Rail Engineer - Issue 137 - March 2016

Engineer

by rail engineers for rail engineers

MARCH 2016 - ISSUE 137

ONCE IN A LIFETIME

KENT FRAMEWORK

RE-OPENING LAMINGTON

CARDIFF AREA RESIGNALLING

Is Costain’s new-style multidisciplinary framework agreement with Network Rail living up to expectations?

This vital viaduct suffered in the recent storms, closing the West Coast main line north of Carlisle for seven weeks.

David Bickell’s look at this important project leads off a major Signalling & Telecoms Focus in this issue.

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Structural deck replacement: Including renewal of timber deck and strengthening, through to the construction of concrete saddles.

Longitudinal timbers: Replacement of life-expired hardwood and softwood long timbers, including removal and replacement of rails, guard rails and transoms.

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Rail Engineer • March 2016

3

Contents

Re-opening Lamington Both Scotland and David Shirres were cut off when Lamington Viaduct suffered storm damage, closing the West Coast main line.

Kent Framework – is it Living Up to Expectations?

Collin Carr considers Costain and Network Rail’s new way of working.

22

Muck – a Very Moving Experience 26 A landslip blocked the Newcastle-Carlisle line, Graeme Bickedike investigated.

32 New UTC for Crewe

Cardiff Area Signalling Renewal David Bickell was Atkins’ guest at this complex undertaking.

36

DAS: a New Roll-out Opportunity How can GSM-R be DAS as well? Clive Kessell finds out.

56

More DAS TTG’s Energymiser® DAS system has been adopted by Abellio ScotRail.

60

Efficient Railway Engineering 62 AM Signalling Design is now working with both Thales and Carillion Rail.

ERTMS in the UK – Another Perception 64 Having discussed ETCS with Network Rail and ORR, Clive Kessell visits RSSB.

42 Farewell to the NRN

A youthful Clive Kessell appears at the start of his article on the demise of the National Radio Network.

46 Rugby ROC Opens

Humberside Resignalling Linbrooke and Ansaldo STS are to tackle the line from Ferriby to Gilberdyke.

66

Resignalling in East Nottinghamshire Signalling Solutions Limited, now owned by Alstom, completes this project.

68

Signals Passed at Danger (SPAD) Alison Moors asks: “How do we know we are doing the right thing?”

72

Resignalling at Kingscote Clive Kessell finds out how it is done on heritage railways.

76

Beer Heights Light Railway 80 It may be narrow gauge, operated by model firm PECO, but it still needs signalling.

Multidisciplinary Company is now Komplete 85 Komplete Group, founded as Railway Projects in 1992, now has three divisions.

Conwy Crisis When the railway flooded at Llanrwst, Alun Griffiths had to rebuild it.

86

Two Down, Two Up 88 Construction Marine demolished two bridges over Christmas, then put them back.

50

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Rail Engineer • March 2016

Signalling

Editor Grahame Taylor

gurus at large!

grahame.taylor@railengineer.uk

Production Editor Nigel Wordsworth

5

GRAHAME TAYLOR

Signalling is our main theme this month and, as can be expected, our signalling gurus have gone into overdrive.

But to kick it all off we have an opinion piece by Kevin Robertshaw, Network Rail’s IP signalling programme director who challenges the industry to find the cost savings that seem so elusive.

nigel.wordsworth@railengineer.uk

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

Engineering writers bob.wright@railengineer.uk chris.parker@railengineer.uk clive.kessell@railengineer.uk collin.carr@railengineer.uk david.bickell@railengineer.uk david.shirres@railengineer.uk graeme.bickerdike@railengineer.uk mungo.stacy@railengineer.uk mark.phillips@railengineer.uk paul.darlington@railengineer.uk peter.stanton@railengineer.uk stuart.marsh@railengineer.uk

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Another month, another ROC (Rail Operating Centre) opens. This time it’s at Rugby, the second of the two ROCs which will eventually control all LNW operations. David Bickell has all the technical stuff, but also alludes to the way that modern ROCs are more than just space-age working environments. Signallers can see their railway.

The Cardiff resignalling, as in many areas now, uses plug couplers so that cables can be manufactured off-site. As David reminds us, though, there has to be some thought about where the couplers actually land up so that they’re not all in the same place and get bunched up! A good idea that has collided with real life - and adapted.

David also reports from the depths of East Devon on a railway complete with tunnel, steam locomotives and a fully fledged signalling scheme. Here’s somewhere to look out for if you’re passing by the Jurassic Coast. The Beer Heights Light Railway is a 7¼” PECORAMA. We’re getting increasingly familiar with obstacle detection schemes on level crossings. At Bingham, on the East Notts signalling scheme described by Clive Kessell, an additional safety feature has been introduced - Barrier Protection Management (BPM). This is an inductive loop mounted in the roadway to detect if a vehicle has stopped on a crossing when the barriers have come down. It’s engineering that gives the yellow box markings some teeth.

Clive has been talking to Tom Lee, professional head of CCS and deputy director of research and standards at RSSB, who will be a speaker at a forthcoming conference on ERTMS. Two issues catch the eye; that of the perennial problem of transitions from one system to another, and the spectacularly mundane, but technically challenging, problem of dealing with trains that come apart when they’re not meant to.

The DAS - driver advisory system - can bring benefits in the form of fuel economy and reduced wear and tear.

Clive looks at a system that shoehorns all the software into existing radio equipment that, like many processing devices, has spare capacity waiting for something to do.

Give yourself time and space to read about SIL Dos and Don’ts. Clive debunks some of the oft held views about Safety Integrity Levels and gets back to their true meaning and their true purpose - or, at least, as near as it is possible! “Over-zealous application of unnecessary safety measures can be damaging to performance, reliability and cost.” The law of unexpected consequences!

It’s pretty obvious that our squad of writers is both knowledgeable and experienced, but it’s fairly rare for them to admit to what they did in their relative youth.

Clive was heavily involved in the NRN (National Radio Network), an incredibly exciting project that started in the 1970s, building a national communications system from scratch.

Heritage railways seem to have the knack of acquiring and adapting all sorts of redundant kit from the main rail network. Of course, for them it’s likely that there is no notion of redundancy - it’s all useful ‘stuff’. Surplus perhaps but, as Clive recounts in his tale of Christmas goings-on at the Bluebell line, ‘stuff’ is almost never redundant.

Crewe is to get its own UTC. That’s a University Technical College. Paul Darlington reports on this new venture even though it’s not strictly a rail-only training establishment.

Network Rail is a partner in association with other engineering companies.

Signal trip wires are a well-established way of containing the risks from crumbling cutting faces. But in Kent, some of the rocks didn’t follow the rules and started to bounce over the trip wires and onto the tracks. This hooligan element had to be controlled. Collin Carr has the details.

The prolonged closure of Lamington viaduct illustrates how a report of a minor track defect on a structure can be the sign of something very serious. In the event, the industry had a very close call with this one. David Shirres looks at what went on under the bridge and how, as we go to press, the line has been reopened The hillside at Farnley Haugh (and no, I don’t know how to pronounce it) was another victim of the great rains. There were an assortment of factors involved in this landslide but, in the end, the terrain just became supersaturated and turned to splodge. Graeme Bickerdike gives a graphic account of how nature took charge.

The problem of Farnworth’s (far-too-small) tunnel was always a reason for putting electrification on the back burner. The scheme to fill it up with concrete and then re-bore it was audacious and raised the odd eyebrow. But now, with eyebrows lowered, Graeme revisits Farnworth to report on an ambitious project successfully completed.

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OPINION

Rail Engineer • March 2016

7

The Future of Signalling Renewals KEVIN ROBERTSHAW

D

uring the 27-years I have spent in this industry, mostly as a signal engineer in one form or another, I have seen the delivery of our signalling projects evolve into the major schemes many of them are today.

While we still deliver specific targeted works to manage an ageing and sometimes obsolete asset, many of our schemes are merged with other works and become larger schemes or integrated programmes that deliver so much more; schemes such as North Lincolnshire resignalling that was eventually delivered as part of an integrated programme of works costing some five times more than the original scheme; and Cardiff Area Signalling Renewals (CASR) delivering the much needed resignalling as part of an integrated enhancement package.

During CP5 the IP Signalling team will spend around £4 billion on works ranging from small likefor-like renewals through to major schemes; our ability to work with suppliers and deliver works of this scale is truly inspiring…but it isn’t enough?

The number of passenger journeys made each year is still growing; we now move more people around the country on our railway network than we ever have. As an industry, we move more freight year-on-year, ranging from fuel to supply the country’s power stations to domestic goods and mail.

The UK railway has often been referred to as the backbone of the economy and this has never been truer than it is today. In many areas, the network is full to capacity and there is no space to build multiple

new routes. Where we can, Network Rail is delivering new lines such as the Borders railway and East to West Rail, or engineering incremental capacity enhancements through both small and large schemes. However, this will not be enough to meet the growing capacity demand that we face – we need more capacity and we need it quickly.

Brave new world Change is coming to the world of signalling renewals – revolutionary change that will alter the way we plan, develop, design and deliver schemes across the country.

Devolution to the routes has created a client organisation that is closer to our customers and has a far greater understanding of their needs, while the development of the Digital Railway programme is creating a suite of tools that can be integrated and delivered to meet those needs on a route and network basis.

Not since the advent of relay based signalling have we had such an opportunity to implement a step-change improvement in the technology that allows our complex and mixed traffic railway to operate safely and more efficiently. There is a huge amount of effort required from the whole industry to make Digital Railway a reality and the humble signal engineer is at the heart of that effort; from operational rules development through to

commissioning, every stage will require signal engineering input into the development/design process, or delivery of the new infrastructure.

The big question is: “Are we ready?”

We have efficient framework contracts, we have collaboration, we have alliances, but still the price of signalling renewals increases each year. There is no sign of the promised efficiency and no sign of signalling renewal costs going down.

This must change if we are to deliver what is needed in CP6 and beyond.

Route based renewals plans must be robust and fixed with little or no change applied; delivery teams must support their clients, such that they can make fully informed decisions; my Infrastructure Projects signalling team must be relentlessly focused on safe, timely delivery in a cost effective manner; our suppliers must be focused on efficient delivery today while seeking further opportunity for more efficient delivery tomorrow.

Should we be worried, concerned about the need for change? Should we sit tight and argue that we have it right now and there is no need for a new approach?

Absolutely not! We must all be willing to embrace change and accept that, whilst what we do today works, we can always do better if we are willing to accept that the way we do things now may not be right for the future. To quote George Bernard Shaw: “Progress is impossible without change, and those who cannot change their minds cannot change anything.”

The future is complex The routes are building baseline renewals plans based on a Digital Railway roll out that will deliver significant benefit to the industry from the commissioning of the first scheme through to the final commissioning in 25-years time.

However, these plans also have to account for the life-expired or obsolete assets and ensure that our railway system continues to safely deliver a high level of performance to our customers during delivery of our future vision.

Working with our suppliers, we need to create new, faster and more efficient means of delivering what we do today, whist also developing new delivery models that will truly integrate the technical elements of our Digital Railway future and implement one of the most significant change programmes the industry has ever seen.

The future for signal engineers across the UK rail industry is complex and exciting. We have the opportunity to lead Europe in delivery of an integrated Digital vision. Nobody will do this for us, it will not just happen, we need to collectively pull together and lead the delivery of the UK’s Digital Railway.

There is clearly a lot to do and a need to change. I am really looking forward to the future of signal engineering – are you?

Kevin Robertshaw is IP signalling programme director at Network Rail.

8

NEWS

Rail Engineer • March 2016

Inside an AT200 From Autumn 2017, passengers between Edinburgh and Glasgow will be able to travel on ScotRail’s class 385 trains, which are Hitachi AT200 series EMUs. These have a maximum speed of 160 km/h and 23-metre cars.

The public has been able to experience what it will be like to travel in one of these new trains following the unveiling of a full-size model at Edinburgh Waverley station.

ScotRail’s new EMUs are Hitachi’s first AT200s. Abellio signed a contract for 70 of them in March 2015, a month before they took over the ScotRail franchise, although they started procurement discussions with Hitachi in August 2013. The £370 million order is for 46 three-car units and 24 four-car units and includes a 10-year contract for maintenance at Craigentinny, which will also service the IEP trains. The order is being financed by SMBC Leasing’s Caledonian Rail Leasing specialpurpose vehicle and gives the Scottish Government the option to buy back the full fleet for £1 after 25 years.

Bodyshell fabrication at Hitachi’s Kasado works in Japan started last October with the first being rolled out at end of January. Seven trains will be built in Japan after which the remaining 63 will be built at Hitachi’s UK facility in Newton Aycliffe, which opened in September.

Scotland will receive its first class 385 in October for nighttime testing with no other trains running. Further units for testing will be delivered in November and December. Approval for normal network running is programmed for May 2017 to allow driver training to start, ready for the first service train in the autumn of 2017.

By December 2017, all 24 fourcar units will have been delivered.

This will enable the timetable to be accelerated as all Edinburgh to Glasgow services will be formed

of class 385 units which will offer faster journey times with more seats. Currently this service uses three-car class 170 DMUs which have 18 first class and 171 standard class seats. These will be replaced by four-car Class 385s which will have 20 first class and 253 standard class seats, 16 of which are tip-up.

Other passenger improvements include more bay seating (four

seats around a table), better alignment of seats with windows, power sockets in standard class, free Wi-Fi and a flexible multi-use area for prams and bikes. A novel innovation is a passenger counting system to record people leaving and entering the train. This will be linked to platform screens and the ScotRail app to let passengers waiting on platforms know where there is more space to board.

NEWS

9

Rail Engineer • March 2016

HS2 moves to Birmingham (and Doncaster, and...)

The new HS2 offices in Birmingham’s Colmore Business District were officially opened when Transport Secretary Patrick McLoughlin visited recently. Up to 1,000 staff will be employed at the new offices, from engineers who will help design the railway to procurement specialists.

As well as being home to the company’s offices, Birmingham will be at the heart of the HS2 network, with new stations at Curzon Street

and Birmingham Interchange when the Phase One route opens in 2026. Connections north to Crewe will open in 2027, with the lines to

Leeds and Manchester due to be completed by 2033.

HS2 Ltd chairman Sir David Higgins said: “The arrival of HS2 in Birmingham will play a vital role in boosting jobs, skills, economic growth and regeneration across the city. Britain’s second city is at the heart of the HS2 network and

I am delighted that the Secretary of State has officially opened our headquarters at 2 Snowhill, as the project moves towards construction.

“I am proud HS2 has chosen Birmingham as its future home to house up to 1,000 staff to deliver the largest infrastructure project Britain has seen for decades.”

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NEWS

Rail Engineer • March 2016

GOBLIN - what's in a name?

Is it the Gospel Oak to Barking line? Or Barking to Gospel Oak? Network Rail says the former, the local user’s group the latter.

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Whatever, the news is that the long-awaited electrification of the line is finally underway with a multidisciplinary design and construct contract worth more than £60 million having been awarded to J Murphy and Sons.

The contract to carry out principal enabling works for the overall scheme was awarded by Network Rail, working on behalf of Transport for London (TfL) and the Department for Transport (DfT).

Conveniently, Gospel Oak station is just opposite Murphy’s head office in Kentish Town and Murphy will use local staff and resources as much as possible on the project. The company will be collaborating with Designer Amey and with Stobart Rail, which will be responsible for the specialised slab track works.

Other contracts have also been placed. Amey Inabensa will be delivering the traction power

upgrade and OLE design under a £10 million contract, while OCR, Network Rail’s own OLE delivery organisation, will be erecting the wires for a further £15 million. The whole scheme will cost in the region of £135 million.

Piling work has already commenced. A phased eightmonth closure of the line will start in June 2016. This consists of a part closure from early June to late September 2016 with trains running between Gospel Oak and South Tottenham during weekdays, and a full closure of the line from October 2016 to early February 2017.

Further works to have the line ready for electric trains will take place during evenings and weekends only and will be completed by the end of June 2017. After four months of commissioning, the route will change over to four-car electric rains from January 2018.

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NEWS

Rail Engineer • March 2016

Infrarail is now just weeks away

T

here are just a few weeks to go before Infrarail 2016 opens its doors at ExCeL London. The eleventh of these popular rail infrastructure technology exhibitions runs from 12 to 14 April and, if you haven’t already registered for your visit, now is a good time to make your plans.

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Registration via the show website guarantees free entry to the exhibition and to the keynote speeches, project updates and discussion sessions that form a key part of this event.

Rail Engineer will also be waiting to welcome visitors to the dozen industry seminars that it is presenting as part of the Infrarail programme. Additions and updates to all these activities are being made all the time - regular visits to the website will reveal the latest developments.

By mid-February, the number of companies taking part in the show had risen to 190. An additional 30 firms, many of them familiar names in the rail infrastructure sector, will be exhibiting as part of the accompanying Civil Infrastructure & Technology Exhibition - CITE 2016 - to which Infrarail visitors will have

unrestricted access. Together, the two exhibitions constitute the UK’s biggest infrastructure event this year. The separate conference and seminars programme accompanying CITE 2016 will also feature rail-oriented topics, so it is worth checking details of those at www.cite-uk.com.

And don’t forget the new Business Matching Service which allows buyers and decision makers to pre-book meetings at exhibitors’ stands, or the Rail Mentoring Scheme to be presented by the Rail Alliance aimed at helping SMEs to join the industry’s supply chain.

Online visitor registration will be accepted up to midnight on Monday 11 April. For registration on arrival there is a £20 entry fee to the show.

More information on everything happening at Infrarail 2016 plus the latest exhibitor list can be found at www.infrarail.com.

Infrarail 2016 Venue: Dates: Opening times:

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ExCeL London, Hall Entrance N1/N2 12 - 14 April 2016 Tuesday 12 April 10:00 - 17:00 Wednesday 13 April 10:00 - 17:00 Thursday 14 April 10:00 - 16:00 www.infrarail.com infrarail@mackbrooks.co.uk

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NEWS

Rail Engineer • March 2016

Civil engineering costs are forecast to rise by around a quarter in the next five years, and tender prices by around a third, according to a report by RICS, the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors.

Prepared by RICS’ Building Cost Information Service (BCIS), the report claims that civil engineering costs rose by 1.4% in the third quarter of 2015 compared with the previous quarter, but remained unchanged compared with the same period last year.

Civil engineering costs are now expected to fall over the year to third quarter 2016, principally as a result of falling oil prices.

Thereafter, costs are expected to rise quite sharply as oil prices bounce back, albeit from a low base, and, as a result, by around 25% over the next five years.

Civil inflation

Peter Rumble, head of forecasting at RICS’ BCIS division, commented: “With civil engineering costs set to fall over the next year, a moderate increase in annual tender prices is expected in the year to the third quarter 2016.

“Over the next three years input cost increases are likely to be the key driver of tender prices, but, over 2020, the final year of the forecast period, stronger output growth, in addition to upward pressure from input costs, is expected to lead to a greater gap between costs and tender prices.”

"Let's Work Together" (as sung by Canned Heat and Bryan Ferry)

Proving that even competitors can work together, Alstom and Bombardier have jointly announced a €73 million contract to provide signalling for the Barcelona suburban network, awarded by Spain’s Administrator of Railway Infrastructure (ADIF).

The Alstom-Bombardier consortium has won a contract to supply ERTMS signalling systems and 20 years of maintenance services for a 56km long suburban line linking L’Hospitalet de Llobregat and Mataró in the area of Barcelona, Spain. Alstom’s share is around €39 million with Bombardier’s €34 million.

The Alstom-led consortium will deliver the design, procurement, installation, testing and commissioning of the signalling

communication systems. Alstom will implement its proven, radiobased Atlas 200 ERTMS Level 2 system for the entire line.

Bombardier is responsible for the electronic interlocking system with its EbiLock 950 computer-based solution.

The two companies are competing for ERTMS signaling business in the UK, Alstom through it’s subsidiary Signalling Solutions and Bombardier as part of the Infrasig consortium with Carillion.

Rail Safety Summit 2016

RAIL SAFETY SUMMIT 2016 – AGENDA 1. Keynote speaker: Graham Hopkins (Network Rail) 2. The new RSSB’s ‘Leading health and safety on Britain’s railway – A strategy for working together.’

John Abbott (RSSB) and Roan Willmore (Network Rail)

3. Fatigue •

Fatigue risks and management. Mark Young (RAIB)

•

New models/products to lower fatigue such as the wrist bands from Crossrail & TfL & a new shift model. Jill Collis (TfL)

•

External view on managing fatigue – Army. Johnny Shute (ORR)

4. Health and wellbeing •

Overview on H&W in the industry & the improvements that have been made. Mick Kearney (ASLEF)

•

Design for H&W – High Gate Control Room. Steve Coe (TSSA)

•

Health and wellbeing – what does ‘good’ look like and what benefits can result? David Nancarrow (Atkins)

Safety Summit 5th MAY 2016 LONDON

5. Road Risk

•

An overview from the Road Risk Project Group on industry statistics and what is being done to lower accidents.

•

A case study from ScotRail on how they are improving road risk for their staff.

•

Hear how monitoring overnight hotel usage can significantly lower road accidents.

•

A review from an external industry expert on how they manage road risk.

6. Workforce safety •

A review of the ‘Deep In Safety’ programme.

•

Hear how leaders are empowering their teams to take ownership of their own safety.

•

A review of new innovations to improve track worker safety.

On top of listening to the speakers, you can visit our sponsor exhibition stands and network over refreshments and lunch.

Please book early to avoid disappointment.

Purchase your tickets now at www.railsummits.com

16

Rail Engineer • March 2016

Farnworth Tunnel: the ups and downs of reboring it

PHOTOS: FOUR BY THREE

ONCE IN A LIFETIME

U

nique is an overused word and it’s often applied erroneously. Whilst all rail projects are different - due to the location and scheme design - there is always some commonality between, for example, every bridge replacement or track renewal. But the same cannot be said of the events at Farnworth last year where a 295-yard tunnel was filled with foam concrete and a new one driven. This was genuinely unique: no reference could be made to a dusty blueprint hiding in the archives.

Now fast forward to the twenty-first century and enabling works for the North West Electrification Programme. Neither tunnel could accommodate two tracks and overhead line equipment so the decision was made to bore a larger one on a similar alignment to the original.

Network Rail appointed Buckingham Group as principal contractor in November 2014, including works to reconstruct Farnworth’s adjacent station, an overbridge and retaining wall. J Murphy & Sons Ltd - we’ll call them Murphy hereafter - undertook the tunnelling to a design by OTB Engineering.

High strength Site mobilisation got underway at the end of February 2015, with a generous compound being established on leased land over the

PHOTOS: NETWORK RAIL

Rail Engineer looked forward to this £20.8 million project in May 2015 (issue 127), charting the tunnel’s history, as well as describing the theoretical methodology and the open-faced shield which would protect the miners. Yes, such people do still exist. This time we’ll look retrospectively at how things actually went.

If you don’t have last May’s issue to hand, here’s some context. Farnworth’s 1838 twotrack tunnel, engineered by John Hawkshaw, formed part of the line connecting Manchester with Bolton. The introduction of out-of-gauge Pullman carriages on services to Carlisle brought the need for a second bore to host Down trains, opening in 1880. The first was then repaired, significantly reducing its structure gauge; thereafter only the Manchester-bound Up line passed through it.

eastern half of the tunnel. This was separated from a smaller compound on the west side by the busy A666 linking Bolton to the nearby motorway network. Construction traffic could enter the site via a slip road built off the southbound carriageway. A few yards away was a full-width ventilation shaft reaching the midpoint of the Up tunnel.

An immediate priority was to strengthen the single-track Down bore through which a reduced-frequency train service would operate whilst the new tunnel was being mined. Over 11

Rail Engineer • March 2016

17

GRAEME BICKERDIKE

weekends, 54-hour possessions were secured for completion of this work, requiring a 200mm concrete lining to be sprayed over two layers of welded mesh fabric reinforcement.

There was insufficient clearance to adopt this solution through an area of distortion so here the brickwork was removed and steel ribs fitted.

Murphy Surveys installed an optical deformation monitoring system which would provide realtime alerts as progress was made with the new tunnel. At their closest point, the intrados of the two bores are just 1.5m apart.

Filling up Bi-directional working was introduced through the Down tunnel on 2 May, allowing the core works to proceed. An early focus for Murphy was to prepare for the tunnelling shield’s arrival by excavating a launch pit in front of the east portal - 3.6 metres deep, 10.5 metres wide and separated from the adjacent open line by a secant-piled wall. As the pit was being dug out, a 15mm movement of the piles was recorded, triggering a monitoring alarm and hasty repacking of the track late one Sunday night. Also assembled was a steel frame to act as a thrust block for the shield. Two new portals were constructed as part of the concrete works, together with a slab above the eastern entrance where the lack of cover could have resulted in the ground and existing parapet being uplifted.

(Left) Drilling Working from the Up the lining before tunnel, Keller Group grouting and (far consolidated the ground left) assembling and filled voids between the shield. the two bores by injecting a high-strength grout

through 1,150 pipes at two metre centres. With shutters erected at both ends, the tunnel and 13 cross passages to the Down bore were then filled with 7,800m3 of foam concrete in 1.5 metre layers, delivering a dry density of 1,050kg/m3 with 1.5N/mm2 compressive strength. This was sufficient to prevent a collapse during tunnelling but proved soft enough for easy excavation. The material was produced using on-site batching facilities and then pumped down the shaft before it too was filled. The process took 17 days, led by GS Foam Concrete.

Late in July, the shield arrived from Oldham where it had been manufactured by Tunnel Engineering Services. It came in six main pieces - the heaviest weighing 64 tonnes - with 12 lorry loads of ancillary equipment such as trailing gantries and the rotary segment erector for the precast concrete lining. A 500-tonne crane, supplied by Ainscough, assisted in its two-week assembly. Testing and commissioning took place prior to launch on 1 August; the first lining ring was completed on the 10th after overcoming the very stiff resistance offered by Hawkshaw’s 177-year-old stone portal.

18

Rail Engineer • March 2016

Fighting fires

PHOTOS: NETWORK RAIL

below invert level - as well as eight window samples and more than 1,000 cores through the lining either side of the tunnel. All this painted a picture of the conditions that would be encountered as the mining work moved forward, and a long-section representation was pinned to the office wall where Rail Engineer spoke with Network Rail’s Rhiannon Price and Murphy’s project manager Mick Boyle.

It showed the original tunnel to have been driven mostly through glacial till, with laminated clay above for two-thirds of its length from the west end. A narrow layer of sand extended inwards from the east portal for a distance of 50 metres, becoming deeper after 35 metres. It’s worth making the point that the maximum ground cover above the tunnel was only seven metres at the shaft, which raises the question as to why Hawkshaw did not specify an open cutting here. No-one seems clear as to the answer.

