On Sunday 6th September 2015, a six-carriage train left the new station of Tweedbank at 08:45, bound for Edinburgh: for the first time in 46 years, trains had returned to the Scottish Borders. The Borders Railway, running for over 30 miles from the outskirts of Edinburgh to just beyond Galashiels to the small town of Tweedbank, is the biggest railway reopening project ever undertaken in Britain.
The scene could hardly be more different than 46 years previously: when, on Sunday 5th January 1969, the overnight sleeper train to St Pancras pulled out of Edinburgh Waverley station at 21:56 and headed for Carlisle via Galashiels and Hawick, its path through the Borders was blocked by numerous protesters, and only after the local MP David Steel (who was on the train) intervened was the train able to proceed.
Its eventual arrival in Carlisle, over two hours late, ended over a century of service on the Waverley Route, a 98-mile railway passing through the heart of the Scottish Borders. After years of protests, the line fell victim to the infamous Beeching Axe, with services withdrawn and some of the rails removed the very next day to symbolise the fact that the line was now closed.
To leave such a wide area as the Scottish Borders without railway lines was one of the most controversial railway closures of the 1960s, not least because the railways in the Scottish Highlands serving far fewer people were kept open as a "lifeline". Even until its closure the Waverley Route had carried not just local trains but express trains to and from London, and its closure had a severe effect on the local economy.
The Waverley Route opened from Edinburgh through Galashiels to Hawick in 1849, and was extended to the border city of Carlisle in 1862. Initially it served mainly local traffic, but after the opening of the Settle-Carlisle railway in 1876, the line was upgraded to carry the Midland Railway's express trains between St Pancras and Edinburgh.
The stretch north of Carlisle was one of the toughest sections of mainline for drivers to work, with two summits at Falahill and Whitrope requiring 10-mile ascents at a gradient of 1 in 70. Combined with the many curves, this meant the Waverley Route was comparatively slow, and the Midland Railway could not compete with its rivals on the West and East Coast Main Lines on journey time between London and Edinburgh.
Instead, the Midland laid on plusher coaches in an attempt to give the passenger a better experience. But plusher coaches couldn't make up for the simple fact that the Waverley Route was really a rural line, with no significant base of population along the route; Galashiels is the largest town, but even today it has just 22,500 people.
In the era of rationalisation in the 1960s, then, the fact that there were two routes from Edinburgh to Carlisle was seen as duplication. The other line from Edinburgh served even fewer centres of population than the Waverley Route, but at Carstairs it joined the WCML, and it could thus be worked as a 28-mile branch line off the mainline to Glasgow. It was also straighter and not as steeply graded, with just the one major summit at Beattock to climb.
With the local passenger services used by less than 10,000 passengers a week, and through traffic able to be accommodated on other lines, British Rail saw little reason to keep the Waverley Route open. Closure was initially proposed in the Beeching Report in 1963; the ultimately unsuccessful campaign to keep it open delayed closure until 1969, making it one of the last major closures. It was also one of the longest lines to be closed, second only to the Great Central Main Line, which closed a few months later.
Almost as soon as the line had closed, people campaigned for the Waverley Route to be re-opened. The first serious study was undertaken in the early 1990s, but the key political change that made the reopening possible was Scottish devolution. With power devolved from Westminster to Holyrood, no longer could the plight of the Borders be ignored as simply a rural area remote from London; here was a significant part of Scotland, with an immense potential for tourism, and an obvious candidate for reopening the railway.
With the area looking mainly towards Edinburgh, reopening the line from Edinburgh as far as Galashiels was a logical first step, with extensions onwards to Hawick (and perhaps even Carlisle) left as future possibilities. After much campaigning, in 2006 the Scottish Parliament approved the construction of the line from Edinburgh to a couple of miles beyond Galashiels, to the small town of Tweedbank, with the aim of Tweedbank being a railhead for the wider area.
The line's construction was eventually costed at £294 million for a mainly single-track line with "dynamic loops", sections of double track a few miles long spaced to allow trains to pass at speed. The plans originally called for the 35-mile line to have 16 miles of double track, but this was reduced to just nine miles in order to cut costs and keep within the original budget.
Although the line was originally built as double track, since closure a number of its bridges and tunnels had fallen into disrepair and required replacement prior to the reopening. In order to keep costs to a minimum, a number of the bridges were constructed to allow only a single track - meaning that if the line is to be fully redoubled in future the bridges will need to be rebuilt. Nonetheless, passive provision has been built in for an additional loop through Newtongrange station.
Just seven new stations were opened with the line, the stations at Brunstane and Newcraighall having been opened in 2002 to provide a park-and-ride service into Edinburgh city centre. Four of the seven new stations, Shawfair, Eskbank, Newtongrange and Gorebridge, are in Midlothian, firmly aimed at commuters into Edinburgh. As a result, much of the benefit of the so-called Borders Railway will be felt not by the Borders but by Edinburgh itself, as commuters switch from car to train.
Nonetheless, the three other stations, at Stow, Galashiels and Tweedbank, are right in the heart of the Borders: they will serve not just the town of Galashiels but also Melrose, Newtown St Boswells, and even Hawick. While there are undoubtedly those who commute from Galashiels and around into Edinburgh, whose journeys will be much improved, Galashiels will generate traffic in its own right, with visitors to the Borders finally able to get there by train.
Indeed, just a few days after it opened, I was one of those visitors: on Thursday 10th September I took a trip from Edinburgh to Tweedbank and back. Unfortunately, not everything went as smoothly as could be hoped: the train I went for was eventually cancelled due to an engine problem, and I thus experienced first-hand the fact that, with a single-track railway built down to a price, one significant delay could ripple through the entire service.
There are precisely enough passing places on the single-track line to support a half-hourly service, and no more. (This must be one of the few railways that is being used at 100% capacity immediately after opening!) The fact that the loops are "dynamic" means trains can pass at speed, and with the loops being a few miles long there is scope to recover from delays of a few minutes, but not much more.
