Over in Northern Ireland, very quietly, something quite remarkable is happening: for the past 18 months, Northern Ireland Railways have been running an hourly service on a single-track mainline with only a handful of passing places. This makes it the busiest entirely single-track mainline in the United Kingdom. While home in Northern Ireland this Christmas, I decided to investigate how this feat of timetabling actually works in practice.
The mainline in question is that running north out of Belfast, through Antrim, Ballymena and Coleraine and onwards to Northern Ireland's second city, known to one side as Londonderry and the other as Derry. (There's an entire Wikipedia article on the naming dispute, if you really want to know.) For the avoidance of confusion I will call it Londonderry throughout, simply because that's what's printed on the timetable (rather than any assertion of my own political affiliation).
Londonderry, a city of 90,000 people, is out on a limb - some might say a withered arm - of the NI railway network, with journeys from Belfast taking slightly over two hours. One problem is that Londonderry is just 70 miles from Belfast by road, but 95 miles by rail, thanks largely to the railway having to avoid the Sperrin hills of Mid-Ulster by heading first for Ballymena and Coleraine and then hugging the north coast.
Moreover, the rail network in NI suffered severe cuts in the 1950s, and for many years the whole network was run down, with just a basic service provided. While the entire line from Belfast to Ballymena, some 33 miles, was once double-track, now just five miles of double track remain at the Belfast end where the line is shared with trains to and from Larne, with the rest of the line reduced to a single track, with loops for trains to pass each other.
But the 1990s and 2000s saw a revival in fortunes, with reopened lines and stations, and a brand-new bridge over the River Lagan in Belfast, all of which contributed to a significant upsurge in use. This was followed in the late 2000s by a complete replacement of the outdated fleet of 1970s slam-door trains with new, comfortable units built by CAF in Spain. Delivered in two batches in 2005 and 2011, the 43 three-car diesel units have revitalised the network. (The closest comparable trains in England would be the three-car Class 185 Desiro units operated by TransPennine Express.)
This much-needed investment was hard to come by, for a number of reasons. For one, the railways in Northern Ireland are still entirely nationalised. But more importantly, the size and usage of the network is so much smaller even than, say, Scotland that even investment in basic track renewals - which are taken completely for granted in Great Britain - have to be fought for with the government in Northern Ireland.
In other words, the fact that NI Railways secured £64 million for upgrades to the track between Ballymena and Londonderry - even after spending £185 million on new trains - represents a very significant investment in transport in NI. The investment will allow speeds on the line to be upgraded, removing some long-standing speed restrictions. The work between Ballymena and Coleraine was completed in 2013, with the line closing for several months, while the work between Coleraine and Londonderry is due to be completed by 2016.
In particular, the speed improvements have already meant that an hourly service can now run between Belfast and Coleraine, a distance of some 60 miles, with only five miles of double track at the Belfast end and six intermediate passing loops (only four of which are in regular use). Indeed, there are enough passing loops to allow a roughly half-hourly service in rush hours in the peak flow direction, with two extra trains into Belfast in the morning and two out again in the evening.
Most impressively, none of the passing loops on the line between Belfast and Londonderry are longer than half a mile: in other words, they all require one or both trains to come to a stand in order for them to pass. While the line between Salisbury and Exeter, with an hourly service, is largely single-track, there is a 10-mile section of double track at Yeovil, and a three-mile stretch at Axminster, giving some margin for error in running an hourly service. Similarly, the Ipswich-Lowestoft line has some double-track sections to help facilitate its hourly service.
So rather than claiming the line to Londonderry as the busiest single-track mainline, you could well argue that it's the maddest; that it's crazy to try and run even an hourly service on a single-track line with no "dynamic loops" - double-track sections which allow trains to pass on the move, rather than forcing one train to come to a stand - let alone to try and run a half-hourly service in the rush hour.
Indeed, most single-track lines in Great Britain are either short branch lines - such as those in Cornwall - or long lines through rural Wales or Scotland, where there might be only four trains a day. Inter-city services on single-track lines are much rarer, and not that much more frequent: even on, say, Perth-Inverness, the service remains irregular, with a train every 90 minutes or so.
Nonetheless, a single-track line to Londonderry has been sufficient until now - the 62 miles between Ballymena and Londonderry were built as single-track and have remained so ever since. And the fact is that, while some upgrades might be feasible if this were England, the NI railway network is so much smaller that even upgrading any significant length of the line to double track would cost far more money than is available. As a result, NIR have become experts at make-do-and-mend.
However, having achieved an hourly service between Belfast and Coleraine with only some track renewals, they now want to extend the hourly service all the way to Londonderry. To do that, they need an extra passing loop. Beyond Coleraine, there is just one passing loop at Castlerock on the 34-mile line run to Londonderry, and that loop is only six miles from Coleraine. Unfortunately, to get a train from Castlerock to Londonderry and back takes about 75 minutes - making it impossible to run an hourly service.
So part of the £64 million will be spent building an extra passing loop at Bellarena, some seven miles closer to Londonderry, which will permit an hourly service to run, at least in theory: it will certainly be tight to keep everything running to time. Part of the justification for the spending is that it entails the removal of the loop at Castlerock, along with the antequated signalling there - this will mean a reduction in running costs for years to come.
For the time being, until the passing loop at Bellarena is completed, the hourly service from Belfast to Coleraine continues every two hours to Londonderry, and in the other hours the train along a short 6-mile branch from Coleraine to the popular seaside resort of Portrush.
To see how it all runs, I took myself on a day trip to Londonderry and Portrush on the Sunday after Christmas. NI Railways do an excellent "Sunday Day Tracker" ticket, where you can go anywhere on the NI Railways network for just £7 - a fantastic value ticket even by comparison to some of the excellent Day Rangers in England, and even if it were twice the price it would be a bargain. A shame it's only available on Sundays!
I caught the 11:20 service from Belfast Central to Londonderry. About five miles north of Belfast, we diverged from the line to Larne at Bleach Green Junction; just as we did, we passed a train coming the other way, just before we entered the single line towards Antrim. Half an hour after crossing that train, we arrived in Ballymena, where the next hourly service was waiting to pass us. We proceeded to Ballymoney and waited for five minutes for the next train to pass us.
It was clear at this point where the timetable had been fudged ever so slightly: Ballymena and Ballymoney are only about 24 minutes apart, even with a call at the intermediate station of Cullybackey. By adding a few minutes at either end, the timetablers created a repeating hourly pattern, where the line was occupied one way for each half of the hour. This also, helpfully, provides a little bit of slack to minimise the knock-on effect of delays. It certainly seemed to function very smoothly for my journeys north and south: the train north was on time all the way, and the train south was all of a minute late back into Belfast.
The Cambrian line, connecting Shrewsbury in England to Aberystwyth on the west coast of Wales, has long had an aspiration for an hourly service, having suffered for years with a two-hourly service to one of the most important tourist regions in Wales. The infrastructure is now in place for trains to run every hour, with an extra passing loop at Dovey Junction and a dynamic 2-mile double-track section at Welshpool.
Once the rolling stock becomes available it is hoped to have an hourly service at least for the morning and evening rush hour from May 2015. But they could do well to learn from NI Railways in how to run and manage a long single-track line: even the Belfast-Coleraine section proves it's possible to run a reliable hourly service.
What's more, though, is that the line between Coleraine and Londonderry is easily one of the most stunning railway lines in the whole of the British Isles. Upon departing Coleraine, you hug the west bank of the River Bann, which on Sunday was like a millpond, beautifully calm. After gradually edging away from the Bann, we arrive in Castlerock, and then head into a 600-metre long tunnel.
At the other end, you emerge for all of 100 metres into daylight, greeted on the north side by the most stunning rough seas and rocky shores of the north Atlantic coast. And after another 300-metre-long tunnel, you come to Downhill Strand, one of the longest and most stunning beaches in Northern Ireland. With the rough waves still lapping onto the shore, the view is easily a rival to Dawlish (if somewhat shorter) and certainly one of the best in the UK.
Further west, as the north shore becomes less exposed and turns into Lough Foyle, there are thousands of wading birds to be seen. In the background, you can see across the estuary to Malin Head in County Donegal, which, in spite of being the northernmost part of the island of Ireland, is in the Republic of Ireland - and indeed, such is mobile phone coverage in that area that my phone briefly picked up a signal from across the border!
It's easily been a decade since I was on the line to Londonderry, and I'd honestly forgotten quite how stunningly beautiful the line is. Michael Palin went as far to describe the Coleraine-Londonderry line as "one of the most beautiful rail journeys in the world". I look forward to the improved service making it possible for even more people to see the wonderful scenery on this busiest (and maddest) single-track railway line.
Monday 29 December 2014
Saturday 27 December 2014
Overrunning Engineering Works: A Perfect Storm?
Three words that inevitably strike fear into any rail passenger's heart: "overrunning engineering works". This Christmas, as with every year, Network Rail used the two-day Christmas shutdown to perform essential maintenance and upgrade work on the British railway network. Unfortunately, it didn't all go to plan: the work at Kings Cross station in London has overrun, and on Saturday 27th December there were no trains to and from Kings Cross. This has left passengers between London and Scotland without any direct trains all day.
The Office of Rail Regulation has announced a review into the major disruption to passengers caused by the overrunning engineering work, and not just that at Kings Cross: work at Paddington also overran, although the station was reopened by 2pm on Saturday. Let me try and pre-empt the review, and offer some insight into what happened and why.
First of all, what happened at Kings Cross? There were several sites of engineering work between Kings Cross and Alexandra Palace, just five miles outside London on the East Coast Main Line (ECML). The ECML is undergoing some upgrade works to cope with the extra Thameslink trains that will run on the line from 2018. One of those sites was at Holloway South Junction, between Kings Cross and Finsbury Park, where the overhead electric wires were being renewed; unfortunately it seems that this work has overrun.
How on earth can this have happened? Minor overruns of an hour or two are (unfortunately) not particularly uncommon, but the disruption is usually limited. In this case it's clear that something has gone badly wrong, with the work running nearly 24 hours late. The overall package of works was planned from Christmas Day to Sunday 28th, with just one track into and out of Kings Cross on Saturday and Sunday, and a limited service running all weekend. Unfortunately, not even that one track was available on Saturday.
Whose fault is it? Ultimately, the responsibility for engineering works lies with Network Rail, who own and maintain all the tracks: however, much of the actual work is done by engineering firms working as subcontractors. It may well simply be that the failure of one piece of equipment has made it impossible to complete the works in time; hopefully that detail will come out in the ORR report.
However, Network Rail (and its subcontractors) are largely invisible to the travelling public: they don't run any trains, and they only operate a handful of stations (including Kings Cross). Instead, most of the blame gets heaped on the train operators - in this case, East Coast and Great Northern, along with the smaller operators Grand Central and Hull Trains.
The operators are really in an impossible situation. On the one hand, they've got thousands of angry passengers who can't get where they want to go, and at this time of year they get accused of "ruining Christmas". On the other hand, they're dependent on Network Rail to provide the tracks they need to run on, and they get told the night before that they can't.
As a result, they have had to scramble to provide any semblance of a service. The first problem was that, while these things are usually planned the night before, there were very few staff in on Boxing Day to do any of the planning. So the service was cobbled together overnight: with Kings Cross shut, East Coast elected to (try and) run a half-hourly service as far south as Finsbury Park, where passengers could change for the Victoria Line for services into London: a perfectly reasonable plan that has been used many times before during planned engineering works on Sundays.
The second problem was a lack of platform capacity. There are 12 platforms at Kings Cross (although only six of those would have been open today). At Finsbury Park, however, there are just two platforms that can be used to turn trains from the north: trains arrive in platform 4, and can either depart from platform 4, or shunt empty to platform 5 and depart from there. With everything running smoothly, this can just about sustain a half-hourly service.
But did it run smoothly? Not a chance. Huge queues started to build up at Finsbury Park from mid-morning, as all passengers who would have travelled out of Kings Cross were advised to head to Finsbury Park. At least twice the station had to be shut due to overcrowding, and as a result there literally wasn't enough room to let people off the trains: as a result a queue of southbound trains built up, with some arriving at Finsbury Park nearly three hours late. This meant that trains heading back north were also delayed, with just five long-distance trains managing to leave Finsbury Park between start of service (at about 10am) and 3pm. During the afternoon the service started to recover, but thousands of journeys were disrupted across the day.
Lots of people are asking: who on earth thought that Finsbury Park was an acceptable substitute for Kings Cross? I can sympathise with their concerns, but there really was no other alternative. There are only so many stations on the ECML with the necessary signalling to terminate trains and send them back north again: the next reasonable alternative would have been Stevenage. Finsbury Park at least had the advantage that people could use the Victoria Line to get to and from Kings Cross. And diverting trains off the ECML onto other lines would have been impossible at short notice, as the drivers wouldn't be cleared to drive on other lines (see here for my earlier post on driver "route knowledge").
So why not just divert the passengers to the trains running on other lines north from London? Sadly, the other main route to Scotland, the West Coast Main Line (WCML) from Euston, was also closed for engineering works at Watford Junction, and will remain closed until Monday morning. The wisdom of closing both the WCML and the ECML - and thus leaving neither major route from London to Scotland open - is certainly questionable, and undoubtedly made the bad situation much worse. The only other line out of London to the north is the Midland Main Line (MML) from St Pancras, which doesn't have as much capacity as the WCML or the ECML (its trains are considerably shorter and less frequent).
Indeed, during the August bank holiday weekend there were also simultaneous closures at Watford and Kings Cross, and that weekend there were horrendous crowds at St Pancras as people tried desperately to head north. But then, at least, Kings Cross remained partially open, with a couple of trains in and out each hour, and passengers mainly got where they were trying to go. With Kings Cross completely shut, that left both the WCML and the ECML at severely reduced capacity.
The fact is, however, that the period between Christmas and New Year is pretty much the only week-long period with very few commuters, and thus the only time to avoid disrupting people's journeys to and from work. Many people who only take the train at Christmas (or a few times a year) come away thinking that the railways never work, precisely because of all the engineering work. But when well over a quarter of ticket revenue is from season ticket holders, the railway can't annoy commuters too much. Ultimately, both the Watford and Kings Cross works needed a four-day block, which is only available at Christmas and Easter. (See here for my earlier post on bank holiday engineering works.)
