The Kent Route Utilisation Strategy January 2010 sets out Network Rail's strategic vision for the future of this vital part of the rail network serving Kent, parts of East Sussex and London.
The Sussex Rail Utilisation Stategy does the same for Sussex.
These run to 220 and 192 pages respectively so would need studying in detail. Given that funding is tight, the proposals are probably something like the best that can be achieved. But if a fraction of the sort of amounts that HS2 will cost could be made available for local schemes, all sorts of desirable projects could get the go-ahead.
9 Mar 2010
Network or hub-and-spokes
High speed rail is predicated on a hub-and-spokes pattern of transport centred on London. However, most journeys are not city-centre to city-centre but begin and end somewhere in a conurbation. Many journeys do not naturally pass through the centre of a conurbation but are more conveniently made by travelling around it. It may be that the actual point-to-point journey starts and/or ends within easy reach of an airport. Forcing people to travel through city centres is unattractive to potential passengers and aggravates congestion.
80% of the population of Britain is dispersed into about one-third of the country's land area. A hub-and-spokes system is ill-suited to serve people's travel needs with such a pattern of settlement. What is needed here is a network of connecting routes to create a wide range of journey opportunities.
In South-East England, such a system might develop services such as a group fanning out from Ashford towards Brighton, Reading (and onwards to Oxford and Milton Keynes), and Stratford/Cambridge and Peterborough. The trains would run as regular-interval, limited-stop regional expresses connecting to the radial routes which they crossed; for instance, the Ashford to Redhill service would call at Tonbridge, Redhill (on a new flyover), Guildford and Aldershot, giving interchanges at each place to the routes out of London.
80% of the population of Britain is dispersed into about one-third of the country's land area. A hub-and-spokes system is ill-suited to serve people's travel needs with such a pattern of settlement. What is needed here is a network of connecting routes to create a wide range of journey opportunities.
In South-East England, such a system might develop services such as a group fanning out from Ashford towards Brighton, Reading (and onwards to Oxford and Milton Keynes), and Stratford/Cambridge and Peterborough. The trains would run as regular-interval, limited-stop regional expresses connecting to the radial routes which they crossed; for instance, the Ashford to Redhill service would call at Tonbridge, Redhill (on a new flyover), Guildford and Aldershot, giving interchanges at each place to the routes out of London.
Capacity crisis
Capacity crisis looms for Britain's Railway runs the headline in an article in yesterday's Daily Telegraph.
This capacity crisis is largely a self-inflicted problem that has come about by filling the system up with short trains. And in refusing to give the go-ahead for an order for additional carriages to lengthen the Pendolino train fleet to 11 cars, the Department for Transport is aggravating the problem.
However, the underlying cause is the high cost of vehicles, now well over £2 million, and approaching that of a standard electric or diesel-electric locomotive such as the TRAXX, and more than double that of an equivalent new steam locomotive such as the product now being offered by Swiss company DLM.
Why the high cost? This is mostly due to the decision to run at speeds of 125 mph and more. At slightly lower speeds, relatively simple vehicles such as the mark 3 hauled stock will do perfectly well, with a service life of 60 years, and a cost, new, of not more than £600,000. At these prices there is no great difficulty in lengthening trains up to the maximum that will fit into the main terminal stations, about 15 cars.
It should also not be forgotten that there is an entire spare main line between London and Manchester, much of it with the potential for four-tracking, another between London and Birmingham, and other between Leeds and Carlisle, and that is apart from the former Great Central alignment.
A steady programme of upgrading and improvement, combined with an order for locomotives and rolling stock compatible with the mark 3 fleet, which it would augment and not replace, should avert this crisis for several decades at least.
6 Mar 2010
Is this serious?
This secondary route in Switzerland is threatened with closure, so the suggestion has been to run it with steam traction. Out came the rebuilt Kriegslok, rebuilt by DLM but originally constructed to run for just six months during the war, and duly ran the service on a trial basis last autumn. The embarrassing thing is that it is an excellent performer, probably the equivalent of a class 66, with an axle load of 15 tons, even less than an HST power car. It runs on light oil and has a very clean exhaust, with no black smoke, easily meeting current emission standards. Experience with the Brietz-Rothorn locomotives has been that modern steam engines consume less fuel and are cleaner than the diesels.