I had arrived in Edinburgh from London at about 16:15, and I walked over to get the 16:24 to Tweedbank from platform 7. The train was already pretty full, and I was lucky to get a seat - but given this was the last train on which off-peak tickets were valid until the 18:24 departure this was no great surprise. But 16:24 came and went; the crew for the train had been delayed, and by the time they got there at 16:35 or so, the engine had automatically shut down. The driver tried to restart the engine, but it spluttered and spluttered, sounding distinctly unhealthy.
Eventually, after ten minutes or so, the guard announced the train was cancelled, and that passengers should join the next departure, the 16:50, from platform 20. Those of you who know Edinburgh station will know that platform 7 to platform 20 is one of the longest walks you can have to do in Edinburgh station! But I only got just back towards the concourse before I heard: "This is a platform alteration: the 16:50 Scotrail service to Tweedbank will now depart from platform 7."
Everyone was rather confused, but it eventually became obvious what was going to happen: the 16:50 would come in to platform 7 and join up to the sickly 16:24, and the pair of units would go up to Tweedbank as one. Unfortunately, by the time the driver was informed of this, and by the time the trains were actually joined together, the train departed Edinburgh at 17:04, some 14 minutes late (and some 40 minutes later than I should have!).
Part of the reason for this was that a train could be allowed to climb the 1-in-70 gradient up to the summit at Falahill with three of four engines working, but not with only one of two engines working. Indeed, we lost a further three minutes on our trip up the hill even with three engines working, although a booked five-minute stand at Shawfair (to let another train pass) allowed us to regain some lost time.
The four-car train was now pretty busy throughout, with people standing in each carriage. A significant number of the passengers got off at Newcraighall, the well-established park-and-ride; from then on, everyone had a seat, but the train remained reasonably busy throughout. On leaving Gorebridge, the end of the Midlothian commuter belt, there were still at least half of the seats taken, and most of them remained on the whole way to Tweedbank. The trip back down to Edinburgh was rather less busy, but nonetheless well-used by people heading into Edinburgh in the evening.
For much of its length the line felt like a commuter railway; but the scenery once into the countryside of the Borders was lovely, the fading autumn sunshine giving a wonderful yellow hue to the rolling hills and valleys. The line is a welcome addition to Scotland's already impressive array of scenic railway lines; indeed, Scotrail have begun refitting some of their Class 158 "Sprinter" trains to give better visibility, so that passengers can better admire the view.
Teething troubles aside, the railway was well-used, and all the locals were quite excited to be able to use the train to get to Edinburgh. It seems clear that about half the business on the new line will come from commuters on the 13-mile stretch out to Gorebridge, and one option might have been to run a half-hourly service to Gorebridge, with an hourly service onwards to Tweedbank. Instead, though, there is a half-hourly service all the way to Tweedbank running until 8pm Monday-Saturday (with an hourly service at evenings and weekends), making it clear that the aim is to grow the Borders rather than simply provide for commuters into Edinburgh.
If a passing loop were provided at Newtongrange, in combination with some reconfiguration of the tracks between Edinburgh and Newcraighall, it would in fact be possible to run a train every 15 minutes as far as Gorebridge (though not without difficulty), with a half-hourly service onwards to Tweedbank. That ought to be sufficient for many years to come, even if the line is extended to Hawick: I doubt that the line will ever be an alternative route from Carlisle to Edinburgh, but its potential to open the Borders up to tourism is considerable, and an extension to Hawick is certainly possible.
Whether it happens will depend a lot on the success of the line. The Borders Railway was officially opened by the Queen on Wednesday 9th September, on the day she surpassed Queen Victoria as the longest-reigning monarch, lending a huge stamp of approval to the newly-reopened line. In the first ten days of operation, some 23,500 people used the line, slightly higher than expected; if that kind of passenger usage can be sustained then the case for extending the line to Hawick will become a lot stronger.
Scotland's railways have seen three major reopenings - Stirling-Alloa, Airdrie-Bathgate, and Edinburgh-Tweedbank - in the last eight years, and a steady programme of electrification proceeding apace, most notably on the Edinburgh-Glasgow main line via Falkirk. This provides a remarkable contrast to England, where several major electrification projects are running late or have been put on hold, and the only major re-opening plan (for the line between Oxford and Milton Keynes) is still in the planning stage.
Admittedly, there are some major projects in England, such as Crossrail and the Thameslink Programme, which are much bigger in scale than anything being undertaken north of the border. Nonetheless, Network Rail in Scotland has just opened the longest domestic railway line in the UK for over a century, and it makes me want to ask: how can England can tap into that Scottish spirit?
Monday 21 September 2015
Monday 29 June 2015
We Are Sorry To Announce...: Why Network Rail's Electrification Plans Are Running Late (and Over-Budget)
Last Thursday, the Secretary of State for Transport, Patrick McLoughlin, made an announcement that seemed to throw Network Rail's ambitious upgrade plans for 2014-19 into disarray. The electrification of the Midland Main Line (MML), between London and Sheffield, and the electrification of the Trans-Pennine line, between Manchester and York, are to be "paused". Network Rail will instead concentrate their efforts on the electrification of the Great Western Main Line (GWML), which is running late and over-budget.
Fundamentally, the situation is simple: the cost of the electrification projects has risen beyond the amount budgeted for the 2014-19 period. To remedy this, either Network Rail need more money to complete everything, or something has to be postponed in order to stay within the budget. Since Network Rail now counts as public sector, they can't just borrow their way out of trouble, as they have done in the past. The Treasury and the Department for Transport (DfT) aren't willing to give Network Rail more money, so the MML and Trans-Pennine electrification schemes have been delayed.
To their credit, the DfT also don't want to take money away from Network Rail: rather, they are actively trying to get the most out of the budget that they've set – there is certainly no way that funds will be transferred to other projects such as HS2, as some commentators have suggested. A full review will be undertaken by the autumn, and by the end of the year we should have a much better idea of what will actually be electrified by 2019.
