Inside Track May 2022

May 2022 | Issue 6 railbusinessdaily.com

GOVERNING BRITAIN’S RAILWAYS

Managing the railway How Great British Railways will be structured Crossrail finally opens – the full story Devolved administrations and their role in running rail Making the case for rail investment

Contents

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Governing Britain’s railways

The sixth edition of Inside Track looks at the governance of Britain’s railways ahead of the implementation of the Williams-Shapps Plan for Rail.

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Mind the productivity gap

Neil Robertson of the National Skills Academy for Rail considers how best to improve efficiency on railways.

8 Tel: 0800 046 7320 Sales: 020 7062 6599 Managing Editor Nigel Wordsworth nigel@rbdpublications.com Editor Richard Clinnick Designer/Production Manager Chris Cassidy Production Editor James Jackaman Print Manager Rachael Dean Subscriptions Danielle Burwood Advertising Team Christian Wiles – chris@rbdpublications.com Freddie Neal – freddie@rbdpublications.com Amy Hudson – amy@rbdpublications.com Published by RailBusinessDaily.com Ltd. 15 Mariner Court, Calder Park, Wakefield WF4 3FL Printed by Stephens & George © 2022 All rights reserved. Reproduction of the contents of this magazine in any manner whatsoever is prohibited without prior consent from the publisher.

For subscription enquiries and to make sure you get your copy of InsideTrack please ring 0800 046 7320 or email subscriptions@rbdpublications.com The views expressed in the articles reflect the author’s opinions and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher and editor.

The published material, adverts, editorials and all other content is published in good faith.

The Department for Transport and its role in rail

The Department for Transport has been at the forefront of the rail industry for 20 years and has come under intense scrutiny throughout that period.

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A new dawn for Britain’s Railways

Announced last year, Great British Railways is seen by government as the answer to the longcalled for rail reform.

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The role of the rail regulator

The Office of Rail and Road regulates the rail industry, a role that has increased over time as it seeks to accommodate the changing needs of both customers and wider society.

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Transforming the Crossrail project into the Elizabeth line

The central section of London’s new Elizabeth line opened to passengers at the end of May and was an immediate success.

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Moving with the times

Mark Phillips, chief executive of the Rail Safety and Standards Board, discusses how the organisation is embracing change as it tackles both the effects of Brexit and an increased commercial focus.

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Seismic change in Welsh rail transformation

Transport for Wales cheif executive officer James Price explains how the Welsh rail network is undergoing major transformation.

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Keeping London connected

Transport for London (TfL) is responsible for transport across the nation’s capital and now faces new challenges in the post-pandemic world.

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In search of the uncommon Common Data Model

Many companies need a structured approach so they can benefit from the wealth of data that digitisation produces.

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Scotland’s Railways leading the way

How the devolved Scottish Government plans to decarbonise its railway while ensuring the service provided is what the people of Scotland want.

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Making the case for investment in the north of England

Continued investment in the railways of the north will help bring economic benefits to the region and reduce delays, but some questions still need answering.

A Cohesive way to deliver, operate and optimise in a post-COVID world 60

How Cohesive is accelerating a digital transformation across the Commonwealth.

Developing Northern Ireland’s railways for the next generation 62

Rising passenger numbers and climate change behind ambitious plans.

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Looking after passengers

The answer is a regular national survey. All train operators say they prioritise the passenger experience. But how do they know whether they succeed?

Digitising document distribution brings substantial benefits 70

Sending out documents should be easy, but, for most train operators, it is a perennial headache.

72

Making the case for rail investment

Railway Industry Association chief executive Darren Caplan explains how the organisation is vital in the ongoing discussions around rail investment.

Siemens launches a ‘fast, clean and sustainable’ hydrogen-powered train 76

Siemens Mobility has launched its new hydrogenpowered train at its factory in Krefeld, Germany.

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Railtex / Infrarail showcases industry’s full potential

Nearly 4,000 professionals from around the world attend major event held in London.

82

Taking on the Yorkshire Three Peaks

Members of the Business Daily Group have completed a 24 mile trek to raise funds for the Railway Children charity.

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Introduction

Governing Britain’s railways The sixth edition of Inside Track looks at the governance of Britain’s railways ahead of the implementation of the Williams-Shapps Plan for Rail

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William-Shapps Plan GBR was announced in May 2021 following the publication of the Williams-Shapps Plan for Rail.

Writing in the report’s foreword, Keith Williams and Transport Secretary Grant Shapps MP stated that to truly secure rail’s future, there must be radical change. They said the system lacked “a guiding focus on customers, coherent leadership and strategic direction.” The system, they said, was too fragmented, too complicated and too expensive. Innovation is difficult and there must be a single-minded effort to entice passengers back onto the rails. “In short, we need somebody in charge.”

Since its publication, there have been several important developments. A successful vaccination programme has meant the end of COVID-19 restrictions, although the pandemic has not officially ended. Passenger numbers have returned to around 80 per cent of pre-pandemic levels, however the markets have dramatically changed with leisure now the biggest passenger sector and commuting returning at a slower rate.

Whether that remains the case depends on the continued agile working arrangements introduced by companies during, and in the aftermath, of the lockdowns. There are already calls by politicians for companies to recall their staff to offices, although whether that happens remains to be seen.

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I am honoured to be joining a growing business which, in a short space of time, has positioned itself at the forefront of rail industry coverage

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elcome to the sixth edition of Inside Track, which focuses on the governance of Britain’s Railways.

For this magazine, the team has spoken to the key decision makers across the rail industry in order to explain how the rail industry works, how it is funded and what the key policies are.

There has never been a better time to ask these bodies and organisations about the role in the railway, ahead of planned rail reform.

Not since privatisation in the mid-1990s has there been such a fundamental change in the industry.

Great British Railways – GBR for short – will be the future of rail operations, at least in England. GBR will own the infrastructure, receive fare revenue, run and plan the network, and set the majority of fares and timetables. Network Rail (NR) will be absorbed into this new body alongside many functions from the Rail Delivery Group (RDG) and Department for Transport (DfT).

The introduction of more agile working combined with lower passenger numbers has led to revised timetables, resulting in train fleets being withdrawn and service levels reduced in certain areas. This has brought about criticism, but there is also concern that highlighting crowded trains on certain days, such as midweek when more people travel to the office, or at weekends, doesn’t show the full picture.

Nevertheless, the Railway Industry Association (RIA) told Inside Track that government officials should not be making decisions for the railway that will last for 30 years based on the situation now.

Integrated Rail Plan More than 300 days after it was due, the Integrated Rail Plan (IRP) was published last November, and that detailed plans for almost £100 billion of investment in the railways, although not all of that money was new.

Nevertheless, it suggests faith in the rail network and an ambition by government to invest in infrastructure.

This is something we at Inside Track will keep a close eye on as the plans develop.

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However, while IRP has been published, the Rail Network Enhancement Pipeline (RNEP) has not been published for approaching 1,000 days despite the government promising this would be an annual publication. Delays to this mean companies are unable to plan their work, their bids and their staff levels accordingly.

Questions remain about the role of organisations such as the British regulator the Office of Rail and Road (ORR), which could have a much bigger say in the running of the railway in the future according to chief executive John Larkinson, who tells Inside Track that discussions surrounding what exactly is being planned under way.

Whether the DfT cedes control remains to be seen, however the hope is that GBR will end the micro-management that has dogged the industry for many years. Hopefully the new governance will enable the railway to innovate and attract both passengers and rail freight back to an enhanced railway that provides value for money for its users and those working in the supply chain.

Inside Track When Inside Track was launched last year, the plan was for it to be published every two months, focusing on a different theme in each edition.

Governance is the last of the six, and with that the magazine is now going to become a monthly publication.

Each issue will include articles on each of the six themes. The plan is that you will be able to learn the ‘Inside Track’ surrounding building, operating, enhancing, safety, maintaining and governance of Britain’s railways.

The magazine aims to complement the RailBusinessDaily daily newsletter, the weekly Rail Insider newsletter and monthly Rail Director publication.

I am honoured to be joining a growing business which, in a short space of time, has positioned itself at the forefront of rail industry coverage. As a journalist I’ve covered the rail industry since 2005 both at home and overseas, and hope to use that experience to bring you, the reader, the very best in rail industry coverage, ably supported by the team here at RBD. Richard Clinnick Editor, Inside Track RBD Publications

Building Britain’s Railways - Major Summer May projects 2022

Neil Robertson

Image: Rail Forum

Mind the productivity gap

By Neil Robertson, CEO National Skills Academy for Rail and programme lead for TIES Living Lab

Stubborn Unlike just about every other major industry, rail has been stubbornly resistant to improvements in productivity. But the problem is not evenly spread throughout the industry. On the operations side there have been dramatic improvements.

Investment in newer, longer, faster, safer trains for one thing has seen an upsurge in passenger numbers. It is on the infrastructure side where productivity has flatlined, and some comparisons between the two areas of investment might offer an insight into what we can do to fix it.

Summer May 2022 2022

For all their faults, the rail operator franchises created an environment that encouraged private sector investment because they were long-term and stable with clear targets. But rail infrastructure procurement has been saddled with the sort of short termism that is deadly to both to investor confidence and the willingness to innovate and modernise.

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Investment in newer, longer, faster, safer trains has seen an upsurge in passenger numbers

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he Williams-Shapps rail reforms are just over the horizon, promising a simplified, rationalised rail network for the UK that - we are confidently assured – will soon deliver £1.5 billion a year in efficiency savings.

Is that a realistic figure? Is the industry really misspending that much annually? Efficiency in policy proposals sometimes seems like the goose that never quite gets round to laying a golden egg, a magical promise in place of real, hard money. But in the case of rail, I think they are on to something.

The forward business competence of a rail supplier, on average, is about 15 months, with a return on investment that is typically about three years plus. The only way we are going to improve on that is by creating a policy environment that properly aligns procurement governance with contracting practice to create more competence in the supply

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chain and more enthusiasm from private investors.

Under the right conditions, it is reasonable to assume that investment would double, rising to levels that are normal in other sectors.

Contracts for difference And we have seen those conditions created elsewhere. The UK has developed a world-leading wind power industry from a standing start in 10 years. It was largely done through imaginative procurement and governance arrangements that made wind an extremely attractive investment prospect. Under the government’s Contracts for Difference policy, companies were promised a set price on every megawatt hour produced for 15 years. It was a long-term bankable promise, immune to changes in administration, that attracted enormous amounts of private investment into what could appear to be a very risky, unproven new technology.

With the right policy environment, we can do the same thing in rail.

But infrastructure is only one part of the story. The skill crisis in rail is another area which demands investment that is not only more but smarter.

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Neil Robertson

Increased apprenticeships The National Skills Academy for Rail (NSAR) is doing a lot of the work needed to address the problem, but more commitment from industry and government is going to be needed. At NSAR we have collaborated to create new standards and to double the number of rail apprenticeships, but we are still a long way from having enough.

Programmes like Routes into Rail, which communicate the overall, long-term benefits of a career in rail – not just pay, conditions and pensions but the opportunity for personal and professional growth and development – are having an impact, as are mandated training clauses in DfT procurement contracts, but we need to reach further. There are reservoirs of potential we are not tapping, those slightly harder to reach youngsters in the more deprived corners of our country, who we haven’t reached out to before. It will require a new way of thinking and different recruitment approaches. But it can be done.

Of course, there is another dimension to the skills shortage, which is that railways are not standing still.

The rail of today is considerably more technologically complex than it was 10 years ago and is showing no signs of slowing down. Modern rail staff need new technological awareness and much greater adaptability. Which means training is longer and so more expensive. Multi-skilling staff and better enabling with technology may be part of the solution as it is in many other sectors, but it will require a new willingness to adapt and change, a culture of innovation that may be as challenging to learn as procurement processes are to rationalise.

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Multi-skilling staff and better enabling with technology may be part of the solution

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Our suppliers are seeing wage inflation that is higher than anything they have experienced before. They recognise the need to spend more on training and skills but if they can’t retain those skills because of spiralling wage inflation, there is a massive disincentive to invest.

Innovation is one of those things that everyone approves of in principle but many find a lot less comfortable in practice. Risk aversion is very much part of the rail industry DNA and the short termism of procurement practice and contract policy only reinforces the tendency. But a willingness to take risks in the right places will play a significant part in finding the more efficient railway that Williams and Shapps are promising.

NSAR is programme lead for TIES Living Lab, a collaboration of 25 partners from industry, academia and government, funded

by InnovateUK through the Transforming Construction Programme with contributions from the Department for Transport, HS2, Transport for London, Network Rail and National Highways. It is working to take some of the risk out of innovation with interrelated projects focusing on data tools, digital solutions, and Modern Methods of Construction projects. It is a good example of how a multiplicity of small steps can add up to big changes, taking a holistic, whole-life view of construction and not neglecting the importance of carbon, biodiversity and social impact.

Addressing challenges The government is not far off the mark in aiming for annual savings of £1.5 billion in a more rational national railway. But the easy efficiencies that emerge naturally from system-wide ticketing and other low hanging fruit will not be enough. We must also address deeper more fundamental challenges such as the productivity gap caused by the in-built inefficiencies in our supply chain, procurement practices that bake in short-term thinking, and wage inflation that will eat up efficiency savings if we don’t take the right steps now. There is no reason why these obstacles shouldn’t be cleared away, as the example of wind power suggests, but we need to act, and invest, now.

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Building Britain’s Railways - Major Summer May projects 2022

The Department for Transport and its role in rail The Department for Transport has been at the forefront of the rail industry for 20 years and has come under intense scrutiny throughout that period Wendy Morton : Minister of State for Transport

Delayed plans Recent major announcements have included the heavily-delayed Integrated Rail Plan (IRP), published last November more than 300 days later than originally intended. This detailed £96 billion of planned investment in the rail industry. Before that there was the Williams-Shapps Review, which sets out the plans for the biggest reform of the railway since privatisation in the mid-1990s.

Not all announcements have been well-received.

The decision to ‘pause’ the Midland main line (MML) electrification in 2015 alarmed local politicians at the time with concerns raised about the potential lost investment for the Midlands. Clive Betts, MP for Sheffield South East at the time, accused the Government of knowingly breaking promises.

Summer May 2022 2022

Pausing the MML scheme was one of several delays or cuts to planned modernisation schemes announced by the DfT that year in response to rising costs and missed targets. Not for the first time, the opposition called for change in how the railways were run. As well as MML electrification, the planned York to Manchester upgrade, which was to include electrification was also ‘paused’, however the Great Western electrification programme (GWEP) continued, although the DfT scaled back plans to electrify the railway to Didcot, Bristol Temple Meads and Swansea. The MML electrification and TRU have reappeared, this time in the IRP.

Work is well “ underway on

the London to Birmingham leg of HS2

The department began life in 1919 as the Ministry of Transport, and has undergone various reorganisations throughout its existence, however since 2002 it has been the DfT The DfT and its agencies employ 18,245 staff and a further 354 non-payroll staff, who work across the country. The organisation’s priorities are to boost economic growth and opportunity, building a One Nation Britain, improve journeys and a safe, secure and sustainable transport system.

At a recent Rail Forum Midlands event held at the Houses of Parliament, Wendy Morton discussed three areas of the DfT’s remit, beginning with investment.

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She told the event that the perceived poor quality of services outside the capital was why the IRP is so important because it “writes those historic wrongs.”

The minister said: “the equivalent funding of 10 London Olympic Games will deliver the benefits of high-speed rail through improved east west links more quickly, to more places, benefiting more people.

“Not only will this plan slash travel times between some of our biggest cities, places such as Doncaster, Leicester, and Kettering, which previous plans have overlooked, will now benefit from improved services.”

Cross party support

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T

he Department for Transport (DfT) is responsible for setting the strategic direction for the rail industry in England and Wales. Railways in Scotland are the responsibility of the devolved Government.

DfT is also responsible for funding investment in infrastructure through Network Rail (NR) as well as awarding and managing rail franchises and regulating fares.

The current secretary of state for transport is Grant Shapps, the MP for Welwyn Hatfield, who has held the role since July 2019, when he replaced Chris Grayling. He is supported by Andrew Stephenson, the minister of state for HS2 and whose portfolio also includes Northern Powerhouse Rail (NPR), Transpennine Route Upgrade (TRU) and skills, and Wendy Morton, the minister of state for rail. Her portfolio includes Crossrail, Crossrail 2, East West Rail, cycling and walking and accessibility.

She highlighted the work underway on HS2. The high-speed project was proposed by former Labour SoS Andrew Adonis in 2009 and has consistently received cross-party support. The new railway, being built in phases between London and Birmingham, the Midlands and Crewe, and then Crewe to Manchester as well as the Midlands to Leeds (albeit around half of the route will share the MML).

“Of course, you’ll all be aware that work is well underway on the London to Birmingham leg of HS2, with 340 active sites and 20,000 people employed.”

She said that HS2 will transform the Midlands region by attracting jobs, investment and regeneration. Despite her optimism, there is concern from the regions. Independent MP Claudia Webbe, who represents Leicester East, said in a parliamentary debate on 22 February that: “All the mentions related to Leicester in the 162-page IRP document are simply a repeated formulation of the electrification policy.

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Photo: Maria Victoria Smith

DfT Minister

DfT Minister

Much needed certainty Nevertheless, Wendy Morton told the Rail Forum Midlands event that investment in the region would end the brain drain of the brightest and best from the region who she said would no longer have to choose between leaving home and career advancement.

“This is an era defining project which I also hope is welcomed by the supply chain,” she said of HS2.

“Already 97 per cent of companies that have delivered HS2 work so far are British, and most of them are SMEs. I hope that this record investment in our railways for HS2 and upgrade to Northern Powerhouse Rail will give suppliers much needed certainty around the future pipeline.” This, she said, would create the certainty needed to invest in skills and training.

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Already 97 per cent of companies that have delivered HS2 work so far are British

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“Crucially, the long-awaited and long-delayed integrated rail plan was silent on the CoventryLeicester-Nottingham project, apart from an opaque mention of Coventry and of improving links in the Midlands rail hub.”

She also asked whether funding would be available via the Rail Enhancements Pipeline (RNEP).

This view, said Webbe, was shared by Conservative MPs and mayor of West Midlands Andy Street.

RNEP is a document the DfT said would be published annually to update the industry on planned projects, enabling the supply chain to invest accordingly and support the railway. The Railway Industry Association (RIA) has regularly pointed out the continued absence of the report which, as this issue of Inside Track went to press, had not been published for around 950 days.

At the same event, the minister gave some insight into the department’s thinking when it came to spending money. “Investment without reform is good money chasing after bad, and that’s why the Williams-Shapps plan for rail seeks the biggest shake-up of the industry in a generation.”

She said the plan, announced in May 2021, will get back to the basics of delivering reliable and comfortable services.

There also needs to be clear accountability, she said, and that’s what Great British Railways (GBR) will provide (see feature, pages 12-16).

Decarbonisation was the final area the minister discussed, highlighting that while rail is one of the cleanest forms of travel, rail must also play its part in reducing transport emissions. “In fact, we set a target of a net zero railway by 2050, with diesel trains phased out by 2040. Yes, it’s ambitious, but yet it’s achievable.” She claimed that more than 800 miles of track have been electrified over the past four years.

Decarbonisation NR published the Traction Decarbonisation Network Strategy (TDNS) in September 2020, which suggested routes that could be electrified across the country as well as which routes were ripe for alternative power such as batteries or hydrogen. Nevertheless, RIA stated that the UK is electrifying its railway at less than half the rate required to decarbonise by 2050. David Clarke, RIA technical director said on 14 October 2021: “New data published today shows that the UK electrified some 179 track kilometres in 2020-21, mostly on completing the MML upgrade between Bedford and Corby.

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Building Britain’s Railways - Major Summer May projects 2022

Train orders The DfT specified train orders within franchises and approved the continued use of trains that did not meet legal accessibility requirements after the deadline of 31 December 2019.

It has also previously placed train orders for 1,140 vehicles for Thameslink and 866 vehicles as part of the Intercity Express Programme (IEP) fleets for the East Coast and Great Western main lines. Both fleets have been criticised, with uncomfortable seating and unsuitable interiors for the services they operate both cited. Nevertheless, the DfT has subsequently awarded the HS2 train contract to an Alstom/Hitachi joint venture, although detailed specifications have yet to be confirmed.

One of the high-profile rolling stock decisions was included in the High Level Output Specification (HLOS) announced in the first half of the last decade to boost capacity for South West Trains. This included an order for 30 new five-car electric trains, platform extensions, the reinstatement of Waterloo International station, a re-tractioning programme for 91 electric trains and the lengthening of 30 four-car trains into 36 five-car trains. Yet, when the DfT awarded the South Western franchise to FirstGroup/ MTR it approved the bid to deliver a fleet of new trains to be built in Derby by Bombardier Transportation that would replace the fleets mentioned in the HLOS plan. At the time of the franchise announcement in 2017, the brand new trains had not entered traffic.

Today, their replacements have yet to do so.

Staff Other staff within the DfT include the parliamentary under-secretary of state for devolution, roads and light rail, Baroness Vere of Norbiton, whose remit of light rail includes tram, underground and metro systems as well as devolution which includes both union connectivity and London transport.

Summer May 2022 2022

Trudy Harrison: Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State at the DfT

Two MPs hold the role of parliamentary undersecretary of state for transport. Trudy Harrison’s role includes the future of transport, including freight, environment (including transport decarbonisation), European Union and international transport, transport research and science, the future of freight strategy and women’s safety on transport. Robert Courts is responsible for aviation, maritime, security and civil contingencies.

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The franchising system was to come under severe criticism in 2012

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“Yet, according to Network Rail’s Decarbonisation Strategy, we need to deliver 13,000 kilometres of electrification by 2050, meaning we need to be electrifying around 400 kilometres a year, more than double the rate we’re currently doing. And what’s more, with no major schemes coming down the line, we can reasonably expect that there will be less work, not more, in the coming year.”

Speaking at the Rail Forum Midlands event, Wendy Morton said: “we know that electrification doesn’t just decarbonise existing journeys, it attracts more passengers and rail freight onto the network, taking polluting cars and lorries off our roads.”

