INFORMED SOURCES e-Preview June 2020
INFORMED SOURCES e-Preview June 2020
Any thoughts that lockdown would mean that there was less to write about have rapidly been dispelled. This month’s column provides updates on three regular topics.
Meanwhile, thanks for the positive feedback on the Modern Railways lockdown podcasts previewing last month’s magazine. This has encouraged us to continue with this initiative.
A Zoom conference features the Editor, Ian Walmsley and me giving a brief summary of what’s in the magazine, plus our respective columns. There is also a longer Video Podcast presented by Ian containing more detail. Both will be available during this coming week.
Electrification to drive ‘rolling programme of rail decarbonisation’.
Safety Critical Communications – another warning.
Rail Replacement coaches – exemption extended.
New train TIN-Watch.
Suggestions in last month’s column, that the Network Rail-led Traction Decarbonisation Network Strategy (TDNS) might reflect the Department for Transport’s negative prejudices on electrification have proved wide of the mark. Outline briefings from TDNS on current thinking emphasise the central role of electrification in decarbonisation.
As with the Decarbonisation Task Force study, the TDNS has adopted a ‘horses for courses’ approach based on three options. These are electrification, battery and hydrogen fuel cell traction.
Even DfT has accepted that there are certain services where only electrification can do the business. Equally, there are sections of the network where low levels of use would not justify electrification.
TDNS has identified these two no-brainers as ‘single option solutions’. In Roger-speak, these are where it is obvious that batteries or fuel cells can’t hack it or, contrarily, where even stringing up the most inexpensive trolley-wire catenary could be disproportionally expensive.
Across much of the network the appropriate single option solution is clear-cut. But for some routes, at least with current technology, the way forward remains unclear.
TDNS categorises these grey areas as ‘multiple option solutions’. Here, between now and 2050, the falling cost of electrification, plus the synergy of an expanding network will compete with the improving capabilities of battery and fuel cell technology.
TDNS reckons that around 5% of the network could be served by fuel cell or battery traction. The ‘grey area represents another 10%. I suspect that as the electrified network expands, and this is over the next 30 years, remember, the case for extending the wires ‘just a little bit further’ will benefit from the economies of scale.
Before the COVID-19 crisis TDNS was expecting to have completed its recommendations by July. These should specify where each technology should be applied, outline the strategic and economic factors and provide an indicative programme.
By the end of the year, these recommendations will be followed with the Programme Business Case exploring the commercial, financial and management cases, proposing a ‘rolling programme of decarbonisation’ and establishing what will drive delivery of the programme, including its governance.
Fatalities missed by a split second
Getting Safety Critical Communications (SCC) conversations right should be as simple as ABC. Each message in a conversation should be Accurate, Brief and Clear. And, as a recent Rail Accident Investigation Branch Bulletin emphasises, the ‘C’ in ABC really can mean the difference between life and death.
RAIB has highlighted an incident last November when a team of nine Network Rail workers were tasked to inspect the track near Kirtlebridge, a few miles north of Gretna Green. Since the work site was on a curvaceous section of the WCML with a line speed of 125 mile/h, protection for the inspection team was to be provided by the Lookout Operated Warning System (LOWS).
At a worksite being protected there is a LOWS receiver unit. It has flashing lights and a siren to warn staff working nearby when a train is approaching.
Either side of the worksite is a lookout with a transmitter unit connected to the receiver by a secure radio link. When a train is seen approaching the lookout triggers the transmitter, initiating the flashing lights and siren.
A designated LOWS Controller remains with the receiver unit. The Controller and each lookout carry a dedicated mobile phone, to avoid any confusion over who is talking to whom. At Kirtlebridge, one LOWS Lookout was 1.8km north of the worksite, the other 2.5km to the south.
A formal communication protocol for the use of LOWS is mandated by Network Rail standards. According to the RAIB Safety Digest, LOWS Controllers are trained to ask each lookout in turn to make a test warning. The controller should then confirm that the test warning has been received and instruct the lookout to start giving warnings with immediate effect, using the instruction ‘you are now looking out’.
Witness evidence, says RAIB, shows that members of the Kirtlebridge LOWS team were following their normal practice of using informal language, rather than the formal SCC protocols. Note that these were not contractors, but Network Rail staff who by now, 14 years after SCC was mandated, should have correct communications procedures ingrained. Especially when working in such a potentially dangerous situation.
As for the actual words used during the conversation between the LOWS Controller and Lookout (North), RAIB says that there is conflicting evidence. Whatever was said, it resulted in a misunderstanding about whether the lookout duties had already started.
According to the LOWS Controller he told Lookout (North) ‘right, that’s you up and running’. Lookout (North) told RAIB that the LOWS Controller told him he was going to phone the other lookout. His understanding from this was that he was not on lookout until the Controller phoned him back.
As a result, a train passed Lookout (North) without a warning being triggered. At the same moment three members of the inspection team stepped onto the track. 18 seconds later the train’s driver saw the men and sounded his horn. The train passed them half a second after they had jumped clear.
Discussions following this near-miss have led RAIB and Network Rail to consider that the official communications protocols when using LOWS are ‘complicated, and consequently difficult to use’.
