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Northern Electrification Task Force Report


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The topic on pacer replacement has many comments about electrification. The report by the electrification task force has now been published and can by viewed here.

 

http://www.railnorth.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/EFT_Final_Report_FINAL_web.pdf

 

The report is a good read and appears to have been done without taking account of a lot of special pleading. I anticipate that the tier 1 and tier 2 schemes will all go ahead but the tier 3 ones will cause some comment. in particualr the very scenic routes such as the S & C.

 

I can reccommend the read though.

 

Jamie

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I know most people will completely disagree with me but despite the practical benefits of it I really, really dislike electrification and my heart sinks every time I hear about more happening (with the odd small gap-filling exception). I can no more get my head around anyone wanting to electrify the S & C than I can with the behaviour of the all the assorted nutters around the world who keep the headlines filled. I've not read the report since I expect it'll plunge me back into depression that I'm only just getting out of.

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Electrification is certainly a hard taste to acquire.  Gone are the spectacular brew-ups and ear-splitting sounds of mechanical heft.  

 

Instead, feast your eyes on a steel and wire cage wrapped round and destroying the flow of lines through the landscape.  

 

Not forgetting the inevitable palisade fencing to stop Darwinists from acquainting themselves with the electrons.

 

Through the eyes of an industry professional   person - I know I must accept it.  But I dislike detest it with a passion, and railways under the wires hold very little no interest for me.

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I personally am in favour of electrification for many reasons though I respect the right of others to hold differring views.

As to the S & C I grew up watching two miles of it from our kitchen window and love the route dearly. However the Midland was the pioneer of overhead electrification for main line freight work, though WW1 stopped the Derby Manchester scheme, and would not have thought twice about stringng the wires across Ribblehead viaduct.

 

When electrification over Shap was proposed there were many arguments against it but the high speed ride over the route in a Pendolino at full tilt is a joy to take and I have happy memories of driving along the M6 near shap watching a passenger train heading south in the rain with a huge plue of spray coming off the pantograph.

We all have differring likes and interests in this fascinating hobby of ours.

 

Personally I can't wait for the wires to come past my home village on the Trans Pennine route and then as each route get's wired the benefits of a proper electric network can be exploited.

 

Jamie

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Brunel would have done it, Gresley was doing it, the LMS had experimented and the Southern definitely were pro electric.

 

It is ultimately where railways would lead, steam very inefficient and dirty, diesels less inefficient but still dirty and in units noisy, electrics don't have to carry excess weight (fuel), are clean and fast.

 

The downside is that on very scenic routes like the S&C it will detract from the scene but as a key freight route it is inevitable that wires will one day need to go up. Newcastle to Carlisle is third tier route yet to me that is a diversionary infill. Scarborough is also tier 3 and that is another route that would make sense to wire as it forms part of Trans Pennine.

 

Glad to see my home route through Warrington Central is tier one, though some joker on Facebook wondered if it would the third rail!!!

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Whether people in the past would've done it or not is beside the point really. We're the ones here now, not them. There's no natural direction, no "this is where things are going" as if it's all driven by some external force, there's just what people decide to do. Some people want a more efficient world, some a more attractive one (I'm obviously in the latter group), neither is wrong since it's all down to personal values.

 

Other methods do the job, they might not do it quite as functionally but IMO it's a sad world indeed where functionality and practicality are the only things that should be considered. "There's no room for sentimentality" is an attitude I really hate, since those "sentimental" things are the ones that make life worth living, the task is to strike the right balance. You may as well argue that there's no room for anything else. The wires will never need to go up anywhere, it's all down to what priorities people want to take, and to what degree.

 

If wires are what society decides is the better option, placing the practical benefits ahead, then that's what it'll be. We'll get the type of world most of us want to live in, so if I'm in the minority I'll grumble and view everyone else dimly but I'll have to accept it; it would be wrong for me to do otherwise (not that I'd be in any sort of position to do anything else).

 

The only thing that necessitates anything though are the laws of physics and available resources.