She also used the speech to highlight work by companies including rolling stock leasing company Porterbrook, working with Birmingham University on HydroFlex, a hydrogen-powered train.

Image: David Woolfall

DfT Minister

The SRA was abolished five years later under a Labour Government, with direct control being assumed by the DfT’s Rail Group.

The franchising system was to come under severe criticism in 2012 after FirstGroup won the Intercity West Coast franchise which at the time was operated by Virgin Trains (VT). A judicial review was initiated against that decision. However before that took place the then transport secretary Patrick McLoughlin scrapped the bidding, granted VT an extension and ordered a report into the franchising process. This caused several contracts to end up being relet as Direct Awards due to the ongoing process. The franchising process has since been scrapped as part of the Williams-Shapps Plan for Rail, with a concession model to replace it, with DfT taking the risk (pages 12-16).

The DfT is also responsible for setting the fares.

This is calculated using the Retail Prices Index (RPI) inflation for the remainder of the current parliament.

This covers regulated fares, however it has been criticised by organisations such as the Campaign for Better Transport (CBT). In March this year, it was confirmed that commuters face a 3.8 per cent fares rise. CBT chief executive Paul Tuohy said at the time: “If this Government is serious about shrinking transport’s carbon footprint and growing the economy, it must do more to address the high cost of public transport by prioritising fares reform, introducing more contactless and PAYG ticketing and providing a better value flexible commuter ticket to cater to the millions of new hybrid workers.”

Reopening railways There is also a permanent secretary, which is the most senior civil servant of a Government department and who is charged with running the department’s day-to-day activities. This role is nonpolitical and the role acts as the civil service chief executive of the Government department. The current DfT permanent secretary is Bernadette Kelly who was appointed to the role in April 2017, replacing Philip Rutnam.

Within the DfT there is also the Rail Strategy and Services Group, the Rail Infrastructure Group and the High Speed Rail Group.

Franchises Privatisation of the railways by the Conservative government in the mid-1990s introduced the franchise system, and while the structure of the railways has largely remained the same, management of the franchising system has changed. Originally the Director of Passenger Rail Franchising was responsible for the organisation of the franchising process, but this was replaced by the Strategic Rail Authority (SRA) in 2001.

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As part of the levelling-up agenda, the Government announced in 2020 that there would be a £500 million Restoring Your Railway Programme which aimed to begin reopening lines and stations. MPs, local councils and community groups across England and Wales were subsequently invited to submit detailed plans on how they could use the money to reinstate services. Funding is split into three categories: the Ideas Fund which is a development funding for early-stage ideas to explore options to restore lost rail services connections to communities, advanced proposals which is the support for lines and stations already being considered for restoration and those identified as having further potential via the Ideas Fund application and assessment process, and the proposals for new stations and the restoration of old station sites.

The DfT funds 75 per cent of the costs in the Ideas Fund, up to £50,000 and in the initial process there were 38 bids. The first successful scheme was the Dartmoor Railway between Crediton and Okehampton, which restored daily passenger services to the Devon town for the first time in almost 50 years.

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DfT Minister

Covid The DfT has supported the railway industry through the pandemic in response to the huge drop in passenger travel after the Government advised passengers not to travel.

During the 2020-2021 financial year, which included the majority of the strictest lockdown, £2.5 billion was generated through fares and other income, £1.3 billion through other sources and £16.9 billion from the Government, according to figures released by the Office of Rail and Road (ORR) in late-November.

Fares income for the period, which covered 1 April 2020 to 31 March 2021, dropped by £8.6 billion to £1.8 billion, compared with the previous year.

Overall the number of passengers dropped by 77.7 per cent in 2020-2021 compared with 2019-2020.

When the initial COVID lockdown was introduced in March 2020, the DfT introduced Emergency Measures Agreement (EMA) and these were

superseded by Emergency Recovery Measures Agreement (ERMA) in September 2020. The DfT designed these to support the privately-owned franchise operators to mitigate the financial impacts caused by the decline in passenger numbers, which at their lowest figure were around 4 per cent of prepandemic figures.

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DfT has so far provided almost £5 billion in support

“

The line was delivered ahead of schedule and underbudget and was engineered to the requirements of the service rather than, as in the past on projects, a service that would never operate on the line.

Further figures released by the DfT in October 2021 revealed that £8.32 billion was split between 14 operators in the 2020-2021 financial year, with a further £2.09 billion split between the same operators in the first four months of the following financial year.

The ERMAs are a temporary amendment to the underlying agreements and allow for the phased transition to new National Rail Contracts (NRC).

Monthly payments have been reducing, as planned.

The DfT has also provided financial support for

Transport for London (TfL) through four separate packages, although conditions are attached including the local government body demonstrating how it can raise an extra £400 million through additional revenue.

The current package is due to expire on 24 June and means DfT has so far provided almost £5 billion in support. The funding covers all TfL operations including London Underground, London Overground, Docklands Light Railway, Elizabeth line and Croydon Tramlink. TfL’s funding must cover all its operations, with 72 per cent of that funding provided by fares.

There has been criticism of the funding package announcements after the current deal followed short agreements which expires on 18 December, 11 and 18 February.

The Operator of Last Resort (OLR) operates a former franchise on behalf of the DfT. Currently the London North Eastern Railway (LNER), Northern Trains and SE Trains are all managed by the OLR. OLR has managed LNER since 2018 when Virgin Trains East Coast defaulted on its franchise agreement, while Northern Trains replaced Arriva Rail North which the DfT terminated. SE Trains operates the former Southeastern contract which was terminated after revenue was not declared.

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Building Britain’s Railways - Major Summer May projects 2022

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Great British Railways

A new dawn for Britain’s Railways Announced last year, Great British Railways is seen by government as the answer to the long-called for rail reform.

Strategic plan In December 2021 the Great British Railways Transition Team (GBRTT) launched a call for evidence for a Strategic Plan that is designed to provide clear long-term plans for the future rail system. This closed on 4 February and sought views on how rail can boost the economy, level up the regions and deliver environmentally sustainable transport.

Summer May 2022 2022

“

By creating Great British Railways and investing in the future of the network, this government will deliver a rail system the country can be proud of

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G

reat British Railways (GBR) is the result of the William-Shapps Plan for Rail, announced in May 2021.

The plan is for the state-owned public body to oversee the rail industry although there will be a few exceptions.

Prime minister Boris Johnson, announcing the new body, said: “By creating Great British Railways and investing in the future of the network, this Government will deliver a rail system the country can be proud of.”

A transition team has been created that is responsible for creating GBR, and this is led by current Network Rail chief executive Andrew Haines.

GBRTT has been split into several key workstreams: policy and transformation, passenger and freight services, passenger revenue, fares, ticketing and retail, and strategy and planning.

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Speaking at a Rail Forum Midlands (RFM) event in Parliament in March, Rail Minister Wendy Morton said the William Shapps Plan for Rail seeks to introduce the biggest shake-up of the industry in a generation. “It will fix long standing issues across the industry. Getting back to basics of delivering reliable and comfortable services. Ensuring that end-to-end passenger experience is effortless and accessible.”

She also moved to assure the industry that GBR will continue to collaborate. Wendy Morton said: “we will continue consulting with supply chain, building on the great collaboration between government around their bodies, and the rail supply industry that we’ve seen to date through delivering the sector deal.

“And let me reassure you that this collaboration will continue when GBR is up and running. If this reform is to succeed, it must work for the supply chain for the thousands of businesses large and small that keep our trains moving every day. And they’re essential to the industry of the future.”

However, the minister warned that there needs to be clear accountability. That is exactly what GBR will provide she said, with the body acting as a guiding mind for the industry.

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Contracts and regions Within these new contracts there will be strong incentives for operators to run high-quality services and increase passenger numbers. The DfT said that there will not be a “one-size-fits-all” approach and that as demand recovers post-COVID operators on certain routes, particularly long-distance, will have more commercial freedom. “Affordable walk-on fares and season ticket prices will be protected,” said the DfT. As well as the contracts, GBR will set fares and plan timetables while also collecting most of the fare revenue across most of England.

When GBR was announced on 20 May 2021, the statement said it would “simplify the current mass of confusing tickets with new flexible season tickets and a significant roll-out of more convenient Pay As You Go, contactless and digital ticketing on smartphones.”

Current infrastructure manager Network Rail (NR) is already Government-owned and will be absorbed into GBR. The new body will take over ownership of all the infrastructure throughout Britain that is currently owned by Network Rail.

There will be five regional divisions within GBR and these are based on Network Rail’s Putting Passengers First programme.

The budgets and delivery will be held at a local level and a national level, with regional divisions managing concession contracts, stations and infrastructure.

Summer May 2022 2022

The regional divisions will also manage the local and regional budgets, integrate track and train as well as integrating rail with other local transport.

The regions are Scotland, North West and Central, Eastern (which includes the East Coast main line), Wales and Western and Southern (which includes HS1).

“

The 30-year strategy is crucial – it will embed an alignment of the industry’s view

“

The heavily-criticised franchise model will be replaced by a concession contract system that will be controlled by the new body. The Department for Transport (DfT) said that this would be a similar model to that used by Transport for London (TfL) for the London Overground and Docklands Light Railway services.

Operators not affected by the planned changes are Elizabeth line, London Overground, Merseyrail, ScotRail and TfW Rail. Combined authorities are also not affected by the creation of GBR.

However, while the devolved administrations will be able to continue with their existing powers, they will be expected to coordinate with GBR to deliver a single national rail network. This will include one website and app, as well as following a national branding and passenger standards.

As this issue of Inside Track went to press, a competition was underway to choose the location of the GBR headquarters, with 42 towns and cities expressing an interest in being the new home for Britain’s railways. A winner is expected to be announced this summer.

Progress At a rail industry event in early May, GBRTT lead director Anit Chandarana provided an update on the plans. He said GBRTT was creating a 30-year industry strategy and that the team was working towards a draft strategy being published before the end of the year.

This, he said, would set the direction for the whole industry, whether track, train or supply chain. “The 30-year strategy is crucial – it will embed an alignment of the industry’s view, setting a clear direction for decades to come,” he said on 4 May. Regarding passenger revenue, Anit said that there is a challenge ahead, but GBRTT’s work to join up revenue, demand and financial sustainability alongside wider customer experience improvements, creates an opportunity to improve rail’s competitive position in relation to other transport modes.

He explained that GBRTT is working with the DfT on the delivery of reform of fares, ticketing and retail.

The most recent Spending Review allocated £360 million to address this issue and secretary of state for transport Grant Shapps has appointed GBRTT to take the industry-lead role in developing and delivering what Anit described as: “a revolution in customer experience on the railway.”

Contactless and digital ticketing systems on smartphone.

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Image: Great Northern

Great British Railways aims to create more integration with local authorities and light rail.

Image: Shutterstock

Great British Railways

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Great British Railways

Next steps Legislation is required to, among other things, formally bring the franchising authority and infrastructure management functions together in one new body via GBR. The DfT is currently undertaking work to consult on the legislative changes.

Anit said that while GBRTT awaits the changes, there is much that can be progressed without legislation and that a significant amount has already been done.

Summer May 2022 2022

“Undoubtedly, we face a big challenge with the ongoing impact of the pandemic and the unpredictability of passenger recovery combined with the reforms that we are progressing. But with this challenge, there is huge potential – the reforms GBR will bring as the industry’s guiding mind will unleash huge new opportunities, including for the private sector,” he said.

“

This is part of the big picture – attracting customers back to the railway

“

This will include a rollout plan for digital ticketing, which needs to be devised and simplifying the customer experience. “We live in a society of convenience, and we need to make sure that the industry matches expectations, keeping up with technological advances is a must as part of our reform. This is part of the big picture – attracting customers back to the railway,” he said.

GBRTT will explore new partnerships as part of the devolution process, aimed at understanding the priorities of local transport bodies and how any such partnership can deliver the strategic objectives of all partners involved, which would include both GBRTT and the Government. “Every part of the work we do for fares, ticketing and retail will be focussing on bringing customers back to the railway and making sure decisions take into consideration the impact on revenue recovery,” he added.

GBRTT has also been commissioned by the DfT to develop a range of rail freight growth target options.

Anit said that the team will be seeking industry input to understand the freight industry’s ambitions and challenges. “We will support freight users and as this work is developed and implemented – they will see a change for the better,” he said. “Improving the freight and logistics sector is a priority and will secure economic, environmental and social benefits across the country.”

Anit also said that the team is very mindful of distraction risk. “We need to achieve change, while ensuring that Network Rail continue to oversee the operational railway to keep that performing safely and effectively during the transition.” He said it is imperative that industry leaders, and their people, continue delivering the day-to-day passenger and rail freight services.

“This is a time of opportunity, the Government has shown its confidence in the railway – through additional support over the last couple of years, as well as its investment plans. As a collective, we’ve got a responsibility to deliver this reform,” Anit said.

A senior Inside Track source explained that in the interest of getting early legislation through, the detail may not be as thorough as expected, however the source suggests that’s the right decision.

“I think the last thing the industry needs is a very extended hiatus over two, three, four or five years,” they said. There is a window required which suggests that should a Bill be presented in Parliament before July then it could have a second reading in the late Autumn.

16

Royal Assent could then be achieved in Spring 2023. This is important as there is a suggestion that a General Election could be held next year.

This timeframe, our source said, would mean GBR could be actively mobilised in the first part of 2023 and be in place by the end of next year.

However, if the July deadline this year is missed then there is a real risk that the legislation could not pass through both the House of Commons and the House of Lords in time. If that was to materialise and all legislative progress hasn’t been completed before the General Election, then the Bill goes back to the start.

The opposition view Labour shadow minister Tan Dhesi, speaking to Inside Track, said there have been many soundbites with regards to GBR. “Whether it actually happens within this parliament is a huge question. It may take several years for that to actually come to fruition.

“But as far as the Labour Party is concerned, we are in favour of a guiding mind and organisation which actually stops the fragmented franchise model. But we think that the Government hasn’t gone far enough to establish a system.

“Once we are given a mandate by the British people, we will then come up with a consolidated plan as to what we think. And we will then implement that accordingly.”

He said there are certain things within the GBR plans that Labour agrees with and others the party doesn’t agree with. “The consultations they’ve made with industry, for example, would also be relevant. We will look very, very closely at that.

“I think the pace of change has been too slow.”

The shadow minister claimed that the pandemic was the perfect opportunity for the Government to bring rail back into public ownership. He said there also needs to be more integration with devolution in terms of rail, buses and light rail.

“We need to give more power to the regional mayors so that they can have a London-style system.”

The Labour belief, he said, is that major infrastructure projects actually happen. “There’s no point in talking about GBR if we cannot have those infrastructure projects happening.

“HS2 Eastern Leg will not be completed, the plug has been pulled on the Western link to Heathrow that the Government committed to about a decade ago and there’s still not a single spade in the ground.”

Almost as soon as the privatised railway came into force in the mid-1990s there have been constant calls for the industry to change its model.

GBR is expected to deliver that change.

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ORR

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The role of the rail regulator The Office of Rail and Road regulates the rail industry, a role that has increased over time and which is set to grow still further

Interest of investors and customers Government wants passengers at the heart of the railway and as an independent regulator, it is the responsibility of the ORR to make sure that is possible. However, at the same time the regulator must also strike the right balance with the interests of all stakeholders including investors, customers, taxpayers and other parts of the industry.

This could, for example, mean holding Network Rail (NR) to account for providing a punctual and reliable timetable for both the passenger and freight industries.

The ORR regulates the industry’s health and safety performance and is responsible for holding both NR and High Speed 1 Ltd (the operators of the high-speed line between London and the Channel

Summer May 2022 2022

Tunnel) to account. ORR sets the charges for HS1 but there is the added complexity of there being a concession agreement.

New rolling stock and infrastructure requires authorisation from the ORR before it can be used in service.

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One area the ORR has put huge emphasis on in recent years is efficiency

“

T

he Office of Rail and Road (ORR) is Britain’s rail regulator.

Decisions on the structure and funding of the rail industry are the responsibility of the Department for Transport (DfT), while that of regulation, as well as the changing needs of its customers and wider society, are the responsibility of the ORR.

The safety aspect of the ORR’s work also includes London Underground (LU), light rail systems and the heritage sector. Britain’s rail network is the safest major system in Europe, both for passengers and staff, and the ORR’s job is to provide health and safety guidance and conduct research to promote continuous improvement.

This is achieved by ensuring that operators and NR manage both passenger and occupational

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health and safety risks appropriately. If required, the ORR will investigate breaches of health and safety regulation and take either informal or formal enforcement action which can include improvement notices and prosecutions.

There is also an economic role for the regulator which has regulatory functions relating to railways in Northern Ireland and the British section of the Channel Tunnel.

Funding Funding for the ORR is provided through licence fees and safety levies while its economic regulation activities are funded almost entirely through NR’s licence fee. Costs are also recovered from its work relating to other networks not owned by NR. Health and safety activities are funded through a safety levy based on the turnover of each railway service provider. These levies can range from £0 to 0.1 per cent of reported relevant turnover for business with a turnover of more than £10m.

The ORR chief executive is John Larkinson.

His appointment was confirmed in March 2021, having held the role in an interim position since October 2018.

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ORR

Image: Shutterstock.

He joined the ORR in 2005 and held roles including director of railway markets and economics, and director of planning and performance. Overall, his railway experience totals more than 20 years.

“I’ve seen huge change,” said John. One area the ORR has put huge emphasis on in recent years is efficiency. “Network Rail had a poor record on efficiency, now it’s actually got a really good record on efficiency. And that’s really good news,” he commented.

Core tasks John continued: “Another task is what I would call providing services to the industry. People tend to think the regulator is always going around having a go at people. We do appeals, if there’s industry processes, often they come to us on appeal.

Things like access, who gets access to network.

Anyone could appeal about access decisions,” John explained.

The Elizabeth line finally opened on 24 May. This required authorisation of 70 new trains and 10 new stations. The ORR had people working around the clock to make this possible. “That’s what I mean by service,” John said. “If we don’t do our job well on

Discussions regarding how the role of the ORR will change continue.

those sorts of core tasks, new infrastructure, new rolling stock, won’t come into service and deliver benefits at the time it could.”

The ORR also has competition powers. It recently investigated the signalling market, worth £1 billion a year, which John described as dominated by two companies. The regulator looked at what could be done, and what benefits there could be by changing the market.

There is also the consumer work. John explained: “Suppose you’ve got a ticket vending machine, and it says, “Click here, for cheapest ticket,” it actually meant: “click here for cheapest ticket for one operator,” and it didn’t mention the others.

“That is mis-selling and a breach of consumer law. So, we have consumer law enforcement powers, which we use.”

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Building Britain’s Railways - Major Summer May projects 2022

John also explained the breadth of work undertaken

by ORR by highlighting some non-NR work. “I spent a lot of my time recently on Eurotunnel work because they want to put a big electricity cable through the Channel Tunnel, moving electricity through the main tunnels. It’s a huge commercial issue for them. It’s an international issue between England and France.

And it’s a safety issue. That’s a complex area that probably goes under the radar.

“As well as all the usual sort of safety risks, there’s the complexity of being within a tunnel. There’s actually only a certain number of people who have those specialisms.”

The ORR is a bit of a conglomerate said John.

There are a lot of very different tasks, each one of them impacting on the industry or people in general in a different way and this is achieved through working with a vast range of organisations such as DfT, Transport Scotland and NR for example.

“Acting with integrity with all those organisations is fundamental, because we get to see a lot of commercial and political stuff,” he said. “We’re also independent, so going back to who we are, we’ve got to think that we are an independent regulator, we do not report to any Government body. But we clearly have to act within a fiscal environment, where there’s heavy public funding.

“We’ve got different funders; Transport Scotland, DfT and local bodies. People have got to trust us to act with integrity, with impartiality, and with skill in that environment. And we have to earn that right to be trusted. The way we do that, in my mind, is by doing the job well.” He said the reason is the ORR is given more responsibility is because it does its core job well.

Summer May 2022 2022

“

We have got to design something that is future proof, as far as possible

The ORR’s role differs slightly in Scotland, John explained. The devolved government funds the industry under legislation. When a periodic review is determined, the ORR must do this separately for Scotland to that which England and Wales will receive. “That means making sure costs are properly allocated to Scotland,” he added. “I’m also very proud that we have moved away from basically just being a London-based organisation. We’ve always had regional offices, but now we have 40 per cent of people working outside London.” There are offices in Glasgow, Manchester, York, Bristol and Birmingham.

“Over the last four or five years we have seen a huge change in distribution of staff, and I think that’s good.

It’s given us a much better perspective of what’s going on in different parts of Britain.”

Wales, like Scotland, has a devolved Government, but unlike Scotland it remains part of the funding block with England. John said the ORR spent a lot of time with the Welsh Government when it was looking at what the best solution for improvements would be along the Cardiff Valley lines. These discussions included what role the ORR could play. Eventually the regulator met the bidders for the Welsh work, those working for the Government and spoke with the technical team regarding proposals for a light rail system on the Core Valley Lines (CVL) as part of the South Wales Metro plan. “Importantly we would offer advice that we could feed into the Welsh Government and find evidence and particular technical issues that would work really well. That shows us to be responsive to different parts of the country,” John explained.

Detailed specifications “Working with Transport Scotland and Transport for Wales is different to the Department for Transport. I don’t mean that in a negative sense,” John said. “The scale is different. You’ve only got to look at when we did the last periodic review and how the two governments designed their specification. Transport Scotland had an extremely detailed specification of what they wanted. We set up a tracker to track I think it’s something like 35 requirements, and we said: “well, if that’s what you want, we’re going to track each one of them, and see how it can be delivered.”

The ORR is also conducting a trial with NR on the Northumberland line to examine if processes can be run differently. “Could NR do the same process with fewer external bodies? Could we introduce clearer staged processes around that? I don’t know how this will pan out, but that demonstrates that we’re willing to reassess our own processes. What we cannot do is complain about everybody else’s processes and not be willing to look at ours.

The ORR authorises the introduction of new trains, such as the Greater Anglia Class 745s

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Image: Shutterstock.