Deep insight Extensive ground investigations by Aspin Group had been ongoing for two years as a dozen possible options for accommodating an electrified railway through Farnworth were whittled down to a final design. Two dozen bore holes were sunk - extending to 10 metres

INVERT OF 1838 TUNNEL

A666

SHAFT

The team then embarked on a venture into the unknown: they had expectations as to what they would face, but no certainty. As the machinery was bespoke and effectively prototype, a number of early breakdowns occurred, keeping the fitters busy swapping pumps and hydraulic rams. Consequently, the anticipated daily advance of three rings - or 4.2 metres - was reduced to just one.

On 14 August, as the shield moved beyond the concrete slab above the portal, came the first intervention by running sands as loose, wet material poured into the excavation. Looking up, daylight could be seen. Around Running sands 35 tonnes of twice inundated Carbofill resin was the workings. A needed to plug the pit was excavated largest of several for remediation substantial voids. purposes.

Orica UK dealt with these, thereafter remaining on site until the end. Two weeks later, ring No.31 had been reached when a second fall inundated the working face with 100 tonnes of sand which had to be removed by hand and fed back through the machinery, the front of the shield having been buried.

With settlement at the surface, it was decided to take the load off the shield by excavating a 15 metre long pit, supported by sheet piles and braced with Megashor propping frames. Having removed the spoil, this allowed a section of tunnel to be constructed without any further threat of collapse, first grouting the haunches and then strapping the rings together as they were installed by the segment erector.

During this period, the Down tunnel monitoring issued a red alert, a movement of 14mm having been recorded - a 4mm exceedance of the trigger threshold. Trains were stopped for an hour whilst engineers examined the lining, although no cracking or water ingress was apparent. Signs of

LINING OF 1838 TUNNEL

PIT

W

PROTECTION SLAB

E

N EW

MADE GROUND

T UN N EL

GLACIAL TILL

:

2 9 5

Y D S

(2 7 0 M )

LAMINATED CLAY

LO NG

/

SAND

1 9 3

L I NI NG

RI NG S

BRICK & STONE

CONCRETE

Rail Engineer • March 2016

19

PHOTO: FOUR BY THREE

distress did however develop in the Megashor frames, underlining the need to backfill the pit as quickly as practical after the rings had been grouted and a concrete slab poured above them.

Miners excavate material from the upper part of the working face.

Boldly go Curiously, this extra work brought some relief from the tension felt by the project team.

The original reopening date of 5 October was now clearly unachievable, and everyone could see that. So, having paused, they took the opportunity to reassess and adopt a more cautious approach.

As the GI had indicated, ground conditions were much more benign by the time the ventilation shaft was reached. To quote Rhiannon, “we’d started to fly”. But with the next critical landmark approaching - the drive under the A666 - four days out were taken to service the machinery, recognising that any failure at this stage would have a significant reputational impact, not to mention the disruption it might cause for many thousands of motorists.

Whilst a typical surface settlement of 100mm was predicted before work commenced, the actual figure proved closer to 300mm. In light of this, contingent mitigation measures were agreed with Bolton Council when excavating within the road’s zone of influence, including increased monitoring and closure of the lane immediately above the working face. The lane was changed each night as progress was made from east to west. A standby highways gang

was called on to carry out resurfacing works on four occasions, the greatest settlement being a very noticeable 191mm in the central reservation. The reality though is that the section under the A666 advanced unremarkably, apart from the frustrating need to slow the work rate to align with the lane closure regime.

Breakthrough came at 12:31 on 25 October less than 12 weeks after re-boring had got off to an uncertain start. A hydraulic hammer forced a

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For more details contact Fran Critchley: 01904 685717 Email: fran.critchley@nrm.org.uk The museum is a charity (no: XN63797A) with exempt status.

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20

Rail Engineer • March 2016

PHOTOS: NETWORK RAIL

hole in the foam concrete; then there was light.

It was a proper team effort - around 120 people had played their part in this ambitious adventure.

On cue, a train sounded its horn to acknowledge their achievement.

Ticking clock

PHOTO: FOUR BY THREE

This was, however, a milestone, not journey’s end. Two possible hand-back dates emerged (based on the availability of specialist resources and considering passenger impacts): midDecember or February, but the latter was deemed unacceptable given the overrun. It was therefore decided that a full timetable would be restored on 14 December, with trains using the new tunnel under a speed restriction. The project team had seven weeks to reinstate the railway.

Having arrived in the reception pit, the job of dismantling the shield and its machinery got underway immediately, a crane lifting the pieces into the small west compound where they were cut up and dispatched on low-loaders. Following discussions with Bolton Council, this element of the work was restricted to the day shift to minimise the impact of noise and lighting on local residents.

The original design called for a concrete invert to be poured through the tunnel, on which ballasted track would be laid. This approach was reviewed in light of the time constraints,

Project team stone fill being members saw the used instead. shield emerge at Unfortunately, the west end on persistent rain 25 August. and the quantity of fines within the supplied material resulted in sludge forming, so it all had to be removed and the process restarted using ballast. As a consequence, the programme fell behind by four days.

Despite the project’s pressure gauge edging upwards, history will show that the first train did pass through the tunnel, as planned, early on Monday 14 December. The last two weekends of January saw removal of the temporary crossovers used for bi-directional working, allowing the speed restrictions to be lifted. Now redundant, a concrete invert will be installed through the Down tunnel; it will then serve as an access route.

Lasting legacy Successful delivery of any project relies on a collection of like-minds pulling towards their shared goal. Beyond that truism, what made Farnworth exceptional was the nature of the challenges that conspired to test Network Rail, its contractors and the train operating companies. This closely-knit team had ups and downs to contend with - such is life - but everyone has learned lessons to take away with them. In that A train enters respect, they’ll reflect the east end of on Farnworth as a Farnworth’s uniquely positive new tunnel. experience for many years to come.

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29/01/2016 12:57:03

Rail Engineer • March 2016

Kent Framework

is it living up to expectations?

A vid readers of Rail Engineer may recall an article I wrote some time ago about a new type of framework contract which demanded a new way of working together, not only for Network Rail and its chosen principal contractors, but also for the entire supply chain involved.

To recap, the process started in December 2013, when Network Rail selected four contractors for construction framework agreements worth a total of £1.2 billion along its Anglia, Kent, Sussex and Wessex routes over the next five years. The contracts were with Network Rail’s

Infrastructure Projects (IP) Southern region and they started on 1 April 2014, covering much of the region’s £2.5 billion workload in control period five (CP5) which is due to end in 2019. The four frameworks, which will soon be entering into their third year, are with VolkerFitzpatrick (Anglia), BAM Nuttall (Sussex), Geoffrey Osborne (Wessex) and Costain (Kent).

The form of agreement in place is known as the New Engineering Contract 3 (NEC3) and, when it was introduced, it was new to Network Rail IP. The aims of the frameworks are to encourage and facilitate suppliers to work closely with Network Rail, undertaking projects of all sizes spanning from initial development through to final delivery, incorporating jointly agreed objectives that are aligned with Network Rail’s outputs for CP5.

To ensure that Network Rail would be able to fulfil its commitment to work more closely and transparently with its supply chain, collaboration formed 25 per cent of the tender evaluation criteria. Also, for the first time, Network Rail decided that safety issues would make up 15 per cent. As a consequence, 85 per cent of the total score is quality related, leaving just 15 per cent associated with cost.

At the time, this represented a significant and exciting shift in Network Rail’s approach to procurement and value.

COLLIN CARR

Installing rockfall protection at Samphire Hoe.

PHOTOS: CAN GEOTECHNICAL

22

Rail Engineer • March 2016

23

Diverse range of engineering challenges Each contractor has had to develop the capability to respond to a diverse set of multidisciplinary projects covering civil engineering, track construction, and mechanical and electrical works. The projects involve underbridge repair and replacement, footbridge construction, major earthworks, and works to tunnels, station platforms and buildings.

To find out how things were progressing, I met again with Andy Clarke, project director for Costain, to find out how their £60 million over the five-year term framework is progressing in Kent since we last met.

Andy reminded me that, for everyone involved, this contract is quite different from anything that they have worked on before. The customer for their contract is clearly defined as Network Rail’s South East route director of asset management (DRAM) and route enhancement manager (REM).

Andy reports to a framework board of directors that includes representatives from Network Rail IP, Costain and the DRAM. Andy has a fully integrated delivery team consisting of Costain, Network Rail IP and supply chain members, all chosen for their knowledge, skills and behavioural suitability rather than their employer.

One significant change since we last met was the creation of a non-contractual, collaborative, customer-facing team designed to oversee Costain’s Kent contract and BAM Nuttall’s Sussex contract. However, as a non-contractual

Work at New Beckenham station. collaborative agreement, each contractor will be working to its original contractual requirements albeit sharing best practice, learning and reporting.

Relationship management plan The development of the integrated team between Network Rail IP, Costain and its supply chain has had time to settle down to this new way of working and, although both Network Rail and Costain are BS11000 accredited, BSI carried out an external audit of the integrated team in February 2015 to ensure compliance with the principles of BS11000. As part of this process, both parties

jointly produced and agreed a Relationship Management Plan for the framework. The plan captures important issues such as what can be shared, what should not be shared, the integrated team structure, how they can learn from each other, sharing best practice and their combined approach to safety.

Originally the integrated team was about 70 people, but this has increased to about 120 with the current flow of work. This is in line with Andy’s expectations over the five years. More than 125 schemes have been identified and to date, 15 have been completed, 41 are in progress, leaving 69 in the pipeline.

24

Rail Engineer • March 2016 solution, brought about by all those involved sitting round a table together and contributing their specific area of expertise.

This was a mantra that Andy kept using: understand the problem, identify the skills required to resolve it, enable the representatives of these skill sets to get together and establish a cost-effective solution. It’s a team approach without a contractual interface in sight.

Rock fall catch fence

Installing rockfall protection at Samphire Hoe. The DRAM has a business plan which includes the anticipated cost for carrying out each item of work. The challenge for the framework team is to work collectively, injecting innovation and efficiency into the process while ensuring that the cost of the work sits within the client’s business plan budget.

The anticipated benefits are that Network Rail no longer seeks the services of a designer to develop a scheme and then tenders to find a suitable contractor to execute the work. For all the projects underway and completed, Network Rail has gone straight to the integrated framework team which, in turn, has provided a complete service by addressing the problem that the DRAM/ REM wants to resolve and finding a cost effective solution.

A practical example of this approach is a scheme, carried out early in 2015, to repair the cast iron columns supporting Hungerford Bridge which spans the Thames from Charing Cross station across to the south bank. The columns were badly cracked and needed to be stitched. Normal access scaffolding was considered to be unacceptable, partly because of cost, security risk and safety, the seven-metre tidal flow levels of the river and the need to keep the shipping lanes open.

Stitching columns The integrated team came up with a unique and cost effective solution. Hanging gantries were designed and built that fitted the profile of the column and were suspended from the bridge deck structure. The gantries could be raised and lowered with the tide. Their slim profile did not interfere with the river traffic passing under the bridge and, because they could be wrapped in Monarflex, all debris - including iron fillings - could be collected and cleared away with a vacuum cleaner. CAN Geotechnical provided the gantries and access equipment and Metalock stitched the cracked columns. It was a simple and effective

Another example of this approach was work carried out on the White Cliffs of Dover at Samphire Hoe between Shakespeare Cliff and Abbot’s Cliff tunnels. Over the years, rock debris has fallen onto the tracks creating a significant safety hazard. To address this problem, a signalling trip wire was placed along the base of the cliff alongside a catch fence designed to prevent falling rocks landing on the railway below. Over the years, falling rock debris was a fairly common event, causing significant disruption to train schedules.

However, an additional problem started to emerge when large falling boulders managed to bounce over the fence and land on the tracks without activating a signal. For Network Rail, this was a significant safety risk and something needed to be done.

The team was charged with finding an effective solution as soon as possible. With the help of suppliers CAN Geotechnical, a design produced

by Fairhurst for soil nailing and rock netting with a rock fall catch fence was chosen. A 1200 metre rock fall catch fence was erected about a third of the way up the cliff in a 52 hour possession, not an easy task. The size of the catch fence varies between two and four metres high to minimise the visual impact as this is a Site of Special Scientific Interest and an Area of Outstanding Beauty, thus requiring the solution to be licenced

by Natural England.

Also, just recently in January, the railway between Dartford and Lewisham, on the

Bexleyheath line, was closed for nearly three days due to a landslip near Barnehurst Station.

More than 200 tonnes of soil, debris and two trees slipped down onto the tracks, dislodging signal location boxes as well as other signalling equipment.

As a short-term solution, 60 tonnes of ballast bags were brought in to create a temporary retaining wall to protect the tracks and enable the signalling equipment to be reinstated, tested and commissioned. This is only a temporary measure to allow the railway to open whilst a more detailed survey of this unstable embankment is carried out and a permanent solution found.

Supply chain involvement There are 28 key suppliers involved with this collaborative contract. Some are relishing the concept, some are fitting in and a few are finding it difficult to conduct business, but this is to be expected. There are a number of graduates who are really benefiting from this approach and the diversity of work available, and the contract has attracted a number of apprentices who are both learning and developing their engineering skills every day.

Andy has asked one of his team, Juliette Gecas - the collaborative manager for Costain, to stand back and capture what is being done and compare it to how it would have been done in the past. The aim of this exercise is to establish evidence to determine exactly how beneficial this collaborative approach is to everyone concerned. It is an attempt to capture the real value when adopting a collaborative approach, not only for Costain, but for Network Rail and the supply chain as well.

This is a challenging piece of work, and an invaluable one, for the industry. It offers an opportunity for all concerned to consider the value or otherwise of adopting the concept of collaborative working while recognising that value means different things to different people.

Replacing the cap on a tunnel vent shaft at Abbot's Cliff.

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26

Rail Engineer • March 2016

PHOTOS: NETWORK RAIL

A view towards Newcastle showing the

Towards the bottom of the cutting, material liquefied due

debris and trees deposited on the railway.

to the volume of water issuing from the ground mid-slope.

27

muck Rail Engineer • March 2016

GRAEME BICKERDIKE

a very moving experience Through trains return to the Newcastle-Carlisle line after a month-long closure for landslide remediation works.

An early aerial view of the slip, taken before the

The back scar 24 hours later, with 400 litres of raw sewage

cracking had revealed the fractured sewer.

being pumped onto the hillside every minute.

28

Rail Engineer • March 2016

I

t must be a heart-in-the-mouth moment - that instant transition from mundanity to disbelief as you drive your train around a curve to find the line blocked by fallen trees. Where’s Jenny Agutter when you need her? So on goes the emergency brake, off comes the power; then all you can do is hope.

Photographs taken during those works show an area of rock pitching (riprap) mid-slope, used to stop weathering by emerging springs and coinciding exactly with the location of the landslip. Drawings were also extracted from the archives showing an unusually extensive drainage provision at this location. It was therefore reasonable to deduce that the engineers had been confronted by considerable groundwater issues.

Over the intervening 50-plus years, the cutting has not proven problematic except for a couple of minor washouts around 300 yards east of where the slip occurred. These were resolved by a refurbishment of the drainage in 2010.

Safety first

Those were the events that unfolded early on the morning of 7 January as an out-of-service DMU headed west through a cutting on the Newcastle-Carlisle line at Farnley Haugh near Corbridge. It struck the trees and came to a stand.

The driver’s report described water cascading down the cutting slope, turning to slurry at the bottom. When examining engineers attended, minor cracking was observed in the field above but, after 24 hours, these cracks had opened up considerably to expose a fractured main pumping raw sewage onto the hillside at a rate of 400 litres per minute. Coupled with this, similar volumes of water were pouring over the field towards the railway, the surface drainage having been overwhelmed. Things were not helped by the deliberate pushing-over of a drystone wall which had previously been acting as a dam and causing the nearby road to flood. With that, a Highways problem suddenly became Network Rail’s.

An initial conclusion was reached that the toppled trees were basically a function of a large washout flowing down the slope. As we all know, the North had suffered from record rainfall over the preceding weeks, with the December average exceeded by 300%.

Deep cut To better understand the reality - which proved rather more complex - we need some historical context. Engineered by Francis Giles, the affected section of line was built by the Newcastle and Carlisle Railway, opening to goods and mineral trains between Blaydon and Hexham in November 1834 - a distance of 17 miles, most of which was single track.

Back then, there was no cutting at Farnley Haugh; instead the railway passed through a tunnel 170 yards in length. To handle an expected increase in traffic, this was enlarged after ten operational years to accommodate two tracks, the work being delivered with only one brief interruption to services when a failure of the original lining blocked the passageway with running sands.

The tunnel suffered from considerable water ingress and some distortion due to ground movement. Repair work was undertaken in 1871 at a cost of £1,000, and the arch was subsequently strengthened throughout with iron ribs and laggings. Concerns over gauge clearance and possible formation scour from the adjacent River Tyne led the Chief Civil Engineer of BR’s North Eastern Region to order the construction of a deviation. This resulted in the cutting being excavated between November 1959 and June 1962.

The operation to remediate January’s landslide was mobilised immediately, the works being undertaken by Construction Marine, Network Rail’s earthworks framework contractor for the London North Eastern and East Midlands route.

AECOM was responsible for the design.

A compound was secured at the entrance to a field rented from the local farmer and traffic control measures introduced on the adjacent A695 to account for the number of plant movements. Despite the inconvenience caused, locals continued to support the on-site team with hotdogs and boxes of cookies. Around 30 of them accepted an invitation to visit the site over the first weekend to gain some understanding of what was going on. Relations have remained excellent.

Over the first four days, the project team progressed the urgent task of making the slope safe for workforce and machinery. With the inundation of water continuing, trees could still be heard cracking and falling to the

An archive photo taken shortly after the cutting’s excavation, showing an area of rock pitching to the right of the locomotive.

Rail Engineer • March 2016

29

A topographical 3D model of the landslip, developed from data captured during an aerial survey.

ground.

Northumbrian Water attended to turn off the sewer and divert it back 50 metres from the crest; meanwhile a field drain was intercepted and taken eastwards to a cascade at the top of the cutting where it discharged into a different drainage system.

This allowed the slope to dry out…or at least that was the hope.

Eye in the sky Initially, the intended methodology for disposing of the spoil involved moving it to the bottom of the cutting and taking it out by rail.

However, large amounts of water were issuing from springs mid-slope - as had been the case during the cutting’s excavation - and liquefying the material. From a safety perspective, this instability rendered unsustainable the idea of bringing trains onto the site.

An unmanned aerial vehicle (or drone if you prefer), operated

by Central Alliance, was brought in to perform a full photogrammetric survey of the landslide.

This was repeated twice during the remediation.

From thousands of geo-referenced digital images, a topographical 3D model was produced to an accuracy of a few millimetres. On the first pass, considerable interpretation was needed to account for the fallen trees - numbering around 100 - and reveal the ground profile. Without getting boots dirty, valuable information was derived on the extent of the slip, its shape and the volume of material involved - crucial in estimating how long the line might be closed.

Ground investigations, fulfilled by Geotechnical Engineering, found that the top part of the slope - to a depth of around 15 metres - consistently comprised glacial till: sands and gravels, with boulders of perhaps a metre across.

Below this was a variable layer of clay, impermeable to water. At the surface, self-seeded silver birches covered the slope, together with some scotch pines. The former’s shallow root system acted to stabilise the ground to a depth of around 0.5 metres but, with the failure plane much lower, each one also acted as an approximately 20-tonne point load which tended to open the ground up as the wind acted on it. By saturating the sands and gravel with floodwater and sewage - increasing the weight of the ground above the clay layer by 40-50% - all the elements had come together for a significant slip. The back scar reached the line of the sewer where a trench must have been excavated at some point in the past 60 years.

Could this have created a weakness which acted as a tipping point? We’ll never know.

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30

Rail Engineer • March 2016

PHOTOS: FOUR BY THREE

(Right) Progress is made with regrading the slope whilst (below) use of a rail vac allowed the fouled ballast to be removed without the need to cut the track.

vac which, over two days, removed fouled ballast from a 70-yard section on each road, as well as a shallow cess drain. Around 600 tonnes of fresh ballast was put back. The vac proved significantly more efficient than the traditional approach, obviating the need to cut the track and lift it out, excavate, replace, weld and stress.

More to come?

What had become clear from observation, investigation and technical insight was that the landslide was not just a washout as originally thought. Something more significant was happening: a rotational failure in the hillside.

This changed the complexion of the recovery operation.

The earth moves The field above the slip hosts the buried remains of a Roman fort, discovered in the 1950s and comprising three camps. The nearest one to the crest - about 15 metres away - dates from just ten years after the Roman invasion.

Archaeologists from Historic England were on-site for the first three weeks, supervising the removal of topsoil and recording any finds.

Geophysics surveys were carried out to map the structures and ensure all works took place clear of them. Their presence did constrain the location of entry ramps into the cutting.

Tractor-mounted winches, sitting at the crest, were used to pull the fallen trees up the slope where they were fed into chippers.

Some of what came out was used to form the surface for a 300-yard walking route from the compound to the site. Thereafter it was possible to get in heavy earth-moving machinery to start the regrading, taking weight off the top of the landslide - which otherwise would have continued to drive it - before removing material at the toe in order to clear the railway.

Throughout, it was regarded as an active landslide with established slip planes, so a constant balance had to be maintained as the slope was battered back from 1:1.6 to

1:2.5. At its peak, more than a dozen large items of plant were involved in the operation, from track dumpers to 40-tonne excavators.

Around 35,000 tonnes of spoil was shifted and stockpiled in the field until a final resting place for it was agreed.

As a temporary measure, two deep counterfort drains were provided on the lower of two benches to deal with the water flows from mid-slope. A permanent, future-proof system will replace them as part of the full remediation works - now underway - which will also involve placing rock pitching on the lower slope to control shallow surface movement. Higher up, top soil and seed will see vegetation reestablish itself. There’ll also be inclinometers for monitoring purposes.

Whilst the p-way sustained no actual damage, the Down (Carlisle-bound) line did slew over towards the Up by around 100mm. The correct alignment was restored during tamping.

Network Rail’s works delivery unit supplied a rail

Trains started running again through Farnley Haugh on Monday 8 February, barely a month after the line was blocked by trees and slurry.

That’s no mean feat given the scale of the landslide and the difficulties it presented. The site will remain active well into the spring to deliver the final design, deal with the spoil and demobilise.

Thankfully, fire-fighting is something the railway is very good at. Just as well - there’s been lots of it to do since the storms ravaged Britain. If the climate change experts are to be believed, severe wet weather is set to become more commonplace during our winters. Whilst there is no emergency brake for that, we can at least see it coming. The challenge then is to make the infrastructure more resilient to its impact. That will have both financial and engineering implications, but it’s something Network Rail is committed to tackling into CP6 and beyond.

On 15 February, with the railway reopened, work continues to deliver the final design.

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32

Rail Engineer • March 2016

Re-opening Lamington

I

n the Upper Clyde Valley the river snakes between hills and the West Coast main line (WCML) crosses it four times. The four span 101-metre Lamington viaduct is the largest of these crossings. It is all very picturesque, and the sound of the river burbling around the bridge piers is usually quite restful.

However, when Rail Engineer visited on 22 January, the noise from the River Clyde was much more pronounced and the ambience anything but restful. After overnight rain and melting snow, the Abington river gauge station, six miles upstream from Lamington, was recording the river level as 1.8 metres above datum, compared with its average 0.7 metres.

Flooding of the site compound car park showed the rising water level.

Storms Desmond, Eva and Frank resulted in the wettest December since records began and created what the Centre for Ecology and Hydrology (CEH) described as “extraordinary” hydrological conditions. On the day of storm

Desmond, river water discharge into the seas around Britain was a third more than the previous maximum. Published CEH statistics show that, during the month, the Clyde’s river flow was a record 249% of its long-term average.

On 30 December, storm Frank brought widespread flooding and disruption to Scotland.

The M74 motorway was blocked by a flood at Abington, where the gauge station recorded the Clyde at its highest-ever level - 3.12 metres above datum.

Tale of three decks The original viaduct was part of the Caledonian main line between Carlisle and Glasgow which

opened in 1848. It was a bow spring truss structure, built on three masonry piers. In 1937 and 1938, the viaduct was re-decked with a plate girder structure for each line. This kept both lines open during construction while the Up line deck was built on downstream concrete pier extensions. It also gave a larger radius curve enabling the Coronation Scot service, introduced in 1938, to run at higher speed. With this new arrangement, the upstream end of the original masonry piers no longer supported a bridge deck.

Sixty years later, there was a requirement for a further increase in speed. This time it was to 125 mph for the West Coast upgrade. So in 1999, the old deck was removed and replaced with one having reinforced main beams and a concrete deck. This was slid into position onto the existing piers during a long weekend disruptive possession.

Initial response Despite the problems elsewhere, on 30 December there was no disruption to trains between Carlisle and Glasgow. However, at 07:35 the following morning, a train reported a dip in the track over the viaduct. In response, a temporary speed restriction (TSR) was imposed pending the arrival of track maintenance staff who, after examining the track and watching a train pass over the viaduct at low speed, lifted the TSR. They remained on site and, after a few trains had crossed the bridge safely at speed, they observed unusual track movement as a later train passed - a few minutes later the line was blocked.

Rail Engineer • March 2016

33

DAVID SHIRRES

The Rail Accident Investigation Branch is to investigate this incident as a dangerous occurrence (as defined by the Reporting of Injuries, Diseases and Dangerous Occurences Regulations). In addition to considering the response to the notification of a track dip on the viaduct, the report will examine the effectiveness of Network Rail’s processes to mitigate risks to structures in extreme weather.

An emerging problem The extent of the underwater damage to the bridge was not immediately apparent on the 31 December. After river levels had fallen further, a photograph of pier two taken on 1 January shows a single sandstone block missing. That this was at the top of a pyramid of missing blocks would only become apparent from a diver’s inspection.

On New Year’s Day, monitoring points were also set up which showed pier two had settled by 125 mm. There was not settlement at the other piers. Rock armour was placed at pier two to reduce flow and limit scour damage.

The following day, a diver from Subsea ROV & Diving Services inspected the piers. His report showed the pier two scour damage to be far worse than expected. Below the waterline most of the masonry pier’s sandstone blocks had been washed away. Although the concrete pier was intact, there was void below it. The footprint of pier two’s foundation had been reduced by three-quarters and offset from its centre line.

With this asymmetric support and the heavy load on the foundations (1,500 tonnes for the deck and 1,000 tonnes for the pier’s weight), it

became clear that there was a possibility that further scour might result in the collapse of the viaduct.

An initial date of 1 February was given for reopening the line, but this was revised to the first week in March when the full extent of the damage was known following extensive investigation works.

Securing the viaduct AMCO (Amalgamated Construction) has both the framework and emergency response contracts for structures in Scotland with Network Rail.

Infrastructure Projects route delivery director Stewart MacPherson advised that AMCO was mobilised on New Year’s Day and they also got a local quarry opened for the rock armour. By 3 January, work had started on an emergency haul road to deliver material for the construction of a causeway upstream of the viaduct.