The other overrunning engineering work, at Paddington, has got rather less attention in the press. The four lines between Paddington and Slough were shut for engineering works over Christmas Day and Boxing Day, and were due to reopen on Saturday morning. Unfortunately, all four lines into Paddington remained firmly shut until 2pm, when two of the lines were reopened. Trains from the west, on the Great Western Main Line (GWML) were instead turned at Reading during the morning. It's not exactly clear what caused the disruption.
What makes the Paddington disruption different to that at Kings Cross? For one, the availability of diversionary routes: passengers between Reading and London can use the alternative South West Trains route via Staines and Clapham Junction, while passengers for Heathrow can use the Piccadilly line. Secondly, Paddington was able (finally) to open at about 2pm, and from then a relatively normal service could resume.
One difference, though, was that the Paddington disruption was not advertised in advance. It was clear by about midday on Boxing Day that there would be significant disruption to trains in and out of Kings Cross, and the railway companies managed to get that message out fairly well. (Indeed, the fact that they got the message to travel to Finsbury Park out so well may actually have worked against them in making the overcrowding at Finsbury Park so bad!) The Paddington disruption, in contrast, seemed to come completely by surprise and was all the more disruptive for it.
All in all, the whole debacle caused absolute chaos for passengers trying to travel to and from seeing friends and relatives after Christmas. While commuter journeys and business traffic is much reduced between Christmas and New Year, there's a significant boost in leisure traffic. Thanks to the perfect storm of planned and overrunning engineering works, those passengers travelling between Scotland, the north of England and London have been very badly hit today, and I hope that lessons are learned.
I can't help feeling, though, that we've been here before: back in 2007, three sets of Christmas engineering works overran at the same time, at London Liverpool Street, Rugby and Glasgow Central. Ultimately, that was down to there simply not being enough engineers qualified to deal with overhead electric wires to go round - something all three sites required in abundance. I can't help but feel a slight sense of déjà vu: there are at least five separate engineering worksites this Christmas which require modifications to overhead wires, and I hope that history is not repeating itself.
The thing which worries me most is that Kings Cross is by no means the largest piece of engineering work going on this Christmas. The aforementioned works at Watford Junction are due to be completed by the morning of Monday 29th. Moreover, there are huge projects underway at Reading and London Bridge which are due to reopen on Monday 5th January, which will be the first day back to work for the majority of commuters - if either of those projects run late, then the crowds at Finsbury Park will start to look small by comparison.
Ultimately, though, I would like to pay tribute to all the Network Rail engineers who are out there doing their best to complete the improvement works on time; while most of us enjoyed our Christmas dinners, they were out there working hard to keep our railways running, and I wish them the best of luck in getting all this engineering work completed on time.
The Office of Rail Regulation has announced a review into the major disruption to passengers caused by the overrunning engineering work, and not just that at Kings Cross: work at Paddington also overran, although the station was reopened by 2pm on Saturday. Let me try and pre-empt the review, and offer some insight into what happened and why.
First of all, what happened at Kings Cross? There were several sites of engineering work between Kings Cross and Alexandra Palace, just five miles outside London on the East Coast Main Line (ECML). The ECML is undergoing some upgrade works to cope with the extra Thameslink trains that will run on the line from 2018. One of those sites was at Holloway South Junction, between Kings Cross and Finsbury Park, where the overhead electric wires were being renewed; unfortunately it seems that this work has overrun.
How on earth can this have happened? Minor overruns of an hour or two are (unfortunately) not particularly uncommon, but the disruption is usually limited. In this case it's clear that something has gone badly wrong, with the work running nearly 24 hours late. The overall package of works was planned from Christmas Day to Sunday 28th, with just one track into and out of Kings Cross on Saturday and Sunday, and a limited service running all weekend. Unfortunately, not even that one track was available on Saturday.
Whose fault is it? Ultimately, the responsibility for engineering works lies with Network Rail, who own and maintain all the tracks: however, much of the actual work is done by engineering firms working as subcontractors. It may well simply be that the failure of one piece of equipment has made it impossible to complete the works in time; hopefully that detail will come out in the ORR report.
However, Network Rail (and its subcontractors) are largely invisible to the travelling public: they don't run any trains, and they only operate a handful of stations (including Kings Cross). Instead, most of the blame gets heaped on the train operators - in this case, East Coast and Great Northern, along with the smaller operators Grand Central and Hull Trains.
The operators are really in an impossible situation. On the one hand, they've got thousands of angry passengers who can't get where they want to go, and at this time of year they get accused of "ruining Christmas". On the other hand, they're dependent on Network Rail to provide the tracks they need to run on, and they get told the night before that they can't.
As a result, they have had to scramble to provide any semblance of a service. The first problem was that, while these things are usually planned the night before, there were very few staff in on Boxing Day to do any of the planning. So the service was cobbled together overnight: with Kings Cross shut, East Coast elected to (try and) run a half-hourly service as far south as Finsbury Park, where passengers could change for the Victoria Line for services into London: a perfectly reasonable plan that has been used many times before during planned engineering works on Sundays.
The second problem was a lack of platform capacity. There are 12 platforms at Kings Cross (although only six of those would have been open today). At Finsbury Park, however, there are just two platforms that can be used to turn trains from the north: trains arrive in platform 4, and can either depart from platform 4, or shunt empty to platform 5 and depart from there. With everything running smoothly, this can just about sustain a half-hourly service.
But did it run smoothly? Not a chance. Huge queues started to build up at Finsbury Park from mid-morning, as all passengers who would have travelled out of Kings Cross were advised to head to Finsbury Park. At least twice the station had to be shut due to overcrowding, and as a result there literally wasn't enough room to let people off the trains: as a result a queue of southbound trains built up, with some arriving at Finsbury Park nearly three hours late. This meant that trains heading back north were also delayed, with just five long-distance trains managing to leave Finsbury Park between start of service (at about 10am) and 3pm. During the afternoon the service started to recover, but thousands of journeys were disrupted across the day.
Lots of people are asking: who on earth thought that Finsbury Park was an acceptable substitute for Kings Cross? I can sympathise with their concerns, but there really was no other alternative. There are only so many stations on the ECML with the necessary signalling to terminate trains and send them back north again: the next reasonable alternative would have been Stevenage. Finsbury Park at least had the advantage that people could use the Victoria Line to get to and from Kings Cross. And diverting trains off the ECML onto other lines would have been impossible at short notice, as the drivers wouldn't be cleared to drive on other lines (see here for my earlier post on driver "route knowledge").
So why not just divert the passengers to the trains running on other lines north from London? Sadly, the other main route to Scotland, the West Coast Main Line (WCML) from Euston, was also closed for engineering works at Watford Junction, and will remain closed until Monday morning. The wisdom of closing both the WCML and the ECML - and thus leaving neither major route from London to Scotland open - is certainly questionable, and undoubtedly made the bad situation much worse. The only other line out of London to the north is the Midland Main Line (MML) from St Pancras, which doesn't have as much capacity as the WCML or the ECML (its trains are considerably shorter and less frequent).
Indeed, during the August bank holiday weekend there were also simultaneous closures at Watford and Kings Cross, and that weekend there were horrendous crowds at St Pancras as people tried desperately to head north. But then, at least, Kings Cross remained partially open, with a couple of trains in and out each hour, and passengers mainly got where they were trying to go. With Kings Cross completely shut, that left both the WCML and the ECML at severely reduced capacity.
The fact is, however, that the period between Christmas and New Year is pretty much the only week-long period with very few commuters, and thus the only time to avoid disrupting people's journeys to and from work. Many people who only take the train at Christmas (or a few times a year) come away thinking that the railways never work, precisely because of all the engineering work. But when well over a quarter of ticket revenue is from season ticket holders, the railway can't annoy commuters too much. Ultimately, both the Watford and Kings Cross works needed a four-day block, which is only available at Christmas and Easter. (See here for my earlier post on bank holiday engineering works.)
The other overrunning engineering work, at Paddington, has got rather less attention in the press. The four lines between Paddington and Slough were shut for engineering works over Christmas Day and Boxing Day, and were due to reopen on Saturday morning. Unfortunately, all four lines into Paddington remained firmly shut until 2pm, when two of the lines were reopened. Trains from the west, on the Great Western Main Line (GWML) were instead turned at Reading during the morning. It's not exactly clear what caused the disruption.
What makes the Paddington disruption different to that at Kings Cross? For one, the availability of diversionary routes: passengers between Reading and London can use the alternative South West Trains route via Staines and Clapham Junction, while passengers for Heathrow can use the Piccadilly line. Secondly, Paddington was able (finally) to open at about 2pm, and from then a relatively normal service could resume.
One difference, though, was that the Paddington disruption was not advertised in advance. It was clear by about midday on Boxing Day that there would be significant disruption to trains in and out of Kings Cross, and the railway companies managed to get that message out fairly well. (Indeed, the fact that they got the message to travel to Finsbury Park out so well may actually have worked against them in making the overcrowding at Finsbury Park so bad!) The Paddington disruption, in contrast, seemed to come completely by surprise and was all the more disruptive for it.
All in all, the whole debacle caused absolute chaos for passengers trying to travel to and from seeing friends and relatives after Christmas. While commuter journeys and business traffic is much reduced between Christmas and New Year, there's a significant boost in leisure traffic. Thanks to the perfect storm of planned and overrunning engineering works, those passengers travelling between Scotland, the north of England and London have been very badly hit today, and I hope that lessons are learned.
I can't help feeling, though, that we've been here before: back in 2007, three sets of Christmas engineering works overran at the same time, at London Liverpool Street, Rugby and Glasgow Central. Ultimately, that was down to there simply not being enough engineers qualified to deal with overhead electric wires to go round - something all three sites required in abundance. I can't help but feel a slight sense of déjà vu: there are at least five separate engineering worksites this Christmas which require modifications to overhead wires, and I hope that history is not repeating itself.
The thing which worries me most is that Kings Cross is by no means the largest piece of engineering work going on this Christmas. The aforementioned works at Watford Junction are due to be completed by the morning of Monday 29th. Moreover, there are huge projects underway at Reading and London Bridge which are due to reopen on Monday 5th January, which will be the first day back to work for the majority of commuters - if either of those projects run late, then the crowds at Finsbury Park will start to look small by comparison.
Ultimately, though, I would like to pay tribute to all the Network Rail engineers who are out there doing their best to complete the improvement works on time; while most of us enjoyed our Christmas dinners, they were out there working hard to keep our railways running, and I wish them the best of luck in getting all this engineering work completed on time.
Tuesday 16 September 2014
Should We Renationalise the British Railways? That's Not the Right Question
Let me start with a surprising statement: the Department for Transport (DfT) now exerts far more control on the British railways than they ever have before. And yet, the railways are more "privatised" than they have been since the start of the First World War. Welcome to the confusing, contradictory world of Britain's rail industry.
British Rail was privatised in 1994, and ever since there have been calls to renationalise it. But the biggest change wasn't that the railway network was privatised; the biggest change was that it was fragmented, broken down into literally dozens of separate companies all ostensibly trying to work together to provide a unified National Rail network, all the while each trying to extract their own little margin of profit.
What this means is there isn't a "British Rail PLC" that can simply be renationalised, but rather a whole multitude of companies which would need to be recombined were we to try and renationalise the railways.
What are these companies? In a nutshell, the privatised railway can be explained as follows: one company owns the tracks, three more companies own the trains, and about 20 other companies run the passenger services. In theory, they all work together to move passengers around, but are also in competition with each other...
How did we end up with this mess? To answer that we must turn to politics. In 1992, the Conservative Party included in their election manifesto that they'd privatise the railways if they won the election. To the surprise of everyone, they won, and then had to make good on that election promise. In 1993, the blueprint was laid out for privatisation: although ostensibly designed to generate competition between the different sectors, the cynic in me wants to believe that the government knew they'd probably lose the next election (they did), and thus set about privatising the railway in a way that couldn't ever be undone. (Nonetheless, I am reminded of the aphorism: "never assume malice when stupidity will suffice".)
The tracks, points, signals and stations were sold off to Railtrack. Railtrack were a profitable company, listed on the London Stock Exchange and part of the FTSE 100 index. But after a litany of accidents, including Hatfield and Potters Bar, Railtrack's assets and operations were transferred to the state-controlled not-for-profit company Network Rail in 2002.
Meanwhile, the trains were sold off to three rolling-stock holding companies (ROSCOs): Angel, Eversholt and Porterbrook. Between them, these three companies own practically all the trains, locomotives and carriages used on the British railway network, being leased back to the companies that operate them. In other words, all the trains that used to belong to British Rail were sold off, and about 11% of the ticket price you pay goes to leasing them back from the ROSCOs! And, unlike Network Rail, the ROSCOs are very definitely private companies and all make a tidy profit.
Most importantly, though, privatisation created 25 train operating companies (TOCs): each part of the country was carved off into a separate franchise, and each was awarded separately to be run by a private company. Each franchise controls the drivers, guards and other operating staff, and is responsible for running the day-to-day service with rolling stock leased from the ROSCOs. Minimum numbers of services per day are specified (usually quite tightly) in the franchise agreement, ensuring that passengers are provided with the service they expect.
One of the aims of privatisation in this form was competition: different companies should "compete" for passengers, driving down prices while improving quality. But that doesn't really work on a railway network with limited capacity, and with a complicated interwoven timetable. In many cases there's more than one company on each line - for example, both Virgin Trains and London Midland operate services on the West Coast Main Line out of London Euston to Watford, Milton Keynes, Rugby, Birmingham and beyond - but there are only a limited number of trains that can be run.
So how do they decide who gets priority? The short answer is that Network Rail does. Each TOC bids for "paths", much like air-traffic control slots, to run a train at a particular time, and then Network Rail decides which paths can go to which operators, and effectively the actual timetable is written, as a whole, by Network Rail. In cases of dispute, things can get referred to the Office of Rail Regulation; sometimes the dispute is resolved by the DfT specifying the exact timetable. This means that the DfT can specify exactly how much competition they want (often none at all).
Perhaps the most laughable way in which this fragmentation manifests itself is when trains inevitably get delayed. If London Midland say to Virgin, "Oi! You delayed our train!", it's not really good enough if Virgin just mumble "Sorry...". No, this is a commercial railway where London Midland must be compensated for the delay caused by Virgin. As a result, Network Rail employ hundreds of train delay attribution clerks, whose entire job is to monitor delays to trains and attribute every minute of delay to a specific cause, and thus determine who pays the compensation. (Operators get compensated when a train is delayed by just 3 minutes; sadly they have to be delayed by 30 minutes for them to pass such compensation on to the passengers.)