Breadth of work

A major piece of work for the ORR in recent times has been authorising the Elizabeth Line infrastructure and trains for passenger use ahead of the May 24 opening

“

Accessibility has also seen a large focus in recent years. “We put a huge effort in terms of improving the service for people who actually need assistance.

“I think that the rail industry has done really well in the last two years, I think the industry has improved enormously. And that, again, is a consumer-type issue.”

There is also what John called the “big set piece”, which is the periodic review. Every five years the ORR has to decide how much money NR will receive over the next five-year period. “We are right in the middle of it now, and what’s particularly interesting about this one, is that whatever the decision is, about what how much money Network Rail gets, and what it has to do with it, it’s that the decision gets rolled forward into the new Great British Railways [GBR]. So that is the infrastructure settlement for GBR. It survives rail reform.

“We have got to design something that is future proof, as far as possible, to an unknown path to rail reform, and I think that’s really interesting and a difficult area for everybody.”

Image: Shutterstock.

ORR

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ORR

Important questions John added: “I think the way it’s probably going at the moment is that there won’t be much fundamental change to the legal position for pretty much everything that we did, so it may be about adding responsibility, especially the whole GBR regulation role, where there is a lot of work to be done and what that then means in more detail.

“One of the things we’re looking at now is, given that GBR will be letting the concessions, what is our involvement in that process? If they do a contractual deal with the operator, how do we effectively sit with regards to that? Do we get involved over disputes, for example? How would we think about

Image: Shutterstock.

“So, we agreed that trial and we’ve said we’ll wait to find out the results,” John explained. “If it works, then we can roll it out.”

The roll out of GBR will fundamentally change the nature of what the ORR does, John said.

“What will be different when GBR is in place is that we will be answering from essentially the passenger perspective and that will require us to build new skills and capabilities. It will require us to work differently. I think it is a fantastic challenge.”

Over the past few years the number of ORR staff based outside London has increased, with offices in cities including Glasgow, located near Central station

a major procurement process, or if a contract went to court? What would be our role in that, because we’ve never had any sort of involvement. These are exactly the sort of questions that we are discussing with the DfT and GBRTT,” John explained.

These are important but difficult questions he said, adding that there is also uncertainty, for instance, in where to pitch the ORR’s involvement.

“What residual role is the DfT keeping for itself, because that is crucial as well in terms of franchising or concession agreements. Is there a role for the DfT

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or not? These needed to be hammered out because we are at the level now of detailed design of these things,” John commented.

With GBR due to ‘go live’ in less than two years, subject to legislation, John said the ORR is working on what he calls the architecture for the future system. This includes discussing whether GBR will have a licence in the same way that NR operates, and what should it contain? “We’re working on issues like that with DfT, and then we’re also working on some of the things like the transition issue.”

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Building Britain’s Railways - Major Summer May projects 2022

The Elizabeth line

Transforming the Crossrail project into the Elizabeth line

Image: Paul Bigland

The central section of London’s new £19 billion Elizabeth line opened at the end of May with great success

Driver on the Elizabeth line at Paddington

A

fter more than three years’ worth of delays, Transport for London (TfL) finally launched the £19 billion Elizabeth line on 24 May, with passengers able to travel on the new central section between Abbey Wood and Paddington.

This followed months of speculation as well as repeated comments from senior TfL officials that the new railway would open “in the first half of 2022.”

Summer May 2022 2022

When the day finally came, TfL’s chief operating officer Andy Lord confirmed that opening the central section won’t be the end of it. On opening day, the services currently running as TfL Rail from Paddington to Heathrow and Reading in the west, and from Liverpool Street to Shenfield in the east, were rebranded Elizabeth line. However, the Elizabeth line will actually be run as three separate railways for the time being,

22

with 12 trains an hour running from Paddington to Abbey Wood. Passengers wishing to reach Heathrow or Reading will have to change trains at Paddington, those wishing to go to Essex will change at Liverpool Street.

In a few months’ time, trains will start running from Abbey Wood all the way to the West, and trains to and from Shenfield will be integrated into the system in Spring 2023.

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The Elizabeth line

The story so far

In addition, further excavations created ‘boxes’ The Elizabeth line is a new railway that runs for three of the eight new underground stations across and under London from west to east. and for crossovers, where trains can change from The underground section runs from just west of one tunnel bore to another if needed.

Over eight million tonnes of earth were Paddington station to Whitechapel, where the excavated during the construction of the new rail, route splits.

One ‘leg’ goes up into Essex, eventually station and platform tunnels.

Much of the excavated material was used to reaching Shenfield. The other terminates at create a wetland habitat for birds in Essex.

Abbey Wood in southeast London.

The project is being delivered by Transport for London subsidiary Crossrail Ltd. The name ‘Elizabeth line’ was announced by then London Mayor Boris Johnson during a visit to the project

by Her Majesty in 2016.

However, unlike the Victoria line, also named after a monarch, this is no ‘underground’ or ‘tube’ line.

The Elizabeth line operates with full-sized main line trains – each made up of nine cars and 200metres long – through the new twin-bore tunnels.

Digging those tunnels began in May 2012 and ended at Farringdon in May 2015. Eight 1,000tonne tunnelling boring machines (TBMs) created 42km (26 miles) of new, 6.2-metre-diameter rail Turning tunnels into a railway tunnels under London, up to 40 metres deep. Once the tunnels were complete, the focus of the The tunnels were lined as they were dug, using work changed to installing the railway systems 200,000 Findlay concrete segments weighing and fitting out the stations.

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This proved to be a complex task, with many

“

The Elizabeth line operates with fullsized main line trains – each made up of nine cars and 200-metres long

more ramifications than had been expected and, as a result, costs escalated and the completion date slipped from December 2018 to May 2022.

London Underground boss Mark Wild was drafted in to head up the team and get the project back on track. Negotiations between Transport for London, the London Mayor’s office and the Department for Transport released extra funding so the new line could be completed. Costs are still not completely under control, the final estimate is lower than TfL requested but higher than the government has agreed to pay. Negotiations continue…

The two biggest challenges faced by the project were integrating and testing the signalling system and completing fitout of the stations, particularly Bond Street and, to a lesser extent, Whitechapel.

Signalling integration is a challenge as trains run under three different signalling systems, all of which have to talk with each other.

In the central tunnels, a bespoke metrostyle computer-based train control (CBTC) system, developed by Siemens Mobility at its UK headquarters in Chippenham, is responsible for the safe running of services.

“

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Experience The Difference 23

Building Britain’s Railways - Major Summer May projects 2022

The Elizabeth line

Image: Paul Bigland

This style of signalling was adopted because, to get the frequency of service, trains will have to follow each other very closely.

Explaining the challenges

Summer May 2022 2022

Mark Wild describing Paddington station

“

When the pandemic hit, we took Bond Street station in house because the Costain Skanska JV contract wasn’t really suitable for the pandemic

“

of 2019. That was too early. We had the right architecture for the plan, but we mis-estimated the effort.

Moving the goalposts Mark added: “Then we set a new goal several months later, and that has stuck. We weren’t proud that we got it wrong the first time, but we created an opening plan, an architecture, on how we would stage the job, and I am really proud that we’ve pulled off the staging plan and it’s a proper engineering job.

“We staged all of the stations, we got the software right in the trains and the signalling system, we’ve got the ventilation system synchronised. I am very proud that, in 2019, our technical architects devised a way out of the hole we were in and it’s come to pass.

It’s really good.”

Image: Paul Bigland

Crossrail’s CEO Mark Wild took time to explain to Inside Track how the project had been reset and the problems he faced when he took the project over.

“I was on the board of Crossrail, so I knew the project very well,” he explained, “but I found that it had completely mis-estimated the amount of signalling and system integration it had to do. I also found an organisation that was hollowed out – we had let too many people go. So, we had two problems – to pull all this integration together and, secondly, to rebuild the team with railway specialists.

“We brought in a whole new crew of people who had done real rail projects. Jim Crawford came from HS2, Colin Brown joined as technical director – he used to be engineering and safety director at Westinghouse, we brought a lot of new people in. There were a small number of returners too, but most of the team was new.

“We had to make changes with the contractors and subcontractors as well. The big difference was we integrated the supply chain model. For example, a company like Protec, which supplied the fire integration testers – only 50 people, but they were critical. All ten major contractors were using them. So, we coordinated Protec’s work.

That’s the type of change we made.

“When the pandemic hit, we took Bond Street station in-house because the Costain Skanska JV contract wasn’t really suitable for the pandemic.

“When the pandemic came, we demobilised 7,000 people in 48 hours and remobilised them over 13 weeks. Costain Skanska, uniquely at Bond Street, had 900 people. We couldn’t find a way of doing social distancing, so we had a choice. Do we leave Costain Skanska with a contract that doesn’t really work? Or do we just take over and reset? Replacing Costain Skanska was purely a product of logistics and the pandemic, nothing that they did wrong.

“Once we had everything in place, in my first year of doing this job, we estimated the opening window and got it wrong, which just goes to show we shouldn’t really blame the people of the past.

“It was just a risk that was hiding in plain sight.

But we reset our end dates once.

“I think we managed COVID really well.

COVID really hasn’t affected us that much, I think. It’s on the record that it was about a £200 to £300 million hit, but, in terms of time, I don’t think COVID has really had a material effect.

“We set our first end date during the summer

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The Elizabeth line

When the full service is operational, the central section will have a 24-trains-per-hour service in the peak in each direction. In the east, trains will split evenly with 12 trains per hour serving Stratford and all stations on the Shenfield line and 12 trains per hour heading southeast through Canary Wharf to Custom House, Woolwich and Abbey Wood.

In the west, the plan has 10 trains per hour west of Paddington in the peak, four trains to Heathrow (Terminals 2/3 and 4), and two trains per hour to each of West Drayton, Maidenhead and Reading.

The others will terminate at Paddington.

Off-peak services will be 16 trains per hour in the central section, with eight trains per hour to each of Shenfield and Abbey Wood in the east. To the west, four trains per hour will run to Heathrow, two to Maidenhead and two to Reading. In the west, some trains do not call at all stations, so while busier stations receive up to 10 trains per hour, smaller stations generally have a minimum of four trains per hour.

At 24 trains per hour, that is just over two minutes for a train to stop, disembark and board passengers, and depart before the next train arrives. It all has to work like clockwork. Each train therefore has to be controlled individually, based on the location of the train in front. If that is delayed for any reason, then every train following it will have to react to that delay and either slow down or hold at the previous station.

To recover from a delay, every subsequent train will have a little less time at a station where possible, until the correct timetable is re-established.

It’s all very complex, hence the bespoke signalling control system. It is also all based on the display in the driver’s cab. There are no lineside signals, which reduces both the need for costly maintenance and the risk of delays due to signal failures.

The CBTC signalling system extends out of the tunnels into Abbey Wood station, the terminus in the southeast, as that lies only a mile or so from

Image: Paul Bigland

The future

Liverpool Street station

the tunnel portal at Plumstead.

In Essex, once Elizabeth line trains emerge at Pudding Mill Lane, they will switch to traditional Network Rail TPWS (train protection and warning system) signalling with lineside signals. So, trains have to be fitted with TPWS as well as CBTC, and they need to switch seamlessly from one to the other.

On the other side of London, near Paddington, there are two systems. Trains for Heathrow are using ETCS – the European Train Control System – which is a pan-European system of in-cab digital signalling that allows interchangeability between different manufacturers. There are aspirations to upgrade the whole of the Great Western main line to this system but, for now, just the spur off to Heathrow has been so equipped.

The rest of the Great Western out to Reading also uses Network Rail TPWS, but from a different control centre to the eastern section, so again the transition from one system to another has to be seamless.

This is the reason the new line is opening in stages. The two ‘open air’ sections, from London Paddington to Heathrow using ETCS and to Reading using TPWS, and from Liverpool Street to Shenfield, again on TPWS, had to be tested

May 2022

TfL in charge At the end of March 2021, Crossrail changed from being a construction site into a railway. Thereafter, the Railways and Other Guided Transport Systems (Safety) Regulations 2006 (ROGS) would apply in the central operating section.

TfL’s service and infrastructure managers became accountable for the safety, operation and maintenance of the railway, and the ‘trial running’ phase started. TfL took over lead maintenance of

Image: Paul Bigland

Paddington station

extensively alongside the CBTC used on the central section to ensure the railway was safe to open.

‘Dynamic testing’, undertaken as part of the construction phase, proved that the railway had been constructed as planned and that trains could safely run through the tunnels from one end to the other while being detected and controlled by the signalling system. Individual trains were run backwards and forwards through the tunnels to check gauge clearances, platform clearances, communications, signalling interfaces, platform edge door locations and controls and a myriad of other features.

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400,000 infrastructure assets, looking after the safety of the railway to make sure trains run reliably.

The move into ROGS was perhaps the biggest step in the delivery of the Elizabeth line so far. The benefits were significant, not least from gaining experience of using the new Railway Rule Book, but also the opportunity for operational and maintenance staff to manage a ‘live railway’.

In preparation, an extensive health and safety campaign was launched in February with the aim of briefing every person involved on the detail of what it is that they need to know for their roles and responsibilities at the transition to ROGS and the start of trial running.

A large team has been involved in preparing materials, engaging with the supply chain and rolling out the campaign for the entire programme.

Under trial running, multiple trains operated in the central tunnels and along the Great Western and Great Eastern main lines to test the timetable, while the final works to the stations were completed. This phase included integrated trials of the railway to demonstrate that the future Elizabeth line would be safe and reliable, and that it would meet the capacity and performance requirements needed to move to the final commissioning stage.

Image: Paul Bigland

The Elizabeth line

Liverpool Street station

During trial running, Crossrail increased the numbers of trains running at the same time, starting with four trains for a short period each day and then extending this to the same four trains operating for most of the day to check reliability and resilience.

Then the number of trains running simultaneously was increased to eight, and finally to 12, allowing timetable operation, timetable demonstrations and integration testing to be

undertaken. Some further outstanding works were scheduled into the programme during the trial running period. These included a combination of maintenance, snagging and enhancements and some testing and commissioning activity.

There were also four software upgrades that needed to be implemented. At these times, the programme was suspended to facilitate the testing and commissioning of signalling and control systems software configurations.

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Building Britain’s Railways - Major Summer May projects 2022

The Elizabeth line

The Elizabeth line station at Paddington is built in a box – a massive open space that was excavated from the surface downwards. The two platforms, each 208 metres long, lie 23 metres below the surface.

The box had to be built without disturbing several historical structures in the area. Brunel’s Paddington station is a Grade 1 listed building, while MacMillan House and the Hilton Hotel, which run along Departures Road, are also Grade 1 listed. In addition, the historic Osbourne Tunnel (once a postal route) passes under the western end of Departures Road, adjacent to Network Rail’s plant rooms.

Built by a Costain Skanska joint venture to

“

The Elizabeth line will be running full-sized main line trains – each made up of nine cars and 200-metres long

a design by architect Weston Williamson and consulting engineer AECOM, the concourse area is covered by a glass canopy 120 metres long by 23 metres wide. This incorporates ‘Cloud Index’, an art installation by Spencer Fitch that creates

a picture of the sky that changes according to the light, the position of the sun and the time of day. The canopy allows natural light to flood the station down to the open platform level.

Behind the scenes Mark Wild pointed out that, although the new station is impressive enough, the ‘back of house’ offices and control centre – 500 rooms in total – actually occupy 20 per cent more space than the front of house passenger areas.

Andy Lord was keen to show off a side tunnel one floor below the platform level. Coated in clean white tiles, this accesses the Bakerloo line platforms.

It was an addition to the station’s design – originally, it was anticipated that passengers would ascend to the main line station, cross its concourse, and then descend to the Bakerloo line.

However, as this was thought to inconvenience passengers too much, an engineers’ access tunnel was enlarged and enhanced to make it into a passenger route – the only one between an Elizabeth line station and an Underground station in the central section.

At platform level, the full-height platform screen doors are immediately apparent. These aren’t solely for passenger safety, they also help manage airflow, cut down on the pistoneffect created by trains running into the tunnels, and control smoke in the event of a fire. The trains and stations are also cooled, and the platform screens prevent expensive cooled air disappearing down the tunnels.

Image: Paul Bigland

Trial running was critical to increasing train mileage in the central section, establishing the reliability of the railway, and demonstrating that the Elizabeth line could run at the performance levels necessary to move into the next phase of the programme. The system ran under timetable conditions to flush out any remaining software bugs or issues.

Once trial running was completed, the final phase of testing – ‘trial operations’ – commenced on 20 November 2021. This simulated the operation of a real railway as closely as possible, involving over 150 scenarios in which volunteers helped to validate the emergency evacuation processes in trains, tunnels, shafts and stations.

Staff also practised getting disabled passengers on and off trains, seeing what effect that had on station dwell times, as well as disembarking and boarding full trainloads of passengers.

On 26 February, a train was evacuated up the Limmo Peninsular escape shaft near Canning Town in East London. This was followed by a simulated train failure just short of Canary Wharf station on Saturday 6 March. Passengers were disembarked in a controlled manner and walked a few yards to another train, which then took them to ‘safety’.

The following week, Inside Track was given the opportunity to travel on an Elizabeth line train from Paddington Low Level to Liverpool Street Low Level through the central section in the company of TfL chief operating officer Andy Lord and Crossrail chief executive Mark Wild.

“

Testing times

Paddington station

Summer May 2022 2022

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The Elizabeth line

Image: Paul Bigland

Contemplation of the platform’s design was interrupted by the arrival of a nine-car Class 345 Aventra train, built in Derby by Bombardier Transportation, now Alstom.

On departure, the train stopped at Bond Street, Tottenham Court Road and Farringdon stations, where the doors opened and closed as part of the ‘trial operations’ testing, before arriving at Liverpool Street just 12 minutes later. It was a smooth and comfortable ride – a product of the semi-resilient floating slab track that was used in the line’s construction.

Liverpool Street

Summer May 2022 2022

Andy Lord in Liverpool Street station

The central section has been built to cope with 30 trains per hour, a 25 per cent increase, and the nine-car trains can be increased to 11 cars, another 22 per cent increase. Intermediate carriages can be ordered from Alstom in Derby and incorporated into existing trains in London –

“

This stunning addition to the transport network will transform life and travel in London and the south east

“

Alighting at Liverpool Street, it has a very different appearance from Paddington. The station was built by mining, not by excavating a box, so the passages and concourse have rounded ‘tunnel’ cross-sections.

The station also looks bigger, perhaps because of that tunnel quality, although the platforms are slightly longer at 238 metres. One quirk is that, if passengers leave the front of the train and head for the nearest exit, they find themselves in Network Rail’s Liverpool Street station – no surprise there.

However, if they leave the rear of the train and head for the nearest exit, they find themselves in Network Rail’s Moorgate station! The Elizabeth line platforms span the gap between the two overground stations.

Built by Laing O’Rourke to a design by architect Williamson Eyre and engineer Mott MacDonald, space was at a premium. This meant that there was nowhere to position a conventional lift shaft, so an inclined lift had to be installed alongside the escalators.

Archaeologists were called in as it was known that the site of the new station took in the Bedlam burial grounds, established in 1569 outside London’s city walls to ease the growing overcrowding of local cemeteries. 10,000 people were thought to have been buried there, but no one was expecting 3,300 of them to be recovered by Crossrail workers.

The remains were reburied at The Willows cemetery on Canvey Island.

This delayed the programme, but Laing O’Rourke and its subcontractors caught up the lost time and completed the station as planned.

The Elizabeth line service is being delivered by MTR under a concession arrangement. Paddington station is operated by MTR, while the other central stations – Bond Street, Tottenham Court Road, Farringdon, Liverpool Street and Whitechapel – are operated by London Underground, though there are MTR train despatchers on the platforms.

Once the whole line is in full operation, 24 trains per hour will be running through the central section, giving an anticipated capacity of 200 million passengers per year. If this proves to be inadequate, there are two ways to increase capacity still further.

a process that has already increased a number of the original TfL Rail seven-car sets to nine cars.

Once the Elizabeth line is in full operation, it will ease congestion on the Underground’s Central line and, to some extent, the Jubilee line. How everything will pan out as Londoners start to return to the capital and their workplaces following the COVID-19 pandemic is unclear, but travelling will certainly be quicker and more convenient for decades to come.

Open to all Passengers flocked to travel on the Elizabeth line following its official opening on 24 May. The first public train left London Paddington at 06:33.

There were more than 600 people travelling on the nine-car Class 345 electric multiple unit, one of 70 built for London’s new railway. The train arrived at Abbey Wood one minute early.

Transport for London (TfL) said that, by 10:00 on the first day, there had been an estimated 130,000 journeys across the Elizabeth line network. Of these, around 65,000 involved the new central section

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between Paddington and Abbey Wood, with 14,000 entries and exits recorded at Paddington, 9,000 at Canary Wharf and 6,000 at Woolwich.

By 29 May, one million passengers had travelled on the new section of railway.

The first day of service was exactly one week after HM The Queen attended a ceremony at Paddington alongside prime minister Boris Johnson, during which she unveiled a plaque marking the completion of the construction of the project.

Andy Byford, London transport commissioner said on 24 May: “It was fantastic to see thousands of excited customers waiting for the Elizabeth line to open this morning and board the first trains from Paddington and Abbey Wood.

“This stunning addition to the transport network will transform life and travel in London and the south east by dramatically improving transport links, cutting journey times, adding capacity, transforming accessibility and supporting the economic recovery and growth throughout the country for years to come.”

Speaking to Inside Track at Woolwich on the first day, he said that TfL has scaled the ridership prediction for 2026 back from 250 million passengers per year to 200 million, However he said of those figures: “You never know, as London and the UK recovers from COVID, as offices begin to repopulate, we may have underestimated. I know this line will be a success.”

Also speaking at Woolwich, Mayor of London Sadiq Khan said: “The stations are like underground cathedrals. The trains are the epitome of British ingenuity. This is the best railway in the country, in the greatest city in the world. I was in New York a couple of weeks ago, and they’re jealous.

“They’re jealous in Hong Kong and Singapore, in Paris, in Madrid, Barcelona and across the globe.”

