West Midlands Metro Tracklaying in Brum

[melmerby]

16 minutes ago, jim.snowdon said:

One day, the consultants who do the design will work out how proper tram track is laid (both historically and currently in the rest of Europe).

 

(Spoken by experience as an ex-tramway engineer.)

Is some of this your input?

https://uktram.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/ORR-Design-Requirements-for-Street-Track.pdf

 

The picture of Grenoble looks exactly the same as the WM Metro

Croydon's version in the next picture looks broadly similar.

[coline33]

I can assure all that Jim speaks with a lot of experience from tramway construction through to operational maintenance thereafter of my home system.   I only wish that the original management had implemented all that he had recommended to them.

[melmerby]

47 minutes ago, coline33 said:

I can assure all that Jim speaks with a lot of experience from tramway construction through to operational maintenance thereafter of my home system.   I only wish that the original management had implemented all that he had recommended to them.

He may well do but I was hoping to find out exactly what we are doing wrong in the UK, as I thought we were doing the same as in Europe.

[coline33]

Keith, I appreciate from where you are coming from.   Yes, I would have expected UK to continue following recommendations from Europe.   In a recent T&UT magazine there is a review of what UK Trams and the Centre for Excellence had been doing.   The impression it gave me was that UK was adding its own thing to European findings, recommendations and implementation.   I believe the whole article was to be published in two parts.   I wish you well in finding your answers, Colin.

[jim.snowdon]

On 08/09/2021 at 13:17, melmerby said:

Is some of this your input?

https://uktram.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/ORR-Design-Requirements-for-Street-Track.pdf

 

The picture of Grenoble looks exactly the same as the WM Metro

Croydon's version in the next picture looks broadly similar.

Yes, but remember that it's not what you see on the surface, but what lies beneath and therein lie the differences.

 

Some of them come from a largely British paranoia about stray current.

 

[melmerby]

3 hours ago, jim.snowdon said:

Yes, but remember that it's not what you see on the surface, but what lies beneath and therein lie the differences.

 

Some of them come from a largely British paranoia about stray current.

 

Hi Jim

Could you elucidate further?

Having followed the construction of the Birmingham extensions from the first "spades in the ground", what would I have seen that doesn't follow European practice?

[wagonbasher]

13 hours ago, melmerby said:

Hi Jim

Could you elucidate further?

Having followed the construction of the Birmingham extensions from the first "spades in the ground", what would I have seen that doesn't follow European practice?

Also interested to hear what the differences are, I watch the construction at the Wolverhampton end in detail from my 1st story office?

 

Have no experience of European practise.

 

Andy

[jim.snowdon]

On 09/09/2021 at 17:25, melmerby said:

Hi Jim

Could you elucidate further?

Having followed the construction of the Birmingham extensions from the first "spades in the ground", what would I have seen that doesn't follow European practice?

Newer British tram track is slowly getting closer to European practice, and at least the Birmingham extensions have adopted the principle of the cast in concrete sleeper in preference to glueing the rail into a concrete slot with polymer compounds (I believe one of the Croydon track renewals that I did was the first UK application of in situ cast sleepers). But, Birmingham is still wedded to using rubber coated rail (which isn't common elsewhere), and reinforced concrete foundation slabs (which aren't used in Europe, and weren't a feature of British first generation tram track). European practice is to use what is essentially a mass concrete slab, with only light reinforcement to mitigate against cracking, poured under the track after it has been set to line and level. British track is not yet built to allow side wear to be welded up in situ - the practice of using heat treated rail on curves, as per railway practice, makes it much more complicated to weld without either damaging the surrounding polymer compound that has been used to hold the rail in place or controlling the rail temperature to prevent cracking. (On a tramway, hardened rail is better used on the straight sections that are subject to rolling wear, and ordinary steels on the curves, which are subject to scrubbing wear and which can be welded up several times before the rail head is too worn.)