 

I find no pleasure in going over Shap in a Pendolino and I find the benefits of electrification rather negligable.

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However the Midland was the pioneer of overhead electrification for main line freight work, though WW1 stopped the Derby Manchester scheme, and would not have thought twice about stringng the wires across Ribblehead viaduct.

Never knew about Derby to Manchester, wonder if it would've saved the route (although it didn't save Woodhead of course).

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What I have trouble with is the assumption that electrification is more efficient.

 

With a diesel train fuel is used to carry around the prime mover but is then used extremely efficiently in the diesel engine. With electrification, power is generated centrally and the distributed to the point of use. In general the generation process is much less efficient than a diesel engine and there are also losses in the transmission system.

 

If electricity is being generated from renewable sources, such as in Switzerland, there is no argument, which is why Switzerland has an almost completely electrified system. Traditionally, electricity was generated using coal fired power stations which were at best 35% efficient. We now in the UK have a mix, and I don't know the average generation efficiency. Some is generated using gas, which to my mind is criminal as gas is an extremely limited resource which has much better other uses. A little is generated by wind, hydro or PV, but still very little. It is also possible to use regeneration during braking, but I have no clue as to how much this actually reduces power consumption.

 

What electrification does do is move the point of production of emissions from the train to the power station. But it also uses resources and energy in their installation, which are not negligible.

 

Please note that I not saying electrification is less efficient. I am asking the question because I have never seen any real evidence, only special pleading.

 

Jonathan

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With electrification the moving part doesn't have to carry the weight of the fuel and generating equipment, which obviously helps, and I expect that there are quite a few efficiency improvements that can be made when generating at a much larger scale, and that transmission losses aren't that bad. Although if the diesel engine is more efficient as you say then maybe I'm wrong there.

 

Since quite a lot of electricity is still coal powered (although less and less) I find it mildly amusing that really quite a lot of trains are still coal-fired steam-powered, and even more if you just consider the steam part :)

 

I wonder what'll happen if electric road vehicles ever get really practical, i.e. there's little benefit in any area for using a petrol or diesel one over an electric, implying vastly better batteries than we've got. If the road powered vehicle has no drawbacks the same should apply to rail. It will still be some extra weight of course, so the busiest routes would remain electrified but there would be much less pressure to wire others, and perhaps to even keep the wires on some (with the extra maintenance). However expecting that sort of technology to appear doesn't seem much better than waiting for the warp drive and teleporter so it's merely idle speculation.

 

Oh, just to add, as much as I dislike the real thing I am perfectly capable of admiring a good model of an electrified line. Not sure if that's inconsistence or not!

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Never knew about Derby to Manchester, wonder if it would've saved the route (although it didn't save Woodhead of course).

The Lancaster Morecambe Heysham scheme that I'm modelling was set up as a test bed for Derby Manchester primarily for freight traffic with 80 ton Westinghouse Bo-Bo's as the motive power. They were also looking seriously at both St Pancras Bedford and the Aire Valley services for suburban passenger traffic. There were various expreiments conducted on the Lncaster lineswith differnt combination os motor and traier cars.

 

Jamie

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With electrification the moving part doesn't have to carry the weight of the fuel and generating equipment, which obviously helps, and I expect that there are quite a few efficiency improvements that can be made when generating at a much larger scale, and that transmission losses aren't that bad. Although if the diesel engine is more efficient as you say then maybe I'm wrong there.

 

Since quite a lot of electricity is still coal powered (although less and less) I find it mildly amusing that really quite a lot of trains are still coal-fired steam-powered, and even more if you just consider the steam part :)

 

I wonder what'll happen if electric road vehicles ever get really practical, i.e. there's little benefit in any area for using a petrol or diesel one over an electric, implying vastly better batteries than we've got. If the road powered vehicle has no drawbacks the same should apply to rail. It will still be some extra weight of course, so the busiest routes would remain electrified but there would be much less pressure to wire others, and perhaps to even keep the wires on some (with the extra maintenance). However expecting that sort of technology to appear doesn't seem much better than waiting for the warp drive and teleporter so it's merely idle speculation.