The trains are operated by MTR Elizabeth line (MTREL). Chief executive officer of MTR UK

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Image: TfL

Steve Murphy said: “I am particularly pleased for two groups of people that this day has arrived.

“Firstly, for Londoners who have always been so supportive of this immense project, and secondly, for our outstanding colleagues at MTREL. Commencing services on the Elizabeth line would not have been possible without their considerable effort and expertise and I’m incredibly proud of their achievements.”

Secretary of State for Transport Grant Shapps MP said: “As iconic as its namesake, the Elizabeth line is a beacon of British success, not just for this marvel of engineering but for the enormous benefits it brings to the entire nation.” He said the new railway was worth £42 billion to the economy and created 55,000 jobs.

“London’s transport network is its lifeblood and the £9 billion we’ve contributed to make the Elizabeth line a reality is once again testament to our unwavering support for this marvellous city, its inspiring people and the millions of visitors it attracts every year,” said Grant Shapps.

The Department for Transport (DfT) said that commuters across London would benefit from cheaper passenger journeys with ticket prices cut from £6.30 to £4.30. Journey times from Abbey Wood to Paddington have been halved – from 58 minutes to 29 minutes.

The DfT also said 5,000 of those new jobs had gone to previously unemployed workers. Of the contracts placed, some 96 per cent were awarded to companies within Britain, with 60 per cent of these to businesses outside London.

Darren Caplan, chief executive of the Railway Industry Association, called the Elizabeth line an

HM The Queen meets senior Elizabeth line staff.

railbusinessdaily.com

Image: TfL

The Elizabeth line

HM The Queen unveils a plaque at Paddington.

exceptional achievement for TfL, the government and the UK rail industry. “It is a bold project that will not only transform how passengers travel across London, but it will also boost economic growth for the capital and the country as a whole,” he added.

Long-term service plan The trains were built at Derby Litchurch Lane. The order for the trains was placed with Bombardier Transportation, which was subsequently acquired by Alstom at the beginning of 2021.

Nick Crossfield, Alstom managing director, UK & Ireland, said: “The Elizabeth line is set to transform London and become one of the world’s leading urban transport operations. I’m immensely proud of the leading role Alstom has played in the Crossrail project and will continue to do so, delivering reliable high-quality trains for Londoners.”

Alstom will maintain the train fleet for the next 32 years as part of the rolling stock and services provision contract.

The Alstom-led ATC joint venture, involving TSO and Costain, also designed, constructed, testing and commissioned infrastructure on the railway. ATC delivered the traction power supply for the trains, incorporating Alstom’s own feeding systems, non-traction power suppliers for the stations, shafts and portals, tunnel ventilation systems and other electric and mechanical systems.

ATC also laid the track, including 5,500 highattenuation sleepers designed to reduce noise and vibration, and built a new maintenance depot at Plumstead.

The Nichols Group supported the Crossrail programme in key areas including strategy and programme management, with its involvement stretching back to the first feasibility study in 1989.

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Owners Kathryn and Frances Nichols said: “The Elizabeth line will deliver incredible economic, environmental and social benefits for communities across the city, all whilst contributing to its reputation as one of the world’s most vibrant, advanced and environmentally responsible cities in the world. As we emerge from the pandemic, this opening represents a new era for London.”

Siemens Mobility has delivered digital signalling and station management systems.

The company supplied the CBTC signalling and control system for the central section, and undertook the design, manufacture, installation, testing and commissioning of the equipment. The CBTC system, Trainguard MT, enables a highfrequency and automated train operation in the central section. It was tested in Braunschweig, Germany. The CBTC system has been integrated with other elements of the signalling and platform screen door systems at the company’s testing facility in Chippenham.

Romford control centre Siemens Mobility has also provided communication and control systems that are run from the Elizabeth line’s Romford control centre, or stations operations rooms on the route. This links up more than 30,000 connections from CCTV, public address, passenger information systems to rail and station systems and also includes several different languages.

Not all of the £19 billion new railway was open on the first day. Bond Street is the only one of the new-build central London stations yet to open, with this expected to be later in the year. The next phase of the opening will happen this autumn when through trains will begin running from Abbey Wood to Reading and Heathrow and from Shenfield to Paddington.

Building Britain’s Railways - Major Summer May projects 2022

RSSB

Moving with the times Mark Phillips, CEO of the Rail Safety and Standards Board, discusses how the organisation is embracing change

A

Image: RSSB

s it approaches its 20th anniversary, the Rail Safety and Standards Board (RSSB), much like the rail industry itself, is embracing major changes. Brexit and a focus on commercial activities designed at reducing the financial burden on its members has meant a change in the way the RSSB operates.

Established in 2003, RSSB is a not-forprofit organisation owned by major industry stakeholders. It was created following key recommendations from the Lord Cullen public inquiry which followed the fatal Ladbroke Grove accident of October 1999 when 31 people died.

Since 2016, Mark Phillips has been RSSB chief executive officer. His rail career stretches back to British Rail. He was head of operating planning and engineering at Railtrack and regional director Anglia for Network Rail (NR). Mark also held the deputy managing director role for London Eastern Railway when operated by National Express.

Expanding membership

Summer May 2022 2022

Mark says that compared to other sectors, rail has a very limited number of consumer and trade bodies. “You have one for the train operators, the Rail Delivery Group, you have one for the suppliers, the Rail Industry Association. Then you’ve got the regulator, the Office of Rail and Road, which is both the economic and the safety regulator. You’ve got the standards body and the safety monitor, which is us, and you’ve got an investigator, the Rail Accident Investigation Branch, and that’s it.”

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Whether you’re an infrastructure manager, we are making the standards changes for the best interest of the railway

“

RSSB’s research work is funded by a direct grant from the Department for Transport (DfT) while the safety work is funded by a membership levy.

Phillips says during his tenure the RSSB has been moving the business squarely into the commercial space. “We have extended our membership to affiliates, international affiliates, so where international rail systems and operators want to get access to our services, they can through an affiliate scheme. We’ve got affiliates in Australia, so that’s a growing opportunity.” Services including training and bespoke consultancy, specific technical issues where RSSB engineers have a unique knowledge and understanding, particularly in applying engineering to regulation, is where the organisation has deep knowledge.

“Supply assurance generates a bit of a margin as well,” Phillips says. “That gives us the opportunity to pull the surface from those commercial opportunities into funding our frontline engineering work and reducing the burden on our members. For every pound that we make on our commercial work, it’s a pound less we need to raise via the membership levy.”

By the end of Control Period 6 (31 March 2024), the commercial activity will be about 35 per cent of the RSSB’s total income.

Phillips explains the RSSB’s various roles. “The first part is around standards. And it’s around the compatibility of the system.

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“If you’re a supplier, you need assurance that the other widget that you make is going to fit the rest of the system. If it’s a piece of signalling kit, you know that it’s going to work in Weymouth as much as it’s going to work in Inverness, if that’s what network was specified.”

Creating railway standards For rolling stock manufacturers this is particularly important because it provides reassurance that the train they are building will be compatible with the signalling and electrification systems and the gauge and structures. Pre-Brexit the RSSB also effectively represented Britain in Europe. For European standards, a lot of the technical specifications for interoperability were written and designed by the RSSB. “After Brexit, I think there was quite a lot of concern about how the gaps will be filled that our people had occupied on those committees and drafting groups,” says Mark. “With Brexit, we now take full responsibility for the railway group standards for Britain, and we carry out that work on behalf of the Secretary of State. So, the Secretary of State is technically the signatory of those standards under the Brexit legislation, but we prepare them under his name.”

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Eye on safety The second area provided by the RSSB is safety.

“In order to do that we need to understand what’s going on in the industry now, so we are the industry safety monitor. We collect data across the sector and all the incidents that happen from a simple trip or fall on a platform through to a fatal accident.

“The more that we can understand the background to what happened on the big events, the more helpful we can be. From that, we’ve developed an approach to managing safety risk, and that is leading health and safety and Britain’s railway strategy.”

The approach has been categorised into risk areas. Some may be operational risk, or asset risk. They may be a freight risk, trespass or level crossings. These are grouped around 12 topic areas and then RSSB provides guidance and services to members to help them manage those risks and reduce them.

“We might produce tools that members can download from our website, or there might be guidance that they can apply in a local station environment. As required, we would work directly with members to help them implement those tools into their business models so that they can use them in a day-to-day environment.”

Mark says that the organisation also manages the safety risk model. This is a tool RSSB uses to calculate the industry risk. “That can be applied by the duty holders and train operators in the routes to understand what the risk is for their particular part of the network, and then they can put that change that they may be introducing to determine whether they can reduce the risk that the industry faces.”

Summer May 2022 2022

The third area that the RSSB covers is around sustainable development. This has really picked up as the industry starts to comprehend what it needs to do to decarbonise the rail network to meet the Paris climate change targets and the target set by former rail minister Jo Johnson for a diesel-free rail service by 2040 says Mark.

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The industry needs to improve its approach to technical advancement

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By being independent, the RSSB can make sure it is making the right business decisions.

“We’re not swayed by one party,” says Mark.

“Whether you’re a robot manufacturer, or whether you’re an infrastructure manager, we are making the standards changes for the best interest of the railway.”

For each standards change proposed a business case is prepared by the RSSB. This includes the cost of implementing the change and benefits that arise. “Some of those will be commercial benefits, because you make the entire system lower costs by doing things in a particular way. It may be that you can generate long-term customer benefits.

“One of the improvements that we did was to provide some standards about Wi-Fi connectivity on trains, so you can ensure that you get a better chance of a signal.

“It might be obviously safety improvements in another area, but it’s that collection of groups and placing a value on those for the period ahead that contributes to the business case.”

“We are at the stage where we have been working with our members to write the strategy. That’s the approach effectively, and that will go into the whole industry strategic plan. That’s the overarching strategy that Great British Railways are producing.

“We’re writing the Sustainable Development chapter, but we’re rapidly moving on now to well, okay, you’ve got the strategy, but what does the industry need to do? What if I was a train operating company, what would I need to do in my business to deliver my component parts? We’re starting to work on the tools, modules and support that they will need in order to help make their bits of the network compliant with the strategy.

“That’s going to be a huge challenge, because that’s going to need some funding. And I think Treasury and DfT are going to have to really work very hard to identify where the funds for some of these changes will come from, because clearly electrification will need to be extended for quite large bits of the electrified network in order to achieve some of these targets.

“Investment in hydrogen powered networks to be able to fuel trains, if we’re going to have hydrogen trains.

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“And battery development for some services may be appropriate. You’re going to need plants to build batteries that are suitable for trains and to either upgrade existing rolling stock to make them capable of using batteries or, in some cases, it might even be new trains for the batteries. There’s a lot of work that’s going to be required on this.”

Evolving standards The fourth area of RSSB activity is rail research.

Most of that is underpinning the workings of standards, the safety and the sustainability Mark has already mentioned.

“Where we’ve got work on changing standards, that may require a research project in order to inform what those changes should be. A lot of the research we do is underpinning those first three areas. The second thing is that we are drafting a technical strategy. We’re starting to think about what technologies the industry needs over the next 30 years in order to advance. It is particularly looking at signalling control systems. You’re moving into more real time train planning rather than doing things in six-month cycles. There’s a lot of work going on in terms of thinking ahead as to what the long-term plans are. But the industry needs to improve its approach to technical advancement, which, when you talk to automotive and aviation, they’re significantly ahead in that regard.”

RSSB is seeking to create a process by which things can be done efficiently. In many ways it is providing the fulcrum for innovation says Mark.

“It’s providing some base level requirements that people need to understand for their widget to work.

“It’s not about suppressing things down to a ‘well, this is the standard and therefore everything’s going to be at this level’. That’s not how it works. It’s providing the base on which you can build upwards.”

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Improving safety The third leg is specific accident investigation, which is the RAIB. “A team of inspectors will go out and examine a particular accident and make recommendations for improvement across the industry, some of which may fall on RSSB, because it may actually require us to take some action in terms of changing a standard or it might be about improving, sharing or learning so that that doesn’t happen again in the future.”

Phillips explains that RSSB doesn’t have a relationship with the heritage rail network unless it operates on the national rail network.

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Nor is it responsible for the light rail industry, however there is a version of the RSSB for that sector. Phillips suggests there could be opportunities to collaborate in the future.

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We have worked a lot with our members on developing a programme of work around everything from addressing mental health to musculoskeletal problems, through to hygiene

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Following Brexit, RSSB is keeping itself aligned with European TSIs as far as practicable.

This helps the supply chain ensure it can get benefit from low costs. “In most cases it makes absolute sense to be aligned with where the majority of the market is,” Mark suggests. “But it works both ways. There are things that we are looking to develop in our standards that we are communicating so that businesses are aware we are refreshing our TSI. There will be circumstances where it is more efficient for us to deviate in some way, and when those situations arise, this comes back to the business case. I think, in a way, we’re supposed to get the best of both worlds, we get the benefits of alignment where it’s appropriate. But equally, we get an idea where we need to do things in a specific way for our own requirements.”

The ORR creates the standards for a safe railway and the RAIB reports on what went wrong. Mark describes the RSSB’s relationship with ORR and RAIB as a three-legged stool. “The responsibilities are clear and separate between the different outfits. RSSB’s role is to help the industry understand safety risks that it faces and the guidance for that. We do that by understanding what’s going wrong in the industry, monitoring safety performance, collecting and analysing data and producing an annual safety report. It’s that guidance and risk analysis that really sets the bar in terms of what should be done. The ORR’s role is to carry out inspections and validate whether an entity or duty holder is operating its business in line with its safety management system. Each business is responsible for its own safety systems.

The ORR will ask the business if it is managing risks in an appropriate way. If it finds it isn’t, it will submit enforcement action.

“The regulator has a duty of law, if necessary, to prosecute. They take enforcement action against the duty holder if they’re not acting within parameters set either by law, or that are appropriate and suitable to manage that particular risk. That’s why that division is important.”

Image: Hitachi

RSSB

Despite the pandemic and the decision to provide rebates on the increase in RSSB revenue, the organisation expanded some services. There is a particular focus on health and wellbeing, which Phillips says is an area the industry has not really tackled.

“We have worked a lot with our members on developing a programme of work around everything from addressing mental health to musculoskeletal problems, through to hygiene.”

The RSSB has representatives from infrastructure managers, all the train operating companies, the supply chain, the freight operating companies and what are classified as the contractors.

“In that regard, we’re the only organisation that has that sort of 360 degree of membership right across the industry. And that’s what makes the work we do particularly interesting, because you get to see all facets of the industry. I’ve worked in the industry for nearly 36 years and there are not many places that you get that opportunity to see all those different perspectives.

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“I think it’s both rewarding, but also it has placed you in the ideal position in the industry to find the best technical advice that is in the best interest of the whole system.

“And not just train operators or infrastructure managers, you’re looking at it also from the supply chain. And from the rolling stock manufacturers and the leasing companies during a meeting to discuss something like this, you’d have all of them around the table.”

Commercial opportunities With the rail industry being reformed, what does the future hold for the RSSB? Mark says: “We want to continue to reduce the burden on members. Moving into a more commercial operation is important and that’s a familiar path several organisations like RSSB follow. If you look at the Carbon Trust, that was an outfit that used to provide technical advice on decarbonisation, to industry sectors, and they’ve become fully private.

I’m not saying RSSB could achieve that, but we can certainly continue to increase our commercial opportunity and reduce the member burden. I think that is important. We’re going to continue in that direction.

“But I think there are options around how we might sort of grow a little bit in terms of our occupancy of light rail and heritage rail. Those are areas that are not yet within our sphere of operation, but they have sort of tentacles of their own, and they might be worth investigating in the future.

“There are potential options, in terms of working with other outfits on an international opportunity. But we’ll have to see how those stack up in the future.”

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Tr a n s p o r t f o r Wa l e s

Seismic change in Welsh rail transformation James Price, CEO of Transport for Wales, discusses major projects in the pipeline

James Price, CEO of Transport for Wales

Old to new Key to the winning bid was the transformation of the services, with ownership of the Core Valley Lines (CVL) network transferring from Network Rail (NR) to the Welsh Government and a fleet of 148 new trains ordered from CAF and Stadler.

Refurbished trains would also be cascaded from other parts of the network, but the plan was that around 95 per cent of the fleet would be new. This would transform the age of the fleet from one of

Summer May 2022 2022

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It’s the Welsh Government’s aspiration, that they should get full devolution of all rail infrastructure in Wales

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he Welsh rail net work is undergoing a major transformation. New trains, new infrastructure and a new focus on how services should be delivered are being introduced, led by the Welsh Government, which controls the railways in Wales.

Seismic change was promised as part of the KeolisAmey joint venture, which was announced as the winner of the new franchise in June 2018.

This would replace incumbent operator Arriva Trains Wales, which had been in place since October 2004.

Britain’s oldest to one of the country’s newest in a relatively short period and reverse years of underinvestment.

The new trains are a mixture of Class 197 diesel multiple units being built by Spanish manufacturer CAF at its facility in Newport, south Wales, which will be used on longer-distance services and Class 231 diesel electric multiple units from the Swiss manufacturer Stadler. There will be tri-mode (diesel, electric and battery-powered) Class 756s built by Stadler that will operate alongside the 231s while Stadler will also deliver Class 398 electric tram-trains, which will operate

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on the CVL. Stadler is building the Class 231s and 756s in Switzerland and the tram-trains in Valencia, Spain. Production is under way, with the first Class 197s delivered to north Wales and Class 231s delivered to Cardiff for testing and training, and testing of the other fleets is under way. It is expected that the first new trains will enter service this year.

James Price is the chief executive of Transport for Wales (TfW), the rail operating company wholly owned by the Welsh Government that manages the subsidiary TfW Rail Ltd. TfW is not a statutory body, while its rail operations within Wales are entirely funded by the Welsh Government.

Cross-border service TfW Rail operates services in Wales, but also serves English destinations including Chester, Birmingham and Manchester. Likewise, there are regular cross-border services operated by Great Western Railway, Avanti West Coast and CrossCountry, governed by the Department for Transport (DfT), which serve Wales.

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Amicably finalised “The normal contract model couldn’t stand it anymore,” said James. “We would have had to flex it so much that it was not good value for money.

So, through amicable means we wrapped up that contract. There was no real dissatisfaction with what they were doing.”

Such was the amicable way this was finalised; Amey has been retained as the infrastructure manager for the CVL network. This also means that Amey is managing, on behalf of TfW, most contracts for trackwork, platform extensions and the construction of the Taff Wells depot.

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Mk 4 coaches at Cardiff Central

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We said your role is to run a really good rail service. A boringly reliable rail service and to be the front end of what is quite a big transformation programme

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TfW was originally created to provide guidance and procure the next rail franchise, which replaced Arriva. However, the COVID-19 pandemic resulted in the subsequent new franchise being nationalised from February 2021.

Nationalisation only happened because the model created for TfW couldn’t stand the financial situation created by the pandemic and the subsequent lack of passengers. The Welsh Government offered different travel advice and issued stricter lockdown rules than the British Government applied for England.

Image: TfW

Tr a n s p o r t f o r Wa l e s

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Amey acts as the managing agent, however, with the actual contracts still passing through TfW. There is more to the Welsh transformation than just the CVL. “We also use the term Metro for a project in west Wales and in north Wales. Which, broadly speaking, means a minimum of four services an hour on a kind of turn-up-and-go basis,” said James.

South-west Wales remains more of a paper exercise currently, but in north Wales there are active projects. James says there is serious money being spent in the region but there won’t be much groundbreaking because of the geography, and there are plans for buses to play quite a big role.

Building Britain’s Railways - Major Summer May projects 2022

The CVL programme will be transformative for the area. “The Valleys will be a turn up and go, minimum four services an hour. That increases in the middle of the Metro area, it will be 12 to 14 services. Then it reaches its peak going through Queen Street, which is 16,” James explained.

“We started calling it smart electrification, but what does that mean? It is discontinuous electrification with batteries. It will be the first time it has been deployed at this scale. We’ve got wires almost everywhere. A lot of the wires will be earthed sections, so not live, which means that for certain bridges and structures, and areas where you would get electromechanical interference, you will not have live wires. This means that we don’t need to move a bridge, we don’t need to move the structure, but the wires still lead.”

Introducing the tram-trains on the CVL is not designed to be replacing heavy rail trains with an inappropriate vehicle, rather this has been designed with the idea of facilitating extensions. James said: “There’s a whole programme of work looking at what those extensions might be in the future.

“As part of phase one, very little new railway. As part of phase two, there’s lots of potential schemes being looked at, some of which will be much closer in terms of build times than others. Extending down into Cardiff Bay looks like a proposition that could happen quite quickly. There is the potential to go to a new cancer hospital in Cardiff. And there’s a

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What everyone is telling me is this is a bigger job than it looks. So, we took the decision that we would focus TfW Rail solely on running a service and getting a reliable service out

couple of Valleys ones where we might extend on an old line. There’s also quite a lot of new track and doubling going in on the existing beds.

“The other point that’s probably worth making is that to get the scheme off the ground we have economised slightly, so we’re not four tracking

two tracks in most places, we have got a series of passing loops built to fit the timetable and the rolling stock that we have, particularly with the Metro vehicles.”

Before TfW transforms the network, the number of route miles it has taken ownership of is about 10 per cent of the network in Wales but, pre-COVID, it was carrying about 50 per cent of the passengers. This is because it is the commuter network around Cardiff. “It’s the Welsh Government’s aspiration, that they should get full devolution of all rail infrastructure in Wales,” added James. “So that’s worth knowing, but I don’t think it’s going to happen overnight.”

Taking ownership In Scotland, the infrastructure is operated or maintained by NR, but there is a separate budget so every time the Office of Rail and Road (ORR) does its determination for how much funding is available, the ORR must produce one for England and Wales and then one for Scotland.

Image: TfW

Smart electrification

A new Stadler Class 231 inside Cardiff Canton

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North Wales Metro will be a mixture of bus and trains. In time the south east and south west Metros will evolve into something similar. James added: “The big thing that we will then want to do is to fully integrate those services, so we don’t have a publicly subsidised bus competing with publicly subsidised rail. And we use all mileage that is subsidised in the most efficient way to cover Wales, in the way that people expect. So, we’d look to strip out competition, for example, and use that money to hub into the most efficient service that we’ve got, whether that be bus or rail.