Whether this results in an order remains to be seen, but it could set a precedent. We shall see. You can't electrify everything and there are obvious niche applications everywhere for a small fleet of such locomotives for intermittent duties as infrastructure trains, rolling stock transfer, rescue and charter services. If that worked, it might be a way of dealing with the problem that the Inter City Express do-everything train was meant to solve, but at a fraction of a cost, as well as being an inexpensive fix for keeping in service British Rail's second generation class 15X DMU fleet dating from the 1980s.
Elsewhere, there are many railways that will never be busy enough to be worth electrifying, and others which were electrified long ago, where the overhead wires will not be worth replacing when they wear out. External combustion locomotives also make it possible to burn any fuel that happens to be available, including waste biomass, which would make them better than carbon-neutral.
The idea of using kettles sounds bizarre but worth keeping an open mind about.
3 Mar 2010
Long trains and short platforms
Short platforms are a cause of lack of capacity. Lengthening can be easy, or very costly, depending on the precise situation. In the days of slam door trains, passengers were often told to travel in certain carriages if they were going to station with short platforms; for example, to sit in the front two coaches for Much Wittering. The guard would check to make sure that passengers for Much Wittering were in the right part of the train.
Whilst this sounds hazardous, in practice it worked well. People were expected to look out for themselves and check if there was a platform to step onto before opening the door of the train. Then came power-operated doors under the control of the train staff, and they became responsible for making sure that a door cannot be opened unless it was safe to step off. Some new trains now have a system of selective door operation (SDO), which should make it impossible to open the wrong doors. Unfortunately, this can be inflexible. The selection options on some types of stock are limited - for example, the open/close over-ride sometimes applies to entire four-car units.
SDO systems work to a database of stations, using GPS to ascertain where the train is. This is a quick-and-dirty fix. It is vulnerable to, amongst other things, failure of GPS navigation and can only be fitted easily to modern stock with a train management system.
Simpler system
How about a simpler system? Each door could be fitted with a detector, wired into the door operation circuit so as to prevent opening of that particular door unless there was a platform alongside. This might, for example, be achieved by fitting reflector strip (like car number.plate material) on the platform face, and a light and photocell at each doorway of the train. The advantage is that the train would not need to "know" where it was.
I once discussed this with an engineer who came up with three possible alternative solutions over a cup of coffee, so it is not difficult.
Whilst this sounds hazardous, in practice it worked well. People were expected to look out for themselves and check if there was a platform to step onto before opening the door of the train. Then came power-operated doors under the control of the train staff, and they became responsible for making sure that a door cannot be opened unless it was safe to step off. Some new trains now have a system of selective door operation (SDO), which should make it impossible to open the wrong doors. Unfortunately, this can be inflexible. The selection options on some types of stock are limited - for example, the open/close over-ride sometimes applies to entire four-car units.
SDO systems work to a database of stations, using GPS to ascertain where the train is. This is a quick-and-dirty fix. It is vulnerable to, amongst other things, failure of GPS navigation and can only be fitted easily to modern stock with a train management system.
Simpler system
How about a simpler system? Each door could be fitted with a detector, wired into the door operation circuit so as to prevent opening of that particular door unless there was a platform alongside. This might, for example, be achieved by fitting reflector strip (like car number.plate material) on the platform face, and a light and photocell at each doorway of the train. The advantage is that the train would not need to "know" where it was.
I once discussed this with an engineer who came up with three possible alternative solutions over a cup of coffee, so it is not difficult.
2 Mar 2010
IRA explosives stolen on train
A few years ago, a case was stolen from a train at Reading. This was easily done, as the luggage shelves are by the doors. Imagine the thief’s shock when he opened it and found it was full of explosives, belonging to the IRA. He reported the incident to the police, which must have been embarrassing.
I can understand the IRA man’s problem. I travel quite extensively in Europe, usually with a medium sized rucksack and a case with enough stuff to last a couple of months.
