RAIB report: "Near miss between a passenger train and cars at Norwich Road level crossing"

[Hal Nail]

22 hours ago, TheQ said:

they wouldn't say why, but you can guess it was a bean counter somewhere trying to save money..

Yes, in an industry as notoriously profitable as railways, looking at finances can only be construed as greed.

[jeff mcghie]

12 hours ago, phil-b259 said:

 

Network Rail does seem to be more aware of this these days and has basically gone back to using Siemens (I.e. Westinghouse) and Alstom as the principle suppliers of signalling technology which should avoid the mistakes of the Railtrack era - but at a higher costs due to the effective ‘duopoly’.

 

 

 

It also has the unfortunate result that fewer signalling renewals take place due to the excessive costs from the monopoly suppliers resulting in old, obsolete equipment having to be nursed from many years. Had the other suppliers been given the time to develop their systems to meet the (overly onerous?) UK specific requirements then, with wider choice, more signalling could be brought up to modern standards.

[phil-b259]

19 minutes ago, jeff mcghie said:

 

It also has the unfortunate result that fewer signalling renewals take place due to the excessive costs from the monopoly suppliers resulting in old, obsolete equipment having to be nursed from many years. Had the other suppliers been given the time to develop their systems to meet the (overly onerous?) UK specific requirements then, with wider choice, more signalling could be brought up to modern standards.

 

'Developing their systems' doesn't happen for free you know.

 

In many cases such development will nullify any cost savings gained by opting for a cheaper supplier. Again I refer you to the Railtrack resignalling schemes which went many times over budget and in all cases did not deliver what they were supposed to do despite vast quantities of money being thrown at them in the later stages of the project and which cost more overall (given the way schemes had to be curtailed or ditched) than an off the shelf option from Westinghouse / Alstom using tried and tested technology.

 

I also take issue with your description of UK standards as 'onerous'. UK standards are not unreasonable (particularly safety critical things like signalling) - but the are different to other railway standards in other countries. Take for example the UK requirement for railways to be fenced in - it imposes extra costs but at the same time means that trespass, vandalism, animal strikes (all of which impose costs to operators and inconvenience to the travelling public) are less likely to happen.

 

In the case of level crossing predictors, the point is that the designers need to take into account UK conditions - where leaf fall contamination is a known problem in the Autumn months. Simply saying it works in X, Y and Z is not enough - alterations such as the fitment of backup treadles is the sort of thing which should have been an obvious step to Railtrack - yet they did not.

 

Finally the biggest costs with resignalling schemas is NOT the kit itself! Its the fact there is a massive shortage of designers, testers and installers, plus far tighter restrictions on 'stageworks' so as to avoid creating conditions where a Clapham Junction style cock up happens. Compensation to train operators during the works for additional possessions / blockades isn't exactly trivial either

 

As with much of the rest of the UK economy, signal engineering based disciplines simply cannot recruit enough people and most of todays youth are more interested in becoming a media celebrity, working in media, digital services,  the arts, etc than doing engineering based jobs. That in turn means the few skilled people out there can command a higher price for their time as well as limiting the volume of work that can be done at any one time - buying more untried (in the UK environment) signalling systems is NOT going to change that.

Edited December 16, 2020 by phil-b259

[Michael Hodgson]

4 minutes ago, phil-b259 said:

Simply saying it works in X, Y and Z is not enough - alterations such as the fitment of backup treadles is the sort of thing which should have been an obvious step to Railtrack - yet they did not.

 

 

Railtrack's lack of industry experience and engineering knowledge at Board level is what resulted in gauge corner cracking and the Hatfield derailment, and ultimately to the company's collapse. 

 

Putting it under new management and the formation of Network Rail is supposed to have solved that problem.

[phil-b259]

2 hours ago, Michael Hodgson said:

Railtrack's lack of industry experience and engineering knowledge at Board level is what resulted in gauge corner cracking and the Hatfield derailment, and ultimately to the company's collapse. 

 

Putting it under new management and the formation of Network Rail is supposed to have solved that problem.

 

The board and the directors of any organisation are the ones who ultimately control the purse strings. Be it retail or railway engineering, choosing to ignore those at the sharp end rarely ends well.

 

At Hatfield the decision to cease rail grinding (a major contributory factor) was driven by the fact it produced an  intimidate cost saving in spite of opposition from the engineers on the ground who knew it was a false economy. Dito the reluctance to put in place speed restrictions even when renewal of the rail was well overdue to minimise compensation payments to TOCS.

 

Similarly with resignalling kit, the decision to go for THREE untried signalling systems at once was done over the heads of experienced engineering staff who knew that kit not originally developed for the UK market would invariably need a fair bit of costly adjustment. Again it was the desire to save money that overulled everything else.

 

The main reason why Network Rail has done a better job is the board are not focusing soley on financial performance or share price - Engineering aspects of the railway business now have a voice at the top table which was not the case under Railtrack.

 

So while no organisation should be closed to new ideas - said new ideas need to be carefully managed until they can be proved to work satisfactory. Its worth noting that the very successful internationally (LOTS of countries across the globe use it), British Rail commissioned SSI was the result of years of research and collaboration between signalling manufacturers who deliberately started small with the first trial site at Lemington Spa rather than a big scheme to resignal everything in the South Manchester area (the Ansaldo system).

 

If a decision is taken to employ a new signalling system from another country to widen the supply pool (a laudable aim in itself) then its crucial that enough attention is paid to making sure its performance, particularly safety aspects, is equivalent or better than the systems previously used. Railtrack failed miserably on that score and many years on it almost resulted in a very nasty collision.