Whatever happens, though, Network Rail have an uphill struggle to get things back on track: the GWML electrification project provides an unfortunate case study in how a project with well-minded ideals can snowball out of control. Work is underway, but progress has been a lot slower than everyone would have liked. The plan had been to get wires to Oxford, Newbury and Bristol Parkway by 2016, to Bath and Bristol Temple Meads by 2017, and to Cardiff and Swansea by 2018, with the Welsh Valley lines following on from the mainline in South Wales. That plan, however, has proved hopelessly optimistic.
So where did it all go wrong? A number of things have led to the project running late and over budget, but fundamentally it boils down to two causes:
The GWML is the first electrification project being undertaken using a new High Output Plant System (HOPS), designed by Windhoff. HOPS is, essentially, an all-in-one electrification "factory train", with segments containing all the equipment to drive piles, place stanchions, fit cantilevers, hang wires, and finally inspect and test the whole thing. (See this fascinating YouTube video for a visual explanation of what it does.) The principal benefit of HOPS is that it can run with the adjacent line open, making it much easier to take overnight possessions.
Unfortunately there were some delays in building the train in Germany, and also some teething troubles in getting the train working here in Britain, not helped by the fact the engineers were having to be trained at the same time. The electrification schedule was heavily dependent on using the HOPS train at full speed – for example, getting 24 piles driven every single night – but unfortunately that rate has only been achieved very recently, after well over a year of use; even now there are still some problems with the system.
The piling itself also caused delays, in more sense than one. In the 1980s, as an effort to combat copper thefts, many lineside cables carrying vital signalling equipment were buried next to the track to make them more difficult to access. Unfortunately, records were not kept of exactly which cables were buried where; it was thus almost inevitable that the piling work for electrification would end up piling right through those wires. In the short term, this caused huge disruption to commuters on the GWML, as signals went black for several miles at a time, sometimes taking days to fix. In the long term, it meant that an inventory of all trackside cables had to be drawn up before piling could continue, meaning more delays to the electrification project.
The signalling system caused another problem for electrification. In order to ensure trains cannot crash into one another, for over a century the signalling system has used track circuits to detect where trains are: simply put, you split a track into blocks, attach a wire to each rail, and when a train passes over the rails in a given block it completes the circuit and current flows. But since current from the overhead wires is liable to leak into the rails (since the rails are used to earth the train), those track circuits have to be modified in order to run electric trains, or alternatively replaced with axle counters (which simply count the number of axles passing a given point on the rails).
In fact, however, much of the signalling equipment on the GWML – not just the track circuits, but the signals and points too – was last modernised in the 1960s, and was approaching the end of its life anyway. Rather than simply "immunise" the existing equipment against electric trains, the decision was taken to replace the majority of the signalling equipment between London and Bristol; a similar project was already underway in South Wales when electrification was announced, and the remodelling of Reading station (see diagram here) already entailed moving the signalbox there anyway.
In and of itself, this wasn't a huge increase in cost, but it was a significant one. It led to "scope creep", where the exact scope for what is being upgraded is enlarged gradually, again and again, such that you don't quite notice the increase in cost until it's too late. The best example is the upgrade of the line between Bristol Temple Meads and Bristol Parkway: this was reduced from four to two tracks in the 1980s as a cost-saving measure, but with plans for a Greater Bristol Metro, and the line being resignalled anyway, it makes sense to include the "re-quadrification" of this line in the resignalling of the Bristol area.
Similar upgrades include adding extra platforms at Oxford and West Drayton, and re-doubling the line between Swindon and Kemble (towards Gloucester). Such upgrades are undoubtedly a good idea, but they only add to the cost of the work on the GWML, particularly if they're added in at the last minute after the design has (supposedly) been finalised.
Moreover, it has exacerbated the shortage of engineers: any change to the network, big or small, requires specialist engineers capable of designing modifications to the signalling. The signal design engineers have had their hands full in recent years: lots of upgrades, combined with a drive by Network Rail to cut costs by consolidating signallers into huge Rail Operations Centres (ROCs), has led to a significant increase in resignalling work in the past few years. The supply of engineers simply can't keep pace with demand.
What does all this mean for the GWML electrification project? The cost has gradually crept up, from £1.1 billion when it was first announced in 2009, to £1.7 billion today, and the work is reported to be over a year behind schedule. On Thursday, McLoughlin declared that electrification of the GWML is now the DfT's "top priority", but it's not clear exactly what that will mean.
While the aims of getting wires to Bristol Parkway by the end of next year are clearly now impossible, there are two seemingly immovable deadlines that the GWML electrification team must face up to:
If it really does take until late 2018 to get to Swindon (and, one would hope, Oxford and Newbury too), then that represents a delay of over two years to the project. Given that the introduction of electric trains to commuter services between London, Oxford and Newbury is planned to initiate a huge cascade – in which the diesel trains currently used in the Thames Valley are to transfer to the Bristol area, allowing some of the oldest diesel trains in the country to be retired – delays to that cascade will have impacts across the country.
What effect will this have on the rest of the electrification project? Some would say that Network Rail and the DfT tried to bite off more than they could chew in launching more than one major electrification project to run simultaneously, especially when we didn't have a big enough basis of engineers or equipment. Allowing Network Rail to focus on one major line at a time (albeit with the electrification between Manchester, Preston and Blackpool, and between Edinburgh and Glasgow, still ongoing) will hopefully allow the team on the GWML to get to grips with the equipment, and then, hopefully, the whole team can be transferred to, say, the MML in about 2020.
While initial works on the MML and Trans-Pennine lines had begun, the only serious work that is already underway is the rebuilding of some bridges: a necessary precursor to any electrification project is to ensure that the electric wires actually fit above the railway you're trying to build them over. Fortunately, these works only involve relatively standard civil engineering teams, and that work can perhaps continue – albeit at a slower pace – while the GWML electrification team cracks on with the job.