“If you were to pick on the A470 corridor in south Wales, from the Valleys down, we will have a high frequency Metro running up and down. Now I don’t know what the average speed is, but it is higher than the average speed you would achieve on the dual carriageway beside it.

“At the minute, there’s an equivalent number of subsidised buses running up and down the A470 literally right beside the Metro. Now we need to think it through because there might be some good reasons for doing that. But on the face of it, it appears that the subsidy that’s going into the competing routes would be better served by punching further into the communities at both ends.”

Image: TfW

Tr a n s p o r t f o r Wa l e s

Ongoing infrastructure work on the Welsh rail network

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Is taking ownership of the CVL the first step to separating that and make putting Wales on the same model of Scotland? James said: “We have been asked that a few times and our view on record at both political level and TfW level is no, not really.

Speaking to Scotland, they don’t think that’s a particularly good deal. And I think our aspiration is to be masters of our own destiny.

“Now, that might mean we can track a lot of it back to NR. It might mean we would get into a joint venture with them. And we’re certainly not being negative or against NR, we’re working really closely with them. But I think we would want to go beyond simply having a budget carved out for Wales.”

Boringly reliable The managing director of TfW Rail Ltd is Jan Chaudry van der Velde. His remit is quite different.

James explained: “It is more focused than a normal MD at a TOC. We have removed a lot of the stuff that a normal MD would have to do around communications, around engaging with government and around contract management, and we said your role is to run a really good rail service. A boringly reliable rail service, and to be the front end 2205 RBD Half Page AD.pdf 1 24/05/2022 12:52:51 of what is quite a big transformation programme.

An aerial view of the new tram-train depot being built at Taffs Well

Image: TfW

Tr a n s p o r t f o r Wa l e s

“In essence we will have replaced every bit of rolling stock we’ve got within four years, we will be running what amounts to a new railway, the Metro, with a completely new system operating approvals process from the ORR. “Pretty much all the track is new, all the signalling will be new. And what everyone is telling me is this is a bigger job than it looks. So, we took the decision that we would focus TfW Rail solely on running a service and getting a reliable service out.

“His strategy should lead to a better day-to-day delivery. We can have the operational people solely focused on being operational with the challenge of being customer focused on all times.”

There is also an infrastructure team that is project managing the building of the Metro through the supply chain through Amey and other contractors; there’s also project managing on NR infrastructure, either where NR is allowing TfW to work on its infrastructure or where TfW is project managing NR to use its money on the infrastructure company’s assets. “The day-to-day relationship is pretty good,” said James.

Transformation plans TfW also operates into England and manages Chester station. The DfT’s authority finishes at the border, but he says the system works well. “My view is when we are providing services that people at the borders are content with, and the DfT is content with us providing them, then the system works well.”

There is a lot of transformation planned in the next few years in Wales, with James and his team at the helm.

“One of our values is to be the best. It would be nice to be the best,” he concluded.

The level of investment in trains and infrastructure combined with the value placed on customer service means it’s entirely possible that TfW could soon be the benchmark for others.

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Building Britain’s Railways - Major Summer May projects 2022

Image: Shutterstock

TfL

Keeping London connected Transport for London (TfL) is responsible for transport across the nation’s capital and now faces new challenges in the post-pandemic world

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ransport for London (TfL) is the integrated transport authority that runs the day-to-day operation of the London’s public transport network and manages the capital’s main roads.

It is responsible for meeting the Mayor’s strategy and commitments on transport in London and the target he set for 80 per cent of all journeys to be made on foot, by cycle or using public transport by 2041.

As well as roads and buses, TfL runs several substantial rail networks which are used by Londoners both to commute to work and to move around the capital.

The rail network London Underground has 11 lines covering 250 miles (402km) and serving 272 stations. In normal times, it carries up to five million passenger journeys a day, with as many as 543 trains on the network during peak periods. TfL is in charge of all aspects of the Tube’s operations including running the trains, stations and control centres, making sure the Tube is safe and secure and collecting and protecting fares revenue.

TfL is also responsible for maintaining and renewing most of the infrastructure, although a few services run on Network Rail track. It is partway through a multi-billion-pound programme to make Underground services more reliable, frequent and accessible.

Summer May 2022 2022

This includes introducing new trains on the Piccadilly line, resignalling the sub-surface railway (Metropolitan, District, Circle and Hammersmith & City lines), replacing track and rebuilding some of the busiest and most complex stations.

The Docklands Light Railway (DLR) stretches east from Bank and Tower Gateway to Stratford, Beckton, Greenwich, Lewisham, London City Airport and Woolwich Arsenal. Opened in 1987, it operates as a driverless, computerised system.

TfL sets the specifications for train frequency, performance, fares and revenue and also plans and funds improvements and extensions to the network. KeolisAmey Docklands (KAD) operates trains and stations and maintains much of the network on TfL’s behalf under a contract than has now been extended until 2025.

London Overground is a network of six routes – Richmond and Clapham Junction to Stratford, Watford Junction to Euston, Gospel Oak to Barking (extending to Barking Riverside in the autumn of 2022), Highbury & Islington to New Cross, Clapham Junction, Crystal Palace and West Croydon, Liverpool Street to Enfield Town, Cheshunt (via Seven Sisters) and Chingford, and Romford to Upminster.

Arriva Rail London manages the network’s stations and trains day-to-day while Network Rail manages and maintains most of the track and signals - London Overground is part of the National Rail network.

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TfL sets the specifications for train frequency, station facilities and overall performance, and is responsible for fares and revenue.

TfL Rail was rebranded Elizabeth line for the start of operations on the central section between Abbey Wood and Paddington on 24 May. Services also currently run between Paddington and Heathrow Airport and Reading, and Liverpool Street to Shenfield. MTR Crossrail manages and operates trains and stations day-to-day while TfL sets the specifications for train frequency, station facilities and overall performance, and is responsible for fares and revenue.

Tram Operations Limited (TOL), a subsidiary of First Group, operates trams day-to-day on the capital’s tram network. Services run from Croydon to Wimbledon, Beckenham Junction, Elmers End and New Addington. Once again, TfL sets the specifications for tram frequency and performance, is responsible for fares and revenue, carries out maintenance and plans and funds improvements and extensions to the network.

Integration TfL commissioner Andy Byford is making changes to integrate the various transport businesses into one.

London Underground head Andy Lord has been appointed TfL chief operating officer, responsible for the operation of all TfL services, including buses.

Deputy commissioner Gareth Powell is responsible for customers and revenue, strategy and planning and investment decision making.

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TfL

Beyond rail While TfL’s ownership of the Underground and control of the buses is well known, how much of London’s road infrastructure comes under TfL? “The majority of the road network is with the London boroughs, all 33 of them,” Gareth explained. “But TfL owns directly and operates the major roads in London – many of the major bridges, the big fly overs, things like the A roads and so on. TfL is the overall movement authority for roads, so we operate all of the traffic lights across London, we control the movement of traffic and we have the overall strategic responsibility for the road network as a whole, its development and evolution.

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Rotherhithe Tunnel

“TfL also is responsible, on behalf of the Mayor, for administering any road-user charging policies, so we operate the congestion charge, for example, and low emission zones.”

TfL operates its railways using a mix of fare revenue and funding from the Mayor’s office, some of which is supported by the Department for Transport and the Treasury. Pre-COVID, around 70 per cent of the day-to-day funding came from fares, meaning that TfL was moving towards a position where it was able to cover its operating cost. Government grants were therefore only really needed for major improvement and enhancement projects.

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The last thing we want, and the last thing that that the government wants, is for TfL and the Underground network to go backwards

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“Previously we had, effectively, two big operating divisions,” Gareth Powell explained.

“We had surface transport and we had London Underground. I was the MD of surface transport and Andy Lord the London Underground.

“However, all the way through COVID, like many transport organisations, we operated completely as one unit. There was no difference between the way in which we supported London Underground colleagues or the way in which we supported our bus colleagues – keeping all the essential services going that we had to. We learned from that, and we think now is the right time to bring it all together as one organisation under Andy Byford as our overall commissioner.”

The organisation only changed in mid-January, so it is quite new. Alongside Andy Lord and Gareth Powell, the executive includes Stuart Harvey as chief capital officer, Tricia Wright, who remains chief people officer and Lilli Matson is chief safety, health and environment officer.

“We’re just in the process of realigning the rest of the organisation to fall under the new set of executive committee accountabilities,” Gareth Powell continued. “We are delivering Mayor Sadiq Khan’s transport strategy. TfL is a large operating organisation, with railways and the road network and the bus network, and we have the opportunity to deliver integrated transport in London and to provide the type of journey options and the journey solutions that the customers want across London, irrespective of whether they happen to have a London Underground station next to them or whether they need a bus service, whether they’re walking or whether they’re cycling.

“The new organisation is reflecting that integrated proposition and that ability to deliver the very broad range of outcomes that the Mayor wants us to, from the large-scale economic outcomes that London needs to climate change, decarbonisation and the health agenda across London.”

“Clearly the pandemic caused a massive reduction in our ridership and a massive reduction in our fare revenue,” Gareth continued. “As we followed government advice and advised everyone to stay at home, that exposed the issues with our funding model. We needed to continue operating our services, because they’re essential for Londoners – people had to get to the supermarkets, we needed nurses to get the hospital, so we couldn’t suspend the services in London, but we obviously didn’t have anywhere near the levels of ridership to be able to sustain them.

“At one point, the London Underground system had just five per cent of its normal ridership, yet the system was fully open and fully operational.

This showed that, at times, relying on customers to fund our day-to-day operations to that extent isn’t sustainable, so during COVID, and still today, we’ve been receiving emergency support from government.

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“We’ve had just under £5 billion of support and so far, for which we’re extremely grateful.

“We’ve committed to government that we will move to a position where we won’t need dayto-day emergency funding by the end of the next financial year – by the end of March 2023 – and we’re working on that financial trajectory as our as our ridership recovers, but also as we continue to refine our services and continue to address our cost base so that we can get to that financially sustainable position.

“The latest settlement we have from the government runs until the end of June and gives us a further £200 million as part of the overall £5 billion that we have received so far. Most importantly, what that sets us up for is a discussion with government about the capital funding of TfL.

Ongoing support Gareth added: “TfL is a very large custodian of national assets in London, not only the London Underground system but the roads as well.

We will need ongoing capital support from government in the same way that Highways England or Network Rail have longer-term capital settlements with government. TFL is going to need some support like that and this settlement period until June sets us up for a longer-term discussion with government on capital investment.

“The last thing we want, and the last thing that that the government wants, is for TfL and the Underground network to go backwards and go into decline, as happened in the 1980s and 1990s when we suffered from unreliability with unpredictability of services.

“Like all railways, London Underground requires constant maintenance and renewal in order to keep the reliability at the level that we need it to be. We’ve got some of the oldest trains in the country operating on the Bakerloo line (1972 stock) and on the Piccadilly line (1973 stock).

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TfL

Confidence During the COVID-19 pandemic, ridership collapsed by 95 per cent, leaving a massive hole in TfL’s finances. Since restrictions were eased, ridership has partly recovered, back to over 65 per cent of pre-pandemic levels on the Underground and over 75 per cent on buses.

“This reflects the great job that many of our cleaners have done,” Gareth Powell commented.

“We see no evidence that there is a lack of confidence in transport; it is more about different commuting patterns, different office working patterns, and so on, leading to lower ridership.

But we are really on the path back to financial stability.”

Despite the reduction in ridership, there is no appetite in TfL to cut costs by reducing the frequency of service. It is felt that this would increase crowding on the trains which still run, and that would put off passengers from returning to public transport. There is still concern about COVID-19 – even though face masks are no longer compulsory on TfL services, a good proportion of passengers still wear them.

“The last thing that we want to do, as a

strategic transport authority, and also as an operator, is to be a barrier to people going out and enjoying leisure activities, to them going out to work or returning to the office,” Gareth said.

“We don’t want in any way to be a barrier. We should be a confidence giver, that people can get out and enjoy all the economic activities. So, it’s really important for us that people are confident travelling on the underground London.”

Enlargement Before the pandemic, there had been an appetite in TfL to enlarge its conventional rail network. It had argued that stopping services, such as those operated by Southeastern and South Western Railway, would be better managed by TfL and should be added to the existing TfL Rail and London Overground network.

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It’s really important for us that people are confident travelling on the underground London

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“They will need to be renewed in due course – trains for the Piccadilly line are already on order.

“We also need to continue the process of modernising the London Underground system, replacing the signalling system as well as the trains so that it keeps going and keeps London functioning economically, contributing to the national exchequer.”

A buoyant TfL doesn’t only benefit London.

The businesses that the rail network keeps running contribute to the national exchequer. The new Piccadilly line trains will be built in Goole, East Yorkshire, and some of TfL new buses are built in Northern Ireland and Scotland.

“We certainly believe, and continue to believe, before COVID and after COVID, that integrating the operation of local stopping services within the London environment is a very positive and an important step to having a fully integrated transport system. We learned through London Overground that taking a clear, customer-led approach to incentivising the operator to deliver at each station and to deliver equally across the entire service is really important in the context of an integrated London Underground metro system.

“It is also important in the context of an integrated bus system and the ability for us to be

able to plan our services so they complement each other and don’t compete or conflict with each other.

“So, we still believe that it would be a benefit to be able to do so for the stopping services that are currently integrated into the larger franchises – the so-called inner services from Southeastern, for example, and our appetite for that is not diminished.

“What has changed, of course, is the context of the future establishment of the Great British Railways approach, which has adopted many of the successful features of our contracting model as its base model to govern and manage the delivery of the railways in the private sector going forward.

“We’ve been a great supporter of that approach and we had a lot of input to Keith Williams’ review.

We think it is in the interests of passengers for urban metro services for TfL to be able to closely specify the services and for the private sector to bring their innovation and their operation to bear and to deliver against those specifications.

Great British Railways Gareth added: “We’re working with the Great British Railways transition team and others to input our thoughts as to how that might work, not only in London but also across the entire travel to work area for London, which is broadly London and the Southeast. The GBR Transition Team is taking many of the lessons that we learned on the way in which the Overground has developed, and the DLR, and is seeking to apply them in it in the national context.

“We’re very supportive of that. We have input lots of ideas, expertise, and lessons learned to that, and we’re very keen to provide that expertise to other parts of the country and other metros, to places like Manchester, Liverpool and Leeds, and to try and help their transport to develop in the same way.

“We have even seconded a number of people into the transition team from TfL to help develop it from the inside.”

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D i g i t a l Tr a n s f o r m a t i o n

In search of the uncommon Common Data Model

Many companies now generate so much data from their activities that they struggle to make use of it all. What is needed is a structured approach so they can benefit from the wealth of data that digitisation produces

Summer May 2022 2022

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Ultimately, what we want to achieve is a sophisticated and robust data model which delivers actual outcomes to users

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here is a famous quote from US entrepreneur Jay Baer that states: “We are surrounded by data but starved for insights.”

This statement is felt by many businesses in all transport sectors. Companies, from Tier One Contractors through to SMEs, are still undergoing significant digital transformations to futureproof their businesses from a technological perspective, while struggling to understand a huge quantum of data that will help them determine how they create a better way of working.

To overcome this challenge, businesses are increasingly looking for help from digital consultants to aggregate and transform the plethora of data they have collated into insights and analysis to help them optimise their operations. However, the inconsistent use of data, lack of transparency and the restrictions posed by using specific programmes, creates a stumbling block towards achieving this.

“The only way that businesses can overcome these challenges is through the consistency of its data,” explained Susannah Matschke, data insights and intelligence consulting lead for government and transport at Sopra Steria, the European leader in technology. “We’ve seen this challenge and the inconsistency of data across all transport industries, including rail and highways.

While businesses in these sectors are gathering vast quantities of data, the way in which it is stored and used restricts the level of information and analysis they can obtain from it.

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“That’s why we are working with clients to develop a Common Data Model (CDM), which creates a digital platform that is unique to their business and integrates all their data and puts it into a consistent format. We then create processes which allow for this model to be fed data in such a way that the business can gain insight and greater understanding, while essentially futureproofing the business to work better and smarter moving forward.”

A better way of working The development of the CDM consists of taking siloed data hierarchies and looking at how it can be weaved together to create one cohesive view across the business, from design through to project management. Most importantly, it helps to improve the reliability and accuracy of reporting, reducing the time and effort spent completing the same jobs manually, and improving compliance.

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D i g i t a l Tr a n s f o r m a t i o n

Futureproofing the business

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Being able to use real data to be accurate in the prediction of all outcomes truly optimises a business

“Businesses working across the transport sector are realising the significant benefits a digital twin brings. Over the next few years, it will be a huge differentiator when it comes to supporting buying organisations on projects and frameworks across the UK, while improving connectivity with its supply chain. This approach will improve safety and compliance and introduce the ability to save costs while ultimately ensuring everyone arrives home safely every day with work completed on time and within budget.”

Two-pronged approach To achieve success in developing a model like this, it takes a two-pronged approach. It’s vital to understand the business’ core systems, while analysing and assessing the raw data to determine the best approach. But this process is not just about developing a system.

“The most important steps we have taken in this process is the engagement of the teams using this system, and it has been one of the larger

challenges throughout our work developing a CDM,” said Susannah. “For it to truly work, you need to gain the buy-in, trust and understanding from the people that will be using it every day.

For our work with buying organisations and contractors, for example, that extends to the supply chain and how those businesses feed data into this to create a better way of collaborative working.”

Connecting with users Susannah added: “We have spent a large portion of our time facilitating workshops and speaking to users to improve our understanding of how they currently use their systems and how we can improve them. Ultimately, what we want to achieve is a sophisticated and robust data model which delivers actual outcomes to users; making their lives easier by augmenting the way that they do their work each day.

“We believe that it is crucial to focus on the outcomes that technical solutions will provide to people, how they fit into the wider organisational culture and how they inform strategy to demonstrate value.

“Through taking this approach, we have seen overwhelmingly positive responses from the transport teams we have worked with. As we feed back to them about the development every month and provide them with new tools to help them do their job better, they are also seeing the value this will bring to them and it is helping them realise other ways in which they can optimise what they do.

“Working collaboratively throughout this project is the only way in which it will truly succeed.”

Image: Shutterstock

The key benefit to the development of a CDM is the foundation it creates for a digital twin.

A digital twin is a virtual representation of an object, or from a rail perspective, a project or network, that uses real world data to create simulations that can predict performance and outcomes. Achieving this within any business is an invaluable tool for both the business itself and the clients it serves.

Susannah said: “Being able to use real data to be accurate in the prediction of all outcomes truly optimises a business.”

The use of a digital twin provides assurance that a business has a strong grasp and understanding of a project and can create predictive models through real data - even in very niche and specific scenarios.

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This process has already supported better interaction with the supply chain and has strengthened the support it is able to give to these SMEs, all thanks to a better stream of communication and information.

Susannah added: “We see the CDM being hugely important to rail businesses, especially contractors prospecting for work in Control Period 7. Being able to demonstrate how your business is able to connect with its supply chain better, improve reporting and analyse where optimisations can be made in project spend and lead times will be hugely attractive to buying organisations.

“We’re working in an environment where these organisations are under huge pressure to demonstrate tangible results from their project spend across a host of factors, and a Common Data Model addresses these issues.

“As the rail industry continues with its digital revolution, we’re urging every business to consider how it is developing and using its data, and to consider this type of approach so that they can truly benefit from their digitalisation strategies.”

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Building Britain’s Railways - Major Summer May projects 2022

Tr a n s p o r t f o r S c o t l a n d

Scotland’s Railways leading the way

Image: Inside Track.

How the devolved Scottish Government plans to decarbonise its railway while ensuring the service provided is what the people of Scotland want.

The introduction of new trains such as the Hitachi Class 385 electric multiple units has been key to Scotland’s decarbonisation agenda.

Managing the ScotRail and Caledonian Sleeper rail franchises; Developing rail policy and strategic planning, including aligning it with wider social and economic policy; Delivering major projects alongside industry partners Promoting and investing in the development of sustainable rail freight; Managing economic regulation of the railways, and monitoring and advising on the affordability of the rail programme.

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Although the railways in Wales and Northern Ireland are also devolved, the arrangements are quite different for all three. Transport Scotland is the franchising authority for Scotland and also has a separate regulated funding settlement and high-level output specification for Network Rail. It does not have the authority to determine the structure of the railway, but it does make strategies, so, for example, it can issue directions and guidance to rail regulator the Office of Rail and Road.

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We are constantly subject to democratic scrutiny of what we do – how much do we spend?

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he railways in Scotland come under the control of Transport Scotland, the national transport agency for Scotland. It was established by the Transport (Scotland) Act 2005 and Rail is one of eight directorates, the others being Aviation, Maritime, Freight & Canals; Bus, Accessibility & Active Travel; Finance & Corporate Services; Low Carbon Economy; Major Projects; Roads; Transport Strategy & Analysis.

The Rail directorate is responsible for Scotland’s rail policy and delivery, including:

Bill Reeve is the director of rail at Transport Scotland. What does that mean? “In essence, the profit and loss account for Scotland railway comes together on my desk in Transport Scotland,” he said.

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Scotland receives funding from the UK Government through the Barnett Formula. A proportion of that is intended to be used for transport, and a proportion of that for rail. However, the exact amount to be invested in the rail network is down to the Scottish Government, which has the responsibility of dividing up the total.

Historically, while Scotland does not get the level of funding that rail in the London area receives, it does do quite well when compared with England’s regions.

Budgets and resources “The Scottish Parliament has concluded it wants to allocate funding to rail,” Bill commented, “and that’s an important part of devolution. The Scottish Parliament sets the budget and allocates resources. But that democratic accountability is a bit of a double-edged sword.

“We are constantly subject to democratic scrutiny of what we do – how much do we spend? Are we spending it on the right things? Are we spending it wisely? Do we have the right priorities and why are the trains not running on time?

“There are an awful lot more questions asked in the Scottish Parliament about railways than I think there are in the Westminster Parliament.