 

[jim.snowdon]

As a footnote to the above, I have just seen some pictures (on another site) of the new junction work for the East Side extension being installed. All I could say was along the lines of "impressive, but the Dutch and Germans would have had the old track out and the new work running trams, even if only on temporary supports, inside a week". The new Birmingham tram work is a tour de force in concrete formwork and casting, with the whole of the trackbed cast with slots for everything, including the gauge tiebars. Go to Europe and the track would have been assembled, lined and levelled with the baseplates all attached, and then had the foundation concrete poured under it. Before the concrete would have gone in, the track would have been on temporary supports, with the joints plated and temporarily bonded, with trams running over it, whilst in between times, the joints would have been welded up.

We are not learning, just reinventing a more complicated wheel.

 

 

 

Edited September 15, 2021 by jim.snowdon
Edited to add pictures

[wombatofludham]

I suspect the encapsulated rail is down to the City Council having issues with noise and vibration.  Back when there was still talk about having an underground route, and when we were preparing the case for Line 1, I was involved, peripherally, with Centro's noise and vibration policy which set out requirements for noise mitigation by the concessionaires and the rights for neighbours to claim for nuisance from neighbouring properties if the new system led to measurable noise nuisance.  This was prior to the Government publishing similar requirements for all new rail works on a national basis (largely based on our work) which is why new rail lines, and the widening of the Trent Valley, ended up with noise mitigation measures.  Birmingham was very nervous of noise and vibration, particularly with the Town Hall, ICC and Symphony Hall all potentially sensitive to regenerated noise (rumble) caused by the passage of steel wheels on rails.  It's why the track under the NIA on the main Stour Valley has additional rubber pads under the rails although trying to reduce regenerated noise from a heavy rail line that was there centuries before the NIA is at best a sticking plaster solution.  As far as I am aware, that Noise and Vibration Compensation policy is still in force so it is probably with that in mind the hefty slab and rubber mounted rails are being used - the massive foundation will be better at absorbing any vibration from the passage of the tram, and the rubber of course will act as a discontinuity boundary and further absorb any vibration

The noise and vibration policy was adopted by the PTA in order to overcome objections not just from a public unaware of how relatively quiet modern light rail vehicles are, but also local authorities who could have made objections to the applications for powers.  As such it wouldn't surprise me if the City is holding the Metro Alliance's feet to the fire on this.

[jim.snowdon]

An example of the Dutch approach to the same task -

 

 

 

[jim.snowdon]

18 minutes ago, wombatofludham said:

I suspect the encapsulated rail is down to the City Council having issues with noise and vibration.  Back when there was still talk about having an underground route, and when we were preparing the case for Line 1, I was involved, peripherally, with Centro's noise and vibration policy which set out requirements for noise mitigation by the concessionaires and the rights for neighbours to claim for nuisance from neighbouring properties if the new system led to measurable noise nuisance.  This was prior to the Government publishing similar requirements for all new rail works on a national basis (largely based on our work) which is why new rail lines, and the widening of the Trent Valley, ended up with noise mitigation measures.  Birmingham was very nervous of noise and vibration, particularly with the Town Hall, ICC and Symphony Hall all potentially sensitive to regenerated noise (rumble) caused by the passage of steel wheels on rails.  It's why the track under the NIA on the main Stour Valley has additional rubber pads under the rails although trying to reduce regenerated noise from a heavy rail line that was there centuries before the NIA is at best a sticking plaster solution.  As far as I am aware, that Noise and Vibration Compensation policy is still in force so it is probably with that in mind the hefty slab and rubber mounted rails are being used - the massive foundation will be better at absorbing any vibration from the passage of the tram, and the rubber of course will act as a discontinuity boundary and further absorb any vibration

The noise and vibration policy was adopted by the PTA in order to overcome objections not just from a public unaware of how relatively quiet modern light rail vehicles are, but also local authorities who could have made objections to the applications for powers.  As such it wouldn't surprise me if the City is holding the Metro Alliance's feet to the fire on this.

