david.hill64

Just following up on private sector involvement:

I was involved with the Taiwan High Speed Rail project in 1992/3 when it was a government funded project. Compared with western countries, Taiwan's government is awash with cash, but still decided in 1993 to cancel the project for affordability reasons. What they did next was to enact legislation that permitted private investment in infrastructure then let a competition to award the project. Knowing that the base economics of rail don't work in favour of the railway (who don't get the larger financial rewards), they sweetened the deal by giving sole development rights in the new station areas for 50 years.

So why don't we say to developers/ pension funds/ insurance companies, you pay the cost of the Euston extension, and in return the station site is handed over to you for 50 years. Develop it as you will, get the revenue from offices, retail and £x a head from every passenger. See if the numbers stack up.

6 hours ago, DenysW said:

Although I still agree that it's the wrong decision, it's a decision based on cash-flow not cost. Everyone, even the politicians, knows it will add total cost and delay benefits. However, a Government (both political & civil service) that is facing a cash-flow abyss as it rolls over debt into new securities at 3-6 times the interest burden has to do at least one of reduce outgoings, increase taxes, or borrow the new difference at the new rates, and with the recent Covid-support and energy-subsidy debt suddenly looking like a millstone.

 

As one of the few Government expenditures likely to give a benefit (and having borrowed/spent a lot of the total already) I think I'd plough ahead. But splashing billions/year on HS2 when trying to save billions/year by screwing-over people who vote is a difficult sell to the media and in Westminster.

So why not use your noddle and invite in the private sector? They are likely to end up buying the infrastructure anyway. It needs something other than groupthink to move forward. Your post is an excellent example of why we don't do things like they do in Asia: we find reasons not to do things. In Asia they find ways to do things.

11 hours ago, jjb1970 said:

 

 However whenever I've looked at the application process I have decided 'stuff that', writing essays about a time I ended world hunger, a time I was nice to somebody, how I am a team player blah blah blah. It was obvious the selection was going to be 'competency' based. To a normal person that might mean assessing whether people are competent to perform the role but in the world of HR it is testing whether you can blag your way through a load of scenarios using the latest current thing ideas and buzz words. 

And this, I think, summarises why so many government departments are inept. Group think is the only opinion tolerated, when what is needed for an effective business is a diversity of opinion and the odd maverick. Dominic Cummings was right when he sought to recruit misfits into government.

HS2 will start returning money only when it is up and running. Delaying the project intentionally not only increases costs but delays revenue and runs the risk of being a massive financial burden if cancelled. It needs some brave souls in the civil service to stand up for this.

8 hours ago, phil-b259 said:

 

My gut feeling is that in spite of the best efforts of the current idoits in charge at Westminster (who will hopefully be removed within 18 months),

Unfortunately the idiots in charge are not elected and any change of government is unlikely to make any significant difference.

16 hours ago, Wickham Green too said:

The slabs will require huge quantities of a different sort of aggregate.

Power station fly ash was the preferred stuff, but with the absence of large scale coal fired stations, that is going to be hard to come by. I did read that although contractors declared that they had used the designated fly ash in the slabs used on China's HSR system, the tonnage used exceeded the output from all of China's vast number of coal burning stations. The implication was that the slabs would not last their design life.

1 hour ago, The Johnster said:

My specification for a modern steam locomotive would include feedback-controlled electronic boiler management connected to GPS, so that the boiler could be readied autonomously for expected accelleration or climbing banks, and allowed to ease off at the right time to avoid valves lifting.  A boiler management system would be needed anyway, as one of my other requirements is single manning for Driver-only operation.  Layshafts to avoid hammer-blow, cab-forward, recycled steam, chime whistle because I like them, and other ideas as well; pure fantasy of course.

With the exception of the GPS and cab forward, what you describe is a Shay on the Taiwan Alishan Forest Railway!

On 29/07/2023 at 04:23, chris p bacon said:

How much ballast is HS2 going to consume ? could it be that future supplies of ballast from UK quarries have already been pre-purchased for HS2.

Most of HS2 is slab track, so ballast requirements will not be huge.

54 minutes ago, MarkC said:

That or they attempted to seal the crack by brazing...

 

...the thought of either of those possibilities scares the **** out of me...

 

Mark

With the suggestion that either they didn't know what they were doing, which is scary, or they did, which is worse.

On 03/08/2023 at 01:40, The Stationmaster said:

No.  All they needed to do was say either yes or no - they said no.   So no point in arguing the toss with them

Possibly getting regulatory approval would be too much trouble for a trial? Not from the railway side, but from whichever government department authorises telecoms systems. Getting approval for radio systems for railways has always been a hassle wherever I've worked. 