With the risk of collapse, an exclusion zone was declared to prevent anyone working on or below the viaduct. As a further precaution, overhead lines were cut before and after the viaduct as its

collapse might have brought these wires down onto anyone working close to the viaduct. Not surprisingly, full advantage of this unplanned closure has been taken to work on the line.

This risk was mitigated, to an extent, by the rock armour upstream of the pier and construction of the causeway. Yet the viaduct could only be considered secure when mass concrete had filled the void below the piers.

Before this could be done, causeways had to be built on either side of the viaduct to dam the river between the piers and get materials to the working area. These included reinforcing bars and one-tonne sandbags needed for rough shuttering. Due to the exclusion zone, these sandbags were positioned by 360° tracked excavators at long reach to ensure their cabs were not under the viaduct. Constructing the causeways required 1,500 tonnes of stone.

On 8 January, all was ready for the first mass concrete pour. This used a boom pump which did not require anyone to enter the exclusion zone under the viaduct. Sixty cubic metres was poured into the void that day or, as Stewart put it, the

34

Rail Engineer • March 2016

equivalent of a portacabin. In the event, filling the void took four and a half days and three hundred cubic metres of concrete (five portacabins) to fill the void. By then, the pier had settled a total of 155mm, 30mm since the line had been blocked.

Once the concrete had set the viaduct was secure and the exclusion zone was lifted.

Concrete jackets Pier two took the brunt of storm Frank’s record water flow, in part because of a bend in the river just before the viaduct. Its permanent repair requires a reinforced concrete jacket on either side of the pier as designed by Donaldson Associates. Before the full extent of the scour damage was known, it had been thought that a jacket would only be required on the damaged south side of the pier. Each jacket has a footprint of 21 x 2 metres and rests on the concrete poured to secure the viaduct. The jackets are being fixed into position by eight metre soil anchors of which 75 are required on the south jacket and 50 on the north.

Pier two also requires new bridge bearings as the settlement has caused them to exceed their travel limit. To restore the viaduct to its original level, the bridge deck is to be lifted by 160mm using the concrete jackets as jacking points. It is hoped that new bearings will be fitted during this operation.

However, Stewart explained that it may not be possible to procure the three bearings before repairs to the viaduct are complete. This will not delay re-opening as a temporary bearing solution is being developed for this eventuality. If required, the new bearings could be fitted during a weekend rules of route possession.

Piers one and three Pier one was undamaged but is to have additional rock armour which will be angled in line with the river flow. This is to be done at all three piers.

There was no settlement at pier three.

However, there was some scour damage which required fifty cubic metres of concrete to repair.

On 10 January, the masonry at the nose of pier three collapsed. It had experienced a significant increase in flow due to rising river levels (1.3 metres at the Abington gauge station) and the causeway was directing the entire river around it. With no deck on its upstream end, this collapse did not affect the viaduct’s structural integrity. However, it will require a new nose end to protect the remaining part of the pier.

It had been recognised and accepted that construction of the causeway would increase the water flow around pier three as the priority was to protect pier two and get concrete poured into its base. Stewart considered this to be, literally, a race against time. Following its collapse, the west river bank was re-aligned to reduce the flow past pier three.

Shifting programme At the time of writing it was estimated that the viaduct will not re-open until the first week in March, closing the line between Glasgow/ Edinburgh and Carlisle for two months. Train operating companies are supportive of Network Rail’s decision to close this route until it is safe to run trains. For example, ScotRail has reduced its local services to Kilmarnock to allow Virgin Trains to run an hourly shuttle service between Glasgow and Carlisle via Dumfries, with a stop at Kilmarnock for ScotRail passengers.

Clearly there is a requirement to open the viaduct as soon as possible. Passengers want to know when they can travel without disruption and Network Rail’s compensation payments to TOCs for this unplanned disruption are almost certainly greater than the cost of the viaduct repairs.

The difficulty for Stewart’s team was that it took some time to determine the full extent of the work required. After the end-of-January completion date was announced, it was found that the concrete required to stabilise pier two was five times that expected, pier two required two concrete jackets and replacement bearings and the nose of pier three collapsed.

The completion date was thus revised to the

first week in March. This was announced at a press conference on 17 January and was widely reported in the Scottish media.

Although the scope of the work is now fixed, the programme is still affected by changes in river level. At the time of Rail Engineer’s visit on 22 January, the causeway was under water and the reinforcing bar frame for the concrete jacket footing was just visible above the water level. No concrete was poured on that day. To mitigate the effect on the programme of varying river levels, an alternative access to pier three was prepared on the north river bank, although this was not required.

There was further flooding on 26 January when the Abington river gauge recorded the Clyde to be 2.26 metres above datum. This flood washed away the northern riverbank and damaged the viaduct’s north abutment, requiring further emergency repairs.

Work continued in difficult working conditions from storms Gertrude and Henry. By 4 February, the bridge deck at pier two had been raised to its original height. This required eight jacks which were supported by the new concrete jackets.

The central bearing plinth was then demolished to break out the old bearings. This work was completed by 6 February.

Rail Engineer • March 2016

The replacement custom-made steel bearings were delivered earlier than expected. They were installed over the weekend of 13/14 February after a concrete plinth to support them had been constructed. Following final repairs, including work on the track and overhead line, the viaduct re-opened to traffic on Monday, 22 February, two weeks ahead of the previously announced March date.

A question of resilience The trains that are now crossing Lamington viaduct are doing so over a structure designed to withstand extreme weather events such as storm Frank. Yet the closure of a key rail route for seven weeks inevitably raises questions such as the one asked in the Scottish Parliament

on whether there was a winter resilience plan for Lamington viaduct. In response Scottish Transport Minister Derek Mackay advised that the viaduct was covered by Network Rail’s resilience planning and that no concerns had been highlighted with this structure.

The plan Mackay referred to is the route Weather Resilience and Climate Change Adaption (WRCCA) plan produced by Network Rail Scotland. This includes rail asset vulnerability and impact assessments and includes a programme to calculate the risk of bridge scour damage.

Lamington viaduct’s last annual detailed inspection was in March. This included an examination for scour by divers which revealed no issues. Up to then, the viaduct’s masonry piers

35

had withstood the River Clyde’s flow for nearly 170 years. Yet a few weeks ago they were unable to do so. Reasons for this are likely to include the cumulative effect of December’s extreme storms, the way the river flows around the piers immediately after a river bend before the viaduct, as well as other factors yet to be assessed.

Both the RAIB report and Network Rail’s own review will doubtless identify lessons to be learnt from Lamington so that Network Rail’s WRCCA plan can be revised accordingly.

However, with the unprecedented weather conditions, it remains to be seen whether the severe scour damage was reasonably foreseeable. What is predictable is that extreme weather events will continue to test the resilience of Britain’s rail infrastructure.

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SIGNALLING AND TELECOMS

36

Rail Engineer • March 2016

Cardiff Area Signalling Renewal (Above) Cardiff SWCC workstations.

(Below) Westermo Lynx modems for internal data.

T

he forthcoming resignalling of Cardiff station area is a large complex undertaking and Atkins invited Rail Engineer along to the project offices at Newport to learn about the latest extension planned for the South Wales Control Centre (SWCC).

DAVID BICKELL

The Cardiff area was previously resignalled back in 1966 with the commissioning of Cardiff power box, with standard BR Western Region Henry Williams entrance switch/exit button panel for route setting with ‘E10K’ relay interlockings, similar to that at Swindon described in issue 131 (September 2015).

The long panel was split into two sections with the left portion covering the South Wales main line from Marshfield in the east through Cardiff Central station main line Platforms 0-4 (bay Platform 5 no longer exists) to Pontyclun in the west. The right section covers the valley lines from Cardiff Queen Street through Cardiff Central platforms 6 & 7 to Penarth, Cadoxton and Radyr (exclusive).

This equipment is now life expired and is being replaced with three new General Electric (GE), Modular Control System (MCS) workstations covering the main lines, Vale of Glamorgan (VoG), and valley lines respectively which interface with Siemens Westlock interlockings.

Although the Cardiff Area Signalling Renewal (CASR) project is primarily a renewals scheme, capacity improvements are being introduced to cater for the ever-increasing passenger numbers. Today, Cardiff Central is the busiest station in Wales.

The original station layout did not provide for movements from the Down Main to Platforms 1 and 2.

Thus, for example, HSTs from London terminating at Cardiff have to do so in platform 3 or 4, then run forward at the west end before reversing into platform 1 or 2 prior to departure back to the east.

This is being addressed by remodelling at the east end and the addition of new routes from the Down Main into platforms 1 or 2, thereby obviating the need for the out and back shunt move, and also freeing up platform 3 for other services. A new through platform 0 was created in 1999 for Up Main local services.

With the decline of heavy industry in the valleys and the increase in officebased businesses in Cardiff, the pattern of traffic has changed dramatically, from a procession of heavy coal trains to the docks to an intensive passenger service for commuters for which the island Platform 6/7 is no longer sufficient.

Accordingly, a new crossover at the east end allows Platform 4 to be used for Up Valley line services, whilst on the Down side a new Platform 8 is under construction. Thus, on completion of resignalling, four platforms will be available for valley services.

Staged delivery The CASR project embraces a wider area than that of the original Cardiff power box. The various phases are as follows: »» Stage 1 - Mar 2013 - Aberthaw & Llantwit (Bridgend Fringe);

Rail Engineer • March 2016

Who does what The project is being carried out under a ‘Hub and Spoke’ contractual arrangement. Network Rail, acting as the principal contractor as well as the client, sits in the hub.

The spokes are the tier one contractors, in this case: »» Atkins - design, management and implementation of the signalling for all five phases of the CASR project; »» Atkins - power and distribution; »» Balfour Beatty - permanent way, track, switches & crossings (S&C); »» BIRSE (now part of Balfour Beatty) - Civil engineering;

SIGNALLING AND TELECOMS

»» Stage 2 - Sep 2013 - Cardiff Queen Street to Coryton and Rhymney; »» Stage 3 - Jun 2014 - Penarth, and Barry branches to Cardiff West Junction; »» Stage 4 - May 2015 - Main line Marshfield (Newport fringe) to Cardiff (exclusive); »» Stage 5 - Dec 2016 - Cardiff Central entire station area and main line to Pontyclun; panel box decommissioned.

Stages 1-4 are thus complete and controlled by Cardiff Mainline, Cardiff Valley, and VoG workstations. The whole scheme is measured as 669 Signalling Equivalent Units (SEUs), of which stage 5 is the largest, consisting of 241 SEUs. The SEU concept is a method of breaking down a job into the hardware it contains, such as interlockings, point controls, signals and level crossings, and then calculating those into a number of SEUs. The cost per SEU is then fairly constant, and can be used to calculate the value of the whole job.

Atkins runs the project from the depot at Newport, shared with Network Rail. There are 81 staff involved in signalling design, although these are based at Swindon, Birmingham, Glasgow, Plymouth and Bangalore. Signalling construction staff number around 50, and there is a core complement of 20 testing staff, peaking at 90 for commissionings.

37

»» Siemens - telecommunications.

Each tier one ‘spoke’ has its own set of subcontractors.

In the case of Atkins these are: »» Siemens Automation - Westlock interlockings, Westcad workstations (Newport and Bridgend areas); »» GE Transportation (now part of Alstom) - MCS workstations; »» Unipart - lineside equipment location cases and relocatable equipment buildings (REBs); »» Henry Williams - functional (power) supply points (FSPs).

GE in turn sub-contracts Hitachi for TREsim signalling simulators for signaller training and design verification, and for TREsa Automatic Route Setting (ARS).

Westlock cubicle showing processors.

Westlock and technician's workstation.

Rail Engineer • March 2016

SIGNALLING AND TELECOMS

38

Frauscher axle counter sensor.

Axle counter lineside location.

Train detection Atkins offered an innovative new product, not previously used on the UK network, as an efficiency saving under the CASR scheme at time of tender. Frauscher digital axle counters (FAdC) with type RSR123 wheel sensors have been installed throughout the CASR area.

Although axle counter products are common in resignalling schemes, the wheel sensor RSR123 has the advantage that it is fitted to the rail by a clamp so it can be fitted on-site in a matter of minutes since drilling the rail is eliminated. No trackside interface module is required further reducing staff time on-site, and it has a comprehensive diagnostic support system.

The clamp installation feature also provided the team with a solution for the Cardiff west station throat. A very cramped four-way divergence with eight sets of double slips, much bespoke point operating iron work in the S&C, which is not being renewed at this stage, meant that drilling the rails was not an option.

A plan was drawn up at the single option development stage (GRIP 4) for the installation of 109 track circuits in the station area which would involve a lot of rail drilling for bonding and the fitting of rail end-post insulations with a significant installation time.

There was a lot of concern about maintaining robust track circuit electrical separation within the bonding and rails of the moving point operating rods and stretcher bars.

After further consideration, Network Rail and Atkins concluded that the Frauscher axle counters, with their much smaller interference area around the head, more compact design, and clamp-on feature, was the ideal solution for the station area.

Overall, CASR uses 832 Frauscher wheel sensors (a total of about 600 train detection sections), of which 252 are in the Stage 5 area. Sensors consist of two detector coils which enable direction to be determined. A single RSR123 may act both as exit counter for the rear section and as entry counter for the forward section.

Sensors are connected into ring transmission circuits, which are linked via nodes into the Fixed Telecomms Network (FTN), communicating with IP protocol utilising Westermo ethernet switches and modems. Thus, if the system detects a fault with part of the lineside cabling, messages are automatically re-routed.

A handshake, via the evaluation boards of adjacent sensors, determines the clear/occupied status of the section which is fed into the signalling system via standard Solid State Interlocking (SSI) Track Function Modules (TFM) in an adjacent location case.

All the ring circuits are connected into the South Wales Control Centre (SWCC) where the diagnostic support system provides technicians with detailed information on the condition of all sensors and train detection status to facilitate efficient faulting.

Points and signals - ‘Plug and Play’ Many existing point operating devices will remain and be recontrolled by the new signalling with the exception that surviving older Westinghouse Type M3 point machines will be replaced. Points will be operated by a mixture of Alstom HW2000 machines, which are AC-immune DC machines for 110V operation; the comparatively

Rail Engineer • March 2016 every magnet should reach the troughing route within 25 metres. A pre-measured cable with plug couplers at each end connects between the plug coupler of the tail cable in the troughing route and plug coupler connection panel in the controlling location case. The latter cables are all made to measure and care has to be taken to ensure there is not too much slack as several plug couplers are connected on each plate.

Whilst this methodology involves a significant amount of accurate measurement work, the benefit is that a location case can be connected up in about an hour compared with a conventional wire-by-wire termination undertaken by an installer on his knees peeling back the individual cable cores.

The pre-measured and labelled cables arrive on site on a drum, hopefully with cables wound the right way round so that male/female ends correspond on the ground!

Signals are either Unipart Dorman Integrated Lightweight Signals (iLS) for straight post signals or conventional Dorman LED for gantry mounted heads.

New signal gantries are to electrification standards. Cables for gantry signal heads are measured so that the plug couplers are staggered down the side of the structure and are not bunched up. From here the measured cables with plug couplers connect back to the location case.

Complex interlockings interfaces The Siemens Westlock interlockings for CASR consist of eight Central Interlocking Processors (CIPs). A Westlock CIP has a much greater capacity than an SSI - the eight CASR CIPs are equivalent to about 19 SSIs. However, Westlock is compatible with SSI Trackside signals, while items such as points are driven by SSI Track Function

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SIGNALLING AND TELECOMS

recent Alstom Hy-Drive system, which was developed following a review of point operating mechanisms after the Potters Bar derailment; In-Bearer Clamp locks and conventional Rail Clamp Point Lock mechanisms, both from SPX. New HW machines come with a set length of tail cable with a plug coupler end which should reach the cable troughing route. For existing HW machines that don’t have cables fitted with plug couplers, the machines are opened up and the existing cable replaced with a new piece of standard length, terminated at one end on the harness and the other end with a plug coupler reaching the cable route. Connecting to this, a further cable with a plug coupler on one end is terminated in the existing location in the traditional way.

Meanwhile, a new pre-measured length of cable with plug couplers on both ends is run from the cable route to the new location case. Under a possession, the cable to the existing location is disconnected, swapped with the cable to the new location and rehearsal tested with detection tests, correspondence tests, and contact break tests. When done, the cabling is swapped back to the old location. On commissioning the new cable is once again swapped back into service but this time permanently, following which all that needs to be done is a function test. For the central station area there are about 100 points being treated in this way, each of which is a separate design pack.

In fact, cables with plug couplers are used for everything as far as physically possible, including signals, AWS, TPWS and Frauscher sensors. As an example of the principle, AWS magnets come with a 25 metre lead with a plug coupler on the end. The philosophy is that the lead from

39

40

Rail Engineer • March 2016

CASR – Westlock Solution

A new piece of test gear supplied by Siemens contains four interlockings CIPs that enables the changes to four ‘in-use’ interlockings to be tested ‘off-line’.

Version 3.1 Feb 16

CASR Stages VALLEY CIP13

BARGOED CIP09 Stage 2 - Sept 2013 CAERPHLY TIF02 DL17

Rhymney TIF01 DL16

HEATHJCN TIF03 DL18

QUEENST TIF04 DL19

BARRY CIP11 Stage 3- June 2014 Stage 1- Mar 2013

VALYWEST TIF01 DL22

COGAN TIF01 DL26

BARYDOCK TIF02 DL27

PENARTH TIF02 DL23

Radyr SSI

CSG A B

SIGNALLING AND TELECOMS

CARCENVL CIP10 Stage 5 -Dec 2016

VALYEAST TIF01 DL21

ABERTHAW TIF03 DL28

LLANTWIT TIF04 DL29

Power supplies

CSG A B

CSG A C B D

CSG A C B D

Cardiff Valley - Workstation 1(MCS)

Vale of Glamorgan - Workstation 3 (MCS) Port Talbot SSI

NASR – Ebbw Workstation (Westcad)

Cardiff Mainline - Workstation 2 (MCS)

CSG A C B D

CSG A C B D

CSG A B

MARSHFLD TIF02 DL02

RUMNYRLF TIF03 DL03

RUMNYMN TIF01 DL01 RUMNEY CIP06

Westlock and MCS schematic.

CARDEAST TIF01 DL06

CARDWEST TIF02 DL07

CARCENMN CIP07

CSG A B

Stage 5 -Dec 2016

Stage 5 -Dec 2016

Stage 4 - May 2015 Newport EBBW CIP04

CSG A B

LECK TIF01 DL08 LECKWITH CIP12

Modules (TFMs) which communicate with the interlocking using SSI data link telegrams.

Trackside Interface (TIF) units are connected to the interlocking cubicle and incorporate SSI Data Link Modules (DLMs) or Long Distance Terminals (LDTs) to enable communications with lineside TFMs via the external data links. CASR has 19 TIF areas and hence 19 data links.

The GE MCS signallers’ workstations interface with the interlocking via a Control System Gateway (CSG) which provides the protocol converter between the CIP and the MCS. Generally, one CSG is required to link workstation to interlocking. However, Cardiff Central station is treated operationally as two separate stations - main lines and valley lines. Separate signallers will operate the two parts, replicating the segregated panel arrangement within the existing signal box. Also, there are separate CIPs for main and valley line tracks.

However, the track layout at each end of the station facilitates movements between the two portions and so the system will allow either signaller to set a route across the boundary. To achieve this, both the main and valley lines MCSs need to interface with both sets of CIPs for which, in a world first, duplicated CSGs are provided. This arrangement also complicates the data for the interlockings, Automatic Route Setting (ARS) groups, SPAD management, and signal emergency replacement groups.

STFAGANS TIF01 DL11

PNTYCLUN TIF02 DL12

MISKIN CIP08

To date ARS has been provided only on Stage 2 valley lines. However, come Stage 5, ARS will be live on all CASR workstations. Hitachi TREsa ARS plugs into the GE MCS.

Testing and commissioning Much of the new outdoor equipment can be installed, set to work and tested in advance of the commissioning.

Location cases manufactured by Unipart can be brought into the depot at Newport and verification (known as Mod 3) testing undertaken in a safe and dry environment.

The complexity of Stage 5 is such that four new interlocking CIPs will be brought into service but the other four CIPs of CASR, plus Port Talbot SSI, and two relay interfaces between adjoining box electronic interlockings, are affected by the changes.

24 hours have been allocated purely for the data changes, during which time the new S&C work will be progressing on the ground. Inevitably, trains will not be able to run through Cardiff at this time and a complete shutdown between Newport and Swansea is planned for Christmas 2016.

During Stage 4 commissioning, although interlockings and workstations were tested separately in advance of commissioning, it was found that, when the systems were put together, communications issues and error messages occurred. Learning lessons from this stage, an integration test centre is being set up within the equipment room at SWCC, facilitating eight to nine months of offline data testing by Atkins, Siemens and GE.

A 650V AC ring main, connecting suites of location cases, is fed via FSPs which take in the supply from the electricity board. If the power goes off, a UPS holds up supply during changeover until the generator fires up and is ready to take the load. Auxiliary Supply Points include a UPS to provide a supply for a certain amount of time but don’t have a generator. Allen Bradley power supply monitors are located at SWCC.

Level Crossings There are three CCTV and one AHB crossings controlled by GE VHLCs (Vital Harmon Logic Controller).

Although Automatic Lowering has been installed at Rhoose, it is currently not operational. There is some debate as to whether it should be used at St Fagans level crossing, given the heavy 7,500 vehicles a day that use it. A level crossing simulator enables the logic controllers to be tested offline. On the day, it is a case of plugging it all in and function testing.

Wales Rail Operating Centre Unusually, the signalling centre featured in this article has two names.

Conceived as a control centre for South Wales, the SWCC appellation appears in print on thousands of signalling schematics and wiring diagrams of the CASR project and also the previously completed Newport Area Signalling Renewals (NASR) scheme.

However, as part of roll-out of Network Rail’s National Operating Strategy, it has been decided that the centre shall control the whole of Wales plus the route via Shrewsbury linking south and north Wales. In 2013 a Shrewsbury North workstation was added to control the line between Shrewsbury and Crewe. It is likely that workstations for the Port Talbot area will be added next, and then a start made on resignalling the North Wales main line. Thus the control centre has now officially become the Wales ROC. Thanks go to Conor Linnell, Atkins practice director, for facilitating this article and Paul Carney, Atkins senior engineering manager, for describing the technical details.

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42

Rail Engineer • March 2016

SIGNALLING AND TELECOMS

PAUL DARLINGTON

Crewe New UTC for

C

rewe is not only a railway centre, but it also has a long history of engineering excellence with the Bentley Motors works and other smaller engineering specialists.

The town has also had a long history of rail training which has included: The Crewe Works Apprentice School, Webb House BRB Supervisory Training Centre and the Gresty Road Signalling and Telecommunications Centre.

Now, Crewe is planned to be the home of the new Crewe Engineering and Design University Technical College (UTC) which Network Rail is partnering with other engineering companies.

Future difficulties Employers are likely to face growing difficulty sourcing suitably qualified and experienced staff in the years to come. Within the larger engineering community, EngineeringUK, formally the Engineering and Technology Board, estimates that 1.8 million additional engineering jobs will be created by 2020. In order to meet the demand for skills, the sector needs to triple the number of apprenticeships on offer each year to 69,000.

The shortage of trained engineers and technicians to support the growing rail industry is well documented. Plans to invest over £38 billion in the Railway Upgrade Plan are at risk because the rail industry will face growing difficulty recruiting suitably qualified and experienced staff. Projects most at risk include electrification schemes, the introduction of large fleets of new trains, Northern Powerhouse, Thameslink, digital rail ETCS, Crossrail, the intercity express programme, HS2 and London Overground.

Crewe Municipal Building.

The age profile of people working within the industry is a particular concern. A report by the National Skills Academy for Rail (NSAR) for the Office of Rail and Road (ORR) stated: “Within the engineering workforce of some 84,500 involved in railway engineering-specific activities, 20 per cent are over the age of 55.”

Another worrying statistic was that less than five per cent are female.

The report identified that, while Network Rail accounts for the single biggest component of infrastructure spend, Transport for London, Crossrail and light rail schemes will contribute significant percentages, particularly in signalling and telecommunications and rolling stock procurement activity over the next decade. It also highlighted that there is a requirement to replace a number of higher-level qualified and experienced people who will retire over the coming years.

For S&T, it is forecasted that there is a need for between 1,600 and 2,000 new people in the next five years, with over 30 per cent being at technician level or above. For Electrification and Plant (E&P) the need is for around 1,000 new people, which is the equivalent of almost 30 per cent of the existing workforce. Of these, some 750 will be required as a direct result of the major electrification programs. While steps have been taken to put systems in place for

maintenance and graduate personnel, there is now a particular need to train and develop design staff for all disciplines.

This year, Network Rail is looking to recruit 150 apprentices nationwide as it continues to deliver the Railway Upgrade Plan. More than 3,500 applications were received for the scheme, which was launched on 28 January.

At the same time, the Government announced its commitment to 30,000 apprenticeships across the transport sector over the course of this parliament as part of its Transport Skills strategy. The three-year Advanced Apprenticeship scheme offers young people over the age of 18 a chance to earn while they learn, while gaining valuable work experience, transferable skills and recognised qualifications along the way.

In order to increase, in particular, the number of engineering design staff, Network Rail reviewed the various schemes already in place. While the new high-speed-rail engineering colleges, NSAR in Milton Keynes and the National Training Academy for Rail (NTAR) in Northampton are excellent initiatives, they won’t directly help Network Rail and other rail companies in the North West to fill their rail systems design capability gap, particularly for the Northern Powerhouse programmes.

Rail Engineer • March 2016

43

Crewe Engineering and Design UTC

Suzanne Mathieson of Network Rail.

This will result in a range of different pathways, career opportunities and learning experiences for the students. Employers will demonstrate how theoretical concepts have very real and exciting practical applications and the range of roles this opens to students.

The Manchester Metropolitan University (MMU) will support the continuous personal development (CPD) of teaching staff. The partnership between the UTC, industry, and MMU is key to ensuring a good balance between academic knowledge and the real-life skills required to progress into higher education or employment. MMU will also assist the UTC by supporting curriculum development mapped into clear progression routes.

®

Cheshire East Council is also providing support to Crewe Engineering and Design UTC as a core part of its education offering in the area.

So why Crewe?

Within the area there are already initiatives to deliver engineering skills development. Bentley Motors has sponsored a major programme at South Cheshire College for the development of its new Sport Utility Vehicle (SUV) and another college, Reaseheath near Nantwich, has 650 engineering students and is sponsored by JCB. The Grand Junction Railway (GJR) chose Crewe as the site for its locomotive works and railway station in the late 1830s as it was in the centre of its network. The central location of Crewe - it

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SIGNALLING AND TELECOMS

UTCs are funded by the Government, nonselective, designed to enrol students aged 1418 and are free to attend. They have a university and employers as sponsors, and are supported by the local council.