 

Oh, just to add, as much as I dislike the real thing I am perfectly capable of admiring a good model of an electrified line. Not sure if that's inconsistence or not!

The Electrification Task Force report discusses alternatives to overhead line electrification (insofar as the technology stands at the moment anyway) on page 42.

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a

 

However the Midland was the pioneer of overhead electrification for main line freight work,

Funny, Lancaster-Morecambe was hardly main line freight, and the other proposal did not happen, meanwhile the NER had a freight line operating with 10 locos and the LNER carried that forward into Manchester Sheffield even if it did need BR to complete it.

If anyone can be said to be 'the pioneer' it was the NER.

Regards

Keith

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Funny, Lancaster-Morecambe was hardly main line freight, and the other proposal did not happen, meanwhile the NER had a freight line operating with 10 locos and the LNER carried that forward into Manchester Sheffield even if it did need BR to complete it.

If anyone can be said to be 'the pioneer' it was the NER.

Regards

Keith

 Don't forget Liverpool - Southport, which opened at about the same time as the NER schemes. So the LYR were also pioneers

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Funny, Lancaster-Morecambe was hardly main line freight, and the other proposal did not happen, meanwhile the NER had a freight line operating with 10 locos and the LNER carried that forward into Manchester Sheffield even if it did need BR to complete it.

If anyone can be said to be 'the pioneer' it was the NER.

Regards

Keith

Lancaster was chosen as it was a small self contained service and had the existing generating station at Heysham. It also had a lot of other challenged duch s high winds, salt air etc that needed to be overcome. The only thing it was lacking was a tunnel. I don't want to get into the AC/DC argument but the Midland was looking at main line work from the start. This all comes from a paper presented to the Institute of Civil Engineers in 1909 by the two young engineers, Sayers and Dalziel who were given Deeley's backing and get on with it. Technically ot worked a treat and the ppm of the whole system was over 98% in it's first year of operation. The paper even has a table of delay minutes and their attribution in it. there is nothing new under the sun. AC was seen as superior to DCd due to the ease of trnsforming voltage without rotating machines and the reduced transmission losses with High voltage as well as reduced section of conductor wire.

 

With the benefit of hindsight it can be see that they chose the option that has eventually been adopted by the network today. they even used AC traction motors.

 

The politics of why DC rather than AC traction supply were chosen are not very good to read as the committee that chose it was dominated by Charles Mercks who happenned to manufacture DC power equipment. If a different set of engineers had been on that committee in the early 1920's the history of other projects might well hav been different.

 

Jamie

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What I have trouble with is the assumption that electrification is more efficient.

 

With a diesel train fuel is used to carry around the prime mover but is then used extremely efficiently in the diesel engine. With electrification, power is generated centrally and the distributed to the point of use. In general the generation process is much less efficient than a diesel engine and there are also losses in the transmission system.

 

Wrong!

 

In a diesel engine a good proportion of the energy generated is heat - not kinetic (i.e. movement). This is basic Physics not an opinion. In a diesel engine attached to a train (or any form of vehicle to be totally accurate) that heat is not used for anything productive. Yes in winter it can be used to heat the interior but in summer it represents a big waste of resources. Also most DMUs use mechanical transmission which has far more friction generating parts than a brushless AC motor based drive train as used in modern EMUs.  In a power station by contrast not only are you able to insulate the boiler room more effectively and eliminate environmental factors (wind chill, fuel temperature, dampness / humidity, oxygen levels, etc) but also the 'waste heat can be used to pre heat the water used for making steam - even in the height of summer. As for transmission losses, if the voltage is high enough and the electricity is AC these become negligible (hint its why 25KV is used for OHLE these days and the national grid runs at 440KV / 275KV / 132KV depending on how 'core' the lines are).