1 hour ago, LMS2968 said:

Having a big interest in marine engineering, I do find all this very interesting, but wonder how we moved from locomotive cylinders to marine water-tube boilers?

The tide took us that way................

1 hour ago, Siberian Snooper said:

I think that report was pretty damming. The thermal cycling was pretty horrendous, and the lack of proper water treatment, especially when shutdown, was also pretty grim.

For me it was the suggestion that someone might have been depositing copper to hide the cracks that was the most worrying.

1 hour ago, rockershovel said:

Supply what, exactly? What do we still manufacture? 

Ninth largest manufacturing economy in the world with an output value of £182bn. Largest segment is transport (cars, engines, jet engines) followed by chemicals and pharmaceuticals. Machinery (JCBs etc) also important.

A friend of mine who was depot manager at Tinsley always maintained that the difference between the UK ones and the Romanian ones was that the UK ones could, just about, pull the skin off a rice pudding.

4 hours ago, Legend said:

But will there be an injury ? What are the chances? What’s the risk assessment? There does need to be a sense of proportion . Again I ask how many people have fallen out the Jacobite or been injured in its years of operation . I don’t know the answer , I can’t think of any headlines but then maybe it doesn’t get reported . I would have thought there would have to be an investigation though , and again I can’t recall any .  Do we know of any cases? 
 

It doesn't matter if nobody has to date been killed or injured by falling from a Jacobite or leaning out of the window. The whole basis of modern safety management systems is that they are no longer reactive to things that have happened, but seek to identify the things that reasonably could happen and ensure that measures are in place to eliminate or mitigate the risk.

You summed this up nicely in the first three sentences quoted above.

1 hour ago, DY444 said:

For the avoidance of doubt, I'm not defending WCRC here.  I'm criticising the ORR for not treating everyone the same.  I also can't help the nagging suspicion that their enthusiasm for ECML OAOs might have played a part in them not taking action against Lumo.

Perhaps ORR are treating Lumo the same as WCRC: make a mistake and you get a second* chance. If Lumo has a repeat incident, then we will know.

* actually for WCRC it may be more......

14 hours ago, phil-b259 said:

The forthcoming ECML works will see all lineside signals removed.

 

Now, you mention the the removal of track based train detection - well in ECTS terms relies on the ECTS system having a watertight guarantee that at any moment each and every train under it supervision entire train is still complete.
 

While this is easy to achieve this for multiple units (hence ideal for metro systems or dedicated high speed lines like HS2)  it’s a lot harder to do for freight trains whose length will vary and which can easily be reformed mid journey.

 

Now although I understand ‘end of train’ black boxes which transmit that information are considered acceptable on US freight only railroads, their adoption in the U.K. with the potential consequences should they not be used correctly and a detached freight wagon come to a stand undetected on a 140mph passenger railway means Network Rail is unlikely to go down that path anytime soon.

I should have said fall-back train detection, not signalling (of which train detection and signals form parts).*

I agree that train integrity detection is a key issue for moving block railways, but it has been done on mixed traffic conventional railways. Bombardier installed an ETCS level 3 look alike system in Kazakhstan. I say look alike as it uses TETRA radio instead of GSMR.

In theory ETCS level 2 could remove the need for axle counters if there was a safe method of train integrity assurance but nobody would do that as axle counters are cheap and assured. The Bangkok BTS uses a system based on ETCS level 2 (Eurobalises to transmit information and for location reference points) but with a different type of radio transmission system. It has no track circuits or axle counters on the main line, relying on self location reporting only, but it is fixed block. Movement authorities are not optimized but given only to where a block section marker would be if installed. (They are not).

I have written, or reviewed, safety cases for a number of systems using moving block technology. All of them had a back up system of fixed block axle counters. Even with MRTs operating fixed consist EMUs, where train integrity is an integral part of the onboard ATP system, back up axle counters are used. The main reason is for recovery from severely degraded modes where a number of trains may have become non-communicating. 

Siemens has a nice solution in which their moving block Trainguard system can coexist with an ETCS level 2 solution and automatically fall back seamlessly to fixed block working. They proposed this for the Marmaray project but in the end a hybrid system was chosen with moving block signalling for the EMUs and ETCS level 2 for the freight.

So I go back to my original statement. It is understandable that NR is moving to ETCS level 2. It's a low risk option and saves them the cost of funding and installing train integrity detection on those trains that don't already have it. Railtrack's vision, 30 years ago, was the right one, but they could not have foreseen that it would take 25 years to agree the specification for ETCS level 3.

I haven't fully understood your comment 'And if you think that I do question your ability to make judgements in other areas.' 