Of course the delay to the electrification projects is disappointing: it means passengers will have to put up with diesel trains for even longer. Sadly, it is not yet beyond the bounds of possibility that the MML or Trans-Pennine electrification schemes could yet be scrapped, especially if money becomes much tighter. Paradoxically, though, their delay may actually be a benefit, not a hindrance. Indeed, that was very much the tone of McLoughlin's statement: on the Trans-Pennine electrification, he said "we need to be much more ambitious for that route".
Ironically, it is precisely the "scope creep" on the GWML that could show the way forward. Much like the GWML electrification, the MML and Trans-Pennine electrification projects were costed and budgeted for just that: electrification, and only electrification. But just putting wires on an existing route doesn't necessarily lead to a dramatic improvement in capacity: what you really want is to upgrade the various capacity pinch-points, spruce up the stations, and bring in new trains, all at the same time, in what British Rail used to call "Total Route Modernisation".
That, belatedly, is precisely what's happening on the GWML: Reading has already been completely rebuilt, with major upgrades at Oxford and Bristol to come, and three fleets of trains (the Hitachi Super Express trains for long-distance services, and Class 387 and Class 365 trains for commuter services) will be introduced in the coming years, commensurate with electrification. If MML and Trans-Pennine electrification are to be truly worthwhile, they must include major upgrades to the various pinch-points of the network too, and that kind of upgrade is much easier done before there are wires to get in the way.
On the MML, a completely remodelled layout at Derby station is already planned for the next few years, as is a straightening of the notorious S-bend at Market Harborough to raise the speed from 60mph to 85mph. But works at Leicester to segregate east-west flows from north-south flows, by adding a flyover at Wigston, would also best be done before the line is electrified; they are currently planned for 2019-2022, but they could yet be folded into a more comprehensive MML upgrade programme.
Similarly, the Trans-Pennine electrification programme has never really been sure what it's trying to provide for: plans for six trains per hour between Manchester and Leeds were first thought to require re-opening the two abandoned tunnels at Standedge, to permit the line between Stalybridge and Huddersfield to be returned to four-track operation; but then a plan was crafted to do away with the stopping services, instead stopping longer-distance services at alternate stations. The Trans-Pennine line would certainly benefit from a more thought-out upgrade programme, rather than just electrifying what's currently there and running the risk of preserving it in aspic.
Until the outcome of the review, led by the new Network Rail chairman Sir Peter Hendy, the future remains uncertain. It may yet be that some of the MML or Trans-Pennine electrification work can be started before 2019, but it's clear that their completion will be closer to 2025 than 2020 (and work on the Electric Spine has been quietly drop-kicked into the long grass). But frankly, at this rate, if Network Rail can get the majority of the GWML electrified by 2019 – say, as far as Bristol and Cardiff – they'll be doing quite well.
Fundamentally, the situation is simple: the cost of the electrification projects has risen beyond the amount budgeted for the 2014-19 period. To remedy this, either Network Rail need more money to complete everything, or something has to be postponed in order to stay within the budget. Since Network Rail now counts as public sector, they can't just borrow their way out of trouble, as they have done in the past. The Treasury and the Department for Transport (DfT) aren't willing to give Network Rail more money, so the MML and Trans-Pennine electrification schemes have been delayed.
To their credit, the DfT also don't want to take money away from Network Rail: rather, they are actively trying to get the most out of the budget that they've set – there is certainly no way that funds will be transferred to other projects such as HS2, as some commentators have suggested. A full review will be undertaken by the autumn, and by the end of the year we should have a much better idea of what will actually be electrified by 2019.
Whatever happens, though, Network Rail have an uphill struggle to get things back on track: the GWML electrification project provides an unfortunate case study in how a project with well-minded ideals can snowball out of control. Work is underway, but progress has been a lot slower than everyone would have liked. The plan had been to get wires to Oxford, Newbury and Bristol Parkway by 2016, to Bath and Bristol Temple Meads by 2017, and to Cardiff and Swansea by 2018, with the Welsh Valley lines following on from the mainline in South Wales. That plan, however, has proved hopelessly optimistic.
So where did it all go wrong? A number of things have led to the project running late and over budget, but fundamentally it boils down to two causes:
- Britain's railway industry lacked the experienced engineers and pre-existing equipment necessary to carry out large-scale electrification projects;
- the scope of the GWML electrification project was gradually enlarged to include other upgrades that weren't originally included in the budget.
The GWML is the first electrification project being undertaken using a new High Output Plant System (HOPS), designed by Windhoff. HOPS is, essentially, an all-in-one electrification "factory train", with segments containing all the equipment to drive piles, place stanchions, fit cantilevers, hang wires, and finally inspect and test the whole thing. (See this fascinating YouTube video for a visual explanation of what it does.) The principal benefit of HOPS is that it can run with the adjacent line open, making it much easier to take overnight possessions.
Unfortunately there were some delays in building the train in Germany, and also some teething troubles in getting the train working here in Britain, not helped by the fact the engineers were having to be trained at the same time. The electrification schedule was heavily dependent on using the HOPS train at full speed – for example, getting 24 piles driven every single night – but unfortunately that rate has only been achieved very recently, after well over a year of use; even now there are still some problems with the system.
The piling itself also caused delays, in more sense than one. In the 1980s, as an effort to combat copper thefts, many lineside cables carrying vital signalling equipment were buried next to the track to make them more difficult to access. Unfortunately, records were not kept of exactly which cables were buried where; it was thus almost inevitable that the piling work for electrification would end up piling right through those wires. In the short term, this caused huge disruption to commuters on the GWML, as signals went black for several miles at a time, sometimes taking days to fix. In the long term, it meant that an inventory of all trackside cables had to be drawn up before piling could continue, meaning more delays to the electrification project.
The signalling system caused another problem for electrification. In order to ensure trains cannot crash into one another, for over a century the signalling system has used track circuits to detect where trains are: simply put, you split a track into blocks, attach a wire to each rail, and when a train passes over the rails in a given block it completes the circuit and current flows. But since current from the overhead wires is liable to leak into the rails (since the rails are used to earth the train), those track circuits have to be modified in order to run electric trains, or alternatively replaced with axle counters (which simply count the number of axles passing a given point on the rails).