Trams in The Hague are remarkably quiet, much as can be said pretty well anywhere.

 

[wombatofludham]

I agree, but as with the almost paranoia about stray currents which our continental friends seemingly dismiss, there's a traditional "we want it done this way" approach to these things.  That said, Birmingham did do some amazing pioneering work on noise in the city, especially the effects on residents and the need to think about noise in planning policy, trying as best as possible to avoid mixing people with noise generators like the motorways and the airport.  They did help Centro enormously and I must admit I picked up a lot of useful gen on noise and rail systems.

As an aside, I was shocked when I was sat in a car showroom on the A41 in Wolverhampton, long after I had left Centro and some ten years after the opening of the tramway on the road, to hear just how bad the old Ansaldo T69 trams were for noise, not only was there the wheel-rail noise but there was an awful mechanical gearing noise which was noticeable in the building.  I think the new trams are a lot quieter.

[melmerby]

13 hours ago, jim.snowdon said:

As a footnote to the above, I have just seen some pictures (on another site) of the new junction work for the East Side extension being installed. All I could say was along the lines of "impressive, but the Dutch and Germans would have had the old track out and the new work running trams, even if only on temporary supports, inside a week". The new Birmingham tram work is a tour de force in concrete formwork and casting, with the whole of the trackbed cast with slots for everything, including the gauge tiebars. Go to Europe and the track would have been assembled, lined and levelled with the baseplates all attached, and then had the foundation concrete poured under it. Before the concrete would have gone in, the track would have been on temporary supports, with the joints plated and temporarily bonded, with trams running over it, whilst in between times, the joints would have been welded up.

We are not learning, just reinventing a more complicated wheel.

 

 

 

 

That's totally different to how they did it first time around. I wonder why the change?

 

All that happened is that they prepared a wide bed, assembled the trackwork on it held up by screws to level it and then poured concrete in two pours up to railhead height.

No precast sections or any other paraphernalia.

[jim.snowdon]

4 minutes ago, melmerby said:

That's totally different to how they did it first time around. I wonder why the change?

 

All that happened is that they prepared a wide bed, assembled the trackwork on it held up by screws to level it and then poured concrete in two pours up to railhead height.

No precast sections or any other paraphernalia.

Different contractor and/or design consultant?

 

[melmerby]

6 minutes ago, jim.snowdon said:

Different contractor and/or design consultant?

 

I've got loads of pictures taken from the early stages of the first extension  to Stephenson Street & the second onto Hagley road and there isn't much difference there.

 

BTW where I said two pours to railhead it was to sleeper top, the rest being Tarmac in most places.

 

EDIT

When they first did the Corporation Street/Bull Street section they put a concrete base for the triangular junction, but did not install it.

That all appears to have been dug up and completely re-newed

Edited September 16, 2021 by melmerby

[phil-b259]

13 hours ago, jim.snowdon said:

As a footnote to the above, I have just seen some pictures (on another site) of the new junction work for the East Side extension being installed. All I could say was along the lines of "impressive, but the Dutch and Germans would have had the old track out and the new work running trams, even if only on temporary supports, inside a week". The new Birmingham tram work is a tour de force in concrete formwork and casting, with the whole of the trackbed cast with slots for everything, including the gauge tiebars. Go to Europe and the track would have been assembled, lined and levelled with the baseplates all attached, and then had the foundation concrete poured under it. Before the concrete would have gone in, the track would have been on temporary supports, with the joints plated and temporarily bonded, with trams running over it, whilst in between times, the joints would have been welded up.

We are not learning, just reinventing a more complicated wheel.

 

 

 

 

Yup - but why are you surprised!

 

The British (or more particularly Whitehall bureaucracy mindset that also filters down to local Government) loves to gold plate / re-invent things - particularly in an era where politicians don't have  backbone and feel the need to pander to all sorts of stuff from whinging voters / lobby groups in pursuit of votes.