That basic structure has been with us now for 20 years, since privatisation took effect on April 1st 1994. There are a lot more details - such as all the subcontractors employed to clean the trains, run the catering services, upgrade the tracks, design the signalling systems - and I'm ignoring freight trains and open-access operators, but you get the picture: the railways no longer function as one, but rather as a myriad of separate companies.
In a small number of cases, that's led to a dramatic improvement in services, particularly with CrossCountry Trains, the long-distance services such as Bournemouth-Manchester and Plymouth-Edinburgh which avoid London and instead pass through Birmingham New Street. Under British Rail, CrossCountry was always the Cinderella of the network, passed from pillar to post with no investment to speak of for decades; with CrossCountry as a separate franchise, Virgin were able to dramatically improve the service. Although, it is now a victim of its own success and the trains are too short, and no-one wants to subsidise lengthening the trains...
And there lies the rub: subsidy. Ever since the then-Transport Secretary Barbara Castle decided in 1968 that some lines could remain open even though they would require permanent subsidy from the Treasury to operate them, all political parties have accepted the principle that the railways should be subsidised by the government. Even as privatisation was enacted, it was accepted that the franchises would, in many cases, require government subsidy to operate; conversely, some of the more lucrative franchises (principally long-distance inter-city operators like Virgin and GNER/East Coast) were required to pay premiums back to the Treasury. This ensured that the principle of cross-subsidisation - where lucrative services propped up loss-making ones - continued as it had done for years.
Of course, when it was all one British Rail, there was no profit to be made; every penny of subsidy went towards improving punctuality and upgrading services. But with the railway fragmented into lots of pieces, allocating subsidy is all of a sudden a trickier job. Previously the job of dishing out money to individual regions or services was the job of the British Railways Board, which operated at arms' length from the DfT, much like today's Network Rail. But without the BR Board, that function is instead fulfilled by the Department for Transport itself.
In other words, the DfT is now the one deciding that, for example, Manchester Piccadilly gets two extra platforms and freight trains to Southampton should be electrified, and that reopening the line between Lewes and Uckfield will have to wait. Network Rail can have their own say on small-scale track improvements, but for anything large-scale or anything involving a significant timetable change, it's the DfT's decision. Even under BR, the DfT didn't have this much control in the day-to-day running of the railway.
Yet, conversely, with dozens of companies involved in running the railways, all trying to extract a profit, the railway is nearly as privatised as it was in the days of Stephenson and Brunel. And while privatisation usually makes things more efficient and reduces costs, in this case the fragmentation has meant that costs spiralled massively, to guarantee each of the companies involved a share of the profit.
Where does this profit come from? Government subsidy (at least in part). Whereas subsidy to British Rail only rose above £1 billion per annum in 1991 (and even that was partly due to the recession at the time), in 2006-07 the total subsidy to Network Rail and the TOCs stood at a whopping £6.3 billion. To be fair, that's come back down to about £4 billion per annum as at 2012. (More figures here.) Nonetheless, what that means is that subsidy to the railways today is about three or four times what it was when it was nationalised; even adjusting for inflation, subsidy has at least doubled in real terms since privatisation.
The reasons for that are not at all clear, and nor is the solution. While some of that subsidy is due to the fragmentation of the industry, some of it may be due to the boom in passengers: passenger numbers troughed at about 700 million in 1995, but have since climbed to over 1.4 billion in 2012. As a result, the railways are carrying more passengers per year than it has since before the Second World War, and moving more people costs more money. Some of the increase in subsidy is also down to long-overdue maintenance; British Rail postponed a lot of maintenance (often even simple things like replacing worn-out track), and Network Rail is having to work overtime to clear the backlog.
It's also important to remember that, in spite (or perhaps in some cases because) of the fragmentation, the railway network has improved immeasurably in the last 20 years. The West Coast Main Line now gets 125mph trains every three minutes, and it takes less than an hour to get from Coventry to London (though the upgrade did cost £9 billion). And as my recent posts have shown, we're currently in the throes of one of the biggest programmes of upgrades to the railway network in decades, with Crossrail, the Thameslink Programme, Great Western electrification, the Northern Hub and the Electric Spine. Those upgrades don't come cheap.
On September 1st 2014, Network Rail was reclassified as a public sector body, meaning that its debt (some £34 billion) counted towards the national debt for the first time since privatisation. That debt is an inevitable side effect of wanting investment now but wanting to pay later; railway investment is a pretty safe bet, because there will always be lots of passengers to move, and if you can move them more efficiently then so much the better. (Incidentally, one of the few reasons the debt was kept off the public sector books was that Gordon Brown didn't want to breach his rule that the national debt should not exceed 40% of GDP, though that went out the window in the financial crash of 2008.)
In practice, this means very little else; the DfT will continue to exert the same control over Network Rail as they have done for years, and Network Rail will continue to ask for more money for improvements. It will probably mean that the salaries of the big bosses at Network Rail will have to fall in line with public sector limits (current chief executive Mark Carne receives an annual salary of £675,000), but the day-to-day running of the railway will change very little.
Does it perhaps signify a change in ethos at the Department for Transport, a desire to move towards a renationalised railway? I don't think so, or at least not under the current government. Indeed, the current government is trying to get East Coast, which was temporarily renationalised when the franchise held by National Express went bust, back into the private sector by the next election.
The Labour Party, however, have suggested that a state not-for-profit firm (such as that which currently runs East Coast) should be allowed to bid for franchises when they come up for renewal. Personally I think that's just making a dog's breakfast of a railway network even worse by trying to partially renationalise bits by the back door: it's not clear that partial renationalisation is actually better, since then you might have not-for-profit companies trying to compete with the likes of Virgin Trains, and that isn't likely to end well (for anyone).
Ultimately, no government since John Major's has had the guts to take any fundamental policy decisions with respect to the structure of the railway network; they've tinkered at the edges, but the railway is still basically that given to us in 1994 at the time of privatisation. A full renationalisation might bring costs down and thus enable more investment in the infrastructure for the same level of subsidy. But even British Rail struggled to find the right structure for the railways: they tried organising it by region, but in the 1980s moved to "sectorisation", where InterCity, Network SouthEast and Regional Railways were all subordinate only to the top management, without regions to get in the way.
Ever present in British Rail, though, was the knowledge that the tracks cannot be maintained without knowing what trains have run over them, and trains cannot be maintained without knowing where they've been. Perhaps the oddest thing about privatisation is that it has separated track from train, with virtually no "vertical integration" of tracks and trains for nearly 20 years. In recognition of that, South West Trains are experimenting with a "deep alliance" with Network Rail's Wessex Route: since 2012 the track and trains on the lines out of Waterloo have been brought into one management structure, for the first time since the days of British Rail.
But that won't work everywhere: even within the Wessex Route there are other trains run by CrossCountry, Southern and First Great Western, as well as a multitude of freight trains serving the port of Southampton. Try and make a vertically integrated railway around Birmingham or Manchester and you're in for a world of trouble, such is the number of different operators in the area. Indeed, the success of CrossCountry is precisely because there isn't vertical integration. Sadly, there isn't an easy one-size-fits-all solution, as British Rail found.
Let me be clear: on this occasion I don't want to try and argue either for or against renationalisation. My point is that renationalisation would require reintegration of the myriad companies that were created at privatisation, and that would bring about a complete restructuring of the railway. In other words, renationalisation is not something to be undertaken without a lot of thought put into the structure of any renationalised railway and - more importantly - how we get there.
Putting the railway network back together could be done: it would probably require the state buying out the train operating franchises (or letting them expire), getting the trains back into public ownership, and instituting a management structure more like British Rail. But that kind of shake-up would require more political will than I think any government is likely to want to expend on railways: unlike privatisation, which was achieved within a single parliament by a partisan government, reintegration and renationalisation might require a commitment over one or more decades to see it through.
For all its faults, the privatised railway has presided over one of the biggest booms in passenger use in history. After 20 years of getting used to a whole new structure, the rail industry has found its feet again, and a huge programme of upgrades, new lines and electrification is underway, with £30 billion being spent over the next five years or so to dramatically improve the railways in a way not seen for generations. Would that investment have come under British Rail? Possibly. But when the current structure has given rise to that much investment, it's hard to argue that now is the time for a fundamental shake-up of the railway industry.
There is undoubtedly scope to improve the organisation of the railways, but I think it's best achieved by the typical chant of the Englishman:
British Rail was privatised in 1994, and ever since there have been calls to renationalise it. But the biggest change wasn't that the railway network was privatised; the biggest change was that it was fragmented, broken down into literally dozens of separate companies all ostensibly trying to work together to provide a unified National Rail network, all the while each trying to extract their own little margin of profit.
What this means is there isn't a "British Rail PLC" that can simply be renationalised, but rather a whole multitude of companies which would need to be recombined were we to try and renationalise the railways.
What are these companies? In a nutshell, the privatised railway can be explained as follows: one company owns the tracks, three more companies own the trains, and about 20 other companies run the passenger services. In theory, they all work together to move passengers around, but are also in competition with each other...
How did we end up with this mess? To answer that we must turn to politics. In 1992, the Conservative Party included in their election manifesto that they'd privatise the railways if they won the election. To the surprise of everyone, they won, and then had to make good on that election promise. In 1993, the blueprint was laid out for privatisation: although ostensibly designed to generate competition between the different sectors, the cynic in me wants to believe that the government knew they'd probably lose the next election (they did), and thus set about privatising the railway in a way that couldn't ever be undone. (Nonetheless, I am reminded of the aphorism: "never assume malice when stupidity will suffice".)
The tracks, points, signals and stations were sold off to Railtrack. Railtrack were a profitable company, listed on the London Stock Exchange and part of the FTSE 100 index. But after a litany of accidents, including Hatfield and Potters Bar, Railtrack's assets and operations were transferred to the state-controlled not-for-profit company Network Rail in 2002.
Meanwhile, the trains were sold off to three rolling-stock holding companies (ROSCOs): Angel, Eversholt and Porterbrook. Between them, these three companies own practically all the trains, locomotives and carriages used on the British railway network, being leased back to the companies that operate them. In other words, all the trains that used to belong to British Rail were sold off, and about 11% of the ticket price you pay goes to leasing them back from the ROSCOs! And, unlike Network Rail, the ROSCOs are very definitely private companies and all make a tidy profit.
Most importantly, though, privatisation created 25 train operating companies (TOCs): each part of the country was carved off into a separate franchise, and each was awarded separately to be run by a private company. Each franchise controls the drivers, guards and other operating staff, and is responsible for running the day-to-day service with rolling stock leased from the ROSCOs. Minimum numbers of services per day are specified (usually quite tightly) in the franchise agreement, ensuring that passengers are provided with the service they expect.
One of the aims of privatisation in this form was competition: different companies should "compete" for passengers, driving down prices while improving quality. But that doesn't really work on a railway network with limited capacity, and with a complicated interwoven timetable. In many cases there's more than one company on each line - for example, both Virgin Trains and London Midland operate services on the West Coast Main Line out of London Euston to Watford, Milton Keynes, Rugby, Birmingham and beyond - but there are only a limited number of trains that can be run.
So how do they decide who gets priority? The short answer is that Network Rail does. Each TOC bids for "paths", much like air-traffic control slots, to run a train at a particular time, and then Network Rail decides which paths can go to which operators, and effectively the actual timetable is written, as a whole, by Network Rail. In cases of dispute, things can get referred to the Office of Rail Regulation; sometimes the dispute is resolved by the DfT specifying the exact timetable. This means that the DfT can specify exactly how much competition they want (often none at all).
Perhaps the most laughable way in which this fragmentation manifests itself is when trains inevitably get delayed. If London Midland say to Virgin, "Oi! You delayed our train!", it's not really good enough if Virgin just mumble "Sorry...". No, this is a commercial railway where London Midland must be compensated for the delay caused by Virgin. As a result, Network Rail employ hundreds of train delay attribution clerks, whose entire job is to monitor delays to trains and attribute every minute of delay to a specific cause, and thus determine who pays the compensation. (Operators get compensated when a train is delayed by just 3 minutes; sadly they have to be delayed by 30 minutes for them to pass such compensation on to the passengers.)
That basic structure has been with us now for 20 years, since privatisation took effect on April 1st 1994. There are a lot more details - such as all the subcontractors employed to clean the trains, run the catering services, upgrade the tracks, design the signalling systems - and I'm ignoring freight trains and open-access operators, but you get the picture: the railways no longer function as one, but rather as a myriad of separate companies.
In a small number of cases, that's led to a dramatic improvement in services, particularly with CrossCountry Trains, the long-distance services such as Bournemouth-Manchester and Plymouth-Edinburgh which avoid London and instead pass through Birmingham New Street. Under British Rail, CrossCountry was always the Cinderella of the network, passed from pillar to post with no investment to speak of for decades; with CrossCountry as a separate franchise, Virgin were able to dramatically improve the service. Although, it is now a victim of its own success and the trains are too short, and no-one wants to subsidise lengthening the trains...
And there lies the rub: subsidy. Ever since the then-Transport Secretary Barbara Castle decided in 1968 that some lines could remain open even though they would require permanent subsidy from the Treasury to operate them, all political parties have accepted the principle that the railways should be subsidised by the government. Even as privatisation was enacted, it was accepted that the franchises would, in many cases, require government subsidy to operate; conversely, some of the more lucrative franchises (principally long-distance inter-city operators like Virgin and GNER/East Coast) were required to pay premiums back to the Treasury. This ensured that the principle of cross-subsidisation - where lucrative services propped up loss-making ones - continued as it had done for years.
Of course, when it was all one British Rail, there was no profit to be made; every penny of subsidy went towards improving punctuality and upgrading services. But with the railway fragmented into lots of pieces, allocating subsidy is all of a sudden a trickier job. Previously the job of dishing out money to individual regions or services was the job of the British Railways Board, which operated at arms' length from the DfT, much like today's Network Rail. But without the BR Board, that function is instead fulfilled by the Department for Transport itself.
In other words, the DfT is now the one deciding that, for example, Manchester Piccadilly gets two extra platforms and freight trains to Southampton should be electrified, and that reopening the line between Lewes and Uckfield will have to wait. Network Rail can have their own say on small-scale track improvements, but for anything large-scale or anything involving a significant timetable change, it's the DfT's decision. Even under BR, the DfT didn't have this much control in the day-to-day running of the railway.
Yet, conversely, with dozens of companies involved in running the railways, all trying to extract a profit, the railway is nearly as privatised as it was in the days of Stephenson and Brunel. And while privatisation usually makes things more efficient and reduces costs, in this case the fragmentation has meant that costs spiralled massively, to guarantee each of the companies involved a share of the profit.