In fact, however, much of the signalling equipment on the GWML – not just the track circuits, but the signals and points too – was last modernised in the 1960s, and was approaching the end of its life anyway. Rather than simply "immunise" the existing equipment against electric trains, the decision was taken to replace the majority of the signalling equipment between London and Bristol; a similar project was already underway in South Wales when electrification was announced, and the remodelling of Reading station (see diagram here) already entailed moving the signalbox there anyway.
In and of itself, this wasn't a huge increase in cost, but it was a significant one. It led to "scope creep", where the exact scope for what is being upgraded is enlarged gradually, again and again, such that you don't quite notice the increase in cost until it's too late. The best example is the upgrade of the line between Bristol Temple Meads and Bristol Parkway: this was reduced from four to two tracks in the 1980s as a cost-saving measure, but with plans for a Greater Bristol Metro, and the line being resignalled anyway, it makes sense to include the "re-quadrification" of this line in the resignalling of the Bristol area.
Similar upgrades include adding extra platforms at Oxford and West Drayton, and re-doubling the line between Swindon and Kemble (towards Gloucester). Such upgrades are undoubtedly a good idea, but they only add to the cost of the work on the GWML, particularly if they're added in at the last minute after the design has (supposedly) been finalised.
Moreover, it has exacerbated the shortage of engineers: any change to the network, big or small, requires specialist engineers capable of designing modifications to the signalling. The signal design engineers have had their hands full in recent years: lots of upgrades, combined with a drive by Network Rail to cut costs by consolidating signallers into huge Rail Operations Centres (ROCs), has led to a significant increase in resignalling work in the past few years. The supply of engineers simply can't keep pace with demand.
What does all this mean for the GWML electrification project? The cost has gradually crept up, from £1.1 billion when it was first announced in 2009, to £1.7 billion today, and the work is reported to be over a year behind schedule. On Thursday, McLoughlin declared that electrification of the GWML is now the DfT's "top priority", but it's not clear exactly what that will mean.
While the aims of getting wires to Bristol Parkway by the end of next year are clearly now impossible, there are two seemingly immovable deadlines that the GWML electrification team must face up to:
- the introduction of the new "very high frequency" timetable for the GWML in December 2018, involving full use of the new Hitachi Super Express trains as part of the DfT's Intercity Express Programme (IEP);
- the opening of Crossrail to Reading in December 2019.
If it really does take until late 2018 to get to Swindon (and, one would hope, Oxford and Newbury too), then that represents a delay of over two years to the project. Given that the introduction of electric trains to commuter services between London, Oxford and Newbury is planned to initiate a huge cascade – in which the diesel trains currently used in the Thames Valley are to transfer to the Bristol area, allowing some of the oldest diesel trains in the country to be retired – delays to that cascade will have impacts across the country.
What effect will this have on the rest of the electrification project? Some would say that Network Rail and the DfT tried to bite off more than they could chew in launching more than one major electrification project to run simultaneously, especially when we didn't have a big enough basis of engineers or equipment. Allowing Network Rail to focus on one major line at a time (albeit with the electrification between Manchester, Preston and Blackpool, and between Edinburgh and Glasgow, still ongoing) will hopefully allow the team on the GWML to get to grips with the equipment, and then, hopefully, the whole team can be transferred to, say, the MML in about 2020.
While initial works on the MML and Trans-Pennine lines had begun, the only serious work that is already underway is the rebuilding of some bridges: a necessary precursor to any electrification project is to ensure that the electric wires actually fit above the railway you're trying to build them over. Fortunately, these works only involve relatively standard civil engineering teams, and that work can perhaps continue – albeit at a slower pace – while the GWML electrification team cracks on with the job.
Of course the delay to the electrification projects is disappointing: it means passengers will have to put up with diesel trains for even longer. Sadly, it is not yet beyond the bounds of possibility that the MML or Trans-Pennine electrification schemes could yet be scrapped, especially if money becomes much tighter. Paradoxically, though, their delay may actually be a benefit, not a hindrance. Indeed, that was very much the tone of McLoughlin's statement: on the Trans-Pennine electrification, he said "we need to be much more ambitious for that route".
Ironically, it is precisely the "scope creep" on the GWML that could show the way forward. Much like the GWML electrification, the MML and Trans-Pennine electrification projects were costed and budgeted for just that: electrification, and only electrification. But just putting wires on an existing route doesn't necessarily lead to a dramatic improvement in capacity: what you really want is to upgrade the various capacity pinch-points, spruce up the stations, and bring in new trains, all at the same time, in what British Rail used to call "Total Route Modernisation".
That, belatedly, is precisely what's happening on the GWML: Reading has already been completely rebuilt, with major upgrades at Oxford and Bristol to come, and three fleets of trains (the Hitachi Super Express trains for long-distance services, and Class 387 and Class 365 trains for commuter services) will be introduced in the coming years, commensurate with electrification. If MML and Trans-Pennine electrification are to be truly worthwhile, they must include major upgrades to the various pinch-points of the network too, and that kind of upgrade is much easier done before there are wires to get in the way.
On the MML, a completely remodelled layout at Derby station is already planned for the next few years, as is a straightening of the notorious S-bend at Market Harborough to raise the speed from 60mph to 85mph. But works at Leicester to segregate east-west flows from north-south flows, by adding a flyover at Wigston, would also best be done before the line is electrified; they are currently planned for 2019-2022, but they could yet be folded into a more comprehensive MML upgrade programme.
Similarly, the Trans-Pennine electrification programme has never really been sure what it's trying to provide for: plans for six trains per hour between Manchester and Leeds were first thought to require re-opening the two abandoned tunnels at Standedge, to permit the line between Stalybridge and Huddersfield to be returned to four-track operation; but then a plan was crafted to do away with the stopping services, instead stopping longer-distance services at alternate stations. The Trans-Pennine line would certainly benefit from a more thought-out upgrade programme, rather than just electrifying what's currently there and running the risk of preserving it in aspic.