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Thanks, Phil. I have just found a reference to typical efficiencies for modern diesel engines of 50% which is less than I expected or remember being told in the past. However, I was assuming electric transmission which has much lower losses than diesel. Grid transmission losses for 2013-14 were 1.66% nationally (NGE report). And from another report: steam turbine fuel-oil power plant efficiency is currently 38 to 44%. So it looks as though there is probably not much in it in efficiency terms. But there is still a big investment in fixed plant with its own energy and resource implications, along with maintenance of the power supply system.

 

On the other hand, we can hope that eventually a good part of British energy will come from renewable sources [but not wind turbines please which don't really do much in the way of energy saving (a lot of energy used in manufacture and delivery to site), and also consume a lot in the way of natural resources].

 

Jonathan

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I really see no valid arguments against electrification except for purely subjective personal preferences for non-electric trains. People point out that electric traction is not zero emission and this is quite true as you move emissions from the engine exhaust to the point of generating electricity. However there is significant renewable electricity generation in the UK and generation from wind and nuclear which has no emissions in service (before it is pointed out, these modes have a large carbon footprint to build). Electric trains are much cleaner and offer much better performance. I think that it would have been sensible to have made a direct leap from steam to electric trains rather than investing so much in diesel traction. Diesel trains were undoubtedly cleaner, easier to maintain/operate and offered more consistent performance than steam engines but ultimately I think they are a technical cul-de-sac and transitional technology. The up front costs of electrification are igh but through life costs are good, it is a classic example of the choice of paying up front or paying through life, unfortunately in the UK the tendency tends to be buy cheap and pay high costs through the life of an asset rather than the other way around.

On the philosophical argument, railways were never built to look nice or to be a pleasant hobby for enthusiasts but to move freight and people efficiently and profitably. We tend to think of the pre-nationalisation companies and maybe more the pre-grouping companies as representing a golden era of railways yet those companies were driven by profit and were certainly not backwards looking entities with an affinity for nostalgia. I sincerely believe that if any of the great engineers were alive today they'd be advocating electrification.

Diesel engines are a mature technology, it is true that emissions abatement can reduce their environmental impact but efficiency will always be an issue especially when trains tend not to have the sort of energy recovery systems that boost efficiency in applications such as electricity generation and marine.

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Something to remember about coal fired stations is that although the efficiency is not great they offer flexibility, use a plentiful fuel which has a very diverse supply base and the emissions are clean after fitting flue gas de-sulphurisation and flue gas de-nitrification systems. Clearly carbon emissions are high but coal offers a secure, flexible, reliably means of generating electricity as a transition to developing genuinely low carbon technologies and/or energy storage offering similar reliability and dependability.

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Railways are the day-job, and in that context there's no room for sentiment.  Resources, tools, procedures, approvals, deliverables and outcomes,  Sense-check and go round again.

Because railways interest me, work retains an element of interest too, which is a definite bonus every day when the alarm goes off and every night as I traipse home late.

 

As my hobby, railways' historic and social context, researching and modelling that, my preferences are necessarily rather different, because they take railways as a form of recreation and entertainment.  Entirely discretionary and with infinite capacity for baseless sentimental predilections.  Privately my headspace sees the decade 1966 - 76 as the finest in British Railway history and endlessly replays it through rose-infused binoculars and a magnifying glass.

 

I would never model the current railway in any form.  I dislike the anodyne traction, endless diet of fixed formation trains, the ruthless accountancy-led decision making and rationalisation, creeping standardisation, the graffiti, decay, abandonment, grot, and general brutalist air that pervades much of the landscape within the boundary fence.  

 

The industry's growth is great, it pays my bills, but I wouldn't climb over a yard full of DeathSteam to go and rub myself seductively against it.  Not when I whore myself to it every day.

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Thanks, Phil. I have just found a reference to typical efficiencies for modern diesel engines of 50% which is less than I expected or remember being told in the past. However, I was assuming electric transmission which has much lower losses than diesel. Grid transmission losses for 2013-14 were 1.66% nationally (NGE report). And from another report: steam turbine fuel-oil power plant efficiency is currently 38 to 44%. So it looks as though there is probably not much in it in efficiency terms. But there is still a big investment in fixed plant with its own energy and resource implications, along with maintenance of the power supply system.