Where does this profit come from? Government subsidy (at least in part). Whereas subsidy to British Rail only rose above £1 billion per annum in 1991 (and even that was partly due to the recession at the time), in 2006-07 the total subsidy to Network Rail and the TOCs stood at a whopping £6.3 billion. To be fair, that's come back down to about £4 billion per annum as at 2012. (More figures here.) Nonetheless, what that means is that subsidy to the railways today is about three or four times what it was when it was nationalised; even adjusting for inflation, subsidy has at least doubled in real terms since privatisation.
The reasons for that are not at all clear, and nor is the solution. While some of that subsidy is due to the fragmentation of the industry, some of it may be due to the boom in passengers: passenger numbers troughed at about 700 million in 1995, but have since climbed to over 1.4 billion in 2012. As a result, the railways are carrying more passengers per year than it has since before the Second World War, and moving more people costs more money. Some of the increase in subsidy is also down to long-overdue maintenance; British Rail postponed a lot of maintenance (often even simple things like replacing worn-out track), and Network Rail is having to work overtime to clear the backlog.
It's also important to remember that, in spite (or perhaps in some cases because) of the fragmentation, the railway network has improved immeasurably in the last 20 years. The West Coast Main Line now gets 125mph trains every three minutes, and it takes less than an hour to get from Coventry to London (though the upgrade did cost £9 billion). And as my recent posts have shown, we're currently in the throes of one of the biggest programmes of upgrades to the railway network in decades, with Crossrail, the Thameslink Programme, Great Western electrification, the Northern Hub and the Electric Spine. Those upgrades don't come cheap.
On September 1st 2014, Network Rail was reclassified as a public sector body, meaning that its debt (some £34 billion) counted towards the national debt for the first time since privatisation. That debt is an inevitable side effect of wanting investment now but wanting to pay later; railway investment is a pretty safe bet, because there will always be lots of passengers to move, and if you can move them more efficiently then so much the better. (Incidentally, one of the few reasons the debt was kept off the public sector books was that Gordon Brown didn't want to breach his rule that the national debt should not exceed 40% of GDP, though that went out the window in the financial crash of 2008.)
In practice, this means very little else; the DfT will continue to exert the same control over Network Rail as they have done for years, and Network Rail will continue to ask for more money for improvements. It will probably mean that the salaries of the big bosses at Network Rail will have to fall in line with public sector limits (current chief executive Mark Carne receives an annual salary of £675,000), but the day-to-day running of the railway will change very little.
Does it perhaps signify a change in ethos at the Department for Transport, a desire to move towards a renationalised railway? I don't think so, or at least not under the current government. Indeed, the current government is trying to get East Coast, which was temporarily renationalised when the franchise held by National Express went bust, back into the private sector by the next election.
The Labour Party, however, have suggested that a state not-for-profit firm (such as that which currently runs East Coast) should be allowed to bid for franchises when they come up for renewal. Personally I think that's just making a dog's breakfast of a railway network even worse by trying to partially renationalise bits by the back door: it's not clear that partial renationalisation is actually better, since then you might have not-for-profit companies trying to compete with the likes of Virgin Trains, and that isn't likely to end well (for anyone).
Ultimately, no government since John Major's has had the guts to take any fundamental policy decisions with respect to the structure of the railway network; they've tinkered at the edges, but the railway is still basically that given to us in 1994 at the time of privatisation. A full renationalisation might bring costs down and thus enable more investment in the infrastructure for the same level of subsidy. But even British Rail struggled to find the right structure for the railways: they tried organising it by region, but in the 1980s moved to "sectorisation", where InterCity, Network SouthEast and Regional Railways were all subordinate only to the top management, without regions to get in the way.
Ever present in British Rail, though, was the knowledge that the tracks cannot be maintained without knowing what trains have run over them, and trains cannot be maintained without knowing where they've been. Perhaps the oddest thing about privatisation is that it has separated track from train, with virtually no "vertical integration" of tracks and trains for nearly 20 years. In recognition of that, South West Trains are experimenting with a "deep alliance" with Network Rail's Wessex Route: since 2012 the track and trains on the lines out of Waterloo have been brought into one management structure, for the first time since the days of British Rail.
But that won't work everywhere: even within the Wessex Route there are other trains run by CrossCountry, Southern and First Great Western, as well as a multitude of freight trains serving the port of Southampton. Try and make a vertically integrated railway around Birmingham or Manchester and you're in for a world of trouble, such is the number of different operators in the area. Indeed, the success of CrossCountry is precisely because there isn't vertical integration. Sadly, there isn't an easy one-size-fits-all solution, as British Rail found.
Let me be clear: on this occasion I don't want to try and argue either for or against renationalisation. My point is that renationalisation would require reintegration of the myriad companies that were created at privatisation, and that would bring about a complete restructuring of the railway. In other words, renationalisation is not something to be undertaken without a lot of thought put into the structure of any renationalised railway and - more importantly - how we get there.
Putting the railway network back together could be done: it would probably require the state buying out the train operating franchises (or letting them expire), getting the trains back into public ownership, and instituting a management structure more like British Rail. But that kind of shake-up would require more political will than I think any government is likely to want to expend on railways: unlike privatisation, which was achieved within a single parliament by a partisan government, reintegration and renationalisation might require a commitment over one or more decades to see it through.
For all its faults, the privatised railway has presided over one of the biggest booms in passenger use in history. After 20 years of getting used to a whole new structure, the rail industry has found its feet again, and a huge programme of upgrades, new lines and electrification is underway, with £30 billion being spent over the next five years or so to dramatically improve the railways in a way not seen for generations. Would that investment have come under British Rail? Possibly. But when the current structure has given rise to that much investment, it's hard to argue that now is the time for a fundamental shake-up of the railway industry.
There is undoubtedly scope to improve the organisation of the railways, but I think it's best achieved by the typical chant of the Englishman:
"What do we want? Gradual change! When do we want it? In due course!"Whatever happens, though, I sincerely hope that it's not driven by blind ideology with no regard for the structure of the industry. Full-scale renationalisation rammed through without a plan for how to reintegrate the railways would be no better than John Major's privatisation. And until someone comes up with a detailed plan for how to renationalise the railways, the question of whether or not we should renationalise them is impossible to answer.
Thursday 11 September 2014
What is... the Electric Spine? (Or, Why Freight Trains Matter to Everyone)
The "Electric Spine" is a plan to electrify two key rail arteries from the port of Southampton to the north of England (via Nuneaton and Sheffield), creating an electrified trunk route avoiding London, principally for use by freight trains. The plan is, as yet, still not finalised; but it promises to have a huge (yet also subtle) impact across the country. So while this blog usually focusses on passenger trains, for this post I'd like to delve into the world of freight trains, and explain why we're spending over a billion pounds so that freight trains can run a bit faster...
Once upon a time, almost all freight traffic in Britain was moved by rail. While the vast majority of it is now hauled by lorries instead, for some traffic (e.g. coal) rail is still the "right" way to move it around the country. This is especially true of long-distance flows: for example, for taking containers from Southampton to Scotland, or cars from Merseyside to Dagenham Dock, rail has the advantage of bulk and speed that road just can't match. Indeed, container traffic has seen a marked shift from road to rail in recent years, and the challenge for the rail network is how to accommodate it.
Unlike passenger trains, which can be broken down into discrete services, even the destinations of freight trains can vary from day to day. Passenger trains between London and Birmingham are completely segregated from, say, passenger trains between London and Dover; in that sense, the electrification of the passenger rail network can be - and is - broken down into discrete chunks, one main line at a time. Freight trains, though, are much less frequent and tend to run to a wide variety of destinations, over a variety of different routes according to where there's capacity.
By its very nature, then, the network used by freight trains is huge and sprawling: indeed, it's quite hard to find a significant part of the network that isn't used by freight trains at all. As a result, while some freight trains running on key main lines can be hauled by electric locomotives, the vast majority of freight trains remain hauled by diesel engines, even when some of the route has electric wires, because having to stop and change engine takes too much time. And that's unlikely to change until a significant portion of the freight network is electrified.
So what is driving plans to try and do just that? The key advantage of electric freight trains over diesel ones is acceleration. Freight trains are mostly limited to 60mph, and while some container trains can manage 75mph, electric haulage can't really improve that. What it can do, though, is dramatically improve acceleration, so that when a freight train has to run between two passenger trains, it doesn't need as large a gap. Quicker acceleration, more capacity. Crucially, though, not just capacity for freight trains but also for more passenger trains.
This is especially true on mixed-traffic lines, where passenger and freight trains have to share the same tracks. For example, while the south end of the WCML has four tracks, north of Preston it's two tracks all the way to the outskirts of Glasgow. In particular, over Shap in the Lake District, where the WCML runs roughly parallel to the M6, the two-track line threads its way between the hills with gradients as steep as 1 in 75. For a 4,000-tonne freight train, 1 in 75 is a big problem! However, while diesel trains are limited by how big an engine they have and how much fuel they can carry, electric trains are basically limited only by how much current they can draw.
The difference between electric and diesel freight trains over Shap can be summed up as follows: from Preston to Carlisle (about 90 miles), a freight train hauled by an electric locomotive generally won't have to stop to be overtaken by faster passenger trains, while a diesel train almost certainly will. Having to have the freight train slow down, pull into a loop, wait to be overtaken, and then start up again costs a lot of time and capacity; converting diesel freight trains to electric over Shap would significantly increase capacity on this very mixed-traffic line.
The "Electric Spine" is the first major project in trying to convert freight trains to electric haulage: the broad intention is that almost all long-distance container trains to and from the port of Southampton will be able to run with electric traction. At this point, though, while the project is committed by the government, it's still being developed by Network Rail, and is unlikely to be fully complete before 2025. Indeed, more than any of the other "big projects" I've discussed recently, the Electric Spine poses the biggest unknowns: there are things in the plan that have never been done before.
Let's return to electrification in general (see my earlier post if you need a refresher). There have been many different voltages and both overhead wires and various forms of third rail in use for electric trains over the years, but two systems remain in widespread use in the UK: 750V DC third rail, mainly south of London, and 25kV AC overhead wires, mainly north of London. Because most passenger services are self-contained, most electric trains only need one kind of electric equipment, and for the small number of services (mainly Thameslink and London Overground) which use both, the trains can be fitted with both systems.
Both systems have advantages and disadvantages: third rail systems are better suited to dense suburban networks, while overhead wires are better suited to long-distance traffic. That said, most would agree that overhead wires are better than third rail - and if the network south of London were being electrified today there is no question that it would be done with overhead wires. The principal problem with third rail is that, because the rail is so close to the ground, the voltage can't really be made higher than 750V. (The National Grid uses 275kV DC to transmit electricity around the country, but the wires are high in the air.)
In order to provide enough power through the third rail, the current has to be higher than it would in overhead wires (power is current times voltage), and as a result a lot of power is lost in transmitting it down the rails; this means third rail requires lots more substations to provide enough power. In particular, providing enough power through the third rail to permit electric locomotives to haul freight trains is hideously expensive, and while it can be done, there are only a couple of routes which have been upgraded to provide enough power, namely those connecting London to the Channel Tunnel.
And here we encounter the major problem with the Electric Spine: Southampton is already electrified... with third rail. The plan for the Electric Spine thus calls for something which has never been done on this scale: the conversion of the line between Basingstoke and Southampton from third rail electrification to overhead wires. While this means freight trains will be able to run on overhead wires all the way to the docks at Southampton, the existing passenger trains which run between London and Weymouth would be required to change from third rail to overhead wires at Basingstoke and back again at Southampton.
For the sake of convenience to passenger trains, you might reasonably ask whether you could simply have both overhead wires and third rail between Basingstoke and Southampton. Clearly it has to be possible over short distances, otherwise trains would never be able to change from one to the other. However, in the section with both overhead wires and third rail, both systems must be carefully insulated from each other in other to prevent current straying from one to the other. As such, the existing third rail equipment would have to be heavily modified; it's certainly not as easy as just adding overhead wires on top of the existing third rail.
In any case, part of the justification for converting the line between Basingstoke and Southampton is that the third rail equipment, which was installed in 1967, will need to be replaced shortly anyway. Given that 25kV AC requires fewer substations than 750V DC, it is in fact cheaper - at least as far as the infrastructure is concerned - to replace the third rail with overhead wires. But this ignores the fact that the existing electric trains, run by South West Trains (SWT), would require conversion to work on overhead wires as well as third rail. These trains are about 10 years old, and most (the Class 450s) should be straightforward enough to convert (though the Class 444s may require more work).
And here is where the ugly truth of the privatised, fragmented British railway system rears its head: who pays? The Department for Transport are happy to pay Network Rail for the work to the infrastructure, but it is not clear who will pay for the conversion of the trains. The trains are operated by SWT, but are in fact owned by the rolling stock holding company Angel Trains. Why should either SWT or Angel Trains pay to change their trains because of Network Rail's infrastructure changes?
The issue is yet to be resolved, and it's still not clear whether the line between Basingstoke and Southampton will actually be converted. I suspect it will, but I suspect the government will have to pay for the conversion of the trains as well. However, if any of the electrification projects were to run over-budget, the quickest way to save money would be to kick the whole Basingstoke-Southampton conversion into the long grass.
The rest of the Electric Spine can be broken down into four distinct chunks:
One of the other major freight projects in recent years has been to increase the number of trains from Felixstowe which can avoid London to get to the north of England and to Scotland. Currently much of the traffic runs through London: fitting freight trains through London is a perennial challenge, with most London Overground routes in fact being freight routes that some would argue would be more efficient without any passenger stations on them! In order to relieve the pressure, tunnels and bridges have been enlarged to permit container trains to run from Felixstowe to Nuneaton via Ely, Peterborough and Leicester. If that line could also be electrified, then we'd start to make major inroads into converting at least container trains to electric traction. It seems that that, however, will have to wait for Southampton to have its turn first.
Ultimately, the point of the Electric Spine is to increase capacity - both for freight and passenger trains - by using electric locomotives, with their impressive acceleration, to speed up freight traffic across the country. On the one hand, this should mean fewer lorries on the roads, making road travel easier for everyone. On the other hand, this will mean more capacity for passenger trains, and fewer delays caused by late running freight trains (hopefully). It sounds like a win for everyone - and it should be - but the devil, as usual, is in the detail. For now: watch this space.
Previous post: What is... the Northern Hub?