Until the outcome of the review, led by the new Network Rail chairman Sir Peter Hendy, the future remains uncertain. It may yet be that some of the MML or Trans-Pennine electrification work can be started before 2019, but it's clear that their completion will be closer to 2025 than 2020 (and work on the Electric Spine has been quietly drop-kicked into the long grass). But frankly, at this rate, if Network Rail can get the majority of the GWML electrified by 2019 – say, as far as Bristol and Cardiff – they'll be doing quite well.
Tuesday 31 March 2015
Franchises and Rolling Stock Cascades: the Merry-Go-Round of the Privatised Railway
One of the most common myths of the privatised railway is that the companies own the trains they operate. Nothing could be further from the truth: in fact, how the "rolling stock" of trains and locomotives is managed is probably the most complex part of the puzzle that makes up the fragmented, privatised British railway network.
With the trains owned by three rolling stock holding companies (ROSCOs), and each passenger operator running under a franchise from the Department for Transport (DfT), in a perfect free-market railway each franchise would be free to obtain rolling stock from any of the ROSCOs. But often there are only so many trains which are suitable for a particular route: long-distance trains on the West Coast Main Line (WCML) pretty much have to be Pendolinos or Voyagers, because they're the only trains that can tilt. Moreover, franchises are constrained by how much subsidy they get from the DfT: it costs more to buy a new fleet of trains than to just keep running the old ones.
How much subsidy a franchise gets is decided by the bidding process: companies compete for the rights to run trains in a particular area for, say, ten years or so. While the DfT decide the winning bid based on a number of different factors, often - but by no means always - the franchise goes to the company demanding the least subsidy. This means that a decision on whether to order new trains, thus requiring more subsidy, forms an integral part of a franchise bid.
As a result, the biggest news to come out of any franchise announcement is what new trains will be ordered, and where existing stock will move: last Monday's announcement of a new 3½-year deal for First to run the Great Western franchise was no exception. In addition to the already-planned IEP, two new train fleets, one for Thames Valley commuters and one for travellers between London, Devon and Cornwall, were announced to great fanfare.
But this announcement - together with last month's Invitation to Tender for the new Northern and TransPennine franchises - marked a significant departure in DfT policy. Until now, the DfT has insisted that it has no national plan for rolling stock, and which trains are used where is a matter for the operators. Here, however, we see the DfT deciding, for the first time, which trains should go where. Why has there been such a change in policy?
One result of the franchise bidding process is that moving entire fleets of trains between lines is most easily done when a franchise expires. Often the introduction of new trains for one particular line can lead to a "cascade", as the older fleet moves to another line to replace an even older fleet, and so on. In the days of British Rail, railway managers were free to move rolling stock around to meet demand. The key difference between then and now, however, is that under the privatised railway such cascades have to be negotiated and planned, piece by piece, several years in advance, in contrast to the simplicity of single management decisions by British Rail.
A classic example of such a cascade under British Rail was the building in 1989 of the Class 321s for WCML commuter services between London Euston and Northampton: their introduction meant that the Class 317s (dating from 1981) could be cascaded onto Great Northern local services between King's Cross and Cambridge, which in turn released the Class 312s (dating from 1975) to run services between Liverpool Street and Clacton. One new fleet built, but three lines end up with more modern trains.
As long as the DfT insist that they have no national rolling stock plan, such a cascade is much more difficult to organise, and becomes a long, protracted affair (if indeed it can happen at all). But the massive electrification projects presently being undertaken by Network Rail will require a huge cascade, with electric trains moving from existing lines in the south-east to the newly-electrified lines elsewhere. It seems that the DfT has finally decided it can no longer sit back and leave it all to the operators.
To the DfT's credit, it was foreseen from the outset that the first phase of the North-West Electrification would allow electric operation of services between Manchester, Glasgow and Edinburgh as early as December 2013, during the life of the existing TransPennine Express (TPE) franchise: as a result, an order for 10 new 4-car Class 350 "Desiro" units was tacked onto an existing order by London Midland, and they entered service with TPE over the course of the winter of 2013/14.
But with new Northern and TPE franchises due to begin operating in April 2014 and April 2015 respectively, the plan was to leave it up to the bidders to propose which trains to use on the newly-electrified lines in the North-West as they went live from December 2014 onwards. Even though the electrification between Liverpool and Manchester was planned explicitly as somewhere to send the Class 319s after they became surplus to requirements at Thameslink following the introduction of the new fleet, the new operators would not have been required to use them.
Then the InterCity West Coast franchise deal collapsed.
Back in August 2012, I wrote a blogpost heralding the arrival of First West Coast, to replace Virgin Trains on long-distance services between London, Birmingham, Manchester, Liverpool and Glasgow on the WCML. But six weeks later, the DfT were forced to admit, on the eve of a court case brought by Virgin, that they'd got their sums wrong. The franchise deal was cancelled, and Virgin celebrated what they saw as snatching victory from the jaws of defeat.
In the aftermath of the West Coast débâcle, the whole DfT process of franchising was suspended for over a year while a full review was carried out. With a large number of franchises having been due to expire during 2013 and 2014, many franchises were awarded extensions without further bidding: in the InterCity West Coast example, Virgin were first awarded an extension from December 2012 to November 2014, which was later extended again to run until March 2017. Only then will another franchise competition lead to a (potential) change of operator; until then, Virgin Trains will continue to operate.
More importantly, the current Northern and TPE franchises have been extended until February 2016. With the wires between Liverpool, Manchester and Wigan going live in early 2015, the DfT were forced to step in to ensure that 14 Class 319s - later upped to 20 - would be transferred from Thameslink to Northern through 2014 and 2015. Even then, it will be late in 2015 before enough 319s have transferred north to cover all the possible electric services, even though the wires are already in use as of Thursday 5th March.