 

On the other hand, we can hope that eventually a good part of British energy will come from renewable sources [but not wind turbines please which don't really do much in the way of energy saving (a lot of energy used in manufacture and delivery to site), and also consume a lot in the way of natural resources].

 

Jonathan

 

Indeed you are correct a power station and the associated transmission network are expensive things to build in the first instance BUT with the correct care and maintenance the can outlast any diesel engine - they are also a lot easier to upgrade over time (i.e. boilers one year, turbines another, control systems, another, etc. So as with many things while electrification of our railways requires a big lump sum up front, once its done the running costs are low.

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Well from sunny Wigan to rainy Manchester I have now two choices

 

Crappy old pacer on the L&Y route via Bolton or Atherton

New swish EMU Trans Pennine Wigan NW to Oxford Rd / Piccadilly via Parkside.

 

I like to model old railways and travel on new ones !!!!!!!!

 

Electrify the whole lot, every line, S&C included I say.

 

Brit15

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I really see no valid arguments against electrification except for purely subjective personal preferences for non-electric trains.

The implication being that those arguments are somehow less significant and meaningful. We live in the world we create, so create the world we want (not that any two people have the same idea of what that is, which makes it a rather insurmountable problem). It is completely about the sort of world we want. I see valid arguments for from a practical point of view, and valid arguments against it from an aesthetic one, and I simply cannot accept that only the former count, and that there the latter should be dismissed as trivial and meaningless. Do you end up in a world that's more or less worth living in than the one you had before, when you've weighed up the pros and cons from both points of view? That, surely, is the only important question. It's also why we have things like planning permission these days (arugments about the effectiveness and appropriateness of it in some cases notwithstanding).

 

 

 

On the philosophical argument, railways were never built to look nice or to be a pleasant hobby for enthusiasts but to move freight and people efficiently and profitably

That is of course true but I don't see why that implies that such considerations should remain the only ones. It all boils down to what you feel gives us the best world to live in - moving freight and people around better than was possible before railways gave (overall) a better world to live in. It doesn't therefore follow that every single change along the same lines does.

 

And of course there are plenty of Victorian railway structures that were built with rather more style than purely utilitarian considerations and building methods of the day would dictate as being all that was necessary.

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If wires are what society decides is the better option, placing the practical benefits ahead, then that's what it'll be. We'll get the type of world most of us want to live in, so if I'm in the minority I'll grumble and view everyone else dimly but I'll have to accept it; it would be wrong for me to do otherwise (not that I'd be in any sort of position to do anything else).

You are in the same minority whose views would have meant there were no railways to electrify in the first place, nor any roads or power lines - you've benefited all your life from infrastructure which isn't aesthetically pleasing but is justifiable nonetheless, though I'd argue that Switzerland has long proved that wires do not make scenic railways ugly.

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Well from sunny Wigan to rainy Manchester I have now two choices

 

Crappy old pacer on the L&Y route via Bolton or Atherton

New swish EMU Trans Pennine Wigan NW to Oxford Rd / Piccadilly via Parkside.

 

I like to model old railways and travel on new ones !!!!!!!!

And if the electric stock was of Pacer standard and the diesel a comfy new thing?

Electrify the whole lot, every line, S&C included I say.

I just simply cannot grasp how anyone could even think that.
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You are in the same minority whose views would have meant there were no railways to electrify in the first place, nor any roads or power lines - you've benefited all your life from infrastructure which isn't aesthetically pleasing but is justifiable nonetheless, though I'd argue that Switzerland has long proved that wires do not make scenic railways ugly.

You could use that argument to justify absolutely anything, and someone alwawys does for every single proposal. It is invalid and looks like you're just trying to find an excuse to dismiss it, "I'm right, end of." Unless I actually claimed those things don't pretend that that's what I would've thought, and don't trot out the tired old "you don't like something new therefore you'd have us living in the dark ages" line. Sometimes change is an improvement, sometimes it is not.
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