Once upon a time, almost all freight traffic in Britain was moved by rail. While the vast majority of it is now hauled by lorries instead, for some traffic (e.g. coal) rail is still the "right" way to move it around the country. This is especially true of long-distance flows: for example, for taking containers from Southampton to Scotland, or cars from Merseyside to Dagenham Dock, rail has the advantage of bulk and speed that road just can't match. Indeed, container traffic has seen a marked shift from road to rail in recent years, and the challenge for the rail network is how to accommodate it.
Unlike passenger trains, which can be broken down into discrete services, even the destinations of freight trains can vary from day to day. Passenger trains between London and Birmingham are completely segregated from, say, passenger trains between London and Dover; in that sense, the electrification of the passenger rail network can be - and is - broken down into discrete chunks, one main line at a time. Freight trains, though, are much less frequent and tend to run to a wide variety of destinations, over a variety of different routes according to where there's capacity.
By its very nature, then, the network used by freight trains is huge and sprawling: indeed, it's quite hard to find a significant part of the network that isn't used by freight trains at all. As a result, while some freight trains running on key main lines can be hauled by electric locomotives, the vast majority of freight trains remain hauled by diesel engines, even when some of the route has electric wires, because having to stop and change engine takes too much time. And that's unlikely to change until a significant portion of the freight network is electrified.
So what is driving plans to try and do just that? The key advantage of electric freight trains over diesel ones is acceleration. Freight trains are mostly limited to 60mph, and while some container trains can manage 75mph, electric haulage can't really improve that. What it can do, though, is dramatically improve acceleration, so that when a freight train has to run between two passenger trains, it doesn't need as large a gap. Quicker acceleration, more capacity. Crucially, though, not just capacity for freight trains but also for more passenger trains.
This is especially true on mixed-traffic lines, where passenger and freight trains have to share the same tracks. For example, while the south end of the WCML has four tracks, north of Preston it's two tracks all the way to the outskirts of Glasgow. In particular, over Shap in the Lake District, where the WCML runs roughly parallel to the M6, the two-track line threads its way between the hills with gradients as steep as 1 in 75. For a 4,000-tonne freight train, 1 in 75 is a big problem! However, while diesel trains are limited by how big an engine they have and how much fuel they can carry, electric trains are basically limited only by how much current they can draw.
The difference between electric and diesel freight trains over Shap can be summed up as follows: from Preston to Carlisle (about 90 miles), a freight train hauled by an electric locomotive generally won't have to stop to be overtaken by faster passenger trains, while a diesel train almost certainly will. Having to have the freight train slow down, pull into a loop, wait to be overtaken, and then start up again costs a lot of time and capacity; converting diesel freight trains to electric over Shap would significantly increase capacity on this very mixed-traffic line.
The "Electric Spine" is the first major project in trying to convert freight trains to electric haulage: the broad intention is that almost all long-distance container trains to and from the port of Southampton will be able to run with electric traction. At this point, though, while the project is committed by the government, it's still being developed by Network Rail, and is unlikely to be fully complete before 2025. Indeed, more than any of the other "big projects" I've discussed recently, the Electric Spine poses the biggest unknowns: there are things in the plan that have never been done before.
Let's return to electrification in general (see my earlier post if you need a refresher). There have been many different voltages and both overhead wires and various forms of third rail in use for electric trains over the years, but two systems remain in widespread use in the UK: 750V DC third rail, mainly south of London, and 25kV AC overhead wires, mainly north of London. Because most passenger services are self-contained, most electric trains only need one kind of electric equipment, and for the small number of services (mainly Thameslink and London Overground) which use both, the trains can be fitted with both systems.
Both systems have advantages and disadvantages: third rail systems are better suited to dense suburban networks, while overhead wires are better suited to long-distance traffic. That said, most would agree that overhead wires are better than third rail - and if the network south of London were being electrified today there is no question that it would be done with overhead wires. The principal problem with third rail is that, because the rail is so close to the ground, the voltage can't really be made higher than 750V. (The National Grid uses 275kV DC to transmit electricity around the country, but the wires are high in the air.)
In order to provide enough power through the third rail, the current has to be higher than it would in overhead wires (power is current times voltage), and as a result a lot of power is lost in transmitting it down the rails; this means third rail requires lots more substations to provide enough power. In particular, providing enough power through the third rail to permit electric locomotives to haul freight trains is hideously expensive, and while it can be done, there are only a couple of routes which have been upgraded to provide enough power, namely those connecting London to the Channel Tunnel.
And here we encounter the major problem with the Electric Spine: Southampton is already electrified... with third rail. The plan for the Electric Spine thus calls for something which has never been done on this scale: the conversion of the line between Basingstoke and Southampton from third rail electrification to overhead wires. While this means freight trains will be able to run on overhead wires all the way to the docks at Southampton, the existing passenger trains which run between London and Weymouth would be required to change from third rail to overhead wires at Basingstoke and back again at Southampton.
For the sake of convenience to passenger trains, you might reasonably ask whether you could simply have both overhead wires and third rail between Basingstoke and Southampton. Clearly it has to be possible over short distances, otherwise trains would never be able to change from one to the other. However, in the section with both overhead wires and third rail, both systems must be carefully insulated from each other in other to prevent current straying from one to the other. As such, the existing third rail equipment would have to be heavily modified; it's certainly not as easy as just adding overhead wires on top of the existing third rail.
In any case, part of the justification for converting the line between Basingstoke and Southampton is that the third rail equipment, which was installed in 1967, will need to be replaced shortly anyway. Given that 25kV AC requires fewer substations than 750V DC, it is in fact cheaper - at least as far as the infrastructure is concerned - to replace the third rail with overhead wires. But this ignores the fact that the existing electric trains, run by South West Trains (SWT), would require conversion to work on overhead wires as well as third rail. These trains are about 10 years old, and most (the Class 450s) should be straightforward enough to convert (though the Class 444s may require more work).
And here is where the ugly truth of the privatised, fragmented British railway system rears its head: who pays? The Department for Transport are happy to pay Network Rail for the work to the infrastructure, but it is not clear who will pay for the conversion of the trains. The trains are operated by SWT, but are in fact owned by the rolling stock holding company Angel Trains. Why should either SWT or Angel Trains pay to change their trains because of Network Rail's infrastructure changes?
The issue is yet to be resolved, and it's still not clear whether the line between Basingstoke and Southampton will actually be converted. I suspect it will, but I suspect the government will have to pay for the conversion of the trains as well. However, if any of the electrification projects were to run over-budget, the quickest way to save money would be to kick the whole Basingstoke-Southampton conversion into the long grass.
The rest of the Electric Spine can be broken down into four distinct chunks:
- The section between Basingstoke and Oxford, via Reading, will be electrified as part of the Great Western Main Line electrification, associated with the Intercity Express Programme (see my earlier blogpost) - at least, the Reading-Oxford part will; exactly what will happen with Reading-Basingstoke isn't clear.
- The section between Oxford and Bedford is unusual in that part of the line that will be electrified isn't open yet! The "East-West Rail Link" is soon to be reopened; whether it will have overhead wires from opening (in 2017) or whether it will follow a few years later (by 2019) remains unclear. (See also my earlier blogpost about a railtour along part of the East-West line.)
- The section between Bedford and Sheffield amounts to electrification of the rest of the Midland Main Line (MML), the section between London and Bedford having been electrified in 1981 for suburban trains. This section will herald the biggest changes for passenger trains too, allowing the existing diesel trains running between London and Nottingham, Derby and Sheffield to be replaced by electric trains.
- The section between Oxford and Nuneaton, which will probably be the last part to be completed (apart from Basingstoke-Southampton), will link Southampton to the West Coast Main Line at Nuneaton, allowing electric trains to run all the way from Southampton to Manchester, Liverpool and Glasgow. I wouldn't be surprised if this got pushed past 2020 (and it would make another easy target for cuts).
One of the other major freight projects in recent years has been to increase the number of trains from Felixstowe which can avoid London to get to the north of England and to Scotland. Currently much of the traffic runs through London: fitting freight trains through London is a perennial challenge, with most London Overground routes in fact being freight routes that some would argue would be more efficient without any passenger stations on them! In order to relieve the pressure, tunnels and bridges have been enlarged to permit container trains to run from Felixstowe to Nuneaton via Ely, Peterborough and Leicester. If that line could also be electrified, then we'd start to make major inroads into converting at least container trains to electric traction. It seems that that, however, will have to wait for Southampton to have its turn first.
Ultimately, the point of the Electric Spine is to increase capacity - both for freight and passenger trains - by using electric locomotives, with their impressive acceleration, to speed up freight traffic across the country. On the one hand, this should mean fewer lorries on the roads, making road travel easier for everyone. On the other hand, this will mean more capacity for passenger trains, and fewer delays caused by late running freight trains (hopefully). It sounds like a win for everyone - and it should be - but the devil, as usual, is in the detail. For now: watch this space.
Previous post: What is... the Northern Hub?
Monday 8 September 2014
What is... the Northern Hub?
The Northern Hub is a £560 million project to upgrade and electrify much of the railway network in the North of England, particularly focussed on the cities of Manchester, Liverpool and Leeds. As well as electrifying over 300 miles of track, the project will unlock one of the biggest bottlenecks in the country: Manchester Piccadilly station will gain two extra platforms, and the Ordsall Chord will allow trains to run directly between Manchester Piccadilly and Manchester Victoria. All in all, rail travel in the North of England will be transformed.
You may have noticed that, so far in this series of blogposts, the projects we've looked at - e.g., Crossrail, Thameslink and the Great Western Main Line - are all in the South of England. It's fair to say that the South - particularly London and the South-East - gets more than its "fair share" of investment compared to the proportion of the population that lives there. To a certain extent, the Northern Hub will help to smooth out that imbalance.
It's important to understand why there's an imbalance in the first place: the fact is that railways are most efficient in dense urban areas and between big cities. As a result, railways naturally gravitated towards London and the South-East, meaning more people used the railways in London, meaning they got more investment, and this created a "feedback loop" of perpetual investment in the South-East to try and cope with ever-increasing demand.
By contrast, while the urban areas in the North of England have received some investment, the railways in the North don't get used as much, so they don't get as much investment, and hence their use doesn't increase as quickly. While much of the South-East has 12-carriage commuter trains into London, four carriages already makes a long commuter train into Manchester, and most platforms can't accommodate more than six. This isn't in and of itself a problem, nor is it necessarily a sign of bias in investment priorities, but it is nonetheless a reality.
However, the use of relatively short trains does make the North's trains less efficient to run: a 12-car train doesn't cost six times as much to run as a 2-car train, not least because you still only need one driver and one guard. What's more, almost all of the North's trains are diesel trains: by contrast to the South-East, where the only major commuter line which isn't electrified is the Chiltern line out of Marylebone, so far there are just a handful of electric lines around Manchester and Leeds, and (as I discussed previously) diesel trains are more expensive to run.
Happily, though, an opportunity to make the North's railway network far more efficient came when then-Transport Secretary (Lord) Andrew Adonis hit on a bright idea. He reasoned as follows: Thameslink is getting a huge fleet of new trains, meaning the 86 4-car Class 319s will no longer be required. The trains could simply be moved to another already-electrified line to displace some older trains and allow them to be scrapped, but instead Adonis decided to invest in electrifying new lines, and send the Class 319s there.
This allows lines to be electrified without incurring the additional cost of a brand-new fleet of electric trains, a significant saving. One of those lines is the Great Western Main Line, where new electric inter-city trains will replace the existing HSTs, and the Class 319s would be used on suburban services in the Thames Valley between London and Reading, Oxford and Newbury.
The GWML alone, however, wouldn't account for all 86 class 319s, so in 2009 four lines in the North-West were chosen for electrification in a phased programme:
The class 319s are to be cascaded to the North-West, permitting older diesel trains (such as the dreaded Pacers) to be scrapped. All told, about 35 Class 319s will be needed across the North-West. However, due to delays in the Thameslink Programme, while the first two phases of wiring will be completed by December 2014, there will only be three electric trains available to run the local services. A further 11 will follow over the following year, which will account for all the Liverpool-Manchester and Liverpool-Wigan services, with the remainder of the trains being available early in 2017 for the completion of the third and fourth phases.
---
One of the most important diesel-operated services in the North, however, is the Trans-Pennine service between Manchester and Leeds, with five trains an hour running between these two huge cities. Most start in the west at Liverpool or Manchester Airport, while in the east the trains continue on to Hull, York, Scarborough, Middlesbrough or Newcastle. With one of the routes between Liverpool and Manchester now being electrified, and the ECML between York and Newcastle already wired, that leaves only a relatively short gap between Manchester and York; wiring that gap would permit a disproportionate number of services to be converted to electric operation.
Moreover, the Trans-Pennine services are some of the most overcrowded trains in the North, and as reasonably fast inter-urban services they are a plum candidate for investment, sure to bring more significant benefits than merely electrifying commuter lines. Sure enough, in November 2011, the government announced a follow-on to the North-West Electrification: the Trans-Pennine route between Manchester, Huddersfield, Leeds and York is to be electrified by 2018. The line from Leeds to Selby (though oddly not all the way to Hull) was added to the electrification plans in July 2012.
All the big stations along the way (Liverpool Lime Street, Manchester Piccadilly, Leeds and York) are already electrified, while Manchester Victoria will be electrified as part of the North-West Electrification, making this project relatively simple; instead the big challenge will be electrifying the 3-mile-long tunnels at Standedge (under the Pennines) without causing too much disruption.
However, before the benefits of a more frequent electric Trans-Pennine service can be realised, one of the biggest capacity bottlenecks on the network has to be sorted out: Manchester Piccadilly station. It may strike you as odd to learn that, in spite of its proliferation of short commuter trains, Manchester Piccadilly station is running more or less at capacity: there is no more room to run more trains.
Manchester Piccadilly is an odd station: it has 12 terminus platforms, all facing south, used by services long-distance from London, Bristol, Bournemouth, and Cardiff, as well as local services to Stoke-on-Trent, Crewe, Chester, Glossop and Sheffield. However, the station also has two through platforms at its west side, used by services to Liverpool, Preston, Blackpool and Scotland. That there are only two such through platforms is already a capacity constraint, and plans are in place to add two extra through platforms by 2018.