The delay is ultimately due to delays to the Thameslink Programme: the Class 700 trains - due to replace the Class 319s - are running a bit late. To allow some 319s to be released as soon as possible, in December 2012 the DfT essentially used Southern as an "agent" to procure 29 new 4-car Electrostars from Bombardier, classified as Class 387. Although two-thirds of them are already in service, with the rest following over the next few months, these 110mph trains were intended only as a stopgap: once the Class 700s arrive they'll be surplus to requirements at Southern.
This week's announcement of the new Great Western franchise has put one more piece in the puzzle of the ongoing rolling-stock cascade: the Class 387s were destined for the Great Western Main Line (GWML) to run Thames Valley commuter services post-electrification. While the North-West electrification couldn't really justify brand-new trains, commuter services on the GWML are some of the most overcrowded in the country, and are thus a logical fit for the Class 387s.
To bolster capacity on the GWML, the 29 Class 387s currently entering service will be transferred to Great Western, and will be supplemented by another 8 newly-built Class 387s. Additionally, 21 of the 40 Class 365 fleet currently used by Great Northern services between King's Cross, Peterborough and Cambridge will also transfer over to the new Great Western franchise by 2018. This will enable Class 165 and 166 trains currently operating in the Thames Valley to move to Bristol, displacing other diesel trains from there (the details of which are yet to be confirmed).
Again, however, thanks to the delays, this Great Western franchise is really just an extension of the existing First Great Western franchise that's operated, in some shape or form, since privatisation in 1996. In other words, this hasn't emerged as the result of a competitive tender: for the first time the rolling stock movements have been specified by the DfT.
And there's more: last month, the DfT released its "Invitation to Tender" for the new Northern and TransPennine franchises, due to take over in February 2016. These describe the services that the operators are obliged to run, and other conditions. Unusually, the DfT has specified some quite stringent conditions on the rolling stock to be used by the new franchises: the biggest headline was that the new Northern franchise would not be permitted to use Pacers from 2020 onwards.
I've written about Pacers many times before: put simply, they were built in the early 1980s out of bus parts, as a cheap way of keeping rural lines open by reducing operating costs. Most importantly, they are the only trains which have fixed axles, rather than bogies with proper suspension, and the ride quality can thus be quite poor. To a certain extent, the fact they are concentrated in the north of England means that trains across the north are not perceived as a pleasant way to travel, and they may even be suppressing demand as a result.
To replace the Pacers, the Northern franchise must procure 120 new carriages of diesel trains. Other than that, though, most of the Invitation to Tender gives the bidders a fair amount of freedom on which trains to use, and it remains to be seen exactly which electric trains will move north. Surely, though, given that the Class 319s are already established in the North-West, it would be cheapest - and most sensible - for bidders to recommend more 319s transfer north to cover the remaining electric services. We'll have to wait and see who wins.
So is the DfT likely to continue specifying which trains a franchise should use, or will the free market prevail? A lot of that will depend on who wins the next election: the scrapping of the hated Pacers is a very good vote-winning policy, and it can hardly go unnoticed that the Secretary of State for Transport, Patrick McLoughlin, was joined in making the announcement by the Deputy Prime Minister, Nick Clegg, whose Sheffield constituency could vote him out in May.
For now, though, the announcement of the Great Western franchise brings some more clarity to the inevitable rolling stock cascade, which currently looks like this:
And that's just what we know about already! That doesn't tell the story of what happens to the 59 remaining Class 319s, or what becomes of the stock that is displaced by some of these moves, or which trains will be scrapped. For that, as always, we'll have to wait for the next franchise announcement...
With the trains owned by three rolling stock holding companies (ROSCOs), and each passenger operator running under a franchise from the Department for Transport (DfT), in a perfect free-market railway each franchise would be free to obtain rolling stock from any of the ROSCOs. But often there are only so many trains which are suitable for a particular route: long-distance trains on the West Coast Main Line (WCML) pretty much have to be Pendolinos or Voyagers, because they're the only trains that can tilt. Moreover, franchises are constrained by how much subsidy they get from the DfT: it costs more to buy a new fleet of trains than to just keep running the old ones.
How much subsidy a franchise gets is decided by the bidding process: companies compete for the rights to run trains in a particular area for, say, ten years or so. While the DfT decide the winning bid based on a number of different factors, often - but by no means always - the franchise goes to the company demanding the least subsidy. This means that a decision on whether to order new trains, thus requiring more subsidy, forms an integral part of a franchise bid.
As a result, the biggest news to come out of any franchise announcement is what new trains will be ordered, and where existing stock will move: last Monday's announcement of a new 3½-year deal for First to run the Great Western franchise was no exception. In addition to the already-planned IEP, two new train fleets, one for Thames Valley commuters and one for travellers between London, Devon and Cornwall, were announced to great fanfare.
But this announcement - together with last month's Invitation to Tender for the new Northern and TransPennine franchises - marked a significant departure in DfT policy. Until now, the DfT has insisted that it has no national plan for rolling stock, and which trains are used where is a matter for the operators. Here, however, we see the DfT deciding, for the first time, which trains should go where. Why has there been such a change in policy?
One result of the franchise bidding process is that moving entire fleets of trains between lines is most easily done when a franchise expires. Often the introduction of new trains for one particular line can lead to a "cascade", as the older fleet moves to another line to replace an even older fleet, and so on. In the days of British Rail, railway managers were free to move rolling stock around to meet demand. The key difference between then and now, however, is that under the privatised railway such cascades have to be negotiated and planned, piece by piece, several years in advance, in contrast to the simplicity of single management decisions by British Rail.
A classic example of such a cascade under British Rail was the building in 1989 of the Class 321s for WCML commuter services between London Euston and Northampton: their introduction meant that the Class 317s (dating from 1981) could be cascaded onto Great Northern local services between King's Cross and Cambridge, which in turn released the Class 312s (dating from 1975) to run services between Liverpool Street and Clacton. One new fleet built, but three lines end up with more modern trains.