 

Hence rather than turning round to concerned residents in Birmingham and saying "the Dutch don't have a problem and we are doing it their way" the British authorities feel the need to say "don't worry - we won't use foreign ideas, we will go for our own 'best practice / bespoke ideas jut in case the foreigners have got it wrong"

 

Ultimately its just an extension of the "Little Englander" mentality which amuses we (and the way we do things) must be inherently superior to all others because we "beat them" in world wars or used to have an Empire spanning half the globe.

[coline33]

17 minutes ago, melmerby said:

That's totally different to how they did it first time around. I wonder why the change?

 

All that happened is that they prepared a wide bed, assembled the trackwork on it held up by screws to level it and then poured concrete in two pours up to railhead height.

No precast sections or any other paraphernalia.

Sounds as though it is first generation practice!   Reminiscent of practice I found on several European systems they rebuilt/regauged/extended in 1958/9 when I delved into 'roadworks' to see how the track was constructed from the soil up.

[phil-b259]

1 hour ago, coline33 said:

Sounds as though it is first generation practice!   Reminiscent of practice I found on several European systems they rebuilt/regauged/extended in 1958/9 when I delved into 'roadworks' to see how the track was constructed from the soil up.

 

Nothing wrong with "1st generation" techniques if they work.

 

Its worth noting that high speed rail* has mostly continued to use the '1st generation' track work technique of laying it on small chunks of stone rather than concrete slabs because it works!

 

*HS2 is the exception due to British willy waving / overcompensating for having ignored the concept for so long and going for a 250mph design speed rather than 200mph which would permit '1st generation' style ballasted track to be used at a far lower cost.

Edited September 16, 2021 by phil-b259

[coline33]

Phil, Jim maybe able to recall, with past changes/renewal to the pointwork at East Croydon and Reeves Corner junctions I spoke to Dutch engineers engaged on the works.   There was no adverse comment on the methods being used.   In fact the change to the pointwork layout was in line with comments I made when the first track layout was installed as to wrong handed points in relation to travel and the 'attack' factor track has to bear.     

[coline33]

To me Phil, the most important thing when starting a new tramway, as I said to LRT's Light Rail Manager/Planner in September 1989, is to get the best mesh between the trams that will be ordered and the track construction to be used.   We formulated what we considered to be the best articulated tramcar for Croydon which could be extended at the articulation following European practice.   Based on a car with both bogies and 'Judas' truck, the best track construction to reduce maintenance should then be explored.   The quote he got for a single artic car that autumn was £0.75m.   In the end Croydon got initially a car with bogies plus a C-truck, sections of poorly laid track that cost millions to restore and now the latest cars are what I call three four wheelers articulated together.   From my experiences of riding such combinations of German experiments in the 1950, I fully understood two decades later C C Hall of Sheffield advising Crich on laying and maintaining their track to understand the 'attack' approach that leading wheel sets have on any curve.   In those days there were no hub motors or 'split' axles to try to reduce this track wear and tear as tried in Helsinki recently which I think failed to give the expected results.

 

As to ballast depth I recall that when Bob Reid became BR Chairman in the 1980's he soon, as a resident of Purley, had the original 1970's Gatwick Express stock replaced because of the dreadful noise they made.   The Mk2 carriages used were constructed for the WCML with its deep ballasted tracks which as I found at Wolverton, ran with little track noise emitted.   Coming on to the Southern's much reduced level of ballasted track, the carriages became track sound generators.   

[jim.snowdon]

27 minutes ago, phil-b259 said:

 

Yup - but why are you surprised!

 

The British (or more particularly Whitehall bureaucracy mindset that also filters down to local Government) loves to gold plate / re-invent things - particularly in an era where politicians don't have  backbone and feel the need to pander to all sorts of stuff from whinging voters / lobby groups in pursuit of votes.