But that in and of itself doesn't solve the fundamental problem, which is that too many trains want to go through each other. In particular, all the Trans-Pennine services between Liverpool and Leeds have to cross the entire width of the station throat, from the westernmost platforms to the easternmost approach lines to the south. Trains between Manchester Airport and Leeds have to reverse in one of the 12 terminus platforms, requiring them either to cross everything on the way into Piccadilly, or on the way out. This diagram shows the problem:
Enter the Ordsall Chord. From 2016, a short piece of track will fill in the third side of the triangle in western Manchester and allow trains from Piccadilly to curve round and head through Victoria, Manchester's other major station. Once the grand centerpiece of the Lancashire and Yorkshire Railway, Victoria is a shell of its former self, particularly since the Windsor Link was opened in 1988 and many services were transferred to Piccadilly. Access between the two has always been rather difficult, and while Metrolink has made it easier, the Ordsall Chord will provide a direct rail connection between the two stations for the first time.
Once completed, it will allow Victoria, not Piccadilly, to become the hub for Trans-Pennine journeys. The Ordsall Chord will permit trains between Manchester Airport and Leeds to run via both Piccadilly and Victoria, and avoid having to reverse along the way. While trains between Liverpool and Leeds can already run via Victoria without any capacity problems, to do so requires diverting them via Chat Moss instead of via Warrington Central; coincidentally (or perhaps as a rare piece of forward planning?) the Chat Moss is the route that's being electrified, while the route via Warrington Central will remain diesel-only.
But more importantly, it will de-tangle the services coming into Piccadilly, with services to Stockport and beyond able to run completely independently of the Trans-Pennine services, bringing significant improvements in punctuality for both groups of services, as well as allowing an increase to six Trans-Pennine services per hour. This diagram shows the solution:
As a result, by 2018 the rail network around Manchester will be transformed by two extra platforms at Piccadilly, the Ordsall Chord connecting Piccadilly and Victoria, and electrification across much of the North-West and the whole Trans-Pennine route from Liverpool to Newcastle. Put it all together and you have the "Northern Hub", whose total cost is about £560 million.
The only problem is the lack of clarity in what trains will be running on such lines: the letting of new franchises for TransPennine Express and Northern Rail has been delayed until February 2016, and only once the new franchise is announced will it become clear what, if any, strategy there is for rolling stock across the North.
One possibility is that the remainder of the Class 319s, perhaps together with some of the other trains released by Crossrail and the Thameslink Programme, could be used on Trans-Pennine services. Currently, however, the Trans-Pennine services run with Class 185s, modern three-car diesel trains which are less than 10 years old, ideally suited for inter-urban services. To replace those with commuter trains from the South-East which are nearly 25 years old is clearly a downgrade, and smacks of the North being handed the unwanted old tat from the South-East.
Unlike the North-West Electrification, however, which could only be reasonably justified by the use of existing trains, it's quite possible that the new Trans-Pennine franchise will decide to order some new electric trains to run across the Pennines. This would allow some (if not all) of the Class 185s to be transferred elsewhere, and trigger a rolling stock cascade that would ensure that many areas benefit from newer trains, while allowing more of the oldest clapped-out trains (hopefully all the Pacers and possibly some Sprinters) to be withdrawn from service.
In any case, the North is getting some much-needed improvements to its rail network, including a whole new railway line, new platforms and lots of new overhead wires. While we'll have to wait and see what trains serve it, it is clear that areas which have seen little investment for over 20 years will see dramatic improvements over the next few years. It could even be the start of a whole new rail boom across the North...
Previous post: What is... the Intercity Express Programme?
Next post: What is... the Electric Spine?
You may have noticed that, so far in this series of blogposts, the projects we've looked at - e.g., Crossrail, Thameslink and the Great Western Main Line - are all in the South of England. It's fair to say that the South - particularly London and the South-East - gets more than its "fair share" of investment compared to the proportion of the population that lives there. To a certain extent, the Northern Hub will help to smooth out that imbalance.
It's important to understand why there's an imbalance in the first place: the fact is that railways are most efficient in dense urban areas and between big cities. As a result, railways naturally gravitated towards London and the South-East, meaning more people used the railways in London, meaning they got more investment, and this created a "feedback loop" of perpetual investment in the South-East to try and cope with ever-increasing demand.
By contrast, while the urban areas in the North of England have received some investment, the railways in the North don't get used as much, so they don't get as much investment, and hence their use doesn't increase as quickly. While much of the South-East has 12-carriage commuter trains into London, four carriages already makes a long commuter train into Manchester, and most platforms can't accommodate more than six. This isn't in and of itself a problem, nor is it necessarily a sign of bias in investment priorities, but it is nonetheless a reality.
However, the use of relatively short trains does make the North's trains less efficient to run: a 12-car train doesn't cost six times as much to run as a 2-car train, not least because you still only need one driver and one guard. What's more, almost all of the North's trains are diesel trains: by contrast to the South-East, where the only major commuter line which isn't electrified is the Chiltern line out of Marylebone, so far there are just a handful of electric lines around Manchester and Leeds, and (as I discussed previously) diesel trains are more expensive to run.
Happily, though, an opportunity to make the North's railway network far more efficient came when then-Transport Secretary (Lord) Andrew Adonis hit on a bright idea. He reasoned as follows: Thameslink is getting a huge fleet of new trains, meaning the 86 4-car Class 319s will no longer be required. The trains could simply be moved to another already-electrified line to displace some older trains and allow them to be scrapped, but instead Adonis decided to invest in electrifying new lines, and send the Class 319s there.
This allows lines to be electrified without incurring the additional cost of a brand-new fleet of electric trains, a significant saving. One of those lines is the Great Western Main Line, where new electric inter-city trains will replace the existing HSTs, and the Class 319s would be used on suburban services in the Thames Valley between London and Reading, Oxford and Newbury.
The GWML alone, however, wouldn't account for all 86 class 319s, so in 2009 four lines in the North-West were chosen for electrification in a phased programme:
- Liverpool-Manchester via Newton-le-Willows (the Chat Moss line), with Manchester to Newton-le-Willows being electrified by December 2013 and Newton-le-Willows to Liverpool by December 2014;
- Liverpool-Wigan via St Helens to be electrified by December 2014;
- Manchester-Preston via Bolton to be electrified by December 2016;
- Preston-Blackpool North to be electrified by December 2015 (though this has now slipped to February 2017).
The class 319s are to be cascaded to the North-West, permitting older diesel trains (such as the dreaded Pacers) to be scrapped. All told, about 35 Class 319s will be needed across the North-West. However, due to delays in the Thameslink Programme, while the first two phases of wiring will be completed by December 2014, there will only be three electric trains available to run the local services. A further 11 will follow over the following year, which will account for all the Liverpool-Manchester and Liverpool-Wigan services, with the remainder of the trains being available early in 2017 for the completion of the third and fourth phases.
---
One of the most important diesel-operated services in the North, however, is the Trans-Pennine service between Manchester and Leeds, with five trains an hour running between these two huge cities. Most start in the west at Liverpool or Manchester Airport, while in the east the trains continue on to Hull, York, Scarborough, Middlesbrough or Newcastle. With one of the routes between Liverpool and Manchester now being electrified, and the ECML between York and Newcastle already wired, that leaves only a relatively short gap between Manchester and York; wiring that gap would permit a disproportionate number of services to be converted to electric operation.
Moreover, the Trans-Pennine services are some of the most overcrowded trains in the North, and as reasonably fast inter-urban services they are a plum candidate for investment, sure to bring more significant benefits than merely electrifying commuter lines. Sure enough, in November 2011, the government announced a follow-on to the North-West Electrification: the Trans-Pennine route between Manchester, Huddersfield, Leeds and York is to be electrified by 2018. The line from Leeds to Selby (though oddly not all the way to Hull) was added to the electrification plans in July 2012.
All the big stations along the way (Liverpool Lime Street, Manchester Piccadilly, Leeds and York) are already electrified, while Manchester Victoria will be electrified as part of the North-West Electrification, making this project relatively simple; instead the big challenge will be electrifying the 3-mile-long tunnels at Standedge (under the Pennines) without causing too much disruption.
However, before the benefits of a more frequent electric Trans-Pennine service can be realised, one of the biggest capacity bottlenecks on the network has to be sorted out: Manchester Piccadilly station. It may strike you as odd to learn that, in spite of its proliferation of short commuter trains, Manchester Piccadilly station is running more or less at capacity: there is no more room to run more trains.
Manchester Piccadilly is an odd station: it has 12 terminus platforms, all facing south, used by services long-distance from London, Bristol, Bournemouth, and Cardiff, as well as local services to Stoke-on-Trent, Crewe, Chester, Glossop and Sheffield. However, the station also has two through platforms at its west side, used by services to Liverpool, Preston, Blackpool and Scotland. That there are only two such through platforms is already a capacity constraint, and plans are in place to add two extra through platforms by 2018.
But that in and of itself doesn't solve the fundamental problem, which is that too many trains want to go through each other. In particular, all the Trans-Pennine services between Liverpool and Leeds have to cross the entire width of the station throat, from the westernmost platforms to the easternmost approach lines to the south. Trains between Manchester Airport and Leeds have to reverse in one of the 12 terminus platforms, requiring them either to cross everything on the way into Piccadilly, or on the way out. This diagram shows the problem:
Enter the Ordsall Chord. From 2016, a short piece of track will fill in the third side of the triangle in western Manchester and allow trains from Piccadilly to curve round and head through Victoria, Manchester's other major station. Once the grand centerpiece of the Lancashire and Yorkshire Railway, Victoria is a shell of its former self, particularly since the Windsor Link was opened in 1988 and many services were transferred to Piccadilly. Access between the two has always been rather difficult, and while Metrolink has made it easier, the Ordsall Chord will provide a direct rail connection between the two stations for the first time.
Once completed, it will allow Victoria, not Piccadilly, to become the hub for Trans-Pennine journeys. The Ordsall Chord will permit trains between Manchester Airport and Leeds to run via both Piccadilly and Victoria, and avoid having to reverse along the way. While trains between Liverpool and Leeds can already run via Victoria without any capacity problems, to do so requires diverting them via Chat Moss instead of via Warrington Central; coincidentally (or perhaps as a rare piece of forward planning?) the Chat Moss is the route that's being electrified, while the route via Warrington Central will remain diesel-only.
But more importantly, it will de-tangle the services coming into Piccadilly, with services to Stockport and beyond able to run completely independently of the Trans-Pennine services, bringing significant improvements in punctuality for both groups of services, as well as allowing an increase to six Trans-Pennine services per hour. This diagram shows the solution:
As a result, by 2018 the rail network around Manchester will be transformed by two extra platforms at Piccadilly, the Ordsall Chord connecting Piccadilly and Victoria, and electrification across much of the North-West and the whole Trans-Pennine route from Liverpool to Newcastle. Put it all together and you have the "Northern Hub", whose total cost is about £560 million.
The only problem is the lack of clarity in what trains will be running on such lines: the letting of new franchises for TransPennine Express and Northern Rail has been delayed until February 2016, and only once the new franchise is announced will it become clear what, if any, strategy there is for rolling stock across the North.
One possibility is that the remainder of the Class 319s, perhaps together with some of the other trains released by Crossrail and the Thameslink Programme, could be used on Trans-Pennine services. Currently, however, the Trans-Pennine services run with Class 185s, modern three-car diesel trains which are less than 10 years old, ideally suited for inter-urban services. To replace those with commuter trains from the South-East which are nearly 25 years old is clearly a downgrade, and smacks of the North being handed the unwanted old tat from the South-East.
Unlike the North-West Electrification, however, which could only be reasonably justified by the use of existing trains, it's quite possible that the new Trans-Pennine franchise will decide to order some new electric trains to run across the Pennines. This would allow some (if not all) of the Class 185s to be transferred elsewhere, and trigger a rolling stock cascade that would ensure that many areas benefit from newer trains, while allowing more of the oldest clapped-out trains (hopefully all the Pacers and possibly some Sprinters) to be withdrawn from service.
In any case, the North is getting some much-needed improvements to its rail network, including a whole new railway line, new platforms and lots of new overhead wires. While we'll have to wait and see what trains serve it, it is clear that areas which have seen little investment for over 20 years will see dramatic improvements over the next few years. It could even be the start of a whole new rail boom across the North...
Previous post: What is... the Intercity Express Programme?
Next post: What is... the Electric Spine?
Tuesday 17 June 2014
What is... the Intercity Express Programme? (and what does it mean for the Great Western Main Line?)
The Intercity Express Programme is a £5.7 billion order for building the next generation of long-distance train in Britain. Or at least, that's the theory: its critics would claim it's an overpriced, wrong-headed solution in want of a problem to fix. It all started when someone decided many of our long-distance trains were getting a bit old. It's since morphed into something quite unusual, involving the first major use of electric-diesel "hybrid" trains (though it remains to be seen if that's actually a good idea)...
The High-Speed Train, or HST, also branded as the InterCity 125, entered service in 1977 and will probably still be in service for the rest of this decade. It was and is the mainstay of long-distance inter-city services across Britain; they regularly reach Penzance, Aberdeen, Sheffield, Swansea and many places in between.
They are diesel-powered, and are thus not used much on those routes which are already electrified; but they provide all long-distance services on the Great Western Main Line (GWML), as well as supplementing the fleets used on the Midland Main Line (MML), East Coast Main Line (ECML), and the Cross-Country routes. These days, they are easily distinguished by being one of the last fleets of trains with slam doors. But the HST was never designed to be around for so long; it was a stopgap solution.
As is so often the case, this stopgap solution ended up being a lasting feature of the British rail network. The plan in the 1970s had been for something much grander: the Advanced Passenger Train (APT). Capable of tilting round corners and hitting speeds in excess of 150mph, the APT was forged in the "white heat of the [technological] revolution" so championed a few years earlier by Harold Wilson. Unfortunately, it proved to be a bit too "white heat", and after many setbacks it was finally launched in 1981 while it was still prone to failures. The launch was a PR disaster, and only three production units were ever built, before being scrapped in 1985.
As a stopgap, the BR engineers had decided to build something a bit more conventional; and thus was born the HST. The fleet of nearly a hundred trains, with their distinctive angular power cars at each end, have served the country well for over 30 years now, but they are starting to show their age. While the typical lifespan of a diesel train is 25-30 years, the HSTs have all had their engines upgraded or replaced; nonetheless, asking them to go much past 40 years in service is pushing it.
So, in 2005, the Department for Transport set out to replace the HSTs. In a spectacular lack of ambition, they seemed only to want a like-for-like replacement; one high-speed diesel-powered train replaced by a slightly newer, slightly fancier, high-speed diesel-powered train. Fortunately, someone in the Department woke up to the opportunity that total replacement of the fleet could provide: since the trains need replacing anyway, why not make them electric? And indeed, once the investment in electrification was forthcoming, the need to replace the HSTs like-for-like evaporated.