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Tr a n s p o r t f o r S c o t l a n d

Green agenda It is that independent control by the Scottish Parliament, and a keen interest in improving Scottish Railways as part of the green agenda, that has resulted in Scotland having a rolling programme of electrification that is the envy of many in England.

More than 440km of track has been electrified over the past 10 years through £1 billion of investment.

Scottish railways are not just ScotRail, as Bill explains. “ScotRail comprises something like 90

per cent of all passenger journeys in Scotland, so that’s a big part. Network Rail plus ScotRail plus Transport Scotland come together as Team Scotland, and that works really well. We do also have a very active approach to promoting rail freight in Scotland, and we published our Rail Freight Strategy some years ago [2016].

“We make our investment decisions in an informed manner that links rail freight with passengers. We join up the infrastructure and passenger operations and freight into the railway’s role as part of the transport mix that will help the decarbonisation of Scotland.

“As head of rail, I’ve got a clear line of sight from the decisions we take in rail through to the strategic objectives of the Scottish Government around promoting sustainable and inclusive. economic growth and the green transition.”

Image: Transport Scotland

But actually, that’s very right and proper because we are spending a very large amount of money on behalf of the Scottish people.

“In fact, certainly within the Kingdom and, I think, also across Europe, where you have devolved responsibility for transport generally and railways in particular, allied to a democratic budget setting process, railways typically do well out of that.

Whether that be in the German Länder, or some of the devolved administrations in France, or Transport for London or Transport for Wales or even Merseytravel, you tend to get people who understand that railways matter and want them therefore to be better and vote for the resources to make that possible.”

Bill Reeve, director of rail at Transport Scotland.

ScotRail in-house On April 1, the ScotRail operation was taken under public control (see later). “There’s Transport Scotland. We have the wholly-owned subsidiary Scottish Rail Holdings (SRH), and we have a framework agreement and financing agreement between ourselves and Scottish

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Building Britain’s Railways - Major Summer May projects 2022

Tr a n s p o r t f o r S c o t l a n d

ScotRail has introduced a fleet of diesel high speed trains in recent years, however the aim is for a decarbonised railway north of the border by 2035.

Carmont “Tragedy struck Scotland in August 2020 when

Summer May 2022 2022

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We have over time established a clear and consistent brand for Scotland’s Railway, which has a clear brand recognition

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SRH also became a vehicle for attracting rail industry knowledge and talent, which Bill describes as “quite helpful”. Discussions were also held with colleagues involved in operation of last report operations elsewhere. “Ask me again in two years’ time whether we got it right or not,” says Bill.

The decision to take ScotRail in house was made due to uncertainty around passenger demand and the rail reform process announcement by the Department for Transport in England. The level of uncertainty in the market was such that Transport Scotland felt it could not run an efficient competition and that there would be a very high risk of competition failure or that the risk premium that TS would get in bids would be disproportionate, so the franchising model was not considered.

The ScotRail brand is being retained. This dates back to 1984, but Bill says that Transport Scotland believes that the brand has real value. “We are not persuaded that changing the colour or name of your trains every seven years does much for anyone other than confuse people.

ScotRail brand has real value. We have over time established a clear and consistent brand for Scotland’s Railway, which has a clear brand recognition,” he says. This was achieved without incurring additional expense by simply waiting for rolling stock to come up for renewal or new stock was purchased to change the livery rather than re-livery the existing fleet. “Now that we have it established the brand, why on earth would we want to change it?”

a High Speed Train derailed at Carmont. Three people lost their lives including a ScotRail driver, a ScotRail conductor and the first passenger killed in an accident in the UK since February 2007.

“It was shocking. The good news is that is shocking because railways now are very safe, but nonetheless, it is still shocking and it should not have happened, and of course we should take that seriously.”

Investigation There were a couple of hundred people working with the investigation and recovery, and I thought there would be very few people in this field who have been involved in a fatal accident of this nature,” Bill comments.

One of the changes following the accident is there is now a permanently-manned meteorological desk in Scotland’s Railway control while temporary speed restrictions and even network closures will be implemented more often than before the tragedy. “It is a necessary change reflecting the reality of what is changing around us,” says Bill. This is in response to climate change and the impact it is having on the railway.

Questions were also raised about the behaviour of the rolling stock involved in the accident and Transport Scotland will now work with safety bodies and stakeholders to see whether those questions give rise to appropriate changes to the HST fleet.

Rail freight Rail freight is also an area Transport Scotland is keen to develop as part of is decarbonisation agenda.

“Scottish Government has powers by which we can facilitate efficient passage of freight traffic.

We provide some subsidies at the margins for some capital operating, but what we can do is make it possible for a competitive rail freight industry to compete effectively against other modes.

Following the tragedy at Carmont in August 2020, new measures have been introduced to prevent climate change and meteorological events impacting Scotland’s Railways.

This view was on the main Edinburgh – Glasgow route.

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Image: Network Rail

Image: Network Rail

One of the things that makes railways is good is that they are safe, says Bill. That is achieved through learning lesions from accidents, which is why the RAIB report into Carmont has been studied so closely and why Transport Scotland intends to follow through with the recommendations from the report. “We must always learn those lessons,” he says. “I was stood in the field next to the Carmont site the day after the accident, which as you can imagine was very sobering.

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Tr a n s p o r t f o r S c o t l a n d

Government with an opportunity to work with stakeholders and elected representatives from all parties to help build rail services fit for a postpandemic world.

“It’s clear that much work needs to be done – and in a collaborative way – to ensure the long-term

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The safe and reliable delivery of services which develop to meet the changing needs of passengers and contribute to our decarbonisation

sustainability of rail operations in Scotland, to best meet the needs of the people we all represent. The national conversation was all about what our beginning for ScotRail should look like, working together to ensure we have a railway that delivers for our constituents.”

More than 440km of track has been electrified in the past decade through £1bn of investment in Scotland.

Summer May 2022 2022

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Photo: Inside Track.

New Scottish Minister ScotRail services coming under public ownership, marking the end of a seven-year Abellio franchise, happened less than two months after Jenny Gilruth was appointed as Scottish transport minister.

In an exclusive interview with Inside Track’s sister publication Rail Director she says: “The current franchising system was clearly no longer fit for purpose and now we have an opportunity to ensure rail is a thriving industry and one which meets the needs of passengers and is sustainable in the longterm future.”

She says that the decision provides the Scottish

Jenny Gilruth: Scottish transport minister.

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That has required us to look at a freight growth target for Network Rail in Scotland because we wanted them to be incentivised to want freight rather than to regard it as a bit of a nuisance.”

As the franchising authority, Bill explains that Transport Scotland will, and does, change the passenger timetable on key routes, and Network Rail’s engineering teams access plans in Scotland.

“I have no complaint about the allocation of resources to rail in comparison to road when I look at the market share that rail moves,” says Bill. “We do very well in that respect.” He says that the biggest fans of increasing rail freight within the organisation are its road maintenance colleagues.

Transport accounts for 37 per cent of the emissions in Scotland and within that, rail is only 1.2 per cent while 25 per cent of transport emissions are from heavy goods vehicles. Bill says that there are not yet plausible technologies that can replace a diesel HGV in as cost-effective manner, and that diesel itself is becoming more expensive. “We need rail freight to play a larger role and the and the relevant economics of rail and road are moving quite rapidly in rail’s favour,” he says. “So our own reflection with colleagues in the rail freight industry and across Team Scotland and Network Rail is that rail freight growth is going to happen faster perhaps than we had dared to hope and that the challenge will be to keep up with it.”

Jenny also spoke about the role of rail staff, saying they play a vital role in shaping and delivering a successful future railway for Scotland, as well as paying tribute to their work during the pandemic.

Meeting challenges There is currently an amended timetable in place due to staff shortages caused by ScotRail staff deciding against working rest days. This timetable was introduced less than a month after Jenny wrote to the UK Government urging a swift settlement with rail unions to avoid a widespread rail strike. In her letter to UK Transport Secretary Grant Shapps she urged the UK Government to do more to resolve the ongoing dispute which could significantly affect operations in Scotland despite the Scottish Government having no say in negotiations.

She is also focussed on meeting challenging climate change targets with an aim of reducing car kilometres by 20 per cent by 2030. Before the pandemic around 75 per cent of ScotRail passenger journeys were made on electric trains.

The Scottish National Party (SNP) wants to decarbonise the railway completely by 2035.

Jenny says: “The safe and reliable delivery of services which develop to meet the changing needs of passengers and contribute to our decarbonisation commitments will remain the priority.”

She concluded: “An efficient, effective, productive and profitable railway is critical to our mission zero ambition for transport. We want ScotRail to deliver the rail services the people of Scotland – and the generations yet to come – need and desire.”

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Making the case for investment in the north of England

Image: Hitachi

Continued investment in the railways of the north will help bring economic benefits to the region and reduce delays, but some questions still need answering.

The Transpennine Route Upgrade will improve capacity between Manchester and Leeds and connect with the planned new Northern Powerhouse Rail line.

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ransport for the North (TfN) is England’s first sub-national Transport Body. It was formed in 2018 to transform the transport system across the north of England. Providing investment in infrastructure and services is needed to drive economic growth, reduce transport’s environmental footprint and improve access for individuals to services and opportunities.

TfN brings together 20 local transport authorities and business leaders together with Network Rail, HS2 Ltd and National Highways.

The body also works with the UK Government (Department for Transport).

The creation of the body enabled devolution of certain powers from central Government in London to the North. Through the Cities and Local Government Devolution Act 2016, a

Summer May 2022 2022

statutory instrument was laid before parliament in late-2017 and, following parliamentary approval, TfN’s functions were enshrined in legislation and came into force in April 2018.

Powers TfN has included: producing a statutory transport strategy, which the Government must formally consider in the decision-making process; funding organisations to deliver transport projects; working with local transport authorities to fund, promote and deliver road schemes; be consulted on all rail franchises that provide services in the north of England, and take forward smart ticketing on public transport.

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At the same time the functions of Rail North, which was an existing association of local authorities, transferred to TfN. This includes co-managing the Northern and TransPennine Express contracts with the Department for Transport (DfT).

In 2019 a Strategic Transport Plan (STP) was approved, setting out the investment case for the region for the next 30 years. The economic analysis underpinning the Plan established that the region has significant potential including a £92 billion (15%) increase in GVA, 850,000 additional jobs and 4% higher productivity than in a business as usual scenario.

Central to the STP was the proposal for Northern Powerhouse Rail (NPR). This proposal was specifically designed to support the transformation of railways across the north of England to enable the North’s economic potential

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Summer May 2022 2022

Chief executive

HS2 line to the Midlands.

In recent months there has been a call for more focus on sustainability, accessibility and collaboration across the whole of the network.

“This is a new era for the rail industry” was the headline message from TfN’s Community Rail User Stakeholder Event at the start of the year, when looking at lessons learned from the pandemic and discussing how the industry can better work together in 2022.

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So we need GBR to act as a national body, one that works closely with TfN

Martin Tugwell is TfN chief executive. His career includes more than 20 years’ experience in strategic transport and infrastructure planning roles at national, regional and local levels.

These positions have been held at organisations including England’s Economic Heartland, the South East England Regional Assembly, the Transport Systems Catapult, and Oxfordshire and Devon County Councils.

He discusses the management of Northern and TPE against the backdrop of Great British Railways (GBR) coming into existence from April 2024.

He says that in establishing GBR as the national ‘guiding mind’ it is important that the respective roles of GBR and TfN need to be defined. “What I’m clear about, what the members are very clear about, is the ability for TfN to say, ‘here are the priorities for the north, and this is what we need the rail system to achieve in terms of outcomes’. It’s important that GBR works with TfN as a statutory body to build on the devolution that already exists.”

Through the SRP, TfN has been able to set out what it believes the rail system needs to deliver in terms of outcome, and what is needed to be done to best achieve those outcomes.

Martin says that that is likely to require a combination of investment in infrastructure and services/operations. “That’s one of the reasons why we’ve been so supportive of the Williams-Shapps Review is that bringing infrastructure and service together makes absolute sense, because we saw the challenge you get when you don’t plan the two together with the May 2018 timetable.”

Martin is referring to the chaos caused by the introduction of a new timetable which caused widespread delays and cancellations due to timetable clashes, lack of available staff and incomplete infrastructure work - including electrification in the north west.

Double devolution is part of the plans for operating passenger transport in the north of England.

Locations such as the Liverpool City Region should be able to integrate local and national services with the Combined Authority working with Transport for the North.

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Image: Network Rail.

Martin Tugwell: TfN chief executive

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to be realised. As proposed NPR was designed to provide effective and efficient rail connectivity between the major economic centres of the north and create faster and more reliable services across the entire region.

In autumn 2021 the Government published its heavily-delayed Integrated Rail Plan (IRP). The IRP committed significant funding to deliver core elements of TfN’s NPR proposal, however it omitted a number of elements of the TfN submission. In the immediate aftermath the then interim TfN chair Cllr Louise Gittins called the IRP “woefully inadequate” adding that: “after decades of underfunding, the rail network in the North is not fit for purpose. It is largely twin-track Victorian infrastructure trying to cope with the demands of a 21st Century economy.”

TfN’s Strategic Rail Programme (SRP) is key to ensuring synergies between the North’s classic rail network, NPR, HS2 Phase 2b and the Transpennine Route Upgrade (TRU) are fully optimised. This programme is helping shape the operational and future development of the classic rail network in the North, ensuring new projects realise the potential of rail in and around the region to be the catalyst for sustainable growth “Leaders from across the North and from across the party political divide came together to set out a vision for a transformed network that would upgrade the North and deliver a level of service in line with the rest of the country. Our statutory advice asked for an over £40 billion network but the Government has decided to provide even less than half of that,” she said.

The IRP aims to integrate several rail projects whilst at the same time driving down costs and over-specification. These include HS2 Phase 2b, NPR, the Transpennine Route Upgrade (TRU) and upgrades to the Midland main line and the East Coast main line.

As a result of IRP, the planned eastern leg extension to Leeds was put on hold, with HS2 trains using the MML to reach Sheffield.

However, the IRP commits government to delivering a new high-speed line from Manchester to Marsden, at the eastern end of Standedge tunnel. There it will join the existing Trans-Pennine line to Leeds, which will be upgraded accordingly.

Whilst this commits to electrifying the line from Manchester to Leeds and York, the IRP doesn’t meet TfN’s stated ambition of a high-speed line serving Bradford or creating capacity for freight.

The IRP envisages a NPR link from the Western Leg of HS2 to Liverpool via Warrington. This will allow HS2 services to access Liverpool via new NPR infrastructure, relieving the existing network and improving journey times. NPR and HS2 will share a west to east line to Manchester, via Millington, where there will be a junction with the

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Image: Shutterstock.

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Leeds station is third in the country for delays, behind Clapham and Birmingham.

As for what is happening in the north, Martin says there needs to be recognition that the commitments made by Government in the IRP represents a significant amount of investment for the region. TfN is committed to working with the DfT to ensure that the IRP commitments are delivered and to make sure that costs are challenged so that projects are delivered costeffectively.

“In parallel, our role is to continue to have our eye on the longer-term ambition for the North so that the challenges and issues around places like Leeds, improving connections to Hull, improving connectivity to/from Bradford, are addressed. The IRP makes reference to an adaptive pipeline approach and Martin sees that as the opportunity for TfN to work with the DfT to develop solutions, those solutions need to be affordable and deliverable.

“We need to use the structures that we’ve got to develop evidence-based solutions with which to have

railbusinessdaily.com

“

The challenge of sorting out Leeds station capacity, connecting it with Sheffield

sustainable transport is to both people and business.

Martin cites the funding identified in the IRP by DfT to explore alternative solutions for getting HS2 trains

to Leeds as positive. “We need to move forward with that at pace, which I think we can see that starting to happen,” says Martin.

“As I said, the challenges, if I think about Leeds, is that in terms of sources of delay across the entire railway network, Leeds is number three after Clapham Junction and Birmingham. That is because so many journeys start and go through Leeds station that goes from north to south, east to west.

“The challenge of sorting out Leeds station capacity, connecting it with Sheffield, these are pressing for the rail network. The money identified by Government will help us identified potential solutions that we can turn into delivery.”

Whilst the IRP published in November last year may not include all of the TfN Board’s ambition for NPR in the long term it represents a significant step forward. The focus needs to be on delivering the IRP commitments and using those as a springboard for the longer term ambition.

TfN has much work ahead of it to be ensure the region is better served by rail, but Martin and his team are working hard to ensure that the levelling up agenda by Central Government benefits the north of England’s rail users.

Image: Shutterstock

The north right now

the conversation with Government about what’s affordable, and then to delivery.

“It’s recognising, that the detail of HS2 has evolved over time, and so it is likely to be with the IRP; these things evolve, develop..”

That example is often cited by TfN chairman Sir Patrick McLoughlin, the former Transport Secretary.

He took up the role in January this year. He was an MP for Derbyshire Dales from 1986 until 2019. Patrick says he believes firmly in the potential of the region and knows from his personal experience and professional career just how vital reliable and cost-effective and

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“As we look to the landscape with GBR in existence what we’re also saying is, there’s a need to recognise the role of Mayoral Combined Authorities,” says Martin.

He uses the Liverpool City Region as an example, saying: “We’ve got partial devolution there already.

It’s right that the City Region should say “we want to ensure local rail services are aligned with local bus services and that they are both aligned with more local transport measures across the that City Region.” But what we’re also saying is that you need to have TfN, to say: “Well, how do we make sure that the needs of connecting Liverpool with Hull or Newcastle and indeed the rest of the North are also being taken account of?”

So we need GBR to act as a national body, one that works closely with TfN. Then, TfN, as the statutory strategic transport body for the North will be able to set out through its Strategic Transport Plan what it is that is needed from the rail sector.

This approach is characterised by Martin as “double devolution”.

Discussions regarding the role of Transport for the North and Great British Railways, and the management of Northern, are ongoing.

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Company focus

A Cohesive way to deliver, operate and optimise in a post-COVID world How Cohesive is accelerating a digital transformation across the Commonwealth

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To do this, Cohesive prepared and conducted interviews to understand the current baseline and engaged with key stakeholders to understand their needs in developing the customer experience and interface.

The City of Melbourne aimed to be the City

of Possibility – where the world meets and the extraordinary happens. The council believes there are unique opportunities and a pressing need to re-evaluate the approach to current and emerging challenges as the world recovers from the pandemic.

Images: Shutterstock

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n an ever-changing world, Cohesive aims to accelerate digital transformation across the infrastructure and asset management markets while working in a responsible, ethical and socially considerate manner.

Founded by Bentley Systems, the United States infrastructure software leader, Cohesive comprises the historic brands of Cohesive AP, Cohesive Solutions, OnTracks, Oxplus, Professional Construction Strategies Group (PCSG) and SRO Solutions.

These are globally-recognised for their delivery of digital strategy, systems integration, enterprise asset management and data analytics services.

Now, as Queen Elizabeth celebrates her Platinum Jubilee, the Group aims to transform mobility across northern England in a similar vein to that in the cities of Melbourne and Hobart, both part of the Queen’s Commonwealth.

In Melbourne, Cohesive worked with the city council to develop a vision and roadmap for the City Intelligence Hub (CIH) and to provide advice to executives on the high-value opportunities that can be unlocked by developing and implementing a CIH strategy.

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Company focus

However, in the midst of the short-term challenges caused by the pandemic and the longer-term urban challenges, Cohesive recognises the ability to not only unlock efficiency and cost-savings, but to transform how the city can plan, manage and operate services.

Working with the council, Cohesive created a data strategy vision for the city that will enable the deployment of a whole life approach to managing digital assets and realising their value.

Cohesive was able to demonstrate how a data strategy program would support the delivery of the City of Possibility – Council Plan and also other key services. An assessment by Cohesive has initially identified a minimum of 27 CIH cases that could support council plan objectives and a selection of key services.

Stakeholder engagement insight has also developed a high-level roadmap for the Data Hub strategy to achieve the Target State Vision as well as assessing potential risks and mitigations to reduce the effects of these risks in delivery and benefit impacts.

Cohesive/PCSG worked collaboratively with the Greater Hobart Smart Cities Working Group to develop a business case to provide advice to the Greater Hobart City Deal Implementation Board as to the high-value opportunities to be unlocked through the development of transformational digital infrastructure for Greater Hobart, supported by legacy federal investments across Tasmania.

Greater Hobart has a challenging and ambitious development program ahead which is encapsulated in a City Deal ranging from a new transport vision and affordable housing to attracting business investment and activation of regions and corridors.

Facing new challenges With these challenges as a background to the City Deal, PCSG was tasked with developing a business case for a Digital Twin of Greater Hobart, a program which is set to provide the critical digital infrastructure to deliver the City Deal and beyond.

PCSG will achieve this through working collaboratively with Hobart having identified three main customers of the Digital Twin: council stakeholders, the public and commercial businesses. To support the needs of customers PCSG identified a library of more than 20 cases, ranging from transport, wastes and energy services, through to tourism support and investment decision-making. PCSG also developed a methodology to estimate the macroeconomic benefits of Digital Twin implementation across each relevant industry sector, providing a range of benefit and cost profiles for distinct option levels.

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The specific challenges were identifying multiple uses for a broad customer and user group spanning a broad range of sectors ranging from manufacturing to tourism, developing a methodology to estimate the economic impacts to Greater Hobart’s economy through Digital Twin adoption and developing distinct implementation options to identify the cases delivered against cost and risk for each option.

The engagement value delivered a strategic business case for Digital Twin for Greater Hobart that successfully created significant buy-in to an implementation programme with City State and Federal stakeholders. It also provided an initial roadmap for a preferred option for implementation, considering funding, achievability and resourcing required.

The services offered by Cohesive span the entire asset lifecycle and focus on how it can help be organisations infinitely more successful in service, fiscal, environmental and social goals.

This is achieved through a blend of technology,

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process, and people transformational change as well as working with clients either as a light touch or full outsource of an organisation’s asset delivery and management levels.

Innovation and integration Cohesive is an independent and technology agnostic digital integrator that provides not just industry-leading digital tools and solutions but the multi-disciplinary expertise and depth of engineering and construction knowledge required to help owner-operators and their teams to embed themselves within organisations.