*Edit. On reflection, having just mulled this over on a long walk, I agree that the standard ETCS level 2 solution for NR is probably the correct one. Nothing to do with the train integrity detection issue with ETCS level 3, for which SIL4 solutions are available, but just down to recovery from degraded modes. I still bemoan the fact that it takes so long to agree standards.

1 minute ago, jamie92208 said:

I have seen in various posts wY back in this thread that there is a lot of tree planting by HS2 but they are being very careful about what is allowed near the line to reduce leaf fall problems. 

 

Jamir

Very sensible of them!

There seems to be a very wide range of trees being planted: HS2 lists oak, hazel, birch, holly, hawthorn, field maple, hornbeam, bird cherry, mountain ash, yew and spindle. The area covered will be more than double that of the removed woodland. 

If the heritage sector were interested in this, they might consider looking into what stock is going for scrap and whether the bogies are suitable/available. New build bogies are very expensive.

I suspected that there would be a requirement for replanting, but HS2 gets little or no credit for the planting it is doing to replace trees lost along the route.

1 hour ago, Compound2632 said:

 

Fake news.

Actually figures from the Forestry Commission and confirmed by the SNP government. Equivalent to 1700 trees per day.

Elsewhere it was reported this week that in the last 20 years over 15 million trees have been felled in Scotland to make way for wind turbines. Where are the complaints from the environmentalists about this?

Some interesting thoughts here.

I have just read Roger Ford's depressing Informed Sources preview. Annual interest on Network Rail's debt is now £2.5bn per year. The industry is now paying more than BR had in subsidy to pay for profligate spending. As others have posted, until that is under control then the future is not as good as it should be. To put that payment into perspective, annual fares revenue is about £10bn.

Simplification of the organizational structure would be beneficial. Perhaps that is the intent of GB Rail, but nobody seems to make progress on implementation. There is potential overlap between the roles and responsibilities of ORR, RSSB and RAIB. Could these be amalgamated?

ORR appears competent: its report on Hitachi train cracking is excellent. It has also moved reasonably quickly on moving away from EU standards where appropriate: electrification schemes now adhere to standards that are safe and appropriate for the UK structure gauge and ORR has recognized that designing rolling stock to be compatible with UK track would be a good idea. Roger Ford also reports that the new TPE coaches have yaw damper cracking problems. Probably worth a small wager that higher than expected loads are part of the problem.

I am not convinced that widespread reopening of closed lines is possible or would be cheaper than new alignments. Before HS2 was chosen a lot of work was done to investigate upgrades of the existing lines, reopening of the GCR route and the conclusion was that HS2 would be cheaper. Of course scope creep has upped the costs as has the increase in construction costs. California High Speed Rail suffers the same issue and closer to home, my proposed house extension which was costed at £60-70k last year has been quoted at £170k by builders. No change in scope, just costs.

1 minute ago, woodenhead said:

I would imagine ticket office staff are not trained to handle trains, they are there to sell tickets, at mainline stations seperate staff are trained to handled trains safely, that's their role.

 

The guard on the train can do the job of the platform staff by checking the safe egress and entry of passengers with the added bonus he can do that at all the stations meaning you don't need platform staff unless the station has sighting problems for the guard to see the whole train.  Of course with DOO, the driver does these checks in place of the guard.

 

The argument here is the need for people with knowledge of tickets to assist irregular passengers with booking or for those with additional needs.  Even if these roles went down to the platform, the role would still be purely ticket information and general knowledge not safety management of the train services themselves.

And as was discussed earlier, there is likely to be a degree of training necessary. 

At busy stations I agree that there are likely to be staff doing despatch duties, but I can see that for lesser used stations, having better skilled staff could be a way of justifying staff retention.

I am surprised at how many people are reluctant to consider change. 

6 minutes ago, Mallard60022 said:

Yup, I'm confused too!

Seems obsessed!

P

Last time, I promise.

I responded to a post in which someone said that there needed to be staff on hand in case the driver had a heart attack. I pointed out that there was no way in which you could always justify that from a safety point of view. People seem to think that you should spend any amount of money for safety. You cannot justify it.

Ticket office staff behind a counter can only advise people and sell tickets. Staff on the concourse can advise people, sell tickets, observe the safety and security of passengers in that environment. Staff on the platforms can do all of those things and check the safe boarding and alighting of passengers. So long as they are still there.

4 minutes ago, Mallard60022 said:

Double manned is what he didn't and I didn't say. Re read his post please.

I'm out of this as you seem determined to go about double staffing in the cab and that was NOT what he or I suggested. Train staff that could access the Driver's cab in an emergency; get it?

Phil

So no DOO or single manned freight operations then?

And, for the avoidance of doubt, on rural and intercity services I think that there needs to be suitably qualified staff available for situations where the driver is incapacitated.