The UTCs are designed to offer technically oriented courses of study, combining national curriculum requirements along with technical and vocational elements as well as subjects such as business skills and the use of ICT. They offer routes into higher education or further learning in work. The study day is longer than in a typical school and is more in line with a commercial working day.

The Crewe Centre will aspire to form the core systems design training centre of choice for the industry. The facility will be designed to integrate training at all levels in a location that is historically associated with the rail industry.

The centre will capture the combined knowledge of such companies as Bentley, Siemens, GE and Bosch which have been involved in dual education systems which drive engineering, design and manufacturing success in other countries. In addition, Network Rail and OSL Rail will provide links to the rail industry while Chevron, Unipart Logistics, Optical 3D, Leoni and James Walker will add specialist knowledge from their industries.

Rail Engineer • March 2016

SIGNALLING AND TELECOMS

44

Terri Steel of Morgan Sindall.

is less than an hour away from Manchester and Birmingham and only 35 minutes longer from London by train - and the adjacent M6 make it an ideal location for transport links. During the early part of my career I was an instructor at the Crewe S&T Training Centre and it was not unknown to have students from Euston, Derby and Carlisle - all travelling daily and on the same course.

The development of an HS2 Superhub at Crewe will create growth and generate up to 40,000-60,000 jobs, providing a substantial boost to the local economy. It will also stimulate growth and investment across the sub-region and beyond.

The All Change for Crewe Partnership Board, comprising key private and public sector partners, is committed to realising the substantial potential within Crewe and has made five key commitments to the locality: a World Class Automotive and Rail Hub, a Market Leader in Renewable Energy, Connecting Crewe, Achievable and Sustainable Growth and a UK Centre of Excellence for Employer Led Skills.

Network Rail has been working with Cheshire East Council to support the forming of a Rail Skills Board for Crewe. The town is a gold mine of multiple colleges and universities, such as MMU, wishing to get into rail education. There is the opportunity for support from the multiple and growing number of rail companies in the town and a Council that wants to champion the true rail heritage of the area to develop a highly skilled workforce that employers are demanding.

The decision to form the board was supported by a detailed report undertaken by Jacobs.

The Rail Skills Board meets every six weeks or so with the aim of supporting the colleges and universities in developing courses which meet the rail industry’s needs. As well as Network Rail, OSL Rail is part of the board and other well-known local railway companies including Bombardier and Atkins are involved.

Delivery A number of locations were evaluated and it has been decided to build the college on the former Victoria Centre site very close to the town centre.

The new Crewe UTC has been granted planning permission and construction of the £10.6 million centre began in January 2016 ready to accept students from September 2016.

David Terry, principal of Crewe Engineering and Design UTC, said: “The strength of demand for the UTC from the local area is very strong. We’ve seen that at our open days, where hundreds of students and parents have attended, allowing us to share our vision for the future.”

It is planned that the delivery of the rail skills training will be aligned with industry needs.

Different levels of training may be provided from apprentice training for students new to the industry, through to mature candidates. It is anticipated that levels of training could be: Tier 1 - apprentice, UTC / College interfaces; Tier 2 - Graduate training, university interface; Tier 3 - mature candidate training, conversion courses for engineers from other industries, professional / vocational training, and continuous professional development.

To deliver the proposed tiers of training, strategic partners located within the Crewe area will be established to form training alliances. Network Rail will be supporting the UTC teaching staff with projects, work experience placements and presentations from experienced engineers and graduates. The curriculum will be developed in partnership with the Crewe Rail Skills Board members to ensure it provides students with the necessary rail design and engineering skills for a career in the rail industry.

The eventual aim will be the provision of a training system that can take a delegate from first principles within the industry through to becoming a fully accredited rail specialist. The new UTC will also help existing engineers, managers and planners looking to specialise within the industry

by providing either tailored bespoke courses or conversion courses to introduce and transfer skills to the industry. The railway is a system and system engineering is becoming increasingly important, and this will be a key feature of the training provided.

While it is accepted that Network Rail and HS2 are building and managing colleges for training their own staff, with the diversity of training required for the industry, the Crewe Rail Design and Engineering Centre of Excellence would not only supplement their needs, but potentially offer courses that Network Rail and HS2 may not be able to facilitate.

The Crewe UTC will complement the existing Network Rail training centres. However, these are based in different regional areas to Crewe and primarily support the Network Rail maintenance organisation, whereas Crewe will specifically focus on railway systems design. This will provide the opportunity for a new talent pipeline, primarily for the regional engineering design groups which have already committed to support the first student intake in September 2016 through placements for 12 railway design students.

Network Rail has the largest rail design house in the UK (over 550 design engineers in Crewe, Manchester, Birmingham, York, Glasgow and Reading) and this needs to grow to meet the huge enhancements and renewals project portfolio along with the skills to support new technology introduction such as the Digital Railway.

Thanks to Jon Shaw of Network Rail and Julian Cobley of Cheshire East Council for their assistance with this article. Any rail suppliers wishing to become involved should contact Jon Shaw at jon.shaw@networkrail.co.uk

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46

Rail Engineer • March 2016

SIGNALLING AND TELECOMS

CLIVE KESSELL

Farewell to the NRN (Lead) A youthful Clive Kessell with an NRN portable.

(Right) The Cat and Fiddle, England's second highest pub.

T

he National Radio Network, originated

by British Rail, has finally been switched off. It served the railway well for over 40 years and provided a significant contribution to improving communication between people in many forms during its lifetime. It is therefore appropriate to record the NRN history and to set down some of the achievements that resulted during its lifetime.

From a personal perspective, I had the task of creating the network (then called the National Radio Plan - NRP) in 1973 and built up the radio team at BR Headquarters that was to design and implement the technology. There were many political, administrative and technical hurdles along the way and it took a persistent and concerted effort for these to be overcome. The NRN had a number of engineering changes during its life and also a significant change of use.

Early days During the first decade and a half of British Rail, regional dominance was the order of the day and schemes to develop technology as a national perspective made little headway. Radio usage largely consisted of small local systems

to give voice communication between staff working at major stations and freight marshalling yards (including communication to shunting locomotives). Some of the more adventurous regional engineers had visions of building wide area radio coverage networks but little progress was made which, with hindsight, was no bad thing since every region would have done it differently.

A common problem in those days was how to communicate with engineering staff engaged in trackside work when they were required elsewhere if an emergency arose. A number of lineside call systems were invented, some using either lights or loudspeakers mounted on equipment cabinets that emitted different

calling signals depending on the department required. These were of limited success and something more resilient was required, radio being the obvious choice.

Thus agreement was given that a national radio based communication network should be investigated and developed to give universal coverage throughout the BR domain. Under the inspired leadership of John Boura, the head of telecoms engineering at BRHQ, the NRP group was established and I was brought down from the Midlands as its head. As well as assembling a London-based team, a working party involving radio experts within the regions helped to unify thinking and generate a spirit of co-operation.

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47

Setting the scene

SIGNALLING AND TELECOMS

Defining what the NRN should and should not do was an early challenge. Remember that, in those days, the public cellular mobile networks did not exist but several industries (fuel, power and the emergency services) had established wide area radio coverage. How had they achieved it and what technology was used?

Getting an allocation of radio frequencies was the first objective and this involved difficult negotiations with the Home Office, which was then responsible for spectrum management.

VHF frequencies offered the best practical solution but nothing was available in the low band (80-90MHz) or high band (150-160MHz) parts of the spectrum. Under pressure from rail and other industries, a VHF mid band was created offering 105-108MHz for mobile transmit and 138-141MHz for base station transmit, this becoming known as Band II. The 33MHz separation was a problem for aerial efficiency but at least it was a start and an allocation of 12 channels was achieved.

Another vexed question was whether to use Amplitude or Frequency Modulation (AM or FM).

Each had its diehard advocates, both within the railway and the supply industry, but a decision to adopt FM aligned with the best industry practise.

It was important that staff in road vehicles as well as those at the trackside should be catered for. This meant deploying both mobiles (vehicle mounted sets) and hand portables. To be of maximum use, the radios should be capable of connecting to the BR telephone network but the Home Office was distinctly nervous about this and insisted that it must be only via a manual switchboard.

Thus a network of ‘radio areas’ was designed, each with its own control centre, connected to a number of base stations to give an estimated 95 per cent connectivity throughout the rail network.

Paul Darlington with Land Rover and trailer.

Coverage The propagation characteristics of Band II would allow coverage of between 20-30 miles from a hilltop base station, but railways seldom ran close to such places. Thus renting mast capacity from other site owners such as water towers, TV stations and others was an early decision. Contacts were established with these owners and site rental agreements put in place.

BR radio engineers could legitimately work on the railway but be many miles from a railway line. This included some lovely parts of the country, like the Cat and Fiddle Inn, the secondhighest pub in England!

How to prove the obtainable coverage needed some novel thinking and, in conjunction with BR Research, Test Coach IRIS was equipped with a radio signal strength measuring kit that would record radio signals as the train moved around.

A boom aerial mounted out front simulated a person with a hand portable radio. In parallel, the BR radio team acquired a Land Rover and portable mast together with a radio strength

measuring van to assess coverage on the roads close to railway lines. Thus the network of both rented and railway-land sites was established.

At the control centres, a geographic map was provided with the base stations marked on it such that the radio operator could relate a caller’s whereabouts to the correct base station.

Usage From the outset, the radios were equipped with Selcall (Selective Calling) such that the operator would only call the person required.

Inward calls would be by voice calling with the operator connecting to either another radio or to a telephone extension. Vehicle-mounted mobiles with their greater power performed the best. Hand portable coverage was patchy, with the helical aerial to accommodate the 105MHz frequency at a reasonable size not being particularly efficient. Later options of having a half wave dipole (about 50cm), but made of metal tapes that could be folded, gave better performance but were cumbersome.

Since the radio areas did not align with railway signalling or even control centre geography, the operating authorities decreed initially that the NRN could not be used for track to train communication, this latter being the role of the Cab Secure Radio system being developed in parallel.

By the mid 1970s, the network was in place, but use of the system was slow to take off.

Some staff accepted the new facility with enthusiasm and useful improvements to faulting and maintenance resulted.

Updating technology and efficiency

Euston control centre.

The Band II arrangement was never very satisfactory and, in the early 1980s, the Home Office decreed that the Band would be closed down and replaced by Band III using frequencies in the 204MHz (base station transmit) and 196MHz (mobile transmit) Band. This meant re-

Rail Engineer • March 2016

SIGNALLING AND TELECOMS

48

Bob Cooper at Roade. engineering the base station network and providing additional transmitters to take account of the higher frequencies and known gaps in the existing coverage. BR was assigned 25 channels, greater than the previous allocation, with the promise of more if traffic levels demanded it.

Another annoying restraint was eliminated with the Home Office finally agreeing that automatic connection from the radio to the telephone network was permissible. This meant development of a new, much smaller, hand portable set which, with technology advances and the addition of a keypad, ultimately became the BRUNEL radio, introduced in 1991. Some wag decreed the name stood for British Rail Universal Network Electronic Link. The device was advanced for its time and enabled: »» Network access to other radio control areas and the internal BR ETD (Extension Trunk Dialling) telephone system; »» Point-to-point calls (individual and wide area); »» Ability to prioritise communications; »» Text communication; »» Ability to transmit documents (although never invoked); »» A network monitoring ability including call logging; »» A single button for Emergency Calls; »» Power adjustment to respond to incoming signal strength.

Similar features were built in to new vehicle-mounted mobiles.

The new sets were much more popular than their predecessors and, for a time, traffic levels increased. As well as allowing automated connectivity, a short code number was allocated to access electrification control rooms (ECRs) in an emergency to get the current switched off. By the mid 1990s however, the first public cellular networks were well established and there was a clamour from engineering staff that the smaller cellular sets would be better suited to the maintenance role. Thus the use of the BRUNEL declined even though the coverage at the trackside was often better than the public offerings.

Polmont and its aftermath In 1984, an Edinburgh - Glasgow push-pull express with the locomotive at the rear hit a herd of cows at Polmont, resulting in the train being derailed at speed and 13 fatalities. The wreckage spread to the other track and, although no other train was involved, the potential seriousness of the accident led to demands that better communication to trains should be implemented. The Cab Secure Radio system was making slow progress and its relatively high cost meant it was only financed in areas where train crew savings could be made. Could the NRN be the solution?

By then, I was back at BRHQ as the Telecom Engineer so, after discussions with the radio team then headed by Les Giles, I was summoned to the BR Board to explain possibilities. Yes, we could offer something: it was not possible to route radio calls direct to the signallers as areas of coverage were incompatible; it would be possible to connect the radio centres to Regional Control Rooms by ‘hot line’ routing and then interconnect with individual signal boxes via the BR telephone network. It would also be necessary to improve coverage to around 98 per cent but stopping short of radiating cable in tunnels.

The necessary finance was quickly obtained and the radio team began to modify and enhance the infrastructure. In parallel, the traction and rolling stock engineers had to produce designs for equipping the multitude of locomotives and multiple units involving aerial fitment to roofs, robust power supplies and cab equipment consisting of mobile radio, microphone or handset, and loudspeaker.

The operators had little choice but to go along with this but tried to impose restrictions on usage - not to be used in place of SPTs, not to be used on the move. Very soon, however, as trains were equipped, usage found its own level. Drivers soon learned the telephone number of signal boxes and used the radio to report when stopped at a signal (what would you do if it was pouring with rain and you had the option of using a radio in the cab??). The train radios had an emergency button that would automatically connect to the Control Office if pushed. Signals in limited clearance areas were a safety risk and, after one driver was killed whilst using the SPT, even the operators sanctioned the use of the NRN. Such signals are shown with a cross on the diamond sign.

A Brunel hand portable radio in use.

Rail Engineer • March 2016

49

Test coach IRIS at Wlton Junction, Kirkby, in September 1991.

SIGNALLING AND TELECOMS

Accidents and NRN improvements Accidents that do not happen do not make headline news but the NRN has prevented such occurrences on a number of occasions.

Regrettably, whilst the operators were getting used to NRN capability, at least one accident failed to be averted even though the radio had been used to report the initial problem. In 1995, a local Sprinter train on the Settle to Carlisle line was derailed by a landslide near Aisgill. Although a successful emergency call was made, this was to WCML Crewe Control. Responsibility for the Settle - Carlisle line had however been transferred to the North East Zone at York under Railtrack boundary changes but no account had been taken of NRN coverage areas.

Whilst the Crewe controller could have made a group call to all trains in the area, this was not done and instead the call was cleared and York control advised of the incident by telephone. In the ensuing mix up, a second sprinter train collided with the derailed train causing one fatality and several injuries. A six-minute window of opportunity had been lost.

From the ensuing enquiry, the Railtrack Zone Controls were better aligned to NRN areas and controllers were trained to react to NRN calls even if off their ‘home’ patch. A number of other improvements were made including dedicated emergency telephone numbers allocated to signal boxes, better recording and time stamping of radio messages, plus the need for controllers to regularly practise emergency scenarios.

These proved beneficial as, two years later, the NRN prevented what would have been a very serious accident. At Macclesfield, a points failure had caused a southbound train to cross to another line under verbal instruction from the signaller. A misunderstanding of the instruction by the driver led to the train proceeding northwards ‘wrong line’ to a ground frame location some miles away. The signaller noticed the situation whereby that train was running head on into the path of a southbound express. A quick call to Railtrack control resulted in an emergency call being broadcast which resulted in both trains being stopped within sight of each other.

Another example on the Settle - Carlisle line determined that a freight train derailment was caused by excessive speed by measuring the time between the train being logged as entering section and the emergency NRN call being received. Other examples of NRN emergency operational usage are known to have occurred.

The NRN system received a number of upgrades and enhancements which were engineered by the BR radio engineers and their successors and which included: base-station landline equalisation which dramatically improved performance, various software and configuration upgrades,

antenna optimisation, additional radio sites to improve coverage, and uninterrupted power supplies for the 21 control centres.

So important did the radio become that trains were not permitted to enter service unless at least one on board radio was operative.

The advent of GSM-R and NRN’s replacement The European development of GSM-R as the all-purpose radio system for railways has gradually led to its adoption in all of Europe including Britain.

This has the capability of giving track-to-train voice communication, being a bearer for ETCS and communicating with engineering staff equipped with sets akin to the public cellular technology.

NSN’s Band III frequencies were also required to expand digital TV service, so the writing has been on the wall for the network for some time.

Working from the south coast northwards, the NRN service has been gradually replaced with GSM-R until, finally, an operating notice dated 12 Dec 2015 stated that the network would be closed on the 19 December.

That is not quite the end as the RETB systems on the Far North and West Highland lines in Scotland still use Band III frequencies but are being reengineered into a different part of the Band, a project that will be completed in 2016.

So, farewell old friend, you served the railways of Britain well and it was a privilege to have been part of the team that enabled radio to become an accepted element of rail operation. Well done to the radio engineers within BR and its successors, and to the supply industry - initially Storno from Denmark and latterly Motorola - who developed the NRN system and its various radio products.

Thanks to my Rail Engineer colleague Paul Darlington who was also part of the NRN team and has added some of his memories to this article.

50

Rail Engineer • March 2016

SIGNALLING AND TELECOMS

DAVID BICKELL

RUGBY ROC OPENS R

ugby Rail Operating Centre (ROC) was officially declared open on 11 November 2015 by Councillor Michael Stokes, leader of Rugby Borough Council, and Martin Frobisher, Network Rail’s London North West route director. This is the second of the two ROCs which will eventually control all LNW operations, the other at Ashburys, Manchester, was described in issue 118 (August 2014). Rugby ROC currently houses Network Rail route controllers, and signals trains in the Stafford area.

Famous Rugby south end signal gantry in semaphore days.

Councillor Stokes said at the opening: “I’m reminded every day of how important the railway is to our town and what strong historical links we have with the railway. Rugby is the fastest growing town in the Midlands and one of the fastest growing towns in the UK. This facility highlights our commitment to work with businesses to ensure they receive a warm welcome to our town and I am pleased we will continue to be part of the future of the railway in Britain.”

The busy junction station on the West Coast route has always featured key signalling installations. Railway history

books show the famous semaphore signal gantry guarding access to the station from the south whilst, in more recent years, the 1964 power signal box (PSB), with SGE geographical relay interlocking, controlled what was a complex station area.

The large island platform hosted just one through line in each direction, though mid-platform signals split the platforms in two, allowing trains to arrive and depart independently from each half - a facility soon rendered superfluous in the timetable of the newly electrified railway. Bay platforms served a myriad of long-discontinued local and branch line services.

During the life of Rugby PSB various rationalisation and layout improvements were made to the station area including making the Down platform bi-directional. However, with the introduction of Virgin’s Very High Frequency high-speed Pendolino services and other (now London Midland) semi-fast services, the old layout was no longer fit for purpose.

Accordingly, the station area was completely remodelled in 2008 and provided with three new through platforms. The original island platform

and station building remains, with a quiet existence these days with few staff and passengers to be seen, explained by the fact that most trains booked to stop at Rugby now do so at the new platforms. Signalling control is from the Rugby workstation in Rugby Signal Control Centre (SCC), a separate building next door to the ROC.

Inside the ROC As at Manchester, the high security building at Rugby has been constructed by Morgan Sindall and is situated near the station on a long narrow parcel of land between the Up side of the West Coast main line (WCML) and Rugby College. The offices have a pleasantly light and airy ambience with windows track side so that staff, glued to their PC screens for most of their shifts, may stretch their legs and watch the trains go by, giving them a tangible sense of being part of the live railway.

Inside the three-story building, the route controllers, signalling work stations and, in the future, the electrical controllers are all on the top floor. The remaining two floors are split between equipment rooms and the maintenance delivery unit (MDU), the base for the orange army of engineering maintenance personnel and associated support staff, managers and supervisors. This therefore replaces the shantytown of temporary relocatable buildings seen on the Up side of the WCML for many years.

Rail Engineer • March 2016

home - necessary today when attending courses at one of the national signalling schools. »» Mission Room. This is actually the name of a company that provides 360º virtual realisation of the railway within a cubicle, replicating the sounds and vision as if one is actually standing in a place of safety with trains passing by. Several Network Rail projects have utilised this concept to brief staff and ensure that they are familiar with the trackside locations before actually venturing outdoors.

Rugby ROC operating floor.

Outside the building there are two 1.25MVA standby power supply units that supply the building and all systems in the event of a loss of grid supply. The diesel generators consume 286 litres of diesel per hour and the tank holds 14,000 litres of diesel.

Safety S afffe a etty e Summit S ummit

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Wing Award 2016 Every year the Institution of Railway Signal Engineers presents the Wing Award for Safety to an individual who has made an outstanding personal contribution to improving trackside safety, and we are now seeking nominations for the 2016 Award.

The Wing Award remains as relevant as ever, and improving track safety rightly continues to be a dominant theme both on the railways in the UK and in other countries as well.

The Award is managed by the IRSE on behalf of the rail industry, and is open to everybody regardless of their specialism.

To find out more about the award and how you can make a nomination please visit www.irse.org/about/public/wingaward.aspx

SIGNALLING AND TELECOMS

Other rooms supporting the day-to-day activities include: »» Breakout area - not a rapid exit facility for stressed-out signallers or controllers but a general kitchen area with seating, to procure refreshment or take a meal break. »» Medical/rest room. »» Visualisation room for weekly reviews, updates and focus on live operational matters affecting the area. »» Incident room. As the name suggests, this is where senior staff gather to take control and manage serious incidents. The room has a state-of-the-art communications suite for tele-conferences and information sharing. »» Signaller training room. It is intended that standard signaller training courses will be run in-house in the future, obviating the need for staff to lodge away from

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Rail Engineer • March 2016 Managing operations

Rugby ROC.

The operating floor of the ROC houses the Network Rail LNW (South) route control manager, train delay attribution, information controller, incident support controllers and the train running controllers who monitor the service, liaise with their train operator (TOC) counterparts, and deal with general incidents and infrastructures faults. This control unit manages the West Coast main line (WCML) from Euston to just south of Crewe.

LNW(S) has a control office counterpart based in the West Midlands Signalling Centre (WMSC) at Saltley (issue 134, December 2015).

Network Rail and several TOCs have supported the principle of the Integrated Control Centres, wherein Network Rail controllers sit in the same room with their TOC counterparts. The LNW(S) Birmingham ‘Mailbox’ offices hosted such a configuration, although not all TOCs running through the area had a presence there. However, this arrangement has been disbanded over time.

Whilst there are benefits of having Network Rail and TOC controllers co-located, and this works fine if the two operating areas are coterminous,

SIGNALLING AND TELECOMS

Rugby ROC official opening.

TOCs serving the West Midlands and WCML operate over a much wider area involving more than one Network Rail ‘route’, such as Virgin Trains West Coast, Cross Country, and Arriva Trains Wales.

TOCs have evidently concluded that their rolling stock and train crew resources are more efficiently managed by integrating their controllers with their own respective management teams. This means that the information-sharing opportunities provided by the ROC project are all the more important to ensure that the remote nature of the teams does not affect the ability of the team to manage incidents well.

Boots on the ground Staffordshire Alliance, a partnership of Atkins, Laing O’Rourke, Network Rail and VolkerRail working as part of a new collaborative contract, is delivering the three key projects of the Staffordshire Area Improvements Programme, a £250 million package of works which will create extra capacity, reduce journey times and reduce congestion and delays in the Stafford area.

The first of the three projects, completed in March 2014, increased the line speed of the Slow lines between Crewe and Norton Bridge from 75 mph to 100 mph. This work

Rail Engineer • March 2016

Stafford signalling workstation Stafford is the first workstation for the signalling of trains to be introduced at Rugby ROC, and it replaces the lever frame signal boxes Stafford No. 4 and Stafford No. 5 (left overs from de-scoping of the 1960s modernisation power box programme!). The Siemens Rail Automation Controlguide Westcad signalling control and display system was introduced last August, following commissioning of the Stafford station area resignalling, and currently controls the route from Norton Bridge (exclusive) to Colwich (exclusive) and also towards Wolverhampton.

Automatic Route Setting (ARS) is not currently provided, but will be added during Easter 2016 when the area of control is extended to include the remodelled Norton Bridge complex and onwards towards Basford Hall, Crewe, taking over this stretch from Stoke SCC. Two Siemens Rail Automation Trackguard Westlock interlockings are employed for the Stafford station area, and three existing Solid State Interlockings (SSI) that are currently in use covering the Norton Bridge to Madeley area will remain and be upgraded to embrace the remodelled area. All these interlockings are located at Stoke SCC. Communication between the Stafford Westcad workstation and the interlockings at Stoke are via the Fixed Telecommunications Network (FTN) using IP over SDH (Internet Protocol over Synchronous Digital Hierarchy).

The signaller workstation replicates, in modern digital computerised form, the functionality of the traditional Entrance/Exit (NX) panel box. The main tools of the trade for the signaller are: »» Signalling control and display system. At Stafford this takes the form of the Westcad display which shows the status of signalling infrastructure including the white route set, and red track occupied indications. A bespoke keyboard provides the various control functions whilst a tracker ball may be used in conjunction with Points

Normal/Centre/Reverse buttons for individual point movement, and Set/Cancel buttons for NX route setting and cancelling. »» Communications.GSM-R provides secure wireless speech communication between signaller and driver, whilst a traditional telephone concentrator connects with wired telephones including signal post telephones, stations, depots, electrification control, and route controllers. »» TRUST (Train Running System TOPS - Total Operations Processing System). TRUST enables the national timetable to be consulted for any train, continuously updated with the actual times at the calling points and intermediate timing points. TRUST takes current train running data from the live signalling and train description systems which know where the trains are. Trains are individually identified by the standard 4-character alpha numeric description (such as 9S34).

Network Rail makes available open data feeds from these systems to third parties which may produce web sites and apps for public consumption. For example, Stafford ‘TRUST’ information can be found at: www. realtimetrains.co.uk/search/advanced/STA. »» CCF. This acronym, standing for Control Centre of the Future, is arguably something of a misnomer. CCF has no signalling control function but is a diagrammatic live train running monitor for the industry as a whole, including Network Rail and TOC control office staff, station staff and signallers. The display shows a simplified layout plan of the area being viewed showing the train description ‘berths’ (typically at each signal).

The berths are populated by actual train descriptions which ‘step’ from berth to berth as trains progress. Each train description is highlighted with a colour to indicate its timing status (early, on time, late or very late). The displays are real time and some also show live signal aspects. Any area of the national network may be called up for display. Again, Open Data feeds are available. For the Stafford area the ‘CCF’ live data may be viewed at: www.opentraintimes.com/maps/signalling/sta

SIGNALLING AND TELECOMS

included modifications to the Overhead Line Equipment (OLE) and the installation of four new banner repeater signals.

