our Victorian infrastructure. All this is fine so long as there are people to make the schemes happen. It took the particularly difficult shock of a project that stalled over Christmas a few years back for recruitment and training to be taken very seriously. Our concluding piece on the (receding) woes of the overhead electrification equipment outlines the Network Rail ten-point plan that is grasping several unpleasant nettles. One of these is, of course, training. Facilities are opening up over the UK and Nigel Wordsworth’s article gives an account of specific ways in which
the industry is getting up to speed. A few issues ago we described how Network Rail embarked on removing the earth conductor from signalling power supplies not, of course without adopting some mitigating electrickery. That was the introduction of Class II equipment. Now it’s the elimination of copper that’s causing the next stir. It’s not quite as easy as it sounds, otherwise aluminium would have been widespread already on the railway network. But, with a whole suite of kit, it is all very possible. It knocks the bottom out of the scrap market as well. Has your train turned up on time recently? Did it then seem to dawdle further on in its journey and still arrive on time? Perhaps the driver was taking advice from an on-board computer. Clive Kessell has been hearing the latest on driver advisory systems and finding out what they can and can’t do. For a start they don’t drive the trains……yet. Surveying is now so complex as to be almost beyond comprehension. With techniques to cope with a curved planet, 3D modelling and narrow band pass filters it was timely that the PWI organised a seminar to explain the whole subject. Chris Parker was there to hear experts from the industry demystify it all - or as much as they could for mere mortals. Particularly fascinating was the principle of probabilistic analysis applied to platform clearances. This neat concept calms the nerves when platforms
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GRAHAME TAYLOR
appear to be ‘too’ tight when of course they aren’t. Simple. Ever tried to catch a train from Norton Bridge? It’s in the national timetable. There is a station, but look a little closer and you’ll discover that your next train is a bus. Apart from this slight ignominy, Norton Bridge junction has been described as being about as useful as a set of traffic lights on the M6. Look at the track layout in our article on the Stafford improvement scheme and you’ll see why. The solution? A whacking great flyover with new tracks that wander way out into the Staffordshire countryside. And look out too for the novel contractual arrangements. ‘Pure alliancing’ it’s called. Collin Carr reports this month on a workshop run by the RSSB covering the fraught subject of managing risk. Fraught because risk seems to mean different things to different people. Speakers from many parts of the industry gave their perspectives with an emerging underlying message of striving to manage risks whilst achieving understanding and balance. Pragmatic stuff. In our ‘and finally’ spot we have the tale of a fine steam locomotive that is undergoing a full inspection and rebuild. Graeme Bickerdike has been to a classically cramped and oily shed near Keighley to see how the Jubilee class locomotive 45596 Bahamas is being prepared for another ten years of service. Anyone who thought that workshop practice in the days of steam was relaxed or even slow should mark what Graeme says about the maintenance turnround time of a locomotive back then. Bahamas is due to be back in business in about four years time. In LMS days, a Jubilee’s “general repair” could be turned around in twelve days, Yes, twelve!
29/05/2013 13:09