As long as the DfT insist that they have no national rolling stock plan, such a cascade is much more difficult to organise, and becomes a long, protracted affair (if indeed it can happen at all). But the massive electrification projects presently being undertaken by Network Rail will require a huge cascade, with electric trains moving from existing lines in the south-east to the newly-electrified lines elsewhere. It seems that the DfT has finally decided it can no longer sit back and leave it all to the operators.
To the DfT's credit, it was foreseen from the outset that the first phase of the North-West Electrification would allow electric operation of services between Manchester, Glasgow and Edinburgh as early as December 2013, during the life of the existing TransPennine Express (TPE) franchise: as a result, an order for 10 new 4-car Class 350 "Desiro" units was tacked onto an existing order by London Midland, and they entered service with TPE over the course of the winter of 2013/14.
But with new Northern and TPE franchises due to begin operating in April 2014 and April 2015 respectively, the plan was to leave it up to the bidders to propose which trains to use on the newly-electrified lines in the North-West as they went live from December 2014 onwards. Even though the electrification between Liverpool and Manchester was planned explicitly as somewhere to send the Class 319s after they became surplus to requirements at Thameslink following the introduction of the new fleet, the new operators would not have been required to use them.
Then the InterCity West Coast franchise deal collapsed.
Back in August 2012, I wrote a blogpost heralding the arrival of First West Coast, to replace Virgin Trains on long-distance services between London, Birmingham, Manchester, Liverpool and Glasgow on the WCML. But six weeks later, the DfT were forced to admit, on the eve of a court case brought by Virgin, that they'd got their sums wrong. The franchise deal was cancelled, and Virgin celebrated what they saw as snatching victory from the jaws of defeat.
In the aftermath of the West Coast débâcle, the whole DfT process of franchising was suspended for over a year while a full review was carried out. With a large number of franchises having been due to expire during 2013 and 2014, many franchises were awarded extensions without further bidding: in the InterCity West Coast example, Virgin were first awarded an extension from December 2012 to November 2014, which was later extended again to run until March 2017. Only then will another franchise competition lead to a (potential) change of operator; until then, Virgin Trains will continue to operate.
More importantly, the current Northern and TPE franchises have been extended until February 2016. With the wires between Liverpool, Manchester and Wigan going live in early 2015, the DfT were forced to step in to ensure that 14 Class 319s - later upped to 20 - would be transferred from Thameslink to Northern through 2014 and 2015. Even then, it will be late in 2015 before enough 319s have transferred north to cover all the possible electric services, even though the wires are already in use as of Thursday 5th March.
The delay is ultimately due to delays to the Thameslink Programme: the Class 700 trains - due to replace the Class 319s - are running a bit late. To allow some 319s to be released as soon as possible, in December 2012 the DfT essentially used Southern as an "agent" to procure 29 new 4-car Electrostars from Bombardier, classified as Class 387. Although two-thirds of them are already in service, with the rest following over the next few months, these 110mph trains were intended only as a stopgap: once the Class 700s arrive they'll be surplus to requirements at Southern.
This week's announcement of the new Great Western franchise has put one more piece in the puzzle of the ongoing rolling-stock cascade: the Class 387s were destined for the Great Western Main Line (GWML) to run Thames Valley commuter services post-electrification. While the North-West electrification couldn't really justify brand-new trains, commuter services on the GWML are some of the most overcrowded in the country, and are thus a logical fit for the Class 387s.
To bolster capacity on the GWML, the 29 Class 387s currently entering service will be transferred to Great Western, and will be supplemented by another 8 newly-built Class 387s. Additionally, 21 of the 40 Class 365 fleet currently used by Great Northern services between King's Cross, Peterborough and Cambridge will also transfer over to the new Great Western franchise by 2018. This will enable Class 165 and 166 trains currently operating in the Thames Valley to move to Bristol, displacing other diesel trains from there (the details of which are yet to be confirmed).
Again, however, thanks to the delays, this Great Western franchise is really just an extension of the existing First Great Western franchise that's operated, in some shape or form, since privatisation in 1996. In other words, this hasn't emerged as the result of a competitive tender: for the first time the rolling stock movements have been specified by the DfT.
And there's more: last month, the DfT released its "Invitation to Tender" for the new Northern and TransPennine franchises, due to take over in February 2016. These describe the services that the operators are obliged to run, and other conditions. Unusually, the DfT has specified some quite stringent conditions on the rolling stock to be used by the new franchises: the biggest headline was that the new Northern franchise would not be permitted to use Pacers from 2020 onwards.
I've written about Pacers many times before: put simply, they were built in the early 1980s out of bus parts, as a cheap way of keeping rural lines open by reducing operating costs. Most importantly, they are the only trains which have fixed axles, rather than bogies with proper suspension, and the ride quality can thus be quite poor. To a certain extent, the fact they are concentrated in the north of England means that trains across the north are not perceived as a pleasant way to travel, and they may even be suppressing demand as a result.
To replace the Pacers, the Northern franchise must procure 120 new carriages of diesel trains. Other than that, though, most of the Invitation to Tender gives the bidders a fair amount of freedom on which trains to use, and it remains to be seen exactly which electric trains will move north. Surely, though, given that the Class 319s are already established in the North-West, it would be cheapest - and most sensible - for bidders to recommend more 319s transfer north to cover the remaining electric services. We'll have to wait and see who wins.
So is the DfT likely to continue specifying which trains a franchise should use, or will the free market prevail? A lot of that will depend on who wins the next election: the scrapping of the hated Pacers is a very good vote-winning policy, and it can hardly go unnoticed that the Secretary of State for Transport, Patrick McLoughlin, was joined in making the announcement by the Deputy Prime Minister, Nick Clegg, whose Sheffield constituency could vote him out in May.
For now, though, the announcement of the Great Western franchise brings some more clarity to the inevitable rolling stock cascade, which currently looks like this:
And that's just what we know about already! That doesn't tell the story of what happens to the 59 remaining Class 319s, or what becomes of the stock that is displaced by some of these moves, or which trains will be scrapped. For that, as always, we'll have to wait for the next franchise announcement...
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