Next up, completed in August 2015, was the wholesale replacement of life-expired signalling, telecommunications and power supplies in the Stafford area including ancillary OLE alterations and civils work such as the installation of foundations, cable routes and new signals and gantries.

Enhancement work consisted of conversion of the existing but defunct postal line to a new freight loop, and provision of bi-directional signalling to all platforms.

The third project, progressing well, will provide grade separation of lines in the Norton Bridge area and is due for completion during Easter 2016. The track layout alterations and civil engineering work here was fully described in issue 130 (August).

Signalling equipment used by the Alliance includes Thales Type K axle counters, SPX IBCL In Bearer Clamp Locks for all new points, and some existing point conversions to SPX RCPL Rail Clamp Point Locks. Fitment of RCPLs on diamonds can give improvements over HW machines through better accommodation of thermal expansion of rails, one reason that a number are being changed out to the SPX RCPL. Signals are mostly Dorman with some VMS.

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Rugby ROC Stafford signalling work station with signaller Hardesh Kaur operating the console.

Rail Engineer • March 2016

SIGNALLING AND TELECOMS

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(Above left) Wembley main line entrance/exit control panel.

(Above right) Willesden Carriage Shed North signal box.

Rugby SCC workstation.

Wembley takeover The southern end of the WCML between Euston and Harrow has been controlled by Wembley Main Line SCC NX panel since 2000, when an extensive grade separation and track remodelling exercise between Euston and Camden was completed.

The panel, a type SM48 manufactured

by TEW, exercises control through fifteen Westinghouse (now Siemens) MkIIIA SSIs. Originally, it was intended to control the Watford Junction area from Rugby SCC but, with the eventual control from the ROC in mind, it was decided that operationally it fitted in better to provide a new Westcad workstation alongside the NX panel at Wembley Main Line SCC which thus now controls from Euston to Apsley. A new Westlock interlocking at Watford replaces the 1992 Westinghouse MkIIB SSI. Although the NX panel is comparatively young, it is possible that migration of control to Rugby

ROC may well be scheduled to coincide with forthcoming layout changes at Euston in conjunction with the arrival of HS2. HS2 enabling works in this area commence in December 2018 with the temporary removal of line X which currently enables departures from low-numbered platforms to dive under the station throat and surface without much conflict onto the Down Fast towards Camden.

Also requiring migration to Rugby ROC around the 2020s will be the Euston-Watford DC suburban lines Westcad work station located within Wembley Main Line SCC, Wembley Yard NX panel plus the surviving electromechanical lever frame signal boxes at Willesden Carriage Shed North and Willesden Carriage Shed South.

Rugby SCC Heading north from Apsley, control of the WCML passes to Rugby SCC all the way to Colwich where it interfaces with the new Stafford workstation at Rugby ROC. Opened in 2004, the SCC was originally intended as an interim control centre pending completion of the WCML Passenger Upgrade 2 (PUG2) which envisaged 140mph running with cab signalling controlled from the building at Saltley.

The rest is history, and the Saltley building now houses the WMSC whilst the Rugby SCC is likely to continue in service for a few more years until the work stations require upgrading and/or ETCS/Traffic Management is introduced, with control being transferred next door to the ROC. The Rugby SCC workstations - Tring, Bletchley, Northampton, Rugby, Nuneaton, and Trent Valley - are

all of GE Transportation Systems (GETS) Modular Control System (MCS) without ARS. Each signalling display is fixed for the respective geographical area under control but a large overview screen at the back allows signallers to observe movements throughout the area.

Down in the equipment room, the interlockings are predominantly Invensys/Westinghouse MkIIIA Solid State Interlockings (SSI) with the exceptions that Wolverton is Alstom MkIIA SSI and Rugby is an Alstom Smartlock 400T Computer Based Interlocking.

Further migration The project to concentrate West Midlands signalling at Saltley was commenced before Network Rail’s National Operating Strategy was finalised and Rugby ROC built.

Thus the former will continue to consolidate the remaining areas still to be resignalled such as New Street.

It remains an intention to move the Saltley workstations to Rugby at a point in the future but as this will be a technically challenging and costly project, its business case justification may be aligned with the programme to introduce ETCS and Traffic Management.

And finally, other areas to migrate to the ROC, probably post 2020, include Stoke-on Tent SCC, Marston Vale (Bedford-Bletchley) SCC, Marylebone IECC, the routes towards Worcester and, possibly, the immediate Crewe area.

Thanks to Andy Scott, Jonathan Harris and Ian Johnson of Network Rail for help in the preparation of this article.

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56

Rail Engineer • March 2016

SIGNALLING AND TELECOMS

CLIVE KESSELL

DAS a new roll-out opportunity D

river Advisory Systems (DAS) are becoming established as a useful operating tool in the thrust to achieve improvements in train running performance. First Group have led the way with DAS implementation and an article describing the usage and experience appeared in issue 104 (June 2013). Since then, other train operators (London Midland, SW Trains and Freightliner) are investing in the technology and seeing the benefits that it can yield.

GPS receiver and converter in a DVT.

DAS, in its simplest form, enables the driver to monitor the timetabled path of a train to ascertain whether the train will reach its next timing point on schedule and to give an advisory speed for this to be achieved. If the train is running early, then a lower than normal speed is displayed so enabling fuel and energy consumption to be minimised. Similarly, if the train is late, then a higher advisory speed can be indicated if the line and train speed limits permit this. The benefits are twofold: getting a train to arrive at the correct point in time can avoid timetable conflicts with other trains; and it can avoid the need to brake at adverse signals, thus saving wear and tear.

The system works by having an on-board device that is loaded with timetable data for the particular route and comparing this with the actual train position derived from a GPS (Global Positioning System) receiver. GPS signals are typically processed every second and give a positional accuracy of between two and three metres.

The systems in use so far use standalone equipment purchased from one of a number of suppliers and require a driver’s interface panel in the cab, a separate DAS equipment box and a GPS aerial to be installed. Although relatively simple, any task that involves altering a train’s configuration can be complex and disruptive. Would there be a simpler way of achieving DAS by using an existing piece of train kit? Siemens certainly think so and a visit to their Poole premises looked at the opportunity.

Adapting the GSM-R mobile radio The roll out of the GSM-R network to replace the ageing NRN and CSR (Cab Secure Radio) systems is now virtually complete. The lineside aerials and mast infrastructure is in place and the radio control hubs have been commissioned.

A standard design for the train mobile radio was agreed a while ago and the sole supplier for this unit has been the Siemens mobile radio factory at Poole with some 9000 units having been delivered. This radio is now proving very reliable in service and has an MTBF of 300,000 hours.

Plessey (before the acquisition by Siemens) had previously provided the CSR cab radio equipment and the new GSM-R sets are designed around that functionality so as to be familiar in operation to the drivers.

However, the processing power used for the voice call and associated identification requirements is only about 20% of the total computing capacity. Could the same radio and display be used for other applications including DAS? Early investigations were encouraging and work began in earnest to prove the concept. An early decision was to use the DAS experience that Siemens had gained in Germany rather than seek an alliance with one of the existing UK DAS suppliers.

The radio must be capable of storing the UK National Timetable, known as the ITPS (Integrated Train Planning System), which is compiled twice a year but updated every 24 hours to take account of engineering works and any other disruption. This amounts to 4Gbit of compressed data and the radio has enough memory to hold this.

Next, the radio has to have the capability of reading GPS signals. Changing the train aerial to accommodate GPS as well as GSM-R is a relatively easy task and can be done at a depot during a nightly maintenance visit.

Accommodating DAS information on the existing mobile radio information screen proved not to be a problem. The screen has 4 lines of display each of 20 characters. DAS information has for the moment been constrained to only 2 lines and shows: »» The current time; »» The time scheduled at the next station or passing point with an abbreviated name for that location;

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SIGNALLING AND TELECOMS

»» The suggested speed to reach that point at the right time (only shown if this is different to the current speed of the train); »» A marker to remind the driver if the train is scheduled to stop there.

The radio must also hold data specific to that type of train such as maximum speed permitted and braking characteristics. This will prevent DAS information from showing a speed that is incompatible with the train specification. It was also important that the provision of DAS requirements has minimal effect on the voice call performance of the radio, the only necessary alteration being the adaptation of the display screen.

Operational testing The theory, whilst fine, needs to be put to the test on the real railway. Siemens reached an agreement with Abellio Greater Anglia for a trial to be conducted on the Liverpool Street to Norwich route with one Class 90 locomotive and its associated DVT (Driving Van Trailer) being equipped.

A number of drivers have been trained on DAS usage and after a period of familiarisation, results over several months are encouraging and the benefits are becoming clear for all to see.

At journey start, the driver goes through the normal routine of entering the train description (run number) for the forthcoming journey into the GSM-R radio which then co-relates this to the radio identity of that piece of rolling stock. The DAS element uses this information to extract the timetable data for the journey as well as the train characteristics.

It has to be remembered that DAS is only an advisory system and must not conflict with the safe driving of a train. Thus, if a voice call between the driver and signaller is taking place, this has to have priority so DAS information will be suppressed. Equally, if a train begins to brake because of adverse signals, then the same will happen. If the train is running very late and it becomes impossible for it to regain correct time, then DAS will not attempt to show unrealistic advice.

Train speed (blue) and energy consumption (brown) between London and Norwich, without DAS (left) and with DAS (right). Note the energy consumption is some 9 per cent lower using DAS.

For the trial, timetable data is loaded on to the radio units directly from a laptop computer at the train depot once a week. When fleet fitment begins to happen, then the timetable and temporary speed restriction updates will be loaded via the GSM-R radio link using a circuit switched connection. The limited data capability of the radio system means that several minutes are required to update each train, which will be acceptable for a smallish fleet but impractical for a national roll out. Siemens has a solution for this currently under development, which will be explored later.

The Greater Anglia trial has demonstrated that worthwhile energy savings can result by logging the train power consumption. A typical London to Norwich journey with the normal station stops shows an average instantaneous consumption of 2MW. With DAS fitted and driving to the speed advice given, this reduces to 1.8MW, a 9% saving and certainly worth having.

Cab installation in a DVT.

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»» Integrated accelerometers on three axes; »» Increased processing power; »» Increased memory capacity.

For increased functionality and resilience, the GSM-R radio unit will revert to 3G if no 4G signal is available. The data capacity of 4G is enormous and will enable emerging conflict situations to be assessed by TMS and transmitted to the DAS screen almost instantaneously.

Only when C-DAS is up and running will the true value of the system be known, but it is likely that both slow down and speed up advice will be given to ensure optimum flow through rail ‘pinch points’. Siemens knows that it will need to work with the TMS providers to achieve the required interfaces.

Other opportunities

GSM-R on board a new Thameslink Class 700.

Connected DAS (C-DAS) implications DAS in standalone form can never fulfil a truly optimal advice package as it is incapable of knowing the location of other trains that could adversely impact on the approach to junctions and stations. Previous articles have hinted that C-DAS is needed to overcome this, which in turn requires Traffic Management Systems (TMS) to be in place at the signalling centres that will monitor and regulate all train movements. Whilst the nationwide roll out of TMS is to be slower than originally intended, the linkage to DAS is important if the best possible advice to drivers is to be achieved. Once in place, C-DAS will require a high capacity data link to be available to the train radio such that minuteby-minute train running information can be advised and duly processed. Siemens has calculated that this will be beyond the capability of the 2G GSM-R system and reliance on the public 3G or 4G networks will be needed.

A new SmarTrain card has therefore been designed and will include the following features: »» Multiple 3G/4G LTE connectivity; »» An integrated GPS receiver; »» Integrated WiFi connectivity;

With multiple 4G connections possible, the GSM-R radio can potentially be used for even more train monitoring and connection services. These include: »» SureTrack - being developed in conjunction with Huddersfield University, the radio, with its in built accelerometer, will be capable of sensing track voids and unusual vibration that would then be reported in real time to a Network Rail centre. Trials to prove the concept are underway. »» On Board Train Monitoring - the latest trains are equipped with a train ‘databus’ that connects to sensors which monitor various elements of train performance. Any abnormal alarm would be sent to the train company control via an interface to the radio and the 4G connection. »» Passenger Information - the ability to use a train radio to connect a control room direct to the train PA system has existed for some time. However, for various reasons, this is seldom used. With an improved radio connection, it might be time to resurrect the facility. The provision of screens in each coach to give updated train running information to passengers is also being trialled. A 4G transmission link would update information more rapidly. »» Remote Software Updating - using the 4G link to update train systems with new software would ensure all trains are updated at the same time rather than having to wait for each train to visit a depot.

Some of these ideas are conceptual, others are already in being but use independent connection hardware.

By employing the GSM-R radio as a ‘comms gateway’, reductions in cost will be possible as well as introducing new opportunities for advertising, business promotion and new passenger facilities.

It is beyond doubt that DAS will be an operational feature of the emerging ‘Digital Railway’. At the same time, the rail industry is under enormous pressure to reduce costs. By using the installed base of GSM-R radios to incorporate DAS operation, this would be one opportunity for cost reduction. Siemens know that this has to be ‘sold’ and will be setting up a demonstration room at Poole with appropriate industry seminars and open days to achieve the necessary awareness.

Thanks to the Siemens engineering team, especially Russell Clarke, Gary Parkinson and Jim Tarrant for demonstrating the capability, and to Jennifer Ockwell and Barry Pearson for arranging the visit.

A connected future, full of possibility A future where everything works better together.

A

DAS

Rail Engineer • March 2016

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60

s Clive Kessell mentioned in his article ‘DAS - A New Rollout Opportunity’ elsewhere in this issue, most Driver Advisory Systems (DAS) use bespoke equipment purchased from specialist suppliers.

One of these is TTG Transportation Technology, a company with offices in Sydney, Derby and Beijing, backed by leading Australian research and patented technology.

TTG’s flagship product is Energymiser®. It was developed as the result of 16 years’ R&D with leading universities and provides real‐time driver advice and performance reports to reduce energy usage (by up to 23%) and emissions. It also improves on‐time arrivals and utilisation of rail capacity, whilst reducing maintenance costs of trains and railway tracks.

Now, following a rigorous supplier selection process, Abellio ScotRail has selected TTG to provide its Energymiser DAS and integrated DAS Energy Metering System (DAS‐EM) for six of its fleets.

More

Largest deployment TTG has already successfully deployed its Energymiser system onto 55 Class 170 DMUs and its integrated DAS‐EM system onto 40 Class 334 EMUs. This new contract award will add an additional 38 Class 156, 40 Class 158 and 38 Class 380 DMUs, together with 21 Class 318, 22 Class 320 and 14 Class 321 EMUs. Further quantities are expected to include 46 AT200 and 24 AT201 EMUs that ScotRail is purchasing from Hitachi, as well as 56 HSTs to be cascaded from Great Western, bringing the total fitments to 730 cabs, the largest deployment of DAS and DAS‐EM in the UK. The contract is for the provision of a full turnkey service comprising: system supply, design, engineering, installation, approvals, field, operations and maintenance support.

Abellio ScotRail’s energy manager Phil Dickson said: “We will be working with TTG to ensure the system is deployed in an effective and timely manner and the project objectives are achieved. We are very pleased to continue working with TTG, with whom our collaboration has pioneered the first application of DAS‐EM to the UK Rail sector and has provided significant benefits to date.”

Meanwhile, Dale Coleman, group managing director of TTG, commented: “We are delighted to be selected by Abellio ScotRail to deploy our system onto these additional fleets and look forward to continuing the good work done over the past two years.

“The selection process was very thorough and our success confirms our Energymiser system as a world‐leading DAS and UK market leader. We will be working with Abellio to ensure the system is upgraded to C‐DAS, so that our client is able to maximise the benefits of the system as soon as possible.”

® Energymiser DRIVER ADVISORY SYSTEM

Fixed Installation new build and retrofit

Tablet Windows and iOS devices

• Improves on-time running • Reduces Operational costs

Integrated ERTMS, TMS, ATO

Traffic Management System C-DAS

• Reduces Carbon footprint • An Essential Traffic Management Sub-system

TTG is a world leader in the provision of Driver Advisory Systems to the global rail sector. The company’s Energymiser® system is now deployed on 5 continents and has a projected install base of over 4000 systems in the UK and Australasia, by the end of 2014.

Whilst the early adopters of the system have focused on the system’s significant capability to reduce operational costs through a reduction in energy and fuel usage, the global rail market is now seeing the additional benefits it provides in relation to improved on-time running, carbon footprint reduction and as an essential sub-system for the emerging Traffic Management Systems.

Our clients initially wanted the system deployed as a fixed ‘in-cab’ solution, but this has evolved to include deployment via iPads, tablets or integrated with existing on-train systems, such as a Train Management, or Traffic Management System. TTG’s development roadmap has been designed to ensure we can meet these changing needs.

www.ttgtransportationtechnology.com Email: enquiries@ttgeurope.com Call: +44 (0) 133 225 8867 (Derby), + 44 (0) 207 554 8805 (London), Derby: The iD Centre, Lathkill House, The rtc Business Park, London Road, Derby DE24 8UP London: Hamilton House, Mabledon Place, Bloomsbury, London, WC1H 9BB

Sustainable Technologies for Rail

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Efficient railway engineering

A

M Signalling Design Ltd was formed in 2011 and since then has grown into the AM Rail Group, the holding company for AM Signalling and A and M Signalling Services, its counterpart in Hyderabad, India.

Experience of the Group to date includes many Network Rail GRIP 3, 4 and 5 projects along with consultancy on various metro projects for leading railway companies from around the world, including Amey, ARUP, Carillion, Signalling Solutions Ltd, Louis Berger Group and Thales.

However, the freshly rebranded group, which has capability across both metro and mainline systems, has now extended its UK signalling offerings into installation and testing, as well as a complementary rail consultancy service for the UK and other global markets.

This new technical consultancy service within the different railway sectors of metro, heavy haul and light rail offers a diversified team of railway professionals who are committed to delivering excellence in telecoms, electrification, civil design and automatic fare collection (AFC).

This fledgling service will continue to develop both capability and capacity to match the footprints of the industry.

AM Rail Group has also set up its own IRSE assessing agency along with a new signalling training academy, demonstrating its commitment to develop competence and its firm intentions in building for the future. The training academy and IRSE assessing agency plans are not only to develop AM’s resources, but also to support industry improvements.

Continuing growth Having outgrown its previous premises, both physically and strategically, AM Rail Group has now relocated to Longbridge, Birmingham; a place steeped in a rich engineering heritage and a hub for progressive technologies.

With a proven track record for delivering large and complex projects for clients throughout the industry and offering a vast array of signalling services, AM Rail Group now employs more than 100 engineers worldwide and has over 80 signalling design engineers who can provide turnkey solutions for signalling projects covering design, installation, testing and commissioning.

Managing director Miles Hancock said: “Whilst our aim is to become a principal engineering partner of choice for mainline and metro systems in the UK, we are also focussing upon emerging markets overseas, beginning in the Middle East and stretching to Asia and beyond.”

Operations director Saurabh Gupta would continue to lead AM Rail Group’s global operations and is responsible for ensuring projects are managed and delivered effectively.

AM Rail Group continues to successfully deliver new signalling projects with six recently commissioned including Swindon re-signalling, Chadwell Crossrail enabling, Brentwood Crossrail enabling and Silecroft Level Crossing renewal.

Next steps This growing business has also started works to support Thales with the Manchester Tram project which will include high level consultancy and approval of signalling design.

As engineering director Adam Saunders commented: “Our successes to date are born out of rigorous implementation of our UK managed quality assurance processes across our extensive in-house resource pools of competent signalling engineering in the UK and India. This enables us to offer fixed priced solutions with absolute programme certainty, giving us a key advantage over our competitors.”

AM Rail Group is also looking at opportunities to support Transport for London and London Underground as part of their continuing investment programme and has a keen interest in high-level opportunities on the Midland mainline electrification project.

Carillion’s Rail Projects team in Crewe has been suitably impressed by AM’s work, highlighting the company’s “commitment, flexibility, dedication and high quality output,” as part of the successful delivery of four level crossing renewals in Cumbria recently.

Undoubtedly, AM Rail Group is building a global brand and embracing its positioning for efficient railway engineering in the worldwide marketplace.

Miles Hancock concluded: “The new branding, restructuring and organic expansion reflects our consistent growth and diversification into other sectors aside from our core offering of signalling design and consultancy ,enabling us to deliver comprehensive solutions for the railways of tomorrow.” www.amrailgroup.com

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Collaboration brings success SIGNALLING AND TELECOMS

T

wo of the rail industry’s most progressive signalling and telecommunications (S&T) companies, Deploy UK Rail and Instal8 Signalling Training Academy, have agreed to come together to collaborate within the S&T resourcing, training and apprenticeship market place.

“Due to my background of supplying S&T resources to the industry for over 10 years, it was always part of the strategy to re-enter this part of the market place,” said Paul Smith, Deploy’s technical sales director. “We are still a relatively new business, after only two years in the industry, and we are trying to grow organically and be self-sufficient - which takes time.

“As a business, we work with the largest signalling principal contractors, currently supplying civils and safety critical resources. We wanted to enter the market with a different approach to supplying and developing such resources and working with Dale and his team at Instal8 proved this.”

Instal8 managing director Dale Law explained further: “We have searched for a high end company to collaborate with which can bring other skills we can apply our learning style to. After many proposals from various companies, an introduction via Construction and Rail Training Ltd to Deploy UK Rail came along and was by far the best.

“We intend to offer low cost practical signalling training to the industry, keeping the student out of work for the least time possible but eradicating

industry cowboys. Instal8 has a motivated and explosive teaching method which can take a student from zero to hero. Our motto is ‘Unite and be Bright’.”

Both companies are looking to grow this year, with Deploy UK Rail opening offices in Plymouth and Manchester to complement its already-successful operations in central London and Kent. Instal8 is extending out from Doncaster and will be opening its next centre in Hertfordshire in the coming months. www.deployuk.com www.instal8.com

Due to expansion we have opened offices in Plymouth and the North West to be able to extend our services to our clients.

Deploy UK Rail are a specialist blue and white collar supplier to the Rail Industry and LUL in Power, Signalling, Electrification, Telecoms and Civils.

We have in-depth knowledge of supplying and planning Rail Safety Critical, Civils, Cabling, Troughing, Trades and Electrical resources to the industry specialising in 3rd Rail environments.

Deploy UK Rail hold the following qualifications: • RISQS Approved via Audit 5* • RCC (Rail Contractor’s Certificate) to supply SWL (Safe Work Leaders) • RIPS (Railway Interface Planning Scheme) 5* • ISO 9001, 18001, 14001 • ROSPA Bronze We are part of the DE Group of companies which all hold individual RISQS Certification as a contractor which complements the services we offer in Rail by providing expertise in Demolition, Asbestos Surveying and Removal and H&S consultancy specialising in Principle Design Services to clients for CDM. We work closely with our clients to help them achieve their project goals by delivering a professional reliable service which is flexible and adaptable to the ever changing Rail and LUL environment.

The core of our business is built up of professionals who have serviced both the recruitment and site requirements for over 10+ years each.

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ERTMS in the UK CLIVE KESSELL

another perception

T

here continue to be divergent views on how effective ERTMS - the European Rail Traffic Management System - will be in a) resolving the problem of capacity constraints, b) creating a safer railway, c) reducing the cost of signalling and d) making the train service more reliable.

Rail Engineer has reported on those views before. Andrew Simmons of Network Rail (issue 120, October 2014) and Ian Maxwell of the Office of Rail and Road (ORR) (issue 131, September 2015) have both outlined their hopes for ERTMS, and expressed their concerns.

Opinions differed widely, ranging from the Network Rail message that it will achieve all the above goals, through to the difficult logistics of fleet fitting from the train operators and a very cautionary view from the ORR who were distinctly nervous about the cost and timescale needed to roll the system out as well as whether it can deliver what is claimed.

Now, in advance of a conference on the topic to be held in London on 22/23 March, Rail Engineer has met with one of the event’s speakers. Tom Lee, the professional head of CCS and deputy director of research and standards, gave an insight on what the RSSB is thinking.

A general perception The technology (principally the ETCS Level 2 equipment) has matured and is now considered reliable. It benefits from being a common European system and is a key part of the rail strategy for the next 15-20 years. A worry is the continuance of change requests, often triggered by the need to suit local operating preferences, since these cause unnecessary distractions and put at risk the whole concept of interoperable working Claims that ERTMS/ETCS (European Train Control System) can dramatically increase capacity need to be considered carefully. They are valid to a degree, since ETCS does away with the constraint of traditional physical signals and the spacing of these to suit the worst performing train on the route. If considering only plain line sections of a main line railway, then up to a 40 per cent increase in throughput is possible. However, a railway is seldom like that and the impact of stations and junctions will always limit the capacity improvement gained only by the signalling system. In reality, ETCS alone is unlikely to deliver significant capacity increases but it does reduce one constraint.

Nonetheless, RSSB would like to see a speed up of the rollout programme as improved safety will result from the full ATP provision that comes with the package as well as being a replacement for TPWS, which is an ageing technology.

Deployment of ETCS is also consistent with the Rail Technical Strategy.

Approval of usage Although RSSB has no formal role in the safety sign off for ERTMS, it does give advice to Network Rail and the train operators when questions are asked. The advantage of ERTMS being a European system is the opportunity for cross acceptance. If a balise works successfully in Holland or Spain then, providing it is deployed in accordance with the specifications in the UK, there is no need for any further safety approval before it is placed into service.

Similarly, once the fitting of ETCS equipment into a particular class of rolling stock, such as the Siemens Desiro City train for Thameslink, is approved, no need exists to instigate a lengthy approval process as later marques of the stock are built. RSSB is involved with Virgin for the operation of the ECML fleet, with Hitachi for the IEPs (Class 800/801), with Govia for the new Thameslink Class 700 units and with Crossrail for the forthcoming Class 345 trains.

A particular challenge at the moment is the operation of Crossrail trains to Heathrow Airport.

This section of line is fitted with the Great Western ATP system (installed as one of two pilots by BR) and there is no desire to equip the Class 345 trains with this system as they will already be fitted with ETCS, TPWS and AWS. Because GWML ETCS deployment is likely to be delayed beyond the time Crossrail starts operation, the route will be equipped with an enhanced TPWS system out to Airport Junction but an ATP is required on the Heathrow branch to maintain the same level of safety on that section. The result means the branch must be equipped with ETCS, resulting in the challenge of changeover from one system to the other at speed. RSSB is undertaking research on signalling transitions to inform on the design and operation for such occurrences.

The legal responsibility for negotiating ERTMS deployment approvals is with the project team that is designing and constructing the system in conjunction with the National Supervisory Authority, which in the UK is the ORR.

The Digital Railway The ERTMS programme is being taken forward

by Network Rail’s Digital Railway team, and the principles for doing this are good in that it separates the project from the day job of running the railway. The RSSB view is that the separation may need to become even more distinct from Network Rail so as not to get entangled with the

Thameslink Class 700.