As the world evolves in the post-COVID times, Cohesive and its diverse team of 450 staff are ready to help organisations such as Transport for the North overcome complex challenges and realise the potential of not just the organisation but the entire region using experience gained elsewhere in the Commonwealth.

Building Britain’s Railways - Major Summer May projects 2022

Tr a n s l i n k

Developing Northern Ireland’s railways for the next generation Rising passenger numbers and climate change behind ambitious plans

Gauging differences NIR is a subsidiary of Translink, which was created in 1996 to integrate the rail and bus services of the Ulster Transport Authority (UTA). The UTA itself had been created in 1967. NIR operates via a vertically integrated model, with responsibility for pricing, train operation, maintenance and infrastructure all lying with the operator.

The gauge is different in Ulster compared with the rest of Britain, using the Irish 5ft 3in gauge.

Currently there are five key lines: The Portadown to Bangor line, which runs from Bangor to Newry via

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Belfast Great Victoria Street; the Belfast to Derry/ Londonderry line; the Larne line; the Portrush line; and the Dublin (Enterprise) line. The latter uses the same infrastructure as the Portadown line. The Lisburn–Antrim line is still maintained and used for crew training but there are no stations open on the line while passing loops have been removed.

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We started to invest more in railway infrastructure over the past five years, mainly because we had an ageing asset and we needed to maintain it and keep it reliable and safe for future generations.

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hen discussing railways in the United Kingdom, the Northern Ireland (205-mile) system is often forgotten.

Easily the smallest network of the four UK systems, there are aspirations to expand and enhance it as a reaction to increased passenger numbers and climate change. Before COVID, usage had more than doubled to 15 million passengers annually.

Northern Ireland Railways (NIR) was privatised like the rest of the UK railway system in the mid1990s and so remained publicly owned.

Chris Conway is Translink group chief executive.

His experience includes roles as managing director of Tata Steel Distribution Ireland and vice president operations for Nortel Networks in Europe.

Funding for the railways effectively comes from Westminster via the Barnett Consequential agreement that is delivered to the devolved

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administration in Northern Ireland, which then has the autonomy to allocate the funding as it sees fit.

Chris explained: “The difference is the Network Rail component of that is still at UK-wide level, whereas the infrastructure component for us is directly owned by Translink. The funding comes directly from the Northern Ireland Executive through a block grant system to the Department of Infrastructure.

Keeping to standards Chris continued: “We work to Network Rail standards. We will look at their competency training and a lot of components are approved by Network Rail.

“We started to invest more in railway infrastructure over the past five years, mainly because we had an ageing asset and we needed to maintain it and keep it reliable and safe for future generations.

“Our supply chain was capable but when you start getting into major enhancements, we went to a framework contract to bring in someone who could manage it and we brought in Babcock Rail.”

Babcock Rail has a five-year framework contract to maintain and enhance the railway.

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Tr a n s l i n k

Image: Translink

It works closely with the supply chain and helps to develop expertise, particularly within the local element of the supply chain.

Chris added: “It is an interesting point about road/rail machinery because if we’re going to do a big piece of work, we need more than what we would normally just to maintain on a dayto-day basis. We’ve had to build up a capability in terms of supply chain for that as well. And we do work with Irish Rail too; we will work together to develop our supply chain so that they can access some of our suppliers, who can access some of theirs.

“Babcock Rail has brought in some suppliers and has started to develop a market in Northern Ireland too.”

CAF has supplied modernised trains in recent years as passenger numbers more than doubled prior to COVID-19

Increasing investment There is a lot of infrastructure work currently under way on the Northern Ireland network. Chris said: “We didn’t want to go back too far into history, but you know, there have been cuts to the railway network.

“Over the years we haven’t received the level of funding required on an annual basis to maintain the infrastructure, and we were falling behind in

that. So, we made the case to the Department of Infrastructure that we need to increase the level of investment, probably double in terms of just maintenance and enhancements.

“Complete renewal was required, particularly around stations and platforms. That’s something we’ve been doing now for about three or four years and we’re starting to get the benefits in terms of

enhanced reliability, safety, and journey time improvements.”

Britain’s decision to leave the EU has had an impact on the way the country’s railway is governed. “We used to operate under the ORR in the UK and CRR in the south, which is the equivalent of the ORR, all under EU standards and so there was no difference,” Chris explained.

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Building Britain’s Railways - Major Summer May projects 2022

Work is under way now to reverse decades of underinvestment. “For example, we’ve been working on the railway between Belfast and Londonderry to enhance that section of the line, improve journey time and improve frequency,” he added.

“In fact, we built a new station in Londonderry, The Northwest Transport Hub. It was actually the old station. It’s an old heritage building, which had fallen into disrepair, and the station had been removed and turned into a small sort of prefabricated station further away from it.

“So, there was debate about whether to build a new station. When it went out to consultation, the community reaction was ‘we’d rather you refurbished the old station, and go back to using that’, so it was completely refurbished, and new sections built.

“And we have improved the frequency after doing that, we’re now working on that section of track to dual a certain aspect, to improve the frequency further and enhance journey time.

“But there’s always been a bit of a campaign around certain sections of the railway being reopened again, and more connection to the west; it’s always been seen to be a very expensive project and therefore has never really had much traction.”

New thinking around issues such as climate change has led to a change in attitude. Chris said: “There has been a lot more debate about how we make better use of the railway. Freight is also being considered.

“There’ve been two reviews. The first is the AllIreland Rail Review that has been initiated by both the Dublin Government and the Northern Ireland Government. That’s looking at what’s possible

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to enhance connections and some options for enhancing and extending the railway. And then there is the Union Connectivity Review by Sir Peter Hendy, which also looked at how to connect the union.

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In fact, we built a new station in Londonderry, The Northwest Transport Hub.

“That recommended we look at the northwest.

And we are looking at opportunities to do some feasibility work around extending the railway. These will be long-term projects.”

Before the cuts, the network had been much larger, up to 1,450km (900 miles), but this was vastly reduced by the UTA. In some cases where railways could be reinstated, the track bed exists, but not all of it. There is an extension between Belfast, through Lisburn, out to

the International Airport direction where the track still exists. There are also some sections of track bed which exist as far as Armagh. However, Chris says a lot of work needs to be done to find out exactly what is possible.

Half way there The All-Ireland Rail Review is due this summer.

“The major piece of consultation work has already been done. Arup was appointed to do the work.

They are, I’d say, probably about 50 per cent of the way through looking at options,” he added.

The 43-strong NIR train fleet is owned by Translink. Chris explained: “We jointly own Enterprise trains – that’s a completely separate fleet, which do the cross-border route.

“They’re quite old, they were ordered in 1995. So, we are currently developing a plan together with Irish Rail to invest in a new fleet for the Enterprise.

At the minute that’s a two-hourly service, we plan to bring that to an hourly service.” That service level is constrained by the number of trains in the fleet.

Image: Translink

Rebuild or refurbish

Belfast Grand Central station is part of a planned transport hub in the city.

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“We were certified under the ORR. We could operate in the south and similarly the south could operate in the north.

“Brexit has changed that. We now have to be certified in the south separately to the certification we do with the ORR. Irish Rail doesn’t have to do that just yet but there is a transition of time where they’ll have to do the same, and hopefully some of the complexities around Brexit will be ironed out by then, and we won’t have to do that in the long run. But at the minute we do have two separate certifications in place.”

There are plans to develop the railways of Northern Ireland. Currently most of it is in the eastern side but there are calls to reopen more of the western side via the Ulster loop, which would link Belfast with the western side of Northern Ireland.

Chris said: “We suffered the same impact as the rest of the UK in the 1950s and 1960s, where there were large cuts to the railway. In Northern Ireland, we lost a good part of our railway in the west and northwest.”

Image: Translink

Tr a n s l i n k

Investment has been spread across the Northern Ireland rail network including on the North West hub in Derry-Londonderry.

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Image: Translink

Tr a n s l i n k

grown from about seven million passengers a year to 15 million plus. We’ve had the impact of COVID-19, but we can see growth is coming back quite quickly. We’ve invested in 21 new carriages which are coming into our fleet now, with about half already in service, and the other half will be in service with the next six months.”

Contactless ticketing

In recent months CAF has built more coaches for the new diesel trains operating in Northern Ireland “We have a couple of backup trains in our local network so that if there are any faults, we can use them. Irish Rail has a couple of backup trains as well, but they all need to have the safety equipment and signalling systems. And the signalling systems operate differently.”

The Enterprise trains stable in the north and south. Chris said: “Any major maintenance for the locomotives is covered by Irish Rail, and we tend to

maintain the carriages.

“We provide about 60 per cent of the fleet and about 40 per cent is provided by Irish Rail, it’s just the way it’s worked out. And we pool the costs and revenue associated with it.”

“The arrangement we’ve had, in terms of governance, works very well. It’s an efficient way to run a railway in a small region.

“Our passenger numbers over the past decade have

“A new transport hub is planned for Belfast, encompassing the new ‘Grand Central Station” which is under construction at the minute. This will allow us to increase capacity and frequency on the rail network. We are certainly very actively innovating and where we invest, we’re seeing the growth. And that’s where we see the opportunity maybe in the future to invest further.”

Translink is also introducing one of the largest contactless ticketing systems outside of London, supplied by Flowbird. Chris said: “We already have integrated ticketing but it’s an old system.

We’ve introduced a ticketing system that will be contactless right across our bus and rail network.

It will be tap in, tap out, similar to London. It will be one of the biggest integrated ticketing systems outside London. I think is a real asset for a small region like Northern Ireland.”

COVENTRY COMPLETES £82M STATION EXTENSION The Heart of England Community Rail Partnership in partnership with Highly Sprung, hosted the Coventry Station Community Day to celebrate the completion of the new £82m station extension building and enhancements to the original station that is celebrating its 60th anniversary.

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Passenger Experience

Looking after passengers All train operators say they prioritise the passenger experience. But how do they know whether they succeed?

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Start at the point of departure. If the car park is always full by 8am, requiring passengers arriving later than that to park in a town car park and walk a mile, then they will stop coming, or go elsewhere.

For those who don’t arrive by car, is there somewhere to leave a bicycle safely? How close is the bus stop? And can the taxi drop them at the entrance?

Once in the station building, is it clean and tidy or run down and scruffy? Are the toilets handy for those who have travelled a distance to get there?

Can the disabled and those with heavy or lots of luggage, pushchairs, babies, small children who insist on walking and dogs on leads, get around easily? Are the signs clear and easy to read? Is it simple to buy or collect a ticket? Are refreshments close at hand?

On the train, is it easy to find a seat? Are the toilets clean and is the refreshment offering simple to access? Do the announcements keep passengers informed or annoy them with neverending exhortations to keep gangways clear and read the safety instructions? Is the ride smooth and quiet?

Then, at the destination, is it easy to get through the barriers, change platforms and levels, find the taxi rank or public transport, go to the toilet (again!) and ask for directions if needed?

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That’s all the job of the train operator. The train is just where passengers sit during the process.

It needs to leave on time, arrive on time, and be reasonably comfortable to sit in. These days, passengers expect phone charging, good Wi-Fi and a table for coffee cups, laptops and magazines.

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In a crisis, you either perform well or badly, there’s not much in between

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The start of the journey

Image: Shutterstock/IR Stone

rain operators are in the people business. Anyone who thinks that the job of a train operator is to run the trains in a region of the country should think again. That’s not it at all.

The sole job of a train operator is to move passengers, quickly and comfortably, safely and punctually, from one place to another.

Yes, they lease trains, employ drivers and on-board crew, station staff and engineers, cleaners and caterers. But the trains are just the tools they use to transport customers, and the staff are there to look after both those essential tools and the passengers.

A happy customer is likely to come back again.

An unhappy one won’t.

And it’s not just about the train journey. It’s about the whole end-to-end trip – now called the ‘passenger experience’.

So that’s the true job of a train company. To have happy passengers that will come back many times and do it all again.

Complaints and satisfaction Like all people businesses, it is important for train operators to know whether they are keeping their customers happy or not. There are several ways they can do this, none of which are completely satisfactory.

The first is to log and act on complaints. This is important as every complaint represents an unhappy customer, and by investigating the complaint the company can ascertain how its service fell short of passenger expectations and act to prevent a recurrence.

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However, there are two facts that need to be remembered – not all customers complain, so the true number of performance lapses will be higher than the number of complaints received, and satisfied customers very rarely say so, which makes estimating the proportion of passengers who are happy with the company’s performance almost impossible.

Mobilising ‘secret shoppers’ is a possibility.

Anonymous passengers travel on services and then report on their experiences. These reports only refer to that one passenger and that one journey, so a large number would be needed to obtain a complete picture, and again they tend to be looking for faults rather than reporting on good practice. A survey of passengers will give a fairer result, depending on how the questions are couched, and could determine the proportion of satisfied and unsatisfied customers. But conducting such a survey is time consuming and expensive, unless a number of train operators act together to formulate a national survey rather than one aimed solely at their individual networks.

National survey The Railways Act of 2005 created a new Rail Passengers’ Council – a single Great Britain-wide organisation that replaced the earlier Rail Users’ Consultative Committee network of eight regional organisations. The operating name ‘Passenger Focus’ was adopted in 2006.

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Recovering from the pandemic Anthony Smith is Transport Focus’ chief executive. “We aim to be useful to those who are making decisions about transport and, above all else, we produce evidence about what transport users are thinking about their current experiences, what their priorities for improvement are, and where to best spend the money in the future,” he said.

The COVID-19 pandemic has had a huge impact on the railways. It has brought forward the end of franchising, cost the government billions to keep trains running for essential workers and vital freight, and had a lasting effect on passenger numbers.

“In a crisis, you either perform well or badly, there’s not much in between,” Anthony Smith continued. “The railways had a good crisis.

They kept running for the people that needed to use them, they changed the timetables quickly when it was needed and they kept up to date with the information about changing restrictions during that period when things were changing around a lot.

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“Now the crisis is over, I think it’s still too early at the moment to tell what the final pattern is going to look like. COVID is still with us, despite the fact that restrictions are changing. I think things will develop slowly as more people get confident. I think the leisure market will firm up even more. Business travel is going to be difficult because the pandemic has proved you don’t need to travel as much. Commuter travel in London and the Southeast will settle into some sort of a new pattern, but I think it’s a bit too early to tell.”

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Business travel is going to be difficult because the pandemic has proved you don’t need to travel as much

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In April 2008, the Secretary of State for Transport announced that he planned to widen Passenger Focus’s role to include bus passenger representation in England, outside London.

Its remit was widened again in 2014, from representing passengers to representing all those who use the motorways and certain A roads in England (the Strategic Road Network). This includes motorists, freight and business users, as well as those who walk or cycle on the network.

As a result, Passenger Focus became Transport Focus.

For the rail industry, one of the key tasks of Transport Focus was the production of the National Rail Passenger Survey (NRPS) – published twice a year, it gave a network-wide picture of passengers’ satisfaction with rail travel.

Passenger opinions of train services were collected from a representative sample of journeys. It was the largest published rail passenger satisfaction survey in the world, covering both passengers’ overall satisfaction and their satisfaction with 30 specific aspects of service, and was keenly read by train operator executives.

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic and the significant drop in the numbers of people using public transport, the NRPS has been paused.

Transport Focus continues to speak to thousands of passengers and former passengers to get a picture of future travel plans, feelings about travel and experiences of travel. The Rail User Weekly Survey is based on the views of approximately 500 rail passengers each week.

Image: Shutterstock

Passenger Experience

“There are still some problems – a backlog of driver training and so on – that are going to take time to work through the system.

“But what’s interesting is our surveys have shown throughout the pandemic, and even now, that the importance of reliability is still there. It dwarfs everything else. If you run the trains on time, you’ll keep an awful lot of your passengers happy.

“Cleanliness has become much more important. Trains now must look and smell and feel clean.

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“And obviously our tolerance to crowding has changed. It may change again, but we’re still sensitive about it. Therefore, disruption and the consequences of disruption are even more offputting, because you’re crammed together with more people.

“So, the message from the passengers to the operators at the moment is to keep that really good focus on performance that we managed to have through COVID, to keep trains looking and smelling clean and to avoid disruption so you’re not ramming people together.”

A new way to sell tickets Just as the operators are trying to attract passengers back to the railway, regulated fares have risen by 3.8 per cent from 1 March 2022, the largest increase in nearly a decade. This will naturally put some potential passengers off travelling.

“Let’s have discounts,” was Anthony’s answer.

“We’ve got to do something to reform the way we sell tickets. The rail fare system has failed – it’s so complicated that it can be difficult to navigate.

We know that Great British Railways has seized on this, and they’re going to do something about it, but it can’t come a minute too soon.

“In the meantime, let’s get people back using rail.”

On 19 April 2022, the government announced its first ever Great British Rail Sale, with the price of over one million tickets reduced by up to 50 per cent. Maybe they had been listening to the message from Transport Focus after all.

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Digitisation

Digitising document distribution brings substantial benefits

Image: Shutterstock

Sending out documents should be easy, but, for most train operators, it is a perennial headache. Toby Hawkins, sales director of ‘Software as a Service’ provider mpro5, suggests that it is crucial that train operators invest in digitising their document distribution ahead of rail reform

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ike many industries, rail is plagued with paperwork, much of it around health and safety compliance. This includes documents that people need to sign as well as ones that need to be read and understood by different teams, whether they are drivers’ general instructions and notices or COVID cleaning measures for train presentation.

Health and safety documents, briefs, company announcements, changes in legislation, working practice or standard operating procedures – there’s a ton of it and distributing it to the right people at the right time and ensuring that they

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have read it and taken it on board is a perennial challenge for most train operators.

So how should it be dealt with? Many operators still send sheets of paper around, which is inefficient, time consuming, expensive and certainly not good for the environment. Email is not much better – yes, it’s greener, but it is still laborious and, more importantly, there is usually no structured way to track who’s read it, who has responded and whether there is any bounce back.

By default, managers often end up falling back on unsophisticated Excel trackers.

But that’s an absurdly complex solution to the problem. There should be a simple way to

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send someone a document and receive back confirmation that they’ve read it, without all of this extra work.

WONs and PONs For example, Weekly Operating Notices and Periodical Operating Notices (WONs and PONs) contain crucial information for drivers and other key personnel. They include information related to engineering work, alterations to track and signalling arrangements, local operating instructions and localised amendments to National Operations Publications.

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Image: Shutterstock

Digitisation

Operators often have different ways of managing these documents. However, the fundamentals are the same: the drivers need to get the documents, read them, digest them and have them available for reference.

The problem in this particular case is never going to be drivers not reading them – that’s built into their DNA as train drivers. It’s the logistics of getting the documentation to staff who are, by default, mobile and remote, working varied shift patterns and widely distributed across the rail network.

Additionally, the raw cost of printing so much documentation is eye watering. I remember being given a figure, thinking it was a lot for a year and being told it was actually per period!

is sending this to you then it is important that you read it.

Aside from the cost and environmental damage of printing reams of documents, paper lacks traceability, visibility and accountability.

Health and safety

Making documents work

By contrast, a new health and safety procedure might seem a little more abstract to someone working in the IT department, but, if they are at the site of an incident in a depot, that document they didn’t read will be on their minds.

Sometimes, it’s tempting to approach this problem by just sending every document to everyone, but then you increase the likelihood of email fatigue – if the first few you’ve read were not relevant to you, why would you read the next one?

I dread to think how many of these important documents go unread. No one turns up to work to do a bad job or be negligent, but it’s a busy industry and operators want to build trust through their employee communications – if the company

The solution to this problem is actually quite simple and comes in three key components. Operators need a software platform that has a central document repository from which all material is sent out, they need this platform to be able to send information out to the right people at the press of a button, and they need those receiving it to be able to e-sign it and send that data back.

Once this is in place, data can be collected on a simple dashboard that will identify every document that has been sent out, how many people have read it and how many haven’t. The latter can be sent reminders automatically, either via an application or email, to ensure everyone has read the new information.

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The conversation around this topic is going to get bigger as rail reform moves ahead

Some operators have embraced digital solutions, but few of these go beyond sending emails or using a shared drive, which isn’t a great deal better.

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In short, the document does the legwork, collecting the required data and ensuring no one is left out of the loop.

This system saves everyone time, whether it’s the employee collecting the document or the manager that has to chase everyone to check it’s been read. It is all managed through the platform.

People no longer have to turn up at a depot just to collect a sheet of paper and, for train drivers, it completely removes the stress of having to obtain their WONs and PONs in advance of a journey.

Crucially, employers will also have irrefutable evidence of their due diligence. Having a full electronic audit trail for vital documents protects employees, passengers and the operator. It ensures that best safety practice is being followed, and that this can be proven in the event of an incident.

Finally, it’s worth underlining just how simple this system is – a document is sent out, proof that it’s been read comes back and is logged, and managers can get back to focusing on maintaining compliance and delivering an exceptional passenger experience.

The conversation around this topic is going to get bigger as rail reform moves ahead. The Great British Railway, Service Quality Regimes and other changes are, in many respects, all about consolidation and standardisation.

The expectation is that all train operators will have software solutions for managing their processes, one of which is document distribution.

The benefits for operators who adopt a digital solution are compelling.

Building Britain’s Railways - Major Summer May projects 2022

RIA

Making the case for rail investment Railway Industry Association chief executive Darren Caplan explains how the organisation is vital in the ongoing discussions around rail investment

Government and industry RIA’s main activities include representing members’ interests to clients, government and politicians, regulators and others, to offer a forum for dialogue and networking between industry colleagues, provide information and insight to members and promote exports of members’ products and services.

RIA also regularly engages with ministers and civil servants, particularly those at the Department for Transport (DfT), Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS) and International Trade

Summer May 2022 2022

(DIT). Discussions are regularly held with Network Rail, Transport Scotland, Transport for Wales, HS2, Transport for London and East West Rail.

RIA also works with industry partners to drive positive change in the sector in areas such as decarbonisation, innovation, equality and diversity. These partners include the High Speed

Working closely “ with government

and collaborating on safety and efficiency

“

S

et to celebrate its 150th anniversary in 2025, the Railway Industry Association (RIA) is the voice of the UK rail supply community.