 

Hence rather than turning round to concerned residents in Birmingham and saying "the Dutch don't have a problem and we are doing it their way" the British authorities feel the need to say "don't worry - we won't use foreign ideas, we will go for our own 'best practice / bespoke ideas jut in case the foreigners have got it wrong"

 

Ultimately its just an extension of the "Little Englander" mentality which amuses we (and the way we do things) must be inherently superior to all others because we "beat them" in world wars or used to have an Empire spanning half the globe.

Up to a point, I agree, but my experience was that the design consultancies to whom they turn for advice and for actual designs are not only more used to designing railway track but have little knowledge of how to build tramway track, and there are few, if any,  people on the client side to tell they are over-engineering things.

 

[melmerby]

If you wanted to hear noisy trams the section of Midland Metro along Bilston Road, Wolverhampton was pretty dire and with a poor ride as well.

This section has now (a few years back) been completely re-newed and is miles better.

[coline33]

1 hour ago, jim.snowdon said:

Up to a point, I agree, but my experience was that the design consultancies to whom they turn for advice and for actual designs are not only more used to designing railway track but have little knowledge of how to build tramway track, and there are few, if any,  people on the client side to tell they are over-engineering things.

 

Yes, Jim, my sentiments too.   As I expressed to the Chairman of the 1992 Conference on Croydon's trams at Fairfields Halls.   During the lunch break I went and sat at as many tables as I could to listen to the views of delegates.   None seemed to have experience of light rail only heavy.   I reported back to Geoffrey of my dismay of hearing of expensive schemes from over engineering (just as I found in the port transport industry1) and concluded that all present thought "all their Christmas's" had come at once!!!   In 1996 Geoffrey thought I would be pleased with the scheme as now going ahead.   My reaction was to say that all I see wrong that will have to be picked up on the maintenance account soon after full service had started.   I had not then taken into account poor cost cutting work by contractors not all of which ha been agreed by CT management!   What stories of what actually was going on my younger daughter would overhear on contractor's staff pay days at a pub in Rotherhithe.   That confirmed a lot of wrong doing I was seeing on construction east of Croydon!!!   I will say no more!    

[wombatofludham]

2 hours ago, melmerby said:

If you wanted to hear noisy trams the section of Midland Metro along Bilston Road, Wolverhampton was pretty dire and with a poor ride as well.

This section has now (a few years back) been completely re-newed and is miles better.

I was surprised by the noise the original tramway generated, but unfortunately, it was down in part to political dogma.

When Metro was being developed and planned, the only way the Government would fund the works was by the then new concept of a "design, build operate and maintain" (DBOM) concession where the public sector specified outputs and the "much better equipped" private sector would design a system that was cheap to buy, would be efficient and maintained well as they needed to make money out of it.  That was the (simplistic) view of the Department for Transport.  Unfortunately, adopting this approach effectively neutered any input from Centro and depended on the private consortium actually working together.  They didn't.  Our friends in Italy just did their own thing, the civils company just did their own thing, the consortium only got the operator on board at the last minute - then both the electrical and mechanical, and civils contractors sold their shares and left the operator with the job of running the system they had no input into.  Unfortunately it left a legacy of patchwork design that has only recently been addressed by the creation of the Alliance which actually does include operation and can get a grip of designing the system as an entity with a view to long term operational cost and anticipate future works.

It does annoy me slightly when I see (not here, elsewhere) people criticising the Metro Line 1 but the political dogma that led to the inefficient and more costly DBOM style of contract whilst preventing Centro from having any effective control of the scheme, having to rely on persuasion and limited contractual clauses is what led to the system being not as good as it should have been.  The national politicians of the time thought the private sector knew best and the public sector shouldn't be trusted to run a bath let alone a multi-million pound contract.  Sadly, the Metro project showed that not to be the case.

I've probably "overshared" here but as neither of the civils or electrical-mechanical contractors exist in the form they did back then, they can bite me.