Rail Engineer • March 2016

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SIGNALLING AND TELECOMS

A Virgin Trains East Coast IEP Class 800 and the image below is of inside the cab. day-to-day rules and organisational structure.

A cross industry team to consider all aspects of ERTMS deployment is the best way forward for the Digital Railway people to achieve maximum consensus.

Heavily linked with ETCS are TMS (Traffic Management Systems) and DAS (Driver Advisory Systems). Maximising capacity improvement opportunities will never be achieved without these three elements working together. Indeed, the original concept of ERTMS was to have a traffic management element, although that has not materialised as expected.

Another factor in the capacity debate is degraded mode operation - how to keep trains moving when the primary signalling system is in trouble. All three elements have to be part of this, maybe incorporating intelligence into the COMPASS (Combined Positioning Alternative Signalling System) scheme for temporary block working (issue 129, July 2015).

GSM-R The specifications for the use of packet switching (GPRS) for GSM-R transmissions were approved by the EU on 10 February 2016, paving the way for introduction. This will give sufficient capacity for ETCS operation in the near-to-medium term. In the longer term, however, a more flexible radio bearer will be required and, rather than devise and negotiate a bespoke rail solution within 4G or 5G, the RSSB view is for a ‘bearer agnostic’ approach to be taken. The idea would be to concentrate on the functionality rather than the technology and RSSB is supporting the UIC and working with the European Rail Agency (ERA) to specify this.

In theory, it could mean using whatever system has the strongest signal at a locality, be it public mobile radio, Wi-Fi, or a railway-provided private radio network. The implications are considerable, particularly for the security and continuity of the radio signal coverage.

Security and safety RSSB has been commissioned to develop a cyber security strategy for the rail industry. To support this, an advisory group has been created which includes academia, train operators, Network Rail, Crossrail, safety and security experts and even the Police. This group will form a basis for co-operative working amongst all players in this most complex of railway systems.

International links and the future Although there is no specific group to which RSSB belongs in Europe, there is a strong informal relationship with many European railways and close co-operation with the ERA. Network Rail, as part of Digital Railway, has signed a memorandum of understanding with ProRail of the Netherlands to seriously investigate the advancement of ERTMS Level 3.

This has been a dream for over twenty years but so far has made little progress. Technically from a train perspective, it is not so different to Level 2 but is essentially a different way of reporting train position by using only radio bearers and distance measurement from track-

mounted balises. A sticking point has always been proving the integrity of a train (that it has not become divided). This is not a problem for passenger trains where through-wiring is an integral part, but freight trains can and do become uncoupled for a variety of reasons.

Much could depend on the development of the ‘smart wagon’ concept, which is akin to the technology applied to modern day containers that contain electronics to monitor temperature, humidity and other conditions. Talk of an ‘intelligent tail lamp’, using radio to communicate from the train rear to the locomotive, is perfectly possible but logistically is a bit of a challenge.

The RSSB with its considerable influence sees ERTMS as an important feature in developing modern train control. Tom Lee will no-doubt amplify his views at ERTMS and ETCS 2016: The Future of Railway Signalling in the UK, a conference organised by Waterfront on 22/23 March at Stephenson Harwood.

For more information on ERTMS and ETCS 2016: The Future of Railway Signalling in the UK, visit www.waterfrontconferencecompany.com

SIGNALLING AND TELECOMS

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Rail Engineer • March 2016

Humberside resignalling

T

he resignalling of Britain’s railways continues apace. An interesting mix of replacing life-expired assets, introducing new technology and recontrolling great swathes of the network into 11 Rail Operating Centres (ROCs) is taking a great deal of Network Rail’s time and money as it approaches the end of the second year of Control Period 5.

One of the latest schemes is just getting started, the resignalling of the line between Ferriby and Gilberdyke, on the north side of the Humber.

It’s not a vast distance, about eight miles or 13 minutes on the train, and the overall objective is to undertake the resignalling and renewal of life expired assets - some of which date back as far as the 19th century – whilst also delivering the signalling and telecommunications preparatory works for elements of the proposed future electrification of the route from Selby to Hull.

The project will transfer control of the rail network in the area to a new York ROC workstation with automatic route setting as part of these works.

Saltmarshe existing relay interlocking and its level crossing, renewed in modern form, will also be recontrolled to the York ROC ‘Brough workstation’ which is to be installed as part of this project.

New technology On the face of it, this is a routine job - the resignalling and renewal of life expired assets, some of which date back as far as the nineteenth century, whilst also delivering the signalling and telecommunications preparatory works for elements of the future electrification of the route to Hull. However, some of the technology being used is new to the British main line network.

Following the successful UK implementation of Ansaldo STS’s SEI technology at St Pancras International on HS1 and on the Cambrian Lines ETCS level 2 infrastructure, Network Rail has selected the SEI interlocking and the MTOR object controller. The contract has been awarded to the consortium of Ansaldo STS and Linbrooke Services Limited – with Arup providing Ansaldo’s UK railway system design deliverables. Ansaldo

STS is now 40 per cent owned by Hitachi, with the Japanese company bidding to acquire the balance.

With a contract worth in the region of £34.5 million, the consortium is implementing Ansaldo’s SEI NG (New Generation) technology. This provides a flexible Computer Based Interlocking (CBI) architecture that utilises modern tools and techniques for the delivery of the safety software and provides a finished infrastructure that is European Train Control System (ETCS) compatible.

Ansaldo STS will be the leader of the consortium and the system authority for the SEI NG interlocking architecture design and delivery and will also be responsible for systems integration testing and the extension to the necessary UK product approvals. Design will progress from scheme plan and level crossing Approval in Principle (AIP) to the final Approved for Construction (AFC) design for the entirety of the signalling system and its level crossings and interfaces/fringes within the renewal area.

With detailed design and design integration delivered by Arup for Ansaldo STS, Linbrooke will provide the detailed design for the telecoms IP bearer network that supports the CBI architecture, working with Network Rail Telecom’s TENE group.

Linbrooke will also deliver the site management and all construction works, including fringe signalling system alterations, patrolman’s lockouts, train detection by track circuits and axle counter systems, point operating equipment, level crossings of MCB-OD & MSL form with associated controllers and a Hot Axle Box Detector (HABD).

For the entirety of the scheme, Linbrooke will undertake the role of the UK overall Tester in Charge. Ansaldo STS will undertake the offsite principles testing of the SEI NG system and the onsite integration with the signaller’s workstation at the York ROC.

External connections To provide the high availability lineside power supply for the resignalled assets, Linbrooke will provide all E&P requirements, including the delivery of a manually reconfigurable signalling power supply distribution system and the associated 11 new DNO connections. This will include one new brick-built Principal Supply Point (PSP), three new Auxiliary Supply Points (ASPs) and 40km of new 650V class II signalling power cable installed in a high security buried route, together with associated route-wide earthing and bonding arrangements.

As Ansaldo’s interlocking product - including the object controllers - requires Ethernet connectivity, Linbrooke will be designing and installing a new FTNx sub-access layer between Howden station and North Ferriby as well as between Gilberdyke junction (pictured above) and Goole SB. Utilising Cisco IE200 switches situated in REBs and temperature controlled lineside cabinets to install the Ethernet’s point of presence along the route, ASR 903 routers will also be installed in existing and new FTN nodes in order to complete the diverse path and form part of Network Rail’s ISIS Area 3600. In addition, 43 new network cable distribution cabinets are to be installed in the project area to facilitate the transfer of around 130 telephony circuits to the York ROC. The project is due to commission in March 2018 and reach completion in August 2018.

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Rail Engineer • March 2016

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CLIVE KESSELL

Resignalling in East Nottinghamshire A

number of projects have taken place recently to abolish yet more lever frame signalboxes and mechanical signalling. Few of these remarkable survivors of nineteenth-century technology remain in main line service and it will be left to the heritage sector to ensure future generations know how signalling was achieved in the past.

One of the projects was in East Nottinghamshire, on the line from Nottingham to Grantham. Older readers will recall that this route was originally a Great Northern line (the Great Northern disappeared in 1922 - how old do you think our readers are? - Ed) and terminated at the now demolished Nottingham Victoria station. In 1967 a new connection at Netherfield enabled Grantham line trains to access Nottingham Midland station via the Lincoln route.

In 2013, Nottingham station was closed for a six week period whilst the entire layout of the station was remodelled with the signalling transferring from the 1969 Trent Power Box to the new Derby ROC. This project extended the signalling boundary out to Lowdham fringe box on the Lincoln line and Bingham fringe box on the Grantham line, thus enabling modernisation of the route and associated level crossings in the city’s eastern suburbs. Eastwards of these locations, traditional mechanical signalling still existed including numerous level crossings.

Modernisation was long overdue.

The East Notts scheme Back in 2012, Network Rail developed a scheme based on the premise that the modular signalling solutions then coming on stream would enable a more cost effective and faster upgrade compared to conventional technology.

Tenders were invited at GRIP stage 4 in the autumn of 2013, with a contract awarded in March 2014 to Signalling Solutions Ltd (SSL).

The firm had recently delivered its first modular signalling pilot project on the Ely - Norwich line. This enabled the modular approach to be developed and proven and, as a result, potential problems associated with this new and innovative approach had been identified and resolved.

New signalling was to be extended to Newark Castle on the Lincoln line and Allington Junction (close to Grantham). No permanent way alterations were envisaged other than the removal of some redundant crossovers and a new switch crossing at Newark Castle. No line speed improvements were instigated.

The signalling would be mainly two-aspect with discrete block sections but including some three-

aspect signals where required.

Allington Junction signalbox, commissioned in 2005 and equipped with an Entrance-Exit panel and relay interlocking, was built to accommodate the construction of a curve that eliminated a flat crossing on the ECML for trains from Grantham going towards Sleaford, Boston and Skegness.

At Newark, the Lincoln line crosses the ECML on the level with train movements being controlled from Doncaster Power Box. As such, the new signalling had to be interfaced with these controls. Derby ROC already had a Netherfield workstation under the Nottingham project with sufficient capacity to accommodate the two new lines.

Modular Signalling The idea of modular signalling is to construct the necessary elements to a standardised design whilst also aiming to use pre-assembly and test in a factory environment to minimise the amount of installation and testing work needed on site. The East Notts project consists of: »» An interlocking using the Alstom ‘Smartlock™’ electronic product already in use at many UK locations, the first being Horsham some 10 years ago. This equipment is positioned in the Derby ROC equipment room.

Rail Engineer • March 2016 Delivering the Grantham line Only the Grantham line has been commissioned so far over the weekend 27-30 November 2015. The work needed to construct and install the elements of equipment make an interesting account and demonstrate the involvement of many parties in a modern signalling scheme.

Key to any signalling project is the preparation of the control data that is loaded into the electronic interlocking Smartlock in this instance. This task was carried out by SSL engineers from the York office and then tested at Derby.

The three REBs - at Bingham, Aslockton and Orston Lane - underwent several fit-out stages to accommodate power, lighting and signalling equipment. The REBs were made by Eldapoint of Liverpool, which provided power and lighting wiring and then transported them by lorry to Blackburn Standing of Nottingham for fitting with the power equipment and UPS. That done, they then travelled to MGB Signalling in Plymouth for fitting out with signalling equipment and racking procured jointly by SSL and MGB. Next move for these REBs was to the SSL depot at Beeston, near Nottingham, where off-site testing could be carried out, known as a ‘hangar test’ facility. Here, by using a test Smartlock, verification testing, functional testing and principles testing can be carried out, connecting to either the signal/level crossing equipment powered up at the Beeston site or to simulations of the external kit.

Once completed, there is a high degree of confidence that the system will need only minimal on-site final testing. The equipment was then transported to the various sites and installed. Prior to this some considerable civils work had to be carried out including signal bases, REB foundations and level crossing alterations, this being contracted to Global Rail of Hatfield.

SSL used its own in-house staff for installation and for functional testing over the commissioning weekend.

Bingham and Bottesford West signalboxes were closed with Allington Junction becoming a fringe to Derby ROC. The

SIGNALLING AND TELECOMS

»» A ‘front end’ to link the signaller’s workstation and mouse to the interlocking, in this case using the wellproven Siemens (ex-Invensys) Westcad system. The two companies worked well together even though they are competitors on many occasions. »» Local Trackside Functional Modules (TFM) installed in ‘Signalling Island’ Relocatable Equipment Buildings, known as SI-REBs, located adjacent to an existing junction or level crossing. These contain all the SSI (Solid State Interlocking) modules, transformers, rectifiers and relays needed for each location. »» Local cabling out to signal points and level crossings pre-made in measured lengths with plug and socket connectors for ease of installation. »» Train detection equipment using Thales AZLM type K axle counters. »» A transmission link from Derby to the ‘Islands’ using the Netwok Rail Telecom-owned FTN network. These links are formed in rings such that any cable cut does not stop traffic being carried. ‘Points of Presence’ were established at all the SI-REB sites, from where the data streams are extracted. Alan Dick Communications (ADComms) at Scunthorpe was contracted to provide the interfaces between the FTN and the local cabling. »» LED signals supplied by Unipart-Dorman for the red, yellow and green aspects but with a single aperture that can show the three colours. »» In-bearer Clamp Locks by SPX for point operation (none required on the Grantham line). »» Local power supplies from the local electricity company to supply the Islands and including a battery backed Uninterruptable Power Supply (UPS) giving a four-hour duration should the mains fail plus hard standing for a generator should the outage be prolonged. »» Level crossing systems of various types, some existing and some new (see later paragraph).

Most of these piece parts can be assembled and connected off site as part of the integrity proving process.

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(Left) LiDAR. (Right) Radar detectors.

commissioning went smoothly and the line was handed back to traffic on the Monday morning as planned.

A number of modifications/ improvements have been made to the SSL modular signalling system resulting from lessons learned on Ely - Norwich.

These include facilitating easier fault finding and maintenance, equipment room reliability and overall system safety.

Level crossings

Aslockton station.

The Grantham line has a number of level crossings. Existing Automatic Half Barriers at Scarrington Lane and Normanton are largely unchanged (Normanton had a new signal within its strike-in point and thus needed adjustment to the control circuitry) but with their alarms and status indications now shown on the Netherfield workstation at Derby ROC. At Bingham and Orston Lane, the manually controlled full barriers have been converted to Obstacle Detection semi-automatic operation (MCBOD), whilst at Aslockton station, the previous AHB has been converted to an MCB-OD crossing. These use detection equipment to prove that nothing is trapped between the barriers, whence a sequence is initiated to lower them automatically and clear the protecting signals.

The detection process uses a combination of RADAR and LiDAR, the former mounted up to 915mm above rail level to scan the crossing as a general area, the latter (light detection) being two units, one at chest height, the other at near-ground level, to scan the roadway for any object that the RADAR might miss.

SSL was asked by Network Rail to manage the pilot introduction of OD technology on the Ely - Norwich project, but a key challenge was encountered with the low level LiDAR lens becoming obscured by dirt thrown up by trains and road traffic. As a result, all crossings using OD technology are

risk assessed to establish if the lowest level detector is actually needed. Some light traffic crossings may be judged not to require it. Both LiDAR units are now equipped with a motorised shutter which automatically opens when the scanning process is taking place.

This has solved the problem of dirt accumulation.

At Bingham, an additional safety feature has been introduced, namely Barrier Protection Management (BPM).

This comprises an inductive loop mounted in the roadway to detect if a vehicle is stopped where the barriers would come down. If activated, it stops the lowering sequence. The road here is much busier than the others and it is possible for traffic to queue across the railway. It is the first application of this feature by SSL but will be used elsewhere in similar circumstances.

Should any of the detection equipment pick up a problem, then the initiation sequence is stopped and the signaller investigates the situation, taking whatever action is needed.

Onwards to the Lincoln line The Lincoln line will follow a similar pattern this coming autumn but with some added complications. Signalboxes at Lowdham, Fiskerton Junction, Staythorpe crossing, and Newark Castle, together with Gate Boxes at Fiskerton station and Rolleston, will be closed. The level crossings at these locations will be converted to MCB-OD operation except at Newark Castle. The barriers here are currently locally controlled from the

adjacent signalbox and will be converted to remote CCTV monitoring under the control of Derby ROC. AHBs at Gonalston and Thurgarton will stay the same but with alarms and indications sent to Derby. The AHB at Bleasby will be converted to MCB-OD operation.

With all these crossings to be altered and tested, it has been decided to commission the line in three stages, planned for September, October and November 2016, rather than having a changeover in a single weekend.

However, this does necessitate establishing temporary fringe boxes at Fiskerton Junction and Staythorpe for a short duration. The Newark flat crossing with the ECML will need an interface with Doncaster Power Box to be developed.

Lessons learned Modular signalling can offer a much cheaper solution for secondary lines when compared to conventional signal technology. By using a state-ofthe-art computer-based interlocking (CBI) like Smartlock, the system will be future proofed to accommodate ETCS. Cable lengths from the TFMs are calculated to be within limits to ensure effective immunisation for any future electrification.

This scheme has been the second modular signalling project for SSL and has enabled the company to consolidate the experience gained from the Ely to Norwich project. SSL believes it places the company in a strong position to deliver further modular-based schemes, realising resignalling on secondary lines at a much lower cost than traditionally designed schemes.

Thanks to Andy Cokayne (project director) and James Suter (project engineer) for explaining the scheme in detail, and to Judy Viitanen for arranging the visit.

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Rail Engineer • March 2016

Signals Passed SIGNALLING AND TELECOMS

At Danger (SPAD)

How do we know we are doing the right thing?

T

here has been a huge amount of research into the causes of Signals Passed At Danger (SPADs), and the resulting picture is complex. It includes organisational, engineering, operating systems and human performance dimensions.

ALISON MOORS

The problem is not restricted to the UK. The New Zealand Transport Agency, the government body responsible for funding and managing the road network and overseeing the safety of rail and road users, was concerned about the risks posed by SPADs. Each year the Transport Agency funds innovative and relevant research that contributes to an efficient, effective and safe land transport system. SPADs have been identified by the Transport Agency as a critical risk for worker and passenger safety, and there were a range of SPAD risk reduction programmes underway by the industry. As a result, the Transport Agency wanted a clearer picture of the full range of factors that influence the likelihood of a SPAD. They also wanted an understanding of what New Zealand Rail organisations were doing to manage SPAD risk and whether this was effective.

So the agency approached the human factors team of international consultants SNC-Lavalin Rail and Transit (formerly Interfleet) to work with stakeholders and determine whether the industry was doing the right things or whether they are working.

The SNC-Lavalin team developed a self-assessment process for rail organisations such as train and freight operating companies and infrastructure managers to understand the effectiveness of the multitude of measures they have in place that can reduce SPAD risk.

To develop the process, ideas and techniques were appropriated from different sources including Reason’s Swiss Cheese model, a UK healthcare improvement programme and the Railway Management Maturity Model (RM³).

James Reason is the originator of the Swiss Cheese model of accident causation. He advocates that, rather than struggling to reduce an already low level of adverse events, as is the case for SPADs in the UK, organisations should regularly assess and improve the basic processes.

The resulting process and tool set out to untangle the complexity and make this achievable for rail organisations. One of the novel features was that it provides leading indicator measures of SPAD risk. Leading indicators are proactive, forward-looking measures that can identify performance degradation or deterioration of the system prior to an incident. Unlike reactive measures, which show ‘holes’ in the system after an event, leading indicators can show where the holes are now and can be monitored to show steady gains in organisational health, improving the resilience of the organisation.

Rail Engineer • March 2016

Developing the process

Organisational

Work practices and processes

»» Planning and implementing SPAD risk reduction strategy »» Organisational culture »» Incident response and investigation »» Managing change »» Leadership

»» Communication of safety critical information »» Timetabling »» Operational procedures »» Driver strategies

Work environment

Individual

»» Design and management of route and infrastructure »» Train management systems »» Train cab design

»» »» »» »»

context. It worked with representation from safety and operations managers, signallers and drivers.

Accompanying the process guide is a risk assessment matrix, the format of which borrows heavily from the RM³, a tool for British railway inspectors assessing duty holders’ safety management systems. It uses a five-point maturity scale for key elements of an organisation’s safety management system (SMS), setting the standard for an SMS and for measuring improvement.

Competencies Teamwork Fatigue management Workload

The tool adopted the format of the RM³ within an Excel spreadsheet, simplifying, adapting and adding to some of the relevant dimensions. This resulted in those listed in Table 1.

For each dimension there are five descriptions of what characterises SPAD risk management from excellent (5) through to ad-hoc (1). Of course, there will always be different opinions within the group and sometimes no score entirely fits. The discussion is a useful way of aligning

Table 1 Dimensions relating to SPAD risk.

SIGNALLING AND TELECOMS

The process and tool were developed iteratively with input from industry stakeholders. These included a network access provider, passenger and freight train operating companies and a small tourist operator.

The process is as important as the tool itself. It borrows heavily from the Manchester Patient Safety Framework, MaPSaF (2006), which was developed in the UK to help healthcare organisations and teams assess and develop a positive safety culture. It is applied in workshops, led by a facilitator to generate collaborative relationships and insightful discussion.

It is this participative, selfassessment feature that was retained. A single person, applying the tool to generate a numerical score, misses much of the potential to accurately understand risk and to develop sustainable prioritised solutions through group discussion.

The human factors team at SNCLavalin has applied similar processes in other safety critical industries and found it works well to have different representation to reflect management knowledge and knowledge of local

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people’s knowledge and expectations; for example the manager’s perception of the effectiveness of a programme may not align with that of front line staff. This may be because staff members have a different understanding of the barriers to implementing solutions.

Benefits and resources The process is very useful for getting a true understanding of the existing measures, how effective they are as well as assessing opportunities for improvement. This approach successfully takes the focus away from ‘single’ events and places the emphasis on a range of contributory causes and mitigation strategies. Rail organisations and network access providers are complex systems; the 16 critical dimensions are not mutually exclusive and there are interdependencies and crossinfluences.

Applying the tool gave participating organisations confidence in some of the SPAD risk reduction programmes that were underway. It also highlighted areas to prioritise for the future, giving sight of the steps needed to achieve a mature SPAD strategy, suitable to the scale and context of each of the operators. It also encouraged them to develop

programmes that build on a baseline, measure, monitor, and review effectiveness.

These are some elements of the self-assessment sessions that are essential for success: »» Participants need to use this as a learning opportunity and be entirely open and honest; »» All participants need to contribute; »» Sufficient time should be allowed typically three hours, with a similar follow up session; »» The right participants need to be in the room (a variety of experience, driver representation, safety, operational knowledge, and sufficient seniority is required for subsequent follow up); »» Note-takers should be present to capture discussion without interrupting the flow.

Relevance to the UK Thankfully, train accidents are rare.

The Precursor Indicator Model used by the Rail Standards and Safety Board (RSSB) shows that harm to passengers from train accidents, measured by Fatalities and Weighted Injuries (FWI), is very low. Harm attributed to SPADs is less than that associated with level crossings and more similar to infrastructure operations and objects on the line.

SPAD investigations do provide an opportunity to learn. As they are infrequent, this opportunity does not come along too often. There is also a danger that SPAD investigations emphasise ‘single events’. This means that action plans are put in place for the driver involved but the company fails to look for common patterns across events and the more systemic issues that the tool considers.

Matching the tool outputs with detailed data of causal and contributory factors of incidents would allow a very strong triangulation of ‘real’ data along with staff perceptions of key causes. This would provide weight to decisions for SPAD mitigation solutions, which can be both costly and resource intensive.

The process and tool could provide a useful resource for those organisations that subscribe to James Reason’s principle of maintaining ‘chronic unease’ (Reason, 1990).

Chronic unease is a healthy scepticism about what you see and do, not just assuming that because systems are in place everything will be fine. This provides a mechanism for wider, more systemic factors to be identified and addressed.

Alison Moors is team leader human factors, rail and transit at SNC-Lavalin.

Our name has changed.

Our people ... haven’t. is now

Magnus Conn UK Director, Rolling Stock

76

Rail Engineer • March 2016

SIGNALLING AND TELECOMS

CLIVE KESSELL

Resignalling

at Kingscote T

here was much re-signalling work on the UK national rail network over the Christmas period but one significant scheme on a premier heritage line went almost unnoticed. The Bluebell Railway in deepest Sussex commissioned a new signalbox at Kingscote, a remote station with only a few houses nearby.

So why was this noteworthy and what has it achieved?

Rail Engineer went along to the location to find out.

Signalling history

Kingscote relay room.

When the Bluebell Railway first opened as a ‘preserved line’, it inherited traditional signalboxes at Sheffield Park (located on the station platform) and at Horsted Keynes.

Under its Northern Extension project, it reached Kingscote in 1994 where a run round loop had to be installed, initially being worked by a two-lever ground frame.

Soon after, better signalling facilities were needed and a small temporary signalbox with 11 levers was built at the south end of the loop. This controlled the home signals, one above the other, allowing entry to both platforms, the starting signals controlling departure from either platform, and the points at the south end. It also housed the single line token instruments for the section south.

At the north side of the station (now a terminus), the loop points were hand worked by the train crew. This allowed the railway to have two trains at Kingscote simultaneously with single line token working between there and Horsted Keynes.

With the further extension to East Grinstead in 2013 (issue 106, August 2013), Kingscote became a passing loop and the signalling had to be adapted accordingly.

Ideally, this would have been from the new permanent signalbox then being installed, but this was not ready in time so the south end box had to be adapted. This included power operation of the north end loop points, new platform end signals for north bound departures and new colour light signals for southbound trains coming from East Grinstead.

The railway’s signal engineers constructed a switch panel to control the additional facilities but only gave limited facilities for the sidings, these being clipped and padlocked with manual operation as and when required.

An additional token machine was provided for the East Grinstead section, the token being used to manually unlock the ground frame controlling the points for the loco run round loop at the new northern terminus. This was very much a temporary measure with a solution made more urgent by the deteriorating condition of the Kingscote temporary box, suffering from rotten wood in its foundation timbers.

Rail Engineer • March 2016

77

The ‘new’ signalbox

SIGNALLING AND TELECOMS

Like most heritage railways, much new infrastructure work uses second hand equipment either surplus from Network Rail or from industrial sources. The Bluebell is no exception, and the replacement signalbox came originally from Brighton Upper Goods. Only the upper timber section is original, the main structure being of new brick construction on a concrete base. Its external image gives the impression of a traditional box with large lever frame, blockshelf and coke stove. Appearances can be deceptive, however, and inside, it is something very different.

The actual box structure has been in place since the late 1990s and was originally equipped with a traditional but unused large lever frame. Various discussions took place as to the suitability of this for the onward extension to East Grinstead. The idea of using a miniature lever frame was triggered by a visit to the Morden model engineering club which had built a 96 lever frame from equipment made surplus by BR. The flexibility that such a frame can provide led to the ultimate decision to use this technology. These became common engineering practice on Britain’s railways from the late 1920s right through to the 1950s. They were a transient step in the modernisation of signalling from mechanical lever frames to the panel and screen based signalling of today.

