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 This was followed in the late 2000s by a complete replacement of the outdated fleet of 1970s slam-door trains with new, comfortable units built by CAF in Spain.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.
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