Rather than scrap the "Intercity Express Programme" (IEP) and simply order some new electric trains to a standard design, the DfT pressed ahead with a revised plan for the IEP. There would be three types of train, all to be built to roughly the same design: electric trains, diesel trains, and "bi-mode" trains, the latter being hybrid trains capable of running off the overhead wires where there were wires, but also carrying underfloor diesel engines to take the train where the wires won't stretch. Eventually the diesel option was dropped, once the full plans for electrification emerged, but the bi-mode option was kept.
Ostensibly, the point of bi-mode trains is to be able to utilise the overhead wires between, say, London and Edinburgh, and then proceed on to Aberdeen or Inverness under diesel power. This means that you don't have diesel trains running "under the wires" for long distances, which ought to save on fuel consumption. But the key benefit of electric trains is that, almost uniquely among forms of transport, they don't have to carry around engines to generate movement. Bi-mode trains, though, mean still carrying around the heavy diesel engines even when you're not using them, and so one of the great benefits of electrification (lighter trains) is lost. It should result in an overall reduction in fuel consumption, but the jury is still out on that.
After a long and torturous bidding process, which was interrupted first by a review into the project's viability after electrification was announced, and then by the General Election and the Spending Review that followed, Hitachi were chosen as the preferred bidders, and would supply over a hundred Super Express trains. They will be built in Hitachi's new factory in Newton Aycliffe, Co. Durham, and marks the first major entrance of the Japanese train builders into the European market.
A total of 866 carriages, in a variety of 9-car and 5-car formations, some electric and some bi-mode, will replace all the HSTs on the Great Western Main Line (GWML) and the East Coast Main Line (ECML), as well as the Class 91 locomotives and Mark 4 carriages on the ECML.
I remain somewhat sceptical of IEP, especially the virtues of bi-mode trains: there are those who would have preferred a standard fleet of all-electric trains, and perhaps use diesel locomotives to haul them where there aren't wires, but I will reserve judgement until the trains actually arrive. It must be said, though, that however you spin it, £5.7 billion is a lot of money for this many trains; standard electric trains would almost certainly have been cheaper.
---
Let's turn specifically to their impact on the Great Western Main Line. Combined with electrification, the new trains ought to bring a step change in performance and journey times; but on their own they cannot on their own provide the necessary capacity increase on the GWML.
London to Reading is perhaps the single busiest passenger flow on the whole railway network, with commuters flooding long-distance trains for the non-stop run to London, and making it near-impossible to get a seat in rush hours. If there is to be enough capacity to provide a meaningful increase in seats in the peaks, more has to be done. Fortunately, more is being done. For one, Crossrail's arrival in 2019 will free up a significant number of platforms at London Paddington, meaning they can be used by longer-distance trains instead.
But Paddington isn't the linchpin of the GWML: the biggest bottleneck, by a long way, is Reading. Reading has long suffered from not having enough platforms - fast trains out of London in particular had only one platform available - and too many conflicting routes, with freight trains between Southampton and the north having to cross the main GWML, and with Cross-Country services added to the mix there was never enough capacity. Here's Reading as it looked in 2009 (click to expand):
Fortunately, for the last five years Reading station has been undergoing one of the biggest rebuilding and remodelling projects ever undertaken on the British railway network. In a £900 million scheme, five new platforms have been added, and two viaducts to the west end of the station will open next year to segregate east-west traffic from north-south traffic. The scheme, due for completion at Easter 2015, will dramatically increase capacity through Reading, permitting fast trains to run as often as every three minutes between London and Reading. Here's Reading as it will look in 2015 (click to expand):
As you can see, the layout of the railway will be transformed. One of the most innovative features is the "Reading Festival Chord" (in light green above), a roller-coaster of a track that goes under the main lines and then over the "feeder" lines from Reading West. What it means is that Cross-Country trains between Birmingham, Oxford and Southampton will be able to reverse at Reading station without ever having to cross the path of high-speed services on the GWML, and that is nothing short of genius on the part of the designers of the scheme.
There is one last part of the puzzle for the GWML, and that is the question of what trains will provide suburban services into and out of Paddington. While Crossrail will take over the stopping services, and the Hitachi Super Express trains (from IEP) will provide the long-distance services, a fleet of electric units will be required for the semi-fast services to Oxford and Newbury, as well as for the branch lines to Windsor, Marlow, Henley and Basingstoke (which will also be electrified).
Here comes the clever part: by syncing up the electrification of the GWML with the Thameslink Programme, no trains need be built specifically for the GWML suburban services; instead, trains will simply transfer from Thameslink over to the GWML. Initially, those were planned to be the Class 319s that currently run on Thameslink, but instead the newly-built Class 387s - which are capable of 110mph, rather than just 100mph - may be transferred; that has yet to be decided.
All told, the Great Western Main Line will be transformed by 2019:
On top of that, following on from the electrification of the GWML, it is planned to electrify the South Wales Valley Lines, a dense network of suburban routes into Cardiff: another 200 miles of track should be electrified by 2020, bringing electric suburban trains to Cardiff and revolutionising rail travel in South Wales - though the details have yet to be worked out.
With all that said, I should point out that not all of the Great Western Main Line will benefit from these upgrades. The electrification will not extend to Gloucester, Cheltenham, Worcester or Hereford; but they will at least benefit from bi-mode trains, capable of running of the electric wires as far as Swindon or Oxford. More importantly, the overhead wires will not go south of Bristol or west of Newbury - meaning all of Devon and Cornwall will remain unelectrified, and indeed will still be served by (refurbished) HSTs, if current plans are anything to go by.
So while parts of the Great Western network flourish, Devon and Cornwall may feel like they're stuck in stagnation. With this kind of scheme, though, there are always winners and losers; in this case it's clear that Bristol, Cardiff, Oxford and the like will benefit from significantly improved journeys to London. And while Devon and Cornwall will not see so much investment immediately, that doesn't rule out the possibility of extensions to the electrification later; indeed, I'd count on at least one major extension to the GWML electrification before 2025.
The Great Western Main Line is going through a momentous phase in its history, perhaps the biggest change since the days of Brunel. It remains to be seen exactly what emerges in 2019, but it's clear there will be faster, more frequent trains - at least for some.
Previous post: What is... Electrification?
Next post: What is... the Northern Hub?
The High-Speed Train, or HST, also branded as the InterCity 125, entered service in 1977 and will probably still be in service for the rest of this decade. It was and is the mainstay of long-distance inter-city services across Britain; they regularly reach Penzance, Aberdeen, Sheffield, Swansea and many places in between.
They are diesel-powered, and are thus not used much on those routes which are already electrified; but they provide all long-distance services on the Great Western Main Line (GWML), as well as supplementing the fleets used on the Midland Main Line (MML), East Coast Main Line (ECML), and the Cross-Country routes. These days, they are easily distinguished by being one of the last fleets of trains with slam doors. But the HST was never designed to be around for so long; it was a stopgap solution.
As is so often the case, this stopgap solution ended up being a lasting feature of the British rail network. The plan in the 1970s had been for something much grander: the Advanced Passenger Train (APT). Capable of tilting round corners and hitting speeds in excess of 150mph, the APT was forged in the "white heat of the [technological] revolution" so championed a few years earlier by Harold Wilson. Unfortunately, it proved to be a bit too "white heat", and after many setbacks it was finally launched in 1981 while it was still prone to failures. The launch was a PR disaster, and only three production units were ever built, before being scrapped in 1985.
As a stopgap, the BR engineers had decided to build something a bit more conventional; and thus was born the HST. The fleet of nearly a hundred trains, with their distinctive angular power cars at each end, have served the country well for over 30 years now, but they are starting to show their age. While the typical lifespan of a diesel train is 25-30 years, the HSTs have all had their engines upgraded or replaced; nonetheless, asking them to go much past 40 years in service is pushing it.
So, in 2005, the Department for Transport set out to replace the HSTs. In a spectacular lack of ambition, they seemed only to want a like-for-like replacement; one high-speed diesel-powered train replaced by a slightly newer, slightly fancier, high-speed diesel-powered train. Fortunately, someone in the Department woke up to the opportunity that total replacement of the fleet could provide: since the trains need replacing anyway, why not make them electric? And indeed, once the investment in electrification was forthcoming, the need to replace the HSTs like-for-like evaporated.
Rather than scrap the "Intercity Express Programme" (IEP) and simply order some new electric trains to a standard design, the DfT pressed ahead with a revised plan for the IEP. There would be three types of train, all to be built to roughly the same design: electric trains, diesel trains, and "bi-mode" trains, the latter being hybrid trains capable of running off the overhead wires where there were wires, but also carrying underfloor diesel engines to take the train where the wires won't stretch. Eventually the diesel option was dropped, once the full plans for electrification emerged, but the bi-mode option was kept.
Ostensibly, the point of bi-mode trains is to be able to utilise the overhead wires between, say, London and Edinburgh, and then proceed on to Aberdeen or Inverness under diesel power. This means that you don't have diesel trains running "under the wires" for long distances, which ought to save on fuel consumption. But the key benefit of electric trains is that, almost uniquely among forms of transport, they don't have to carry around engines to generate movement. Bi-mode trains, though, mean still carrying around the heavy diesel engines even when you're not using them, and so one of the great benefits of electrification (lighter trains) is lost. It should result in an overall reduction in fuel consumption, but the jury is still out on that.
After a long and torturous bidding process, which was interrupted first by a review into the project's viability after electrification was announced, and then by the General Election and the Spending Review that followed, Hitachi were chosen as the preferred bidders, and would supply over a hundred Super Express trains. They will be built in Hitachi's new factory in Newton Aycliffe, Co. Durham, and marks the first major entrance of the Japanese train builders into the European market.
A total of 866 carriages, in a variety of 9-car and 5-car formations, some electric and some bi-mode, will replace all the HSTs on the Great Western Main Line (GWML) and the East Coast Main Line (ECML), as well as the Class 91 locomotives and Mark 4 carriages on the ECML.
I remain somewhat sceptical of IEP, especially the virtues of bi-mode trains: there are those who would have preferred a standard fleet of all-electric trains, and perhaps use diesel locomotives to haul them where there aren't wires, but I will reserve judgement until the trains actually arrive. It must be said, though, that however you spin it, £5.7 billion is a lot of money for this many trains; standard electric trains would almost certainly have been cheaper.
---
Let's turn specifically to their impact on the Great Western Main Line. Combined with electrification, the new trains ought to bring a step change in performance and journey times; but on their own they cannot on their own provide the necessary capacity increase on the GWML.
London to Reading is perhaps the single busiest passenger flow on the whole railway network, with commuters flooding long-distance trains for the non-stop run to London, and making it near-impossible to get a seat in rush hours. If there is to be enough capacity to provide a meaningful increase in seats in the peaks, more has to be done. Fortunately, more is being done. For one, Crossrail's arrival in 2019 will free up a significant number of platforms at London Paddington, meaning they can be used by longer-distance trains instead.
But Paddington isn't the linchpin of the GWML: the biggest bottleneck, by a long way, is Reading. Reading has long suffered from not having enough platforms - fast trains out of London in particular had only one platform available - and too many conflicting routes, with freight trains between Southampton and the north having to cross the main GWML, and with Cross-Country services added to the mix there was never enough capacity. Here's Reading as it looked in 2009 (click to expand):
 |
| Reading station layout, 2009 |
 |
| Reading station layout, 2015 |
There is one last part of the puzzle for the GWML, and that is the question of what trains will provide suburban services into and out of Paddington. While Crossrail will take over the stopping services, and the Hitachi Super Express trains (from IEP) will provide the long-distance services, a fleet of electric units will be required for the semi-fast services to Oxford and Newbury, as well as for the branch lines to Windsor, Marlow, Henley and Basingstoke (which will also be electrified).
Here comes the clever part: by syncing up the electrification of the GWML with the Thameslink Programme, no trains need be built specifically for the GWML suburban services; instead, trains will simply transfer from Thameslink over to the GWML. Initially, those were planned to be the Class 319s that currently run on Thameslink, but instead the newly-built Class 387s - which are capable of 110mph, rather than just 100mph - may be transferred; that has yet to be decided.
All told, the Great Western Main Line will be transformed by 2019:
- 650 track-miles of electrification;
- brand-new Hitachi Super Express long-distance trains running between London, Bristol and Swansea;
- electric suburban trains providing fast commuter services from Oxford and Newbury;
- Crossrail services providing through trains from Reading and west London to the City;
- five new platforms and a completely new layout at Reading.
On top of that, following on from the electrification of the GWML, it is planned to electrify the South Wales Valley Lines, a dense network of suburban routes into Cardiff: another 200 miles of track should be electrified by 2020, bringing electric suburban trains to Cardiff and revolutionising rail travel in South Wales - though the details have yet to be worked out.
With all that said, I should point out that not all of the Great Western Main Line will benefit from these upgrades. The electrification will not extend to Gloucester, Cheltenham, Worcester or Hereford; but they will at least benefit from bi-mode trains, capable of running of the electric wires as far as Swindon or Oxford. More importantly, the overhead wires will not go south of Bristol or west of Newbury - meaning all of Devon and Cornwall will remain unelectrified, and indeed will still be served by (refurbished) HSTs, if current plans are anything to go by.
So while parts of the Great Western network flourish, Devon and Cornwall may feel like they're stuck in stagnation. With this kind of scheme, though, there are always winners and losers; in this case it's clear that Bristol, Cardiff, Oxford and the like will benefit from significantly improved journeys to London. And while Devon and Cornwall will not see so much investment immediately, that doesn't rule out the possibility of extensions to the electrification later; indeed, I'd count on at least one major extension to the GWML electrification before 2025.
The Great Western Main Line is going through a momentous phase in its history, perhaps the biggest change since the days of Brunel. It remains to be seen exactly what emerges in 2019, but it's clear there will be faster, more frequent trains - at least for some.
Previous post: What is... Electrification?
Next post: What is... the Northern Hub?
Monday 9 June 2014
What is... Electrification?
Electric trains are cleaner, quicker, lighter, quieter and cheaper to run. So why is only 40% of the British rail network capable of running electric trains, and the other 60% is still suffering noisy, cramped, sluggish diesel trains?
The simple answer is infrastructure costs. While electric trains are cheaper to run, an electric train must be powered by electricity received through either overhead wires or a third rail. So while the second electric train is cheap to run, all the costs of putting up the overhead wires (or laying down the third rails) and connecting them to the National Grid must be borne before the first electric train can run. Putting up all the wires and transformers for a railway line to take electric trains currently costs about £250,000 per single-track kilometre.