A common design was the Westinghouse Type L and the Bluebell engineers scoured the country for parts that could be used to build a complete installation for Kingscote. An L frame is akin to a big ‘meccano’ set and can be built up to whatever size is required. John Francis, a past President of the IRSE and an authority on L frame construction, managed to provide a full set of drawings and access to some surplus spares. Further parts were acquired from Churston on the South Devon railway where a new approach to their signalling methodology made a 12-lever section of L frame redundant.

An approach to the Embsay and Bolton heritage line yielded information that the National Railway Museum was having a clearout of surplus material and resulted in a further supply of levers and parts originally installed at Clapham B. Thus the scene was set and the Bluebell Trustees gave approval for the project to go ahead.

Kingscote signal box.

Constructing the new signalling With all the bits and pieces acquired, the first step was to disassemble everything down to component level and instigate a thorough cleaning and refurbishment job.

Sounds easy but a number of piece parts were heavily corroded and needed grit blasting, achieved in house by the Carriage and Wagon workshop. Some larger elements had to be specialist cleaned by contractors.

The design for the new signalling was carried out by Gordon Callender for the electrical circuitry and by Brian Hymas for the mechanical elements. An L frame has no mechanical interlocking between levers but two electric

Kingscote lever frame with Brian Lymas.

Rail Engineer • March 2016

SIGNALLING AND TELECOMS

78

Kingscote signal box mezzanine floor.

Girder for lever frame support.

locks on each lever slide facilitate, firstly, lever-to-lever locking and, secondly, locking to external elements such as track circuits and point detection.

To access the locks and electrical wiring at the rear of the frame, a mezzanine floor was needed. L frames are heavy and need to be supported very accurately. To achieve this, a large double girder was constructed and put in place on the concrete bed of the ground floor. This enables the L frame to be perfectly horizontal and immune from the vibration effects of passing trains. A separate relay room is adjacent to the box for all the interfaces to the signals and points with a power supply derived from the National Grid but with a diesel generator should this fail.

The result is a 55 lever frame that can accommodate all the operational needs of Kingscote plus sufficient spare levers to equip East Grinstead with signals should this ever be a requirement. However the restricted space at that location is unlikely to ever replace the ‘one train working’ operation for this section.

Most of the signal position indications associated with the L frame were acquired from heritage railway sources with only a few indicator stencils having to be specially made. A box diagram with track circuit indications follows the traditional pattern as do the Tyers key token instruments, the block bells and the SPT concentrator.

The latter came from the Embsay and Bolton Railway, but had originally been in use at Dover. It required a complete strip-out and rewire and caters for 30 lines. Overall, the new box is impressive to see both inside and out. The standard of workmanship is excellent.

Externally, all signals and points are worked electrically using either a Westinghouse M3 point machine or its signal equivalent. This includes ground signals for siding or shunt moves, replacing the three light position signals considered out of keeping with the 1950s period that the station portrays.

The signalbox in operation The new signalling was commissioned on 5 February 2016, with the temporary south box closing that day.

Training of the signallers has taken place but operating the box is little different from any other box with levers and block instruments.

Operations revolve around three levels of traffic, commensurate with the three token instruments provided. For busy periods, the box will be staffed and will work to Horsted Keynes box in the south direction and East Grinstead northwards. Tokens are issued for both these sections.

When traffic is lighter, Horsted Keynes box may be switched out and a long token section then operates from Kingscote to the southern terminus at Sheffield Park, hence the need for the third token instrument. It is also

Rail Engineer • March 2016

SIGNALLING AND TELECOMS

possible to switch Kingscote out by means of a ‘king lever’ that enables the signals to be cleared in both the Up and Down directions into the main platform line.

However, because it is necessary to obtain a token to proceed to East Grinstead, Kingscote effectively becomes the northern terminus, as Sheffield Park can only issue a token to allow movement as far as that station. This will cater for when a normal service is not in operation but will permit engineering trains or specials to run to this point.

With the loop out of action, any steam train has to be top and tailed with locomotives. It is recognised that this arrangement is somewhat restrictive and thoughts are being given to providing a token instrument at East Grinstead so as to permit a train service to that location when Kingscote box is closed. Space constraints at East Grinstead prevail and it will be a challenge to find room for a small cabin to hold the token equipment.

There is a main line connection at East Grinstead and occasional specials are run on to the Bluebell Railway from the national network. When these arrive, a Kingscote to East Grinstead section token has to be removed from the instrument and taken up by road. The token is used to mechanically unlock the ground frame that operates the points connecting to the main line as well as giving authority for the special to run southwards on to the Bluebell Railway.

The Kingscote signalbox heralds a new chapter in standard gauge heritage railway signalling, it being the only one to use a miniature lever frame. Only two remain on Network Rail - at Maidstone East and Liverpool Lime Street - but there are others in use on narrow gauge and miniature railways. The new signalbox at Porthmadog for the Ffestiniog and Welsh Highland lines has an L frame and they are also in use at the 7½” gauge Great Cockrow Railway near Chertsey.

79

Kingscote SPT concentractor.

It is quite amazing what can be achieved on a heritage line by re-use of redundant signalling equipment from the main line. Keeping costs down is all-important and the skills of volunteer staff who have had professional signal engineering experience on BR and its successors, also in the signalling supply industry, are much valued. It is their responsibility to enthuse and train the younger volunteers in the technology of yesteryear.

Thanks to Charles Hudson MBE, the Bluebell’s S&T manager, and to Brian Hymas for facilitating the visit to Kingscote and explaining the detail so explicitly.

Kingscote lever frame with Charles Hudson.

Rail Engineer • March 2016

SIGNALLING AND TELECOMS

80

BEER HEIGHTS

Light Railway T

he hillside of the Jurassic Coast, high above the little fishing village of Beer in East Devon, is the beautiful setting for a world of railway engineering in miniature which includes a complex signalling system, based on main line practice, that features automatic route setting.

Building the tunnel.

Seventy years ago, entrepreneur Sydney C. Pritchard (affectionately known as ‘Mr P’) created the company of PECO (Pritchard Engineering Company) to produce model railway products such as track parts, axles and wheels in a two-room cottage at Branscombe. In 1951 the firm re-located to larger premises in Station Road, Seaton but, with the growing range and popularity of PECO products, ‘Mr P’ obtained planning permission for a new complex at Beer with a purpose built factory and offices which opened in 1973. The offices include the editorial team that publishes Railway Modeller and Continental Modeller monthly magazines, also produced by the company.

Seizing upon the tourist potential of the site, an indoor permanent model railway exhibition was created to showcase PECO products, and the extensive grounds were utilised for the construction of the 7¼” Beer Heights Light Railway (BHLR). The overall leisure complex also includes a shop, gardens, restaurant, and is marketed as ‘PECORAMA’.

DAVID BICKELL

A small but highly skilled team under the direction of chief engineer John Macdougall maintains and repairs the BHLR infrastructure and rolling stock entirely in-house. A wellequipped workshop facilitates the design and construction of new locomotives, carriages, switches and crossings (S&C), and signals.

Major earthworks Initially built as a short ‘out and back’ line between Much Natter (MN), the main terminus, and Upsan Downs station, giving a ride of around 300 yards, more land was purchased over the years and the track layout has grown in size and complexity including the additions of Devil’s Gorge, Deep cutting and a tunnel. A local firm was employed to undertake the spectacular and ambitious earthworks, excavating the chalk and clay, to build the cuttings and tunnel, with the waste spoil piled up to create what is known as Mount Delight.

The tunnel was created using the ‘cut and cover’ technique.

Two-metre diameter corrugated Armco rings were laid on a slight curve and the spoil backfilled to create a rigid tunnel structure. Unfortunately, some of the original work failed and an engineer from Sir William McAlpine’s workforce was called in to rectify the deficiencies, thereby ensuring the tunnel has remained in robust condition ever since.

Motive power As both the extent of the railway - now offering a milelong ride - and the level of patronage have increased over the years, so the locomotive fleet has grown in size to eleven locomotives, the more powerful comfortably hauling heavily loaded trains around the full circuit. Steam locomotives have been obtained from several specialist 7¼ inch builders while Bo-Bo diesel ‘Jimmy’ was built by Severn Lamb of Stratfordupon-Avon.

Rail Engineer • March 2016

SIGNALLING AND TELECOMS

However, steam locomotives 2-4-2T No7 ‘Mr P’ (built in 1997) and 2-4-4T No9 ‘Claudine’ (named after Mr Pritchard’s wife and built in 2005) were designed and constructed by John Macdougall with boilers outsourced. ‘Mr P’ has 3¼” x 4½” cylinders, 10” driving wheels, Walschaerts valve gear and a 12” diameter boiler which employs the gas producer combustion system developed by L D Porta in Argentina.

‘Claudine’ is a unique single Fairlie tank locomotive with articulated power bogie and rear truck making her eminently suited to the line’s sharp curves and steep gradients. Steam is delivered to the power bogie by means of a stainless steel flexible hose system also designed by John. The boiler, motion and cylinders are all the same as those on ‘Mr P’ with the exception that piston valves have been employed on the slightly inclined cylinders.

Locomotives that are scaled down from full size deliver an equivalent scaled down power output of one third. However, the resultant adhesive weight doesn’t provide sufficient traction to use all of the available power, so extra weight has to be built in wherever possible, including extra thickness lead lining of tanks.

Steam locomotives require significant preparation time for the fire to be lit and working boiler pressure to be reached before the departure of the first train. Likewise, at the end of service, the fire has to be left very low, boiler filled and fire tubes cleaned out. At quieter times, it makes sense to manage the long days for staff by deploying the diesel, typically for the last train of the day, and ‘Jimmy’ is up to the job of hauling normal length passenger trains.

The need for a ‘go instantly’ light vehicle for track inspections and branch services to Beer Mines takes the form of a Bo-Bo Electric Tram - powered by two pairs of traction batteries driving four powerful motors. This was also built by John Macdougall and his assistant Carolyn Nation in 2003 and is named ‘Alfred’ in memory of Carolyn’s grandfather to whom she attributes her fascination for things mechanical.

81

A further in-house build is internal combustion engine No11 ‘Ben’. Powered by a 998cc petrol engine from a Mini adapted with automatic transmission, it runs on LPG gas. Being more environmentally friendly than diesel, it is used typically for the last train of the day and as a standby ‘Thunderbird’. Ben is also quieter and more comfortable to operate than the ageing ‘Jimmy’ and offers much greater weather protection for drivers. The chassis is fabricated from 3” x 1½” channel and the bogies are all 12mm plate using a bolted construction to aid removal of the 90º bevel gearboxes within, if necessary.

Carriage and wagon department The first coaches to run on the BHLR were supplied by Cromar-White, a specialist supplier of a variety of products to the miniature railway industry, although these have since been superseded by newer vehicles. A second set of coaches, built in the railway workshop using bogies supplied

Ballast train.

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Rail Engineer • March 2016

SIGNALLING AND TELECOMS

adhesion than steel due to a rougher rail head caused by oxidisation of the aluminium.

For many years, interlaced track was used within the tunnel, obviating the need for motor operated points at either end. However as this restricted operational flexibility, points have subsequently been installed although the second set of rails remain in situ and could be utilised if a defect occurs to the rails in service. Good quality, 14mm section, cleaned and washed limestone ballast comes from a local quarry in South Devon.

Signalling the BHLR

Wiring the interlocking.

by John Milner, are liveried as the ‘Beer Belle’ in full Pullman umber and cream bearing the names carried on main line Pullman carriages such as ‘Orion’ from the Golden Arrow Boat Train - the full-sized version of which is preserved on site as a quality catering outlet.

A further set of coaches entered service in 2000, named the “Silver Jubilee Limited” to commemorate 25 years of operation on the BHLR. Uniquely, at the time, this rake of eight is made up of two sets of four permanently articulated coaches, or ‘double quad arts’ as they are known. Designed and built by John Macdougall, they are considered by many to be the smoothest-riding miniature railway coaches in the country and are turned out in Crimson Lake livery with gold leaf lettering.

Another set was constructed in the workshop during 2011. This is mechanically similar to the ‘’Silver Jubilee’’ set but with different body styling. It is also made up of two sets of four-car permanently articulated units with failsafe vacuum brakes on all wheels. Known as the “Jurassic Coast Express”, or ‘’MK 4 set’’, it is finished in eye-catching 1950s-era British Railways carmine and cream livery. The signwriting, which is all applied in traditional style, employs genuine gold leaf lettering.

Typically, two rakes of coaches are used for passenger services with the third kept as spare.

The BHLR also has purpose built wagons. Given the location of the railway on a steeply sloping hillside, there is no direct road access to the lines, sheds, workshops and main station terminus. Materials needed for use by the railway, such as coal, ballast, steel and any building materials are loaded onto wagons at a level crossing beyond the tunnel and brought in by train!

Permanent way Timber sleepers generally have a life of at least twenty years. Whilst hardwood sleepers, as used for many years, are durable, they tend to soak up water on the end grain, so treated softwood sleepers produced by a local sawmill are now preferred. More recently, plastic sleepers have been used which are injection moulded from high grade engineering polymers, making them extremely durable, rot, frost and UV resistant.

Heavy aluminium-alloy rail, 32mm high x 13mm head width, extruded and supplied by Cromar-White, is utilised for plain line whereas S&C components are made of steel.

A common experience is that aluminium rail provides better

At first, a wooden train staff was deployed as a safe method of ensuring only one train could pass through the single bore tunnel with its interlaced track. At that time, a complete circuit was straightforward with trains starting from MN and proceeding via Devil’s Gorge, Tunnel, Mount Delight, Deep Cutting, Mount Delight, Tunnel, then back direct to MN. With the subsequent additions of Little Moore Platform, Quarry Siding and Beer Mines branch, and the need to provide a longer run by giving passengers a second pass of Devil’s Gorge on the return journey, not to mention the need for increased capacity to cope with growing patronage whilst maintaining a safe system, it became apparent that a full signalling system with track circuit block was needed.

In 2001, retired professional signal engineer Mike Hanscomb offered his services to design and test a new signalling system. After careful consideration, a system using relays was chosen based broadly upon main line signalling principles. Whilst a computer-based interlocking system would be possible, achieving a high level of safety and building in sufficient diversification of hardware and software would be a challenge using a desktop PC application but becomes prohibitively expensive using a main line or metro bespoke system.

A difficult to diagnose software or hardware fault that might paralyse the whole railway isn’t desirable on a busy summer day when visitors are queuing to ride the railway.

With a relay system, faults can be localised and rectified rapidly by staff on duty without a high level of specialist technical knowledge. Although the system has proved to be very reliable in service, the usual track circuit and point detection faults may be quickly diagnosed by train drivers stepping down off the footplate to investigate, when stopped at a red signal!

at the Heart of the Hobby – for 70 years

The catalogue of Peco Products for model railway enthusiasts extends to over 1,000 different items, from building kits to rolling stock. But at its core is our huge range of track which is in demand all over the world. For example the O Gauge turnout illustrated above featuring modelled Pandrol style rail clips and made with our specially-drawn flat bottom rail section.

The gauge may be just 71/4 inches but the Beer Heights Light Railway at Pecorama in Devon is a proper railway, with a fully developed signalling and train detection system. In addition, trains are hauled by locomotives designed and built in our own on-site locomotive works.

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84

Rail Engineer • March 2016

SIGNALLING AND TELECOMS

The relay interlocking is a little more complicated but John Macdougall and his team are getting to grips with understanding the signal engineer’s control tables and wiring diagrams.

The new signalling system is being commissioned in three stages with Stages 1 and 2 already in service and the final stage 3 (MN station area) being completed this winter in readiness for the start-up of service at Easter. The freewired interlocking utilises 50V DC PO3000 (Post Office) type relays including enclosed Keyswitch Varley style variants.

Younger readers may be puzzled by the reference to the Post Office. Until BT took over the infrastructure in 1981, the national telecommunications network was owned by the General Post Office which used large quantities of specialised electro-mechanical light current circuit controller devices which were suitably dubbed ‘Post Office’ relays. These were used in conjunction with ‘Strowger’ rotating circuit selector switches for call switching and routing in telephone exchanges before being replaced with digital electronic and computer based ‘switches’. This technology is paralleled within the railway’s own private national telephone network.

PO3000 relays are still used today in mining and other industries and they continue to be manufactured today by Mors Smitt which also makes Field & Grant, Tyer, BR930 signalling relays, AWS/TPWS train protection systems, alarm & indicator units, and circuit controllers.

departure, for example to the Down Main, the driver then pressing a Train Ready to Start (TRS) button. For the rest of the journey, routes are automatically set by the passage of the train occupying the appropriate track circuits. Lineside plungers are used at other locations for any ‘non-standard’ routes such as moves to/from the depot, branch line trains or anything else. Such is the flexibility of the system that a driver could choose to depart via the rare Southern Chord and do several loops before returning to MN. TRS plungers at stations are push buttons whereas elsewhere full-sized railway plungers are deployed, which may be pressed whilst on the move. These are located on the post of the signal preceding the one at the junction, ensuring that the junction signal ahead is cleared in good time before the driver reaches it.

Buttons and plungers send a route request to the interlocking which works on a first-come, first-served principle. As, unlike BR Spec 930 series, the relays are not inherently fail-safe, additional safeguards are built into the route release sequence which, in addition to the usual track sequence required, may also require the signal ahead route set and the train proved to have reached it.

Train detection The 44 track circuits consist of a BHLR specified Telerelay Ltd (now Mors Smitt) PO3000 Post Office type relay with 100 ohm coil, two change-over contacts, lightweight armature, 3.2V pick-up and 2V drop-away high-nickel-content core giving a narrow hysteresis. Dropshunt varies 30-90 ohms.

At the feed end, a 24V DC unsmoothed supply with a 390 ohm shunt delivers 4-6V DC to the rails. Single rail, common return is used.

A modified BR shunt box is used to test track circuits.

Signals and points

A driver's-eye view.

Stage 3 of the new system, however, deploys Relpol 24V DC miniature industrial plug-in relays which are more costeffective and easier to wire up as the sockets have screw terminals, unlike the PO relays which have solder tags. There are over 300 relays in the system, which is hidden away inside the two signal boxes.

The signal boxes at MN and T’Other End, complete with manikin signallers, create the illusion of a traditionally signalled railway. No signalmen are actually employed by BHLR, although there is a designated ‘Person in Charge’ who will manage any issues arising, communicating with drivers and other staff over a local VHF two way radio system.

For the normal visitor train journey from MN and return, the station master at MN operates a Westinghouse miniature lever to select the appropriate route for the

For added interest to visitors, signals comprise both semaphore (15) and coloured light (18), fed from 24V AC with return via the common rail. The former provide a more traditional aspect to the railway and are placed at locations readily visible to visitors on foot though they are more difficult to manufacture than coloured lights.

There are no three-aspect signals, drivers mostly having sufficient visibility to be able to brake and stop at a signal at danger. However, there are four signals where sighting distance is less than service braking distance, so repeater signals are used.

There are six motorised points using small 12V DC electric motors, and seven spring points. In the event of a signalling fault, points may be moved by means of a manual switch.

To the future Ridership of this highly successful miniature railway has been growing steadily in recent years and the new signalling system provides spare capacity that allows a third fulllength passenger train to be in service when the need arises.

An extension to Beer Caves has been mooted, which would involve a new triangular junction at Deepwater, extending the running line even further, but this is for the future.

Thanks to John Macdougall and Mike Hanscomb for help in the preparation of this article.

Rail Engineer • March 2016

85

Multidisciplinary company

is now Komplete

A

company with over a decade of consistent performance in the rail industry has diversified into other markets. Following a period of sustained growth and investment, Komplete Group, originally founded as Railway Projects Limited in 1992 to deliver engineering services on a wide range of rolling stock projects, now comprises three separate but complementary divisions Komplete Projects, Komplete Recruitment and Komplete Train Presentation.

While providing dedicated and informed services to their specific markets, the services offered by Komplete continue to serve the rail industry.

In addition, the company now offers a fully managed service, and this coupled with Komplete’s newly formed partnership with Arlington Fleet Services in Eastleigh, enables them to perform level five works off-site, including the refurbishment and painting of rolling stock. This offering provides Komplete with an important advantage over its competitors.

Complete offering Together, the group’s divisions offer an end-toend solution to customers.

Komplete Projects serves clients throughout the rail industry, providing installations, repairs, refurbishments, modifications and maintenance on a wide range of rolling stock schemes - with the capability to deliver a full turnkey service.

For day-to-day care, Komplete Train Presentation offers the very highest level of interior and exterior cleaning, plus minor repairs and spot painting for railway rolling stock.

Meanwhile, individuals looking to find permanent and temporary positions in engineering and technically focused roles can approach Komplete Recruitment, which provides permanent, contract and fixed term solutions to the rail industry, as well as the energy and building services, aerospace, automotive and general engineering sectors. This division also drives Komplete’s own service delivery, allowing Komplete to source and supply the very best people for its projects in the rail division.

Skilled management The group has a new management team in place. Headed up by managing director Simon Pitt, the team includes Lee Reynolds as recruitment director, head of commercial and projects Mike Harmer and business development

manager and head of train presentation Daniel Cartwright. All possess a wealth of business experience within their respective fields.

Simon Pitt said: “Our ambitions are to become the first-choice business for train operators in the UK and overseas. We deliver the same high standard of service in every project, no matter how small. We offer complete solutions for all customers in our target markets, resulting in both client retention and growth.

“We also have a completely new brand to reflect our company’s new and improved position in the marketplace. As our website says: the evolution is over. Now we are Komplete.” www.komplete-group.com

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Rail Engineer • March 2016

Conwy CRISIS

D

uring December 2015, the Conwy Valley in North Wales received over three times its average monthly rainfall, with over a metre being recorded at Capel Curig. As a result, the Conwy River finally burst its banks on 27 December and inundated the Conwy Valley railway line.

The combination of floodwater from the river to the west of the railway and the sheer volume of water coming off the mountains from the east, now unable to flow into the river, finally overtopped the railway in several places with floodwaters reaching platform level at North Llanrwst station.

Futureproof Washout Repairs Working with Network Rail, several teams from Alun Griffiths (Contractors)Â were mobilised at first light on 28 December to assess the damage.

North of Llanrwst, there were several areas of ballast washout totalling over a mile in length. The railway runs through a flood plain in this section and the flooding was made worse by breaches in the river flood defence embankments.

The damage was limited to the top and bottom ballast levels, leaving the earthworks largely unaffected. However, 10 foot-crossings were affected along with much of the lineside cabling.

Work commenced promptly with more than 1000 tonnes of ballast being delivered to site.

Fortunately, there was a road-rail access point (RRAP) at Llanrwst North, so road-rail vehicles were used to run the ballast out to the affected areas progressively, allowing each section to be re-ballasted before moving on to the next site. The reinstatement of this section was straightforward and was completed in January, along with the level crossing repairs.

South of Llanrwst station, floodwater had overtopped the embankment and washed away a thirty-metre section, totally undermining the track. Access to the site was severally hampered because of flooding in the adjacent field so, working from track level, damaged sections had to be repaired in sequence.

As the floodwater subsided, access was gained across the flood plain in order to speed up repairs and take delivery of around 600 tonnes of rock armour.

Whilst initially asked to undertake a like-forlike repair, Griffiths also proposed a number of measures to build in future resilience. Short of

raising the level of the railway, the embankment south of Llanrwst would always remain susceptible to overtopping during flood events and was prone to rapid erosion. The solution was to cover the embankment slopes with geotextile membrane, keyed into a trench at the toe of the embankment filled with free-draining material.

Rock armour was then placed up to cess level.

This will slow the velocity of water during future overtopping events and, at the same time, protect the embankment slopes themselves.

Rapid Solution and Approval Wing-wall scour had undermined the back of the abutments of Bridge 14, just south of Llanrwst station, causing the approach transition slab to drop. The slab weighs 11 tonnes and, as the surrounding fields were totally saturated, it was impossible to use a crane from the side of the railway. A road-rail crane was brought in, but had to travel over the line affected by the washout.

This meant that earthwork reconstruction had to be finished before the bridge slab could be lifted.

Arcadis, formally Hyder, was engaged to prepare general arrangement drawings and a Form 001 for both the earthworks and the permanent way design. Network Rail expedited the technical approvals process allowing construction work to get underway.

Griffiths proposed an extension to the bridge wing wall to provide anti-scour protection around the bridge and, for the embankment, designed a key trench with large 500mm stone wrapped

in geotextile matting. The pitching stone and embankment slope was then reworked to a shallower angle such that the earthwork fill material would be better protected from future overtopping flood events.

Strengthened Overhead Flume The fourth section of work revolved around a small aqueduct or flume that spanned the railway between Llanrwst and Betws-y-Coed. The parapet wall had failed, depositing silt and debris onto the track below.

To allow the failed parapet to be rebuilt, the watercourse was over-pumped. Griffiths took the opportunity to strengthen the works with the use of stainless steel dowels through the parapet. This work was completed in early January, preventing further water damage and debris affecting the line.

But nothing is ever easy. Just as all of the above work was being completed, more storms arrived, culminating in further flooding on 25 and 26 January. However, Griffiths’ two pronged methodology, by accessing the railway from adjacent land and using road rail machinery, provided the flexibility to keep working towards handing the railway back before the end of February.

Delivering sustainably for over 45 years Griffiths are one of the leading civil engineering and building contractors based in Wales and the West.

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Rail Engineer • March 2016

CLEATHAM ROAD BRIDGE

STATION ROAD BRIDGE

Two down, two up Replacing two bridges over Christmas

Rail Engineer • March 2016

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T

he rain gods must have been looking favourably on Yorkshire based Construction Marine Ltd (CML) over Christmas 2015 as the sites for two North Lincolnshire bridges that needed replacing narrowly missed the flood conditions twenty miles further North.

Reconstruction of the two under bridges between Brigg and Gainsborough on the Deepcar junction to Cleethorpes line presented several challenges for CML, which was awarded the bridges contracts as part of its Renewals Collaborative Delivery Partnership (RCDP) framework with Network Rail.

The bridge reconstructions were to be integrated into the North Lincolnshire Resignalling Blockade (issue 136, February 2016).

By utilising this opportunity, CML was able to optimise the planned access, removing the need

The challenges

Pre-cast caison units to form new bridge abutments.

Traditionally, underbridge reconstructions are carried out following an eighteen month lead time, but concerns were raised regarding the deterioration of both structures resulting in the design, procurement, fabrication and installation all having to be compressed into less than nine months.

To keep rail and road traffic disruption to a minimum, the two reconstructions were to be carried out in parallel, meaning that all labour, plant and specialist suppliers had to be duplicated so that each site could operate independently. The fact that the works had to be carried out over Christmas meant that a significant amount of planning and risk evaluation was required.

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Rail Engineer • March 2016

CLEATHAM ROAD BRIDGE

for future disruptive possessions and therefore reducing the impact on train operators and customers alike.

For both bridges, repair options were considered alongside reconstruction in order to determine the lowest whole life cost solutions.