Confusingly this should not have been a factor in the incident because training material for LOWS staff had been updated and simplified when upgraded LOWS equipment was introduced in 2010 and 2018.
So now we come to the official responses. Network Rail’s national Workforce Safety team has told RAIB that it intends to address this issue and is considering the most efficient way to ensure that staff use the simpler protocol.
After the Balham near miss (Informed sources March 2020, and note that ‘near miss’ in that instance was a generous 75 seconds compared with half a second at Kirtlebridge, I asked the rail safety regulator, the Office of Rail & Road for a comment. They told me: ‘Network Rail has effective systems in place for Safety Critical Communications; these are both regularly tested and thoroughly reviewed. There does however appear to be an inherent cultural issue when it comes to dealing with issues arising from their implementation’.
After a second, more-serious SCC-failure-induced incident, that response has a tinge of complacency. In safety, the killer is ‘creeping normalcy’. You deviate from the correct procedure once and nothing bad happens, encouraging you do it again. Despite the simplified SCC protocol this team of LOWS operators, was eventually caught out by the use of informal communications.
I make no apology for returning to such a specialised subject for the second time in four months. While Auric Goldfinger may have told James Bond, ‘once is happenstance, twice is coincidence but three times is enemy action’, in safety critical activities, even once should be cause for serious concern.
Further exemption for Rail Replacement coaches
In a further letter to the Rail Delivery Group on 21 April, Rail Minister Chris Heaton-Harris rejected RDG’s proposed solution to problems created by the last-minute application of the Public Service Vehicles Accessibility Regulations 2000 (PSVAR) to Rail Replacement coach services. However, he did bow to the inevitable by further extending exemptions for the use of non-compliant coaches to the end of the year.
At the end of March, RDG submitted its proposed solution to the current problems to DfT under the title ‘Rail Replacement Vehicles – a pathway to regulatory compliance’. Mr Heaton-Harris considered that while these proposals were, ‘potentially, a step in the right direction’ he wanted RDG to be ‘more ambitious about how and by when PSVAR compliance can be achieved’.
He did concede that the supply of compliant vehicles ‘is not within the industry’s gift’. And he also acknowledged that the issue is not one the rail industry can resolve on its own.
Mr Heaton-Harries believes this latest exemption will buy time for further ‘multi-modal, multi-organisational discussions and to explore and devise a more ambitious timeline than that currently proposed in respect of planned and unplanned disruption’.
I had hoped to publish the proposals RDG had put to the Minister, but unfortunately a copy could not be made available by the time this column went to press. However, Dominic Lund-Conlon, RDG’s Head of Accessibility and Inclusion told me, ‘We want everyone to have comfortable, dignified journeys on rail replacement services and the rail industry has led plans across the transport sector to boost the number of PSVAR compliant vehicles, which are in short supply. Train operators are working hard to procure compliant coaches wherever possible and provide better information about the vehicles they’re using to improve customers’ confidence’.
A copy of the proposals has now arrived. They bring a welcome dose of realism to what is often an emotive subject and I am planning detailed coverage in the July column. Significantly the document includes endorsements of RDG’s work on PSVAR compliance from several disability groups.
End of term reliability report
With Railway Reporting Period 13 we come to the end of the 2019-20 year. In this spirit, and for a bit of fun in the current circumstances, I thought New Train TIN-Watch would take the form of end-of-term reports on the students at the Lord Nelson of Stafford Memorial Academy for Aspirant Manufacturers (Principal: E.R.A Ford HNC (Distinction)).
Since most schools nowadays seem to have to have houses named after fashionable inspirational figures, I thought the Academy should do the same. But who to choose? National heroes? Military leaders? Artists? Social reformers? All open to misinterpretation.
Then Mrs Ford came up with the solution – international tennis players. No one can accuse them of national stereotyping.
My Headmaster’s Report covers, in no particular order, Boris Becker House, Naomi Osaka House, which heads the Honours Board with the only two fleets over the 20,000 MTIN MAA mark, Tim Henman House, Arantxa Sánchez-Vicario House and Roger Federer House.
While the approach is light-hearted, the performance of the various fleets is analysed in some detail. I have also published the TIN-Watch Table from Period 1 2019-20 which highlights the pace at which new trains have been entering service over the past year.
Roger’s blog
Living close to the East Coast Main Line, I have at least been able to hear trains during lockdown. I must fire up Real Time Trains on my lap top in the garden sometime, when I’m not pursuing the fruitless task of trying to eradicate bluebells, and test my aural recognition skills. One make of train gives a set of S&C a real pounding and I would like to check which. The prime suspects are Azuma or Desiro City.
As you will see from above, there is no shortage of topics to cover. But, by popular demand, I have begun an update of my ‘Who runs the railway’ analysis which last appeared in 2016. By then it had become a monster, with 73 footnotes. Can’t say when the 2020 version will be available but it will be more manageable.
Last week we got together on Zoom to record our second preview video for the June issue on Zoom. I had hoped to match Ian Walmsley’s virtual background: Mrs F had produced the necessary green screen, but there was a technical hitch just before we started. I hope to have the tech sorted for next month.
I also recorded my separate contribution to our longer video podcast. Both videos will be available this week on Modern Railways’ growing social media coverage.
Roger