Except in Britain, the rucksack will go on the overhead luggage rack so it is not a problem. The case is another matter. Again, except in Britain, the aisle is wide enough to wheel a case through. But except on some trains in Sweden and Denmark, it is usually difficult to find anywhere to put the case. This should not be a problem, because when seats are back-to-back, there is ample space in-between for a case.
The trouble arises because of the recent fashion for arranging seats airline-style, face-to-back. On this Danish inter-city train, there is space for cases between the seat backs. In theory, more passengers can be fitted into face-to-back seating, but it does not really work like that except on commuter trains. The minimum space between seats face-to-back is 900mm, although in Britain the train companies pack passengers in, sometimes as close as 750mm. Facing seats take up slightly more space, with a bay dimension of 1.9 metres, preferably 1.95 metres, though Electrostars are acceptable for commuter trains with a bay spacing of 1.8 meters.
I can understand the IRA man’s problem. I travel quite extensively in Europe, usually with a medium sized rucksack and a case with enough stuff to last a couple of months.
Except in Britain, the rucksack will go on the overhead luggage rack so it is not a problem. The case is another matter. Again, except in Britain, the aisle is wide enough to wheel a case through. But except on some trains in Sweden and Denmark, it is usually difficult to find anywhere to put the case. This should not be a problem, because when seats are back-to-back, there is ample space in-between for a case.
The trouble arises because of the recent fashion for arranging seats airline-style, face-to-back. On this Danish inter-city train, there is space for cases between the seat backs. In theory, more passengers can be fitted into face-to-back seating, but it does not really work like that except on commuter trains. The minimum space between seats face-to-back is 900mm, although in Britain the train companies pack passengers in, sometimes as close as 750mm. Facing seats take up slightly more space, with a bay dimension of 1.9 metres, preferably 1.95 metres, though Electrostars are acceptable for commuter trains with a bay spacing of 1.8 meters.
The difficulty is this. Airline passengers can put large items in secure storage in the hold of the aircraft. But this is not possible on trains, and so luggage shelves have to be provided. These occupy most of the space that is saved by arranging seats airline-style, making the whole exercise pointless.
Pay attention to Captain Deltic
Captain Deltic, otherwise known as Roger Ford or Uncle Roger, has a long running series in Modern Railways, under the heading "Informed Sources."
And informed they are. He does his homework uniquely well, bringing together the physics, the engineering and the economics of railways. Anyone involved in making decisions about railways should study his writings assiduously.
Unobtainium
Correspondence I have received through my MP shows that the DfT civil servants are not paying attention as they should. That is one reason why £20 million came to be wasted on consultancy work in connection with the aborted Inter City 125 replacement, which, as Captain Deltic pointed out, was going to have to be constructed of a new metal he called "Unobtainium".
His latest piece is an analysis of the refurbishment opportunities presented by the fleet of trains inherited from British Rail. It is just as well, as he points out, that vehicles such as the mark 3 have an economic life of at least sixty years. This is the thinking that is going to be needed to keep the wheels turning over the next decades.
My only criticism of him is that he has a bit of a blind spot about kettles. This technology has had a boost in recent years. As potentially green off-the-wires traction, able to run on any fuel, and with a low construction cost, he may be missing something that needs to be kept an eye on.
And informed they are. He does his homework uniquely well, bringing together the physics, the engineering and the economics of railways. Anyone involved in making decisions about railways should study his writings assiduously.
Unobtainium
Correspondence I have received through my MP shows that the DfT civil servants are not paying attention as they should. That is one reason why £20 million came to be wasted on consultancy work in connection with the aborted Inter City 125 replacement, which, as Captain Deltic pointed out, was going to have to be constructed of a new metal he called "Unobtainium".
His latest piece is an analysis of the refurbishment opportunities presented by the fleet of trains inherited from British Rail. It is just as well, as he points out, that vehicles such as the mark 3 have an economic life of at least sixty years. This is the thinking that is going to be needed to keep the wheels turning over the next decades.
My only criticism of him is that he has a bit of a blind spot about kettles. This technology has had a boost in recent years. As potentially green off-the-wires traction, able to run on any fuel, and with a low construction cost, he may be missing something that needs to be kept an eye on.
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