RIA campaigns vociferously on behalf of more than 300 member companies from across the country’s supply chain. More than 60 per cent of its membership are either small or medium sized enterprises (SMEs) but overall, its members represent a large proportion of the rail industry by turnover.

Rail Group (HSRG), Rail Delivery Group (RDG), Rail Freight Group (RFG), RSSB, Campaign for Better Transport, Women in Rail and Young Rail Professionals (YRP), among others.

Darren Caplan has been RIA chief executive since January 2017. Prior to taking that role he was chief executive of the Airport Operators

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Association (AOA) for six years, and before that he worked in communications, politics and public affairs across a number of sectors including infrastructure, planning and technology, for 14 years.

Darren explained: “Our job is to represent the interests of our members, and work with them to enhance their chances of being successful companies, but also to try to help develop policy that helps them in our industry generally.

Safety and money Darren added: “Sometimes that’s working closely with government and collaborating on safety and efficiency, sometimes that is lobbying for a smoother pipeline of investments so that our members can provide better value for money.

There are some parts of it that are about just bringing people together.

“I think if you spoke to our members, hopefully they’ll say we fight their fight with a collective voice. But we also bring them together to discuss issues of the day and to make contacts, which leads to commercial benefits as well.”

railbusinessdaily.com

“

If you look at the figures now it’s around 80 per cent of prepandemic levels, which is great

“

Darren, says that RIA is very much informed by its members and so acts on their concerns, rather than being ‘top down’ in terms of activities. RIA is by no means the only trade association in rail, and he knows they all have a role to play.

“We have to focus on what we do, so I don’t look over my shoulder too much.

I suppose what marks us out is the lobbying side of things because we do make a point of saying things that maybe our members couldn’t say themselves.

And our view is that sometimes we need to negotiate with Government, and we have to fight the good fight on their behalf,” he added A perfect example is the continued campaigning for the publication of the Rail Network Enhancement Pipeline (RNEP). This was supposed to be published annually and therefore would help the supply chain plan for upcoming work. However, on the first day of Railtex/Infrarail exhibition on 10 May, RNEP was 930 days late.

Darren said: “We do engage quite a lot with government and other stakeholders. But we work strategically with other trade associations as well. For example, on Project Speed, we worked with Rail Alliance and Rail Forum Midlands on a message to government on visibility versus efficiency. And we don’t see ourselves as competing in this role, we see ourselves all working together for the benefit of the industry.”

Image: Shutterstock

RIA

Northern England RIA is rolling out regional activities, via RIA North and RIA Scotland with more to follow, however resources are currently being concentrated on those two main areas this year, as well as a bit in the Midlands.

Next year there are plans to work with other parts of the country. Three years ago, RIA began a rail fellowship programme designed to educate ministers about the industry; 30 MPs signed up.

Darren explained: “We’re trying to get people to understand the railway, the railway supply industry in particular, because when most people think of railways they think of services and they talk about train times and reliability.

“We’re trying to bring the industry to life to them, how we build, maintain, renew and enhance the railways. So, we take them out to members. They either go to a supplier or to a demonstration in their constituency.

“It may be they want to discuss apprenticeships and skills. These visits are very successful. We are building friends and importantly they understand how the world works.

“It should be said that we don’t just target 30 MPs, we do quite a lot of communications with MPs of all the parties. That means at the very least, they’re

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aware of what’s going on in the railway industry and actively take part. We do a survey every year, looking at our visibility in Parliament. We found 92 per cent of MPs have heard of RIA in some way, or what we do. And that’s shot up from much lower figures in 2017. So, it shows that we are increasing visibility of railway industry issues. The railway supply industry generally benefits from high visibility among the political decision makers.”

Pipelines of work The businesses visited vary in sizes, but Darren said the key thing is that the MPs should be coming back talking about the railway in the sense of its wider contribution to UK PLC and their region rather than just saying ‘we have trains and ticket prices’.

RIA has been active in championing the case for rail in the post-pandemic era. Several economic reports have been published looking at figures relating to rail usage compared with pre-pandemic.

These show that rail was growing in terms of jobs and Gross Value Added (GVA).

“We broke it down into regions and post codes as well,” Darren explained. “When we meet with people we have these figures for the MP’s local patch.

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“This includes jobs, GVA, tax revenue and all the rest of it. So as an MP, not only do you have a chance to visit suppliers and get some good knowledge, but you also get some information that shows how important it is to your patch.”

RIA will also highlight how, when projects are delayed, the impact to the supply chain can mean lower value for money for taxpayers. MPs are informed about how providing a clear and visible pipeline of work, and sticking with their decisions, helps deliver efficiencies. “Railway contractors are not just railway contractors, they do civil engineering in other sectors too,” said Darren. “And they’ll send teams out to other projects, sometimes to other countries. So if a rail project is announced, and then there is a delay over decision making, they’ll decline to negotiate because they haven’t got a team.

Project visibility “I’ve worked on other sectors and what do you lobby for? You argue for more money. In rail we just say we want to know with certainty about the visibility of projects. It’s not hard. It shouldn’t be that hard to say, ‘we’ve allocated this money’.”

Great British Railways offers opportunity for rail suppliers. Darren believes the day-to-day running of the railway should be by industry experts. “We’re looking at the track and train together, Guiding Mind, there are broadly good things,” he said.

“But the extent to which the DfT and civil service will take a step back remains to be seen. We would argue that the people most involved with the railways know best what to do with it. There is clearly a role for government, but as to the extent to which the civil servants let go, we’ll have to wait and see.”

Building Britain’s Railways - Major Summer May projects 2022

Image: Shutterstock

RIA

Impact of Brexit Brexit will also play a role in the supply chain, but has there been an impact yet? “Truth be told I think it’s too early to say,” said Darren. “Part of Brexit was going to be big changes in regulations and standards. But actually, there hasn’t been a lot of change in rail. People are trading in the same way.

I think our focus is on these free trade agreements and saying, ‘well, wherever we are in the world, we want to sell UK rail, how about we create a higher profile for rail in these negotiations’.

“You often hear about automotive, life sciences or aerospace, all these industries get talked about in free trade agreements. You don’t have rail, per se. Mostly we were working really hard to raise the profile of rail supply as an export.

Summer May 2022 2022

“When we first looked at this back in 2020-21, we expected to have lots of meetings, lots of issues happening and lots of concerns raised over Brexit. And I’m sure there’s some concerns, but it hasn’t been the big plethora of concern that we thought it may be.”

Darren summed up RIA’s role. “It’s often building up relationships. It’s often ensuring that the arguments are known by all the parties, and it’s also bringing to life key issues that either officials or ministers may not know about.

“Our strapline is the voice of the rail supply community. That’s how we see ourselves now. We can’t get everything we want, but we will argue for it, but if no one’s saying it, you’ve got no chance at all.

“

We’re talking as if the new normal means devastating effects on the rail network in the years to come

“

Darren thinks Labour broadly supports bringing track and train together. Positively, when RIA has spoken to both Conservative ministers and Labour shadow ministers, there is recognition that the supply chain will be integral to the future on the railway. He said: “We are reassured by all the parties that they won’t nationalise down those layers.

“Should it be at arm’s length and on a day-to-day basis be decided by experts? That’s the best version.

Suppliers shouldn’t have to worry about party politics playing a role in our industry.”

RIA has developed five tests for GBR which have been developed with members: no hiatus in current work, transparency, partnership, productivity and ambition. Darren added: “We need to clearly and openly see what’s going on with GBR which means the rail supply chain is part of the discussion. Cost efficiency can only be delivered if you have visibility and certainty of work. Decarbonisation, safety, exports or the economy more widely should be a positive force for good.”

long-term trends. Trends dip quickly and they come back quickly. So, I think we’ve got to be careful.”

Darren added: “We need to ensure government doesn’t overcompensate for the past two years.

Times ahead are tough now, but rail can support the economic recovery. So just to put in context, no one is really out there being bullish. We are. We’re saying to any official or stakeholder we can meet, don’t judge the next 30 years of rail investment on the last two years. I’ve said it to Wendy Morton, the rail minister, I’ve said it to DfT officials, I’ve said to BEIS officials. And that’s a role we can play.”

HS2 remains an important part of RIA’s work, and the scaling back of the Eastern Leg remains a concern. Darren said: “We have to look at HS2 over the period of the project. It’s a 30 to 40-year project. There was a plan in place that everyone agreed on. Then almost overnight, journalists were being briefed, saying, ‘actually, we’ve changed the plan’. Even though we welcome the £96 billion of investment in the Integrated Rail Plan (IRP), it was a total shock to lots of people in rail. Future changes to a major project shouldn’t be that piecemeal.

Moving on “An example would be that at the moment I think we’re being too negative about the prospects of the rail network in the future. I think passenger numbers will come back, and I think they’ll come back pretty sharp.

“We’re talking as if the new normal means devastating effects on the rail network in the years to come. If you look at the figures now it’s around 80 per cent of pre-pandemic levels, which is great when you think we are less than a year from pandemic restrictions ending.

“History shows that when you have wars or recessions, or even pandemics, it always reverts to

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“They might want to spend a bit more time meeting and briefing the industry so that we understand the issues. If they’ve come along and said because of the pandemic, we’re having to reduce our budgets or reschedule the scope it might have landed better than just overnight saying change our plan and you should be grateful for this new plan.

“And I think that’s why they had the problem. But look, we have to move on. We’ve already said for the full benefits we should build the whole scheme and Northern Powerhouse Rail shouldn’t be scaled back; however, we are where we are with the IRP, and we’ll work with them to try to deliver it.”

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Siemens Hydrogen

Siemens launches a ‘fast, clean and sustainable’ hydrogen-powered train Image: Siemens

Siemens Mobility has launched its new hydrogen-powered train at its factory in Krefeld, Germany

Its traction “motors develop

1.7MW, giving the train a top speed of 160km/h

“

B

ased on the Mireo platform, the train has been developed in cooperation with German state operator Deutsche Bahn (DB).

Fuelled by hydrogen, the only emissions are water vapour emitted as steam, which will help DB achieve its goal of reducing rail-related CO₂ emissions to zero.

Diesel replacement Intended to replace diesel multiple-unit trains on commuter and regional routes where electrification is not a viable option, the new Mireo Plus H has been launched as a two-car train with a range of up to 800km. Its traction motors

Summer May 2022 2022

develop 1.7MW, giving the train a top speed of 160km/h and acceleration similar to its all-electric equivalent.

A three-car version will also be made available.

This will have an increased range of 1,000km due

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to the additional storage room available on the roof of the third car.

The new train has been developed as part of the H2goesRail project, funded by the National Innovation Program for Hydrogen and Fuel Cell Technology and €13.74 million from the Federal Ministry for Digital and Transport (BMDV).

The German federal government aims to electrify 75 per cent of the country’s rail network by 2030.

However, some lines are just not economic to electrify, and it is for these routes that Siemens has developed the Mireo Plus H. The hydrogen fuel cells, developed in conjunction with specialist manufacturer Ballard of Canada, convert the hydrogen and oxygen taken from the air into electricity that is then

railbusinessdaily.com

Siemens Hydrogen

Image: Siemens

stored in lithium-ion batteries. These then power electric traction motors in the conventional way.

Overhead or battery

time “noRefuelling different from that of a dieselpowered train

“

The electrical system is based on that of the Mireo Plus B, an electric train that can run on overhead wires when they are available and on its batteries alone when no overhead power is available. It has a range of 80km on batteries alone and is used on short branch lines off the main network.

A total of 51 train sets are already on order for use on two lines in Germany, and a further seven have recently been ordered to operate on two lines in the Midtjylland region of Denmark.

The Mireo Plus H does not use the overhead line, although there is probably no reason why it couldn’t be configured to do so. Instead, hydrogen stored in tanks on the roof is its sole source of power. Stored at 350bar pressure, the train can be quickly refuelled using a specially designed mobile hydrogen infrastructure. This solution can be delivered by road and installed at convenient locations. The first installation will be at Siemens’ test track at Wildenrath, close to the Dutch border, where the new train will undergo its first trials.

Green hydrogen The refuelling process, from hydrogen tanks at 500bar pressure, is managed by a specially designed fuel process control and communication in the Deutsche Bahn mobile refueller that results in a refuelling time no different from that of a diesel-powered train, meaning current service schedules will need no alteration. The fuel itself is to be ‘green hydrogen’, produced by

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railbusinessdaily.com

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Building Britain’s Railways - Major Summer May projects 2022

Siemens Hydrogen

“

We now have a fast, clean and sustainable solution that will slash CO₂ emissions on rail

“

electrolysis using wind-generated electricity at night when demand is low, as distinct from hydrogen produced as a byproduct of ‘dirty’ chemical processes.

During 2023, the Mireo Plus H will start testing in Baden-Württemberg and will enter passenger service in 2024 between Tübingen, Horb and Pforzheim. It will replace a diesel train, saving some 330 tonnes of CO₂ a year. A second Mireo Plus H will enter service in the state of Bavaria at about the same time.

“In Europe, there are still around 15,000 dieselpowered train in operation,” Siemens project manager Jochen Steinbauer explained at the launch. “These are mainly used on non-electrified routes. Electrification of these routes cannot be implemented overnight – it requires investment and it requires time.

There are also routes where this is simply not possible or not economical, even in the long term. For this reason, in addition to the electrification of lines, we need other options to gradually replace dieselpowered vehicles.

“Hydrogen-powered trains, such as these new multiple units, can enable completely emission-free transport when using green hydrogen. Our newly developed hydrogen train, the Mireo Plus H, together with Deutsche Bahn’s hydrogen storage trailer, must be seen as a complete system.”

Deutsche Bahn intends to be carbon neutral by 2040. It therefore needs alternatives to its current fleet of diesel trains. “We see hydrogen as a complete system, comprising the train, the hydrogen infrastructure and the maintenance infrastructure,” said DB project manager Marc-Andre Saba. “We

need to harmonise and optimise those three elements.

“We also need to ensure we can operate a hydrogen train from day one. That’s why we as Deutsche Bahn developed the hydrogen infrastructure, secure the supply of the hydrogen for these new trains and join Siemens in the development and testing of the hydrogen train with focus on operational aspects.”

Siemens Mobility chief executive officer Michael Peter was pleased with his new train. “Together with Deutsche Bahn in the H2goesRail project, we now have a fast, clean and sustainable solution that will slash CO₂ emissions on rail routes that are not electrified,” he said. “There are more trials to come, but we are getting very close to seeing this train serving passengers very soon – great work and innovation by everyone involved.”

Saving carbon output Over the 30-year lifetime of a train, Siemens Mobility estimates that using green hydrogen will save up to 15,000 tonnes of carbon compared to a similar diesel train. At a CO₂ cost of €55 per tonne, that represents a saving of €825,000 over the life of the train.

Summer May 2022 2022

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railbusinessdaily.com

Asset Management Specialists

Railtex review

Railtex / Infrarail showcases industry’s full potential

Image: Railtex

Nearly 4,000 professionals from around the world attend major event held in London

Meaningful collaborations “Attendees from management, engineering, planning and technical design backgrounds came to the iconic buildings at Olympia London to create meaningful collaborations and form the future of the railway,” said Olaf Freier, Railtex / Infrarail portfolio director, on behalf of Mack-Brooks Exhibitions. “We are proud to be part of this again and to support the rail industry’s progress in the modern, post-pandemic world.”

In total there were 130 exhibiting companies from 14 countries with strong involvement from the UK. Countries represented included Turkey, Italy, Germany, the Netherlands and Switzerland, all of which were able to showcase a wide variety of new products and innovative technologies. The focus was clear: greener and sustainable product solutions, decarbonisation and digitalisation.

Summer May 2022 2022

Exhibitors and visitors alike were highly satisfied with their newly established business relationships. “Railtex / Infrarail 2022 provided not only the opportunity to reconnect with our customers in person, but we also had a chance to meet new ones,” said Richard Lenthall, vice president of voestalpine Railway Systems.

“During the three show days, we were able to update our customers on new products where they could see them in person, and without a doubt, this process would not be the same over teleconference.

“

The exhibition provided the perfect stage for business conversations to happen

“

T

he Railtex / Infrarail exhibition took place at Olympia London, from 10-12 May, with 3,707 industry professionals, mainly from the UK, attending the event.

Topics including decarbonisation, investment to create a more sustainable rail industry and digitalisation were all discussed at events within the main show.

“Also, the exhibition provided the perfect stage for business conversations to happen and to engage with quality customers in person.”

Across the three days, visitors and exhibitors of this year’s show had the opportunity to attend a rich supporting programme, including keynote

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speakers from leading industry names, technical seminars, project updates and question and answer sessions covering current topics for the railway industry.

The programme included two conference streams: The Future Focus Conference and Unlocking Innovation, two recurring features organised by the exhibition’s main show partner the Railway Industry Association (RIA).

Professional speakers During the opening ceremony on 10 May, Nicola Hamann, Mack-Brooks Exhibitions managing director, welcomed all attendees and expressed her gratitude for joining Railtex / Infrarail 2022 and making it a success. The ceremony continued with a message from RIA chief executive Darren Caplan expressing his views on the future of the industry.

Other speakers included shadow minister for business and industry Bill Esterston MP, Simon Blanchflower, non-executive director and strategic advisor at FICE, and Helen McAllister, programme director at Great British Railways Transition Team (GBRTT), all of whom were able to share insights about the latest developments within the railway industry.

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Railtex review

Building greatness He said that now, in the present, rail was likewise coming out of difficult times and building towards something greater, albeit this time rail was in a state of recovery from the pandemic. He drew particular note to the shifting landscape of passenger types, saying that at times leisure travel was back to 100 per cent of its pre-pandemic levels. “It is essential this market recovery continues,” he said. “Rail is a critical component of this country’s transport policy.”

Image: Railtex

Simon Blanchflower used his keynote speech to discuss the rail of past, present and future. He made a call to modernise, attract talent and deliver sustainable transport with a seemingly common thread being that the railway had to adapt to the needs of, and “delight”, customers.

Simon said that when he started his career at British Rail in 1982, it was not the “halcyon days” of rail that many portray them as, and that passenger numbers had been falling for some time. He said that there “wasn’t a particular focus on the customer,” adding safety performance was “particularly woeful at that stage.” He added that at the same time there were “great engineers and great operators with real pride in their job.”

To enable the market to recover, Simon said that the industry must continue to remove all barriers to rail travel – physical, psychological, and any that make it a worrying prospect for women or people who from different minority groups.

He also said that a socio-economic background should not keep people from rail travel. The focus must be on customer experience and improving the railway, he said, rather than being too distracted by the changing organisational mechanisms running through the sector.

zzIn addition to the conference programme, RIA’s Meet the Buyer programme once again offered networking opportunities to participants.

Furthermore, the product demonstrations and on-track display were popular features.

Mack-Brooks has confirmed that next year’s event will take place from 9-11 May at the NEC in Birmingham.

Inside Track’s sister publication Rail Director, published on June 17, will feature a supplement looking back at Railtex / Infrarail 2022.

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Building Britain’s Railways - Major Summer May projects 2022

And finally

Taking on the Yorkshire Three Peaks Members of the Business Daily Group have completed a 24 mile trek to raise funds for the Railway Children charity that provides protection and opportunity for children with nowhere else to go and nobody to turn to

Fantastic cause David McLoughlin commented: “I thoroughly enjoyed taking part in the challenge, while at the same time raising money for a fantastic cause, which certainly helped when the legs started to tire.

We started and finished the challenge together, completing it in under the 12 hours.

“It is important to me that, as a business, we give something back, putting ourselves outside our comfort zone for the good of others. This was exactly that, and what better place to do it than in the Yorkshire Dales.”

It was an early start for the team, who started the walk up the first hill, Pen-y-Ghent, 694 metres tall, shortly after 07:00. “It was a short, steep climb

Summer May 2022 2022

up Pen-y-Ghent and before we knew it, we were at the top,” Adam Archer said. “Despite looking towards the summit ahead, it was important to stop every now and again to look behind and take in the stunning Yorkshire scenery.”

Having reached the top, the team’s reward was a long, gradual walk down to the Ribblehead viaduct, where they started the climb up to the second of the hills, Whernside – a height of 736 metres.

“

We were delighted to reach the top and be treated by breathtaking views of the Ribblehead viaduct

“

F

ive intrepid members of the Business Daily Group (BDG), which owns Inside Track, were among dozens taking on the Yorkshire Three Peaks Challenge – walking 24 miles, including 1,585 metres of ascent, all in under 12 hours.

Led by chief executive officer David McLoughlin, the team from BDG included Rail Director editor Danny Longhorn, head of digital Adam Archer, director of marketing Rachael Dean, and RBD Community’s head of client engagement Rachel Woodman.

Rachael Woodman said: “The second hill was certainly not as steep as Pen-y-Ghent, and we were delighted to reach the top and be treated by breathtaking views of the Ribblehead viaduct.

“Completing the second hill was also a good excuse to stop for lunch and replenish all those lost calories from several hours of walking.”

Then it was straight down Whernside and past the temptation of a pub for the team, who soldiered on to the final of three hills Ingleborough, a height of 723 metres.

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Rachel continued: “Having been walking for the best part of nine hours, I don’t think there will have been anyone at the bottom of Ingleborough looking up at the climb ahead with a smile on their face.

“But, knowing what we were walking for, and that this was the last of the hills, we made it to the top where, after a dry day, it started to rain.

It was great fun, and we all felt a huge sense of accomplishment when, as a team, we reached the final trig point.”

Team achievement With tired legs, the five had several miles left to walk to reach the start point of Horton in Ribblesdale, where they were met by members of the Railway Children team who handed them a medal for their efforts and a well-deserved cup of tea.

Danny Longhorn was tired but satisfied. “It was a fantastic team achievement, and it was great to start and finish the challenge as one,” he said.

“If the stunning views of the Yorkshire Dales weren’t enough, knowing that the blood, sweat and blisters were all helping raise funds for the fantastic work of Railway Children made it all the more worthwhile.

“Well done to everyone else who took on the challenge and thanks to the Railway Children team for organising the event and providing cups of tea along the way.”

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