Here's a map showing the parts of the network that are electrified:
First, let's look at the benefits that "electrification" can deliver. With a diesel train, the train must carry around fuel and then generate power by burning that fuel in a diesel engine. But with an electric train, the train can simply tap straight into the electricity, and use that electricity to turn motors. Motors are much lighter than engines, and combined with the savings on having to carry around the fuel, the train is much lighter.
As a result, electric trains can accelerate much faster than diesel trains, making them excellent for suburban routes with lots of stops. What's more, the improved acceleration permits trains to run closer together, meaning more trains can run. Time and again, newly-electrified railways see a significant upturn in usage, often known as the "sparks effect", as improved capacity and speed combine with modern, clean electric trains to yield a much more attractive way of commuting.
The benefits are by no means limited to suburban trains, though: electric trains can pack more power for the same weight, and thus much better performance for longer-distance traffic. It's no coincidence that all the world speed records for trains since the 1970s have been set by electric trains; specifically, by high-speed trains in France and Japan.
Nonetheless, electrifying small, dense, intensively-used suburban networks is usually most cost-effective, since you convert the greatest number of services to electric operation for the least total cost outlay. And thus goes the history of British railway electrification: first to be electrified, in the early 20th century, were suburban lines in Liverpool, Newcastle and south London - all using different (and incompatible) electric voltages and transmission systems. (Indeed, none of them still use the system they first pioneered!)
After the railways were "grouped" into four large companies in 1923, the Southern Railway became the undoubted pioneers of electrification. Having standardised on 660V (later upped to 750V) DC supplied through a third rail, they made a concerted effort to electrify their entire network: by 1939 the "Southern Electrics" covered almost all of south London, running as far afield as Brighton, Eastbourne, Hastings, Guildford, Portsmouth and Reading.
But a committee in 1921 had recommended the national standard should be 1,500V DC through overhead wires; a few lines were electrified using this system by the LNER, such as the Woodhead route between Manchester and Sheffield, but the Great Depression and the Second World War prohibited much progress being made. Overhead wires finally started appearing on the commuter route from London Liverpool Street to Shenfield and Southend Victoria in 1949.
By the time of the 1955 Modernisation Plan, technology had moved forward considerably, and 25kV (25,000V) AC became the national standard for all new electrification schemes. Over time, all the remaining 1500V DC overhead wires were converted to 25kV AC, except those on the the Woodhead route where the line was controversially closed in the 1980s. More importantly, the 1960s and 1970s saw the entire 400-mile West Coast Main Line between London and Glasgow electrified at 25kV AC with overhead wires.
As with many things on the railways, the story at this point inevitably gets tied up with politics. After the success of the WCML electrification and various suburban electrification schemes around London and Glasgow in the 1970s, British Rail wished to embark on a rolling programme of electrification, whereby all the major main lines would be gradually electrified over the course of 20-30 years. Unfortunately, the plan was formulated in 1981, and the Conservative government of the day declined to proceed with the rolling programme in full. To its credit, though, it did fund the electrification of the East Coast Main Line between London and Edinburgh, completed by 1991.
This relatively slow pace of electrification is in marked contrast to other countries in Europe, notably Germany, where they forged ahead with much electrification even before the Second World War, and were more aggressive in replacing steam directly with electric trains, rather than just building diesel engines. Over half of the French, German and Italian rail networks are electrified, while in Belgium and the Netherlands nearly three-quarters of the network is electrified.
Any long-term plans British Rail might have had for electrification were well and truly dashed when, in 1994, the railways were privatised and fragmented. The industry was left without a body like the British Railways Board to advocate for a coordinated national approach to things like electrification. As a result, between 1991 and 2010 only nine miles of railway were electrified: the short link between Stoke-on-Trent and Crewe received overhead wires as part of the West Coast Route Modernisation, to provide a diversionary route for electric trains while other lines were rebuilt.
It has taken the railway network most of a generation to find its voice again. Indeed, as recently as 2007, John Armitt, then chief executive of Network Rail, said that electrification was just another interface to go wrong: too often the overhead wires come down and cause disruption; better to not put them up at all and have a quieter life. In less than five years, though, the view has turned full circle and the government is currently demanding electrification faster than Network Rail can deliver it!
When the Thameslink Programme was approved in 2007, the initial intention seems to have been that the electric trains would simply be moved to a different line with older trains, permitting some of the oldest electric trains to be retired. This "cascade" of trains has long been standard practice, as it allows more than one line to benefit from better trains while only building one new fleet.
But in July 2009, instead of simply shuffling the trains about existing electrified lines, the then-Transport Minister Andrew Adonis approved a plan to electrify new lines in the north-west and the Thames Valley. Once the new trains had been built, the old electric trains from Thameslink would move to the newly-electrified lines; as a result, the lines could be electrified without the cost of building new electric trains. This significant saving is probably the only way electrifying some of the lines could be justified: the cost of new electric trains is not to be underestimated.
The plans were put on hold when the coalition government took over in 2010, but within a year it was back on track. Indeed, the present government has taken a huge liking to electrification, and rather than a rolling programme we seem to be heading for a "big bang", where a huge number of lines will be electrified by 2020:
In theory all of this should be electrified by 2020. However, some parts of the plan are further advanced than others, and you'll note I didn't put a date on the completion of the Electric Spine: it seems as if the Department for Transport saw an idea that Network Rail put forward for possible future electrification and said "ooh, yes, we like that", and approved it before Network Rail had really had a chance to scope out to the project. Nonetheless, the rest of the electrification schemes are proceeding apace, with part of the Liverpool-Manchester line already open to electric trains.
While electrification provides significant benefits - reduced running costs, faster journeys - it doesn't always provide a "step change" without other investment, and the most successful electrification schemes are usually accompanied by changes to track layouts and signalling to unclog bottlenecks in the route.
For example, when the southern part of the WCML between London and Manchester was electrified in the 1960s, a flyover was built at Rugby to allow trains from Birmingham to head to London without interrupting the flow of northbound trains. That one bridge did nearly as much for improving capacity as electrification alone did; together with major rebuilding projects at London Euston and Birmingham New Street stations, they yielded "total route modernisation", and provided for a doubling of traffic on the WCML between 1962 and 1975.
Each of the major electrification schemes planned comes along with various capacity improvements. In the next three posts, I will look in turn at the three big drivers of change on England's railways outside London:
Previous post: What is... Automatic Train Operation?
Next post: What is... the Intercity Express Programme?
The simple answer is infrastructure costs. While electric trains are cheaper to run, an electric train must be powered by electricity received through either overhead wires or a third rail. So while the second electric train is cheap to run, all the costs of putting up the overhead wires (or laying down the third rails) and connecting them to the National Grid must be borne before the first electric train can run. Putting up all the wires and transformers for a railway line to take electric trains currently costs about £250,000 per single-track kilometre.
Here's a map showing the parts of the network that are electrified:
 |
| British railway network, showing electrification (as at 2012) |
As a result, electric trains can accelerate much faster than diesel trains, making them excellent for suburban routes with lots of stops. What's more, the improved acceleration permits trains to run closer together, meaning more trains can run. Time and again, newly-electrified railways see a significant upturn in usage, often known as the "sparks effect", as improved capacity and speed combine with modern, clean electric trains to yield a much more attractive way of commuting.
The benefits are by no means limited to suburban trains, though: electric trains can pack more power for the same weight, and thus much better performance for longer-distance traffic. It's no coincidence that all the world speed records for trains since the 1970s have been set by electric trains; specifically, by high-speed trains in France and Japan.
Nonetheless, electrifying small, dense, intensively-used suburban networks is usually most cost-effective, since you convert the greatest number of services to electric operation for the least total cost outlay. And thus goes the history of British railway electrification: first to be electrified, in the early 20th century, were suburban lines in Liverpool, Newcastle and south London - all using different (and incompatible) electric voltages and transmission systems. (Indeed, none of them still use the system they first pioneered!)
After the railways were "grouped" into four large companies in 1923, the Southern Railway became the undoubted pioneers of electrification. Having standardised on 660V (later upped to 750V) DC supplied through a third rail, they made a concerted effort to electrify their entire network: by 1939 the "Southern Electrics" covered almost all of south London, running as far afield as Brighton, Eastbourne, Hastings, Guildford, Portsmouth and Reading.
But a committee in 1921 had recommended the national standard should be 1,500V DC through overhead wires; a few lines were electrified using this system by the LNER, such as the Woodhead route between Manchester and Sheffield, but the Great Depression and the Second World War prohibited much progress being made. Overhead wires finally started appearing on the commuter route from London Liverpool Street to Shenfield and Southend Victoria in 1949.
By the time of the 1955 Modernisation Plan, technology had moved forward considerably, and 25kV (25,000V) AC became the national standard for all new electrification schemes. Over time, all the remaining 1500V DC overhead wires were converted to 25kV AC, except those on the the Woodhead route where the line was controversially closed in the 1980s. More importantly, the 1960s and 1970s saw the entire 400-mile West Coast Main Line between London and Glasgow electrified at 25kV AC with overhead wires.
As with many things on the railways, the story at this point inevitably gets tied up with politics. After the success of the WCML electrification and various suburban electrification schemes around London and Glasgow in the 1970s, British Rail wished to embark on a rolling programme of electrification, whereby all the major main lines would be gradually electrified over the course of 20-30 years. Unfortunately, the plan was formulated in 1981, and the Conservative government of the day declined to proceed with the rolling programme in full. To its credit, though, it did fund the electrification of the East Coast Main Line between London and Edinburgh, completed by 1991.
This relatively slow pace of electrification is in marked contrast to other countries in Europe, notably Germany, where they forged ahead with much electrification even before the Second World War, and were more aggressive in replacing steam directly with electric trains, rather than just building diesel engines. Over half of the French, German and Italian rail networks are electrified, while in Belgium and the Netherlands nearly three-quarters of the network is electrified.
Any long-term plans British Rail might have had for electrification were well and truly dashed when, in 1994, the railways were privatised and fragmented. The industry was left without a body like the British Railways Board to advocate for a coordinated national approach to things like electrification. As a result, between 1991 and 2010 only nine miles of railway were electrified: the short link between Stoke-on-Trent and Crewe received overhead wires as part of the West Coast Route Modernisation, to provide a diversionary route for electric trains while other lines were rebuilt.
It has taken the railway network most of a generation to find its voice again. Indeed, as recently as 2007, John Armitt, then chief executive of Network Rail, said that electrification was just another interface to go wrong: too often the overhead wires come down and cause disruption; better to not put them up at all and have a quieter life. In less than five years, though, the view has turned full circle and the government is currently demanding electrification faster than Network Rail can deliver it!
When the Thameslink Programme was approved in 2007, the initial intention seems to have been that the electric trains would simply be moved to a different line with older trains, permitting some of the oldest electric trains to be retired. This "cascade" of trains has long been standard practice, as it allows more than one line to benefit from better trains while only building one new fleet.
But in July 2009, instead of simply shuffling the trains about existing electrified lines, the then-Transport Minister Andrew Adonis approved a plan to electrify new lines in the north-west and the Thames Valley. Once the new trains had been built, the old electric trains from Thameslink would move to the newly-electrified lines; as a result, the lines could be electrified without the cost of building new electric trains. This significant saving is probably the only way electrifying some of the lines could be justified: the cost of new electric trains is not to be underestimated.
The plans were put on hold when the coalition government took over in 2010, but within a year it was back on track. Indeed, the present government has taken a huge liking to electrification, and rather than a rolling programme we seem to be heading for a "big bang", where a huge number of lines will be electrified by 2020:
- a triangle of routes in North-West England, namely the Liverpool-Manchester, Liverpool-Preston and Manchester-Preston lines, as well as the branch from Preston to Blackpool North, will be electrified by 2016;
- the Trans-Pennine route from Manchester to Leeds, York and Selby will be electrified by 2018;
- the Edinburgh-Glasgow Improvement Programme (EGIP) will see the main route from Edinburgh to Glasgow (via Falkirk) electrified by 2016, with other suburban routes in the central belt following by 2019;
- the Great Western Main Line (GWML) from London to Oxford, Newbury, Bristol and Swansea will be electrified in stages from 2016 to 2018;
- following on from that, the Valley Lines in south Wales will be electrified by 2020;
- the Midland Main Line (MML), already electrified between London and Bedford, would have its wires extended from Bedford to Corby, Nottingham, Derby and Sheffield in stages from 2017 to 2020;
- in a project dubbed the "Electric Spine", the lines from Southampton to Nuneaton and Bedford would also be electrified to create an electric freight route for containers from Southampton to the north of England and Scotland.
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| British railway network, showing planned electrification by 2020 |
In theory all of this should be electrified by 2020. However, some parts of the plan are further advanced than others, and you'll note I didn't put a date on the completion of the Electric Spine: it seems as if the Department for Transport saw an idea that Network Rail put forward for possible future electrification and said "ooh, yes, we like that", and approved it before Network Rail had really had a chance to scope out to the project. Nonetheless, the rest of the electrification schemes are proceeding apace, with part of the Liverpool-Manchester line already open to electric trains.
While electrification provides significant benefits - reduced running costs, faster journeys - it doesn't always provide a "step change" without other investment, and the most successful electrification schemes are usually accompanied by changes to track layouts and signalling to unclog bottlenecks in the route.
For example, when the southern part of the WCML between London and Manchester was electrified in the 1960s, a flyover was built at Rugby to allow trains from Birmingham to head to London without interrupting the flow of northbound trains. That one bridge did nearly as much for improving capacity as electrification alone did; together with major rebuilding projects at London Euston and Birmingham New Street stations, they yielded "total route modernisation", and provided for a doubling of traffic on the WCML between 1962 and 1975.
Each of the major electrification schemes planned comes along with various capacity improvements. In the next three posts, I will look in turn at the three big drivers of change on England's railways outside London:
- the "Intercity Express Programme" (IEP) will introduce brand-new Hitachi Super Express trains to the GWML which, combined with electrification, the construction of Crossrail, and the complete rebuilding of Reading station, will totally transform the Great Western Main Line;
- the Northern Hub, encompassing the electrification in the north-west of England and across the Pennines, will unlock capacity through the congested approaches to Manchester Piccadilly and transform rail travel across the north of England;
- the Electric Spine, which technically includes the MML electrification, will (hopefully) transform the future of freight movements by rail across the country.
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