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FEATURE THE ROLLING STOCK SITUATION
A SIGNALLING SUPPLIER VIEWPOINT The main supplier of signalling systems in Scotland is Siemens, so says Steve Wright, the company’s Scottish representative. Siemens partnership with Network Rail is widely considered to be working well but an open discussion is needed as to how this will work into the future. Competence in the industry is a concern. Network Rail has to be assured that supply industry designers and implementers have the right skill sets. The people who were trained in the British Rail era are coming to the end of their careers and the onus for competence has shifted towards the suppliers. With the change in technology evolving towards the digital railway, there is a need to attract people from different backgrounds. Within the supply chain, the purchase of materials is becoming increasingly difficult. Microchips are a real problem, with manufacturers uninterested in supplying small quantities. It is recognised that better integration between signalling, telecommunications, and rolling stock is needed and a move away from silo thinking is required as well as the recognition that signalling is the enabler for operations.
Rail Engineer | Issue 202 | May-Jun 2023
Whilst concerns are raised about interoperability and interchangeability in signalling, it comes as something of a surprise that similar concerns exist for rolling stock. In the British Rail days, the specifications for the various types of multiple units designed in the 1980s required that they could all couple together, for example 153s, 155s, 156s, and 158s for DMUs and similar for EMUs. With the huge numbers of new trains having been purchased over the past decade, regrettably the specifications for these did not call for the same inter-coupling requirement from train builders. This has seriously impacted on operational flexibility. Graham Taylor from CAF remarked that a third of Scotland’s operating costs is spent on the provision of trains and this is a sixth of the total of Scotland’s railway costs. Not enough work is carried out to ascertain what is really needed. In other industries, this is known as Front End Engineering Discipline (FRED), where, for example, BP as an example spends £25 million per annum on such investigations. Rail companies spend precious little on rolling stock research and getting the resultant product wrong can result in horrendous costs. It must be remembered that there are lots of alternative ways of travelling and that road vehicles are catching up fast with electric technology. If rail is to produce the modal shift that everyone seems to think would be good, getting the technology right is going to be critical.
AUDIENCE PARTICIPATION The discussion session threw up some difficult questions that don’t have ready answers: » Why are we buying so many trains from abroad? Although Brexit has happened, procurement law still exists on an international basis which is supposed to open up markets and see fair play. » Why do we not specify interoperable trains? Unfortunately, trains tend to be built as