Through optimisation of the blockade, access costs were significantly reduced, resulting in reconstruction providing the lowest whole life cost solution in both cases.

Following abutment lowering and installation of a levelling screed, the new bridge was moved and set in its final position on Christmas morning. Deck end drainage was then installed before backfilling and bottom ballast was placed. The existing track was then reinstalled, and all work was completed on programme. with the line handed back to rail traffic at the same time as Cleatham Road bridge as planned.

Station Road at Blyton

Cleatham Road bridge

Station Road bridge carries a single track railway line over the road between the villages of Blyton and Pilham, north east of Gainsborough.

The original construction was two singlespan bridges constructed of steel with twin longitudinal main girders, cross girders and rail bearers on brick abutments. Constructed around 1906, one bridge carried live load and one was redundant with the tracks removed.

The bridge was in poor condition with evidence of water ingress at the deck ends which had resulted in extensive corrosion. The main girders and rail bearers had significant areas of loss of section to the stiffeners, bottom flanges and, in particular, the webs, which in some locations were beginning to extend into the bearing zone.

There had been previous plating repairs to the main girders.

Work to replace the bridge began in earnest when the worksite was granted at 22:00 on Christmas Eve. The first works involved disconnection of the track circuits followed by the removal of the track, ballast and other materials from both bridge decks. The old bridges were picked up as one and transported to the site compound by a Self Propelled Modular Transporter (SPMT). They were set on supports ready for demolition at a later date, and the same SPMT was then used to pick up and transport the new bridge, a single span ‘U’ deck carrying one track only, complete with pre cast concrete cill units attached, onto the road ready for installation.

The original Cleatham Road bridge was a single-span five-ring brick arch bridge which carried a single track railway over the B1400 on the north side of the village of Kirton in Lindsey, north east of Gainsborough. Constructed in 1849, it had a RED bridge strike status, meaning any reported bridge strike closed the bridge, resulting in operational delay minutes and cancellations.

CML took possession of the site on Christmas Eve at 22:00. Works would take longer at this location than the Blyton bridge because the masonry on the arch was in poor condition with numerous fractures, areas of open joints, hollowness and spalling to the arch barrel, and evidence of waterproofing failure.

The replacement bridge removed the significant bridge strike risk as the new singlespan horizontal deck level now allows all traffic (with the exception of abnormal height vehicles) to pass under the railway with greatly improved safety, and it also removed the already narrow carriageway pinch point where high vehicles had to pass under the old arch bridge in the centre of the road.

In all, demolition of the old bridge and excavation of fill behind the abutments to accommodate the riser units and bridge deck end drainage resulted in the removal of 900 tonnes of material which had to be loaded into wagons and transported to a storage compound for disposal at a later date. All fill material was removed, and the arch was

demolished in a pre-planned sequence. Due to the nature of the arch, the demolition lowered the abutment to the arch springing level which was some 1.57 metres below the level required for placing the cill units of the new bridge.

The novel solution chosen to raise the abutments involved the use of pre-cast concrete cellular ‘riser units’ which were placed on a screed and then filled with concrete to generate the mass and strength required by the design. The cellular units were placed using a Hiab lorry, and concrete was supplied from a nearby batching plant opened specifically for these works. Because of the Christmas working, local companies with rapid response and/or duplicate facilities were selected, which significantly reduced the risk of over running the possession.

After the riser units were completed, the new bridge (of similar construction to Station Road bridge) was driven into position by SPMT and then pre-cast ballast retention units were placed before backfilling commenced. Bottom ballast and track installation operations then followed and, once the strength of the riser unit infill concrete had been confirmed as being strong enough to allow passage of trains, the bridge was handed back on 28 December at 09:50, some 48 hours before the end of the blockade possession.

Charles Mortimer, managing director of Construction Marine, appreciated the work carried out over the Christmas holiday. “Our delivery team has worked collaboratively with Network Rail in developing a novel construction solution to de-risk the delivery of the core possession works, which has been delivered as planned,” he stated. “Many of our staff have given up valuable time with their families to deliver these projects, and I can honestly say how impressed I was with the positive attitudes we were greeted with by all our site staff and suppliers who were still full of Christmas cheer on a visit at 3am on Christmas morning.”

Rail Engineer • March 2016

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ENHANCING EARTHING SAFETY

R

ailway work takes place in all weathers - and, recently, that weather has been quite unpleasant. There is a natural temptation for those working on overhead line (OHL) maintenance in the wind and rain to finish their work quickly and get back into the warmth of the crew cabin.

It is under these conditions that short cuts are taken with safety procedures rushed or overlooked. When it comes to OHL earthing, the risks involved in failing to adhere to procedures couldn’t be higher, with life-changing incidents or even fatalities posing a very real danger.

When applying and removing portable earths, Network Rail procedures state that the earthend clamp must be attached to the earth point before the line-end clamp is applied. For removal of the earths, the line end must be removed before the earth end. This procedure ensures that the linesman will never be subjected to any potential shocks by inadvertently handling an object which is part of a circuit.

Incidents may occur where a maintenance crew, out in cold, wet conditions, work in tandem to remove the earths in order to get back to the warmth more quickly. Procedures may not be adhered to, and earth-end clamps could be accidently removed before the line end, putting all of the crew at extreme risk.

Innovative locks In order to combat this potentially lethal element of human error, P&B Weir Electrical has created innovative Interlocked Traction Earths. Unlike regular portable earths, these leads have been specially enhanced to incorporate a ‘lock and key’ system to ensure safe removal. The line-end clamp has an integrated ‘key’ element built into the design of the body which is necessary to tighten and secure the earth-end clamp. The lineend clamp can then be applied safely.

Upon removal of the earth, the line-end clamp must be removed in order to use the “key” element to detach the earth end clamp.

The ‘lock’ element of the earth-end clamp is completely tamperproof, protecting not only the maintenance crew, but also any potential thieves or vandals on the tracks. P&B Weir Electrical can supply up to 20 different key combinations, which also means that a ‘master key’ cannot be used to bypass the system.

As well as employing this unique locking system, both clamps are of rugged construction with substantial fabricated bodies and have good corrosion resistance meaning that, within reason, all P&B Weir leads are capable of withstanding day-to-day rough handling whilst still ensuring maximum levels of safety.

Lightweight aluminium Aluflex leads ease application and stress relieving sleeves on the cable to increase the longevity of the equipment.

The combined advantages of these enhanced

design elements all act as examples of the expertise and commitment to intelligent design and manufacture that P&B Weir Electrical puts into each earthing product.

With ongoing supply of the Interlocked Traction Earth throughout the rail infrastructure, P&B Weir Electrical is ensuring that a ‘belt and braces’ approach to electrical safety is employed nationwide.

Rail Engineer • March 2016

CLIVE KESSELL

P

rogrammable electrical and electronic systems used in safety applications will experience systematic as well as random failures. It is difficult to apply traditional techniques to measure safety and/or reliability in softwarecontrolled systems and thus the proof required is hard to achieve.

Hence the need for SIL. It stands for Safety Integrity Level and is there to help engineers in the rail industry manage the safety criticality of electronic systems. SIL was introduced to assist in obtaining assured performance for electronic systems that use software and to define a target probability of failure for such systems with emphasis placed on the use of recognised and proven processes to secure software integrity.

In rail activities, SIL ratings were initially used only for signalling but were later extended to all systems with safety implications, including train borne equipment. Subsequently, the concept has been applied to any electronic-based safety system even if no software is involved. Whilst proving useful to engineers in providing methods and understanding on how systems can be assured and assessed, SIL has become wrongly used for specifying general engineering integrity, thus creating misuse and potential adverse impacts on cost and ongoing system performance.

The SIL standard Most rail engineers are aware of the four SIL categories. Too few understand how they were derived or the precise definition of each.

The origin is in international standard IEC 61508 which defines safety integrity as “the likelihood of a safety-related system satisfactorily performing the required safety functions under all stated conditions within a stated period of time”. Developing this into safety integrity levels has resulted in the four SIL categories defined as the probability of correct safety functioning in either ‘on demand’ or ‘continuous’ operation:

On Demand Continuous »» SIL 1 ≥ 10-2 to < 10-1 ≥ 10-6 to < 10-5 -3 -2 »» SIL 2 ≥ 10 to < 10 ≥ 10-7 to < 10-6 -4 -3 »» SIL 3 ≥ 10 to < 10 ≥ 10-8 to < 10-7 -5 -4 »» SIL 4 ≥ 10 to < 10 ≥ 10-9 to < 10-8

SIL S a fe t y

Integrity

ELECTRIC AND ELECTRONIC SYSTEMS

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Level

Dos and Don’ts

Rail Engineer • March 2016

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SIL is there to define the safety functions within a system and not the component parts of a system.

This can cause difficulty in interpretation when trying to define a ‘system’, which is typically made up of subsystems that combine to provide the overall system functionality and all of which may contribute to the overall system safety. Further confusion may occur when the complete system has subsystems provided by different engineering disciplines and/or suppliers, such as ERTMS which has both infrastructure and train-borne elements.

In such circumstances, it is acceptable to specify separate SILs for subsystems that exist as a standalone entity and are required to operate with more than one other subsystem. It is wrong to specify a separate SIL for a subsystem or component that is a fixed part of an overall system without understanding the impact that such components will have on the complete system requirements.

In a signalling context, any client that specifies a SIL for such as a track circuit, axle counter, point machine or signal head in isolation from a specific system context should be challenged. The same principle applies to any railway system that uses software to achieve safety performance.

IEC61508 (part 4, section 3.5.8 ‘Safety Integrity Level’, NOTE 3) states: ‘A safety integrity level (SIL) is not a property of a system, subsystem, element or component. The correct interpretation of the phrase

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ELECTRIC AND ELECTRONIC SYSTEMS

So what do these numbers and terminology secure quality or reliability. This is confusing and mean? ‘On Demand’ (sometimes called ‘low the recommendation is that this categorisation demand’) relates to systems or functions should NOT be used. There are other ways of that have a safety impact only when they are specifying system performance such as mean operated (such as a shut down or emergency time between failures (MTBF) and how this and stop system, the failure of which will not other techniques can be employed should be automatically lead to a hazard unless something stated in the relevant contract. else happens that causes it to be needed). The SIL relates to the probability that the function SIL, safety and reliability linkage will operate correctly when asked to.

SIL is used to define how the safety functional ‘Continuous’ (also known as ‘high demand’) requirements of a programmable electronic functions are those that can cause a hazard if system can be achieved. Getting the SIL they malfunction (an example would be a railway classification right should lead to the system signal showing a less restrictive aspect than that performing to its required safety specification, required) and the SIL relates to the number of which may also lead to improved reliability but dangerous failures that could occur per hour. will not guarantee it. SIL must NOT be used to These different definitions mean that a specify reliability in its own right as safety and detailed safety analysis of the system must reliability are two different requirements. Just initially be carried out to determine the required because a system has been designed to be safe integrities rather than any ‘blanket’ application it will not necessarily be reliable (for example, of a particular SIL. To say any piece of equipment the use of the ‘fail safe’ philosophy may reduce should be ‘SIL n’ without detailed knowledge of system level reliability). its required functioning in a particular application If a client specifies a high SIL with the stated is meaningless and problematic. purpose of obtaining high reliability, it will The 2011 version of European Standard probably result in a higher than expected price EN20128 ‘Railway Applications and significant additional life time costs in Communication, Signalling and Processing terms of re-validating future changes in a way systems - Software for Railway Control and that is unnecessary if no safety functions are Protection Systems’ introduced the term SIL 0, involved. Clients demanding an unrealistic SIL to specify software that has no safety function should be challenged as to their thinking and the but requires defined software techniques to implications made known to them.

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Rail Engineer • March 2016

ELECTRIC AND ELECTRONIC SYSTEMS

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“SIL n safety-related system” (where n is 1, 2, 3 or 4) is that the system is potentially capable of supporting safety functions with a safety integrity level up to n.’

Like many standards, this phraseology is not easily understood and, in particular, the term ‘potentially’ needs explanation. The safety function must be analysed in its entirety to establish the required and delivered SIL. Specifying a high SIL for all the subsystems in the functional chain will not necessarily achieve a high SIL for the required functioning of the complete system if the architecture and safety engineering techniques are wrong. The common temptation is to try to specify a SIL for each subsystem but this is neither correct nor sensible. It is understanding the safety criticality of the complete functional chain that is important, and the SIL of any individual subsystem is only part of that.

There are standalone systems that can be specified with a high SIL number to ensure safe operation. Automatic level crossings are an example where the risks of compromised safety can have dramatic results. However, allocating a specific SIL for the control system will do nothing to protect against the unwanted actions of a third party, such as the general public, unless the project specification takes into account and attempts to guard against unwanted intrusion. As such, overall system design remains important.

Remember that a high SIL enforces a series of specific methods and tests be applied in order to ‘assure’ that the system will achieve its safety requirements. These methods can be costly and difficult to maintain, and the tests can be lengthy and expensive to set up. If subsequent changes are made to software or configuration, or piece part components are replaced, then the SIL testing will need to be re-done, meaning, in practical terms, that the test system must be maintained throughout the system life cycle.

Having to re-establish a SIL level after time will be an expensive exercise. Examples can be cited where the customer (i.e. system user) decided to short cut this process because of the cost and time needed, on the basis that ‘it was all right before, it should be ok now’. If the SIL is not worth maintaining, it is highly questionable why it was specified in the first place.

Some misconceptions Many engineers believe that, by specifying a higher SIL, the overall integrity/quality of a system will be improved. This is false, since SIL has nothing to do with good engineering practice and bolting on additional electronic or software fixes to achieve the specified SIL will more than likely worsen the overall system performance.

A typical example is to rate a Signalling Centre Control Front End - i.e. the Man Machine Interface and associated decision support - as SIL 2. Whilst these have increasing complexity, and the addition of TMS (Train Management System) with the objective of improving train service performance will only add to that complexity, they are not generally safety systems in their own right and should not be specified with a separate SIL. To do so only complicates the design of the total system, often to the detriment of its performance.

If there are functions such as TSR (Temporary Speed Restriction) imposition that, by analysis, require a SIL, they should preferably be segregated or, if not possible, secured by a design that utilises confirmatory processes to confine the required integrity to the interlocking subsystem.

Another failing of many control and communication engineers is the belief that Commercial Off The Shelf (COTS) equipment will not be suitable for use in safety-related systems.

The fact that many of these are produced in their millions for the mass market, where reliability is

all important and getting the performance wrong may result in a company going out of business, puts the equipment integrity into context. Such equipment should be used wherever possible in the design and manufacture of modern control systems as not only will it give proven reliability within a subsystem, it will also mean lower cost.

Even worse than rejection of COTS equipment is trying to insist that it must have a SIL rating when used in a railway application without any analytical justification. That is wrong, so don’t do it!

Signalling and operating philosophies can be prisoners of history, which leads to the risk of ‘Not Invented Here’ when new signalling projects are being procured. A signalling system approved and proven in use in one country, suddenly requires some re-design and a different SIL classification just to meet ‘custom and practice’ in another. The result can be a compromised system, costing far more than its original estimate, delayed in delivery and with a lower than expected performance.

Proving a SIL rating It is very easy to specify a SIL, proving that a system will achieve it can be extraordinarily difficult and akin to the problems of proving a MTBF when requesting reliability. If both are specified for the same system, the result can be ‘paralysis by analysis’ due to a system configuration that puts these requirements into conflict.

Where a system already has a pedigree of usage, the challenge is a lot easier since a track record can be traced. However, the higher SIL ratings require a very high number of accumulated hours in service to support a ‘proven in use’ declaration, which may prove impractical for all but equipment delivered in very large quantities. Over-specification may therefore increase cost by precluding a valid ‘proven in use’ safety argument.

Rail Engineer • March 2016

Good practice »» Remember what SIL is for: designating the required integrity of a system’s safety functions. »» Do not use a SIL rating as a means of trying to achieve high reliability or as a surrogate for quality. »» Resist the temptation to apply arbitrary and/or global SIL ratings to subsystems or component parts without a specific justification. »» Think carefully and analyse the safety integrity requirements for the specific application even if similar past systems have attracted a particular SIL. »» Never assign a high SIL just to be on the ‘safe side’. »» Challenge the client if SIL requirements are considered unrealistic. Better to forego a contract rather than take on something that proves to be impossible to provide or will take years to argue and agree how compliance is achieved. »» Beware of SIL 0 being specified and make sure the actual requirement is understood. »» Promote the use of COTS equipment but don’t expect to apply a SIL to that equipment in isolation whilst nonetheless recognising that it could be a constituent part of a SIL 4 system. »» Do not customise a system with a recognised and assessed performance just to meet historic rules or local custom and practice.

»» Clients and suppliers should work in partnership to mutually agree what SIL is realistically required and economically achievable.

Whilst safety remains all important, over zealous application of unnecessary safety measures can be damaging to performance, reliability and cost.

It is highly recommended that anyone involved in specifying the required SIL for a project (even if you have done it before) reads as a minimum the introduction/guidance to IEC 61508 before starting the task.

Thanks go to Rod Muttram FREng, a member of the IRSE International Technical Committee, who had the motivation to produce the original draft on this subject. A more detailed article on the subject was recently published in IRSE News and Rail Engineer is grateful to Francis How, IRSE Chief Executive, for allowing this abridged version to be published here.

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ELECTRIC AND ELECTRONIC SYSTEMS

Good practice follows the ‘Safety Lifecycle’ (as described in IEC61508) and starts with the client setting an overall safety target as part of the system requirements, with this overall target then apportioned to the various contributing sub-systems. A good system design should aim to produce an architecture that supports achievement of that target in the most cost effective and easily demonstrated way. This will normally mean segregating the safety related subsystems from the non-safety system elements in order to maximise the combination of safety compliance and high reliability. Where existing equipment is being offered, either as a total system or subsystem element, it may exceed the specified safety and reliability requirements in some aspects, but this should not matter unless the whole life cost of maintenance is significantly increased.

In every case, it is good practice for the SIL analysis activity to be a joint effort between client and supplier, based on an allocation of safety functions and tolerable hazard rates within the client’s overall safety target. A straight demand from the client that the supplier proves compliance to a specific SIL should be challenged. Specialist consultants practiced in SIL assessments can be engaged if the combined in-house knowledge is insufficient, but beware of allowing the work to become a lengthy and expensive academic exercise.

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Rail Engineer • March 2016

MELANIE OXLEY

W

ho would expect that the messy edges of railway sidings, the bits under bridges and the spaces behind platforms - the gaps in which our flotsam and jetsam collect - could be inhabited by protected wildlife?

When ecologists are asked to survey urban and suburban routes, this is the stuff they are dealing with. They will look at line-side and embankment habitats, dilapidated station buildings and associated infrastructure, particularly any road bridges that span the railway line.

Often messy, with a poor substrate such as ballast, dumped bitumen and rotting rubbish, in which plants are scraping an existence, such sites can encourage invertebrates and mammals, amphibians and reptiles, to make an unexpected appearance.

Modern nature writers will call this special habitat ‘edge-land’, the gap between this and that, between the safe walkway and the live track, often ignored, more often considered an eye-sore.

Areas tangled with brambles, old man’s beard, ivy and nettles, perfect for catching wind-borne plastic bags and food containers.

Rose-bay willow-herb and buddleia, ragwort and ox-eye daisies make a showing, along with garden escapes such as everlasting pea and valerian; opportunists all.

Surprisingly, such places can even harbour some of our protected wildlife. It follows that, ahead of even small works, ecological surveys are important in making any assessment of risk to wildlife.

LIFE ON THE EDGE

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NLL survey

This was the case along the North London Line for Transport for London’s proposed redevelopment of a number of stations on that route. The main proposal was to extend platforms, ready for the introduction of five-car trains to increase the carrying capacity of the line, as part of a wider undertaking of route enhancements.

Transport for London (TfL) asked ecologists to deliver an ecological scoping survey and detailed package of mitigation measures prior to works on seventeen small work sites, from South Acton in west London to Homerton in east London.

On each site, the expert team took into consideration the impact of proposed works on a range of protected species including reptiles, bats, badgers and breeding birds, and on any statutory and nonstatutory sites of Importance for Nature Conservation falling within 1km of the works, including places such as Wormwood Scrubs Local Nature Reserve (LNR).

The rail corridor is itself designated as a non-statutory Site of Borough Grade I Importance for Nature Conservation and comprises an extensive mosaic of open and wooded habitats of particular value for birds, mammals and insects.

Although the rail line runs through a heavily built-up environment, where the surrounding land use is mostly residential and commercial, the scoping survey revealed some habitats of wildlife importance close-by.

For example, located approximately two hundred metres south of Caledonian Road and Barnsbury stations is Barnsbury Wood LNR, one of the largest natural woodlands in the borough of Islington. Other areas of open space within a one kilometre search area of the line include Barnard Park, Caledonian Park, Paradise Park and Highbury Fields.

Along the line A full habitat survey of the line itself noted that the majority of the proposed work sites were dominated by rough grassland and/or scrub habitat, with

Rail Engineer â&#x20AC;˘ March 2016

Ecologists at Caledonian Road

occasional mature trees. The ecologists found that nine of the stations had good potential to support reptiles, eight had the potential to support breeding birds, two had the potential to support badgers and one had potential for roosting bats. Contrary to expectation, five bridges that span the railway line were assessed as having low potential to support roosting bats; more suitable roosting habitat was considered to be associated with the adjacent residential houses.

The station buildings were assessed as having negligible value for roosting bats, owing to high levels of disturbance associated with rail traffic, as well as bright lighting coming from the buildings and station platforms. Other potential roost sites included ivy-clad trees and mature willows although few were rated as having high potential for roosting; however, they were assessed as providing good quality bat foraging and commuting habitat.

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Canonbury station north.

As construction works were undertaken, the ecologists moved to a more supervisory role providing mitigation measures for reptiles, invertebrates and breeding birds.

In order to improve the sites after works were completed, TfL asked what enhancements could be added that would benefit wildlife and require minimum maintenance. These included placing bug hotels among long grass at South Acton station, wildflower grassland planting at Kensal Rise and Canonbury, bird boxes at Brondesbury, and native tree planting at Gospel Oak. Maintenance plans for vegetation were prescribed; these would further encourage wildlife, and amongst other things they recommended that interpretation boards, placed on the platforms, could inform the public about the wildlife that shares their morning commute.

Melanie Oxley is public relations consultant for The Ecology Consultancy.

Flower-rich siding, Northwood Junction.

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Rail Engineer • March 2016

RECRUITMENT

GROUP BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT DIRECTOR Flexible location base

SERVICE DIRECTOR PROFESSIONAL HEAD – ROLLING STOCK Location flexible, Doncaster base | £competitive salary and benefits package LONDON | £ Attractive remuneration package

• activity’ Strategic planning in the context of rolling stock Wabtec Rail Groupleadership is a leader in UKrole rollingin stock engineeringnew and business management, ‘An excellent a growing across the and European rail industry’ technology with a number of strong businesses serving the rail industry. technology developments andUK innovations, including capital It formsRail a keyis part of theUK global Wabtec expenditure Wabtec a leading rolling stock Corporation.The Service Director role will focus on: implications Candidates should have wide experience RSSB (Railbusiness Safety and Key areas of accountability will includegroup to: sales • rolling Respond toside enquiries members engineering withStandards large scaleBoard) activities in of the stock of thefrom UK rail opportunities, new business proposals • Co-ordinating • Co-ordinating TOC support activities from supports the upgrade GB rail industry its continual and across an theappreciation industry, ensuring their vehicle and thein manufacture industry including of supply and relationship management growthoverhaul, and by acquisition.

It supplies products and services including • a Wabtec Set strategic stock priorities to Group rolling perspective work to improve performance and vehicles. deliver requirements areand metROSCOs from a and rolling stock ofcomponents, equipment for passenger and freight relationships with TOCs the technology upgrades and complete vehicle overhauls balancetothe needs all parties and RSSBcompanies point • ofWorking with group business strategies and value for money to its customers. It helps the • Leadership of viewgrowth nature ofonassociated contracts. and strategic development of rail businesses across the UK. Turnover is over £200m with approximately objectives Theindustry businessto is part of the global Wabtecstandards, supporting their sales activities understand risk, guide the Service business across the UK 2,000 employees.

• Lead, develop andwill support a team of Corporation employs approximately orientation be sought but manage and research, development and2,000 innovation • Provide support, guidance and advice for A commercial engineers and manage people four main rollingBusiness stock locations the role professional will also require leadership qualities the • Contract profitability, tender activities and Due tofrom retirement, a Group Development Director isall sought and facilitates collaboration.

RSSB departments and decision Candidates should makers have a senior level rail business background with further sites in the UK operating in otherand to co-ordinate and experience managing remote teams. supply ofinappropriate resources to deliver business to lead rail business development activities salesperformance areas of engineering.

Engineering knowledge and qualifications are supported byStock a graduate/professional level education gained in technical RSSB has strong technical engineering and standards, research and other • Play a key role on the Rolling opportunities in the UK. Key areas of contribution will• include: Ensuring the management of teams at all or other but not mandatory. engineering, relevant discipline.

Interpersonal skills project management expertise covering outputs Standards Committee and EU business groups and desirable Wabtec Rail now has a growing Service to high operating standards • infrastructure Representing and group interests across the industry and sites leading rolling stock activities. should atRolling a high level. mirror groups that shapebeEU Stock TheCandidates business working with Train Operators and role will have Doncaster base and willwith willa be Chartered Engineers marketing and business development standards • Working closely with managers across ROSCOs, providing fleet engineering and require regular travel. in It will notstock be necessary Due to retirement, a Professional Head of broad experience rolling engineering • Developing and managing collaborative with partners Rail in support of company reliability support with capabilities inrelationshipsWabtec to live close to Doncaster but frequent visits Rolling Stock isactivities required to provide leadership including seniorthe management level.

Candidates should ideally be able to easilyataccess groups’ key sites • objectives Achieve safety and performance across the industry air conditioning, doors, traction motors, train will be required. of the rolling stock engineering team and to and customers in an area ranging from, say, South Yorkshire to North monitoring etc. of a comprehensive knowledge of the railway rolling • head Maintenance up all rolling stock activities. The role will • Identifying potential acquisition and value London. of technical opportunities, awareness UK rolling stock developments in the context stock market future developments impact of UK developments partnership opportunities be part ofprovided theand wider leadership team RSSB. the adding Services are from Wabtec and ofincluding of technical and of of wider rail systems, requiring skills in and European legislation and policies customers’ own depots by dedicated international practice communications, collaborative working and technical teams. strategic management.

Please contact Rod Shaw at RGS Executive on 0115 959 9687 to discuss this opportunity further Pleaseyour contact Rod Shaw at RGS Executive on 0115 959 9687 with any queries or forward application to Alex Selwood at alex@rgsexecutive.co.uk or forward your cv and covering letter to him via enquiries@rgsexecutive.co.uk

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