Great Western Coffee Shop

Issues with the IET’s aren’t just confirmed to GWR.  East Coast won’t be able to operate them on Electric north of York.  You couldn’t make this up.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-tyne-45435683

Sorry no, I’m not surprised. What an expensive embarrassment this procurement and implementation has been.

Wow.

And they have the buffets.

Roger Ford in Modern Railways has been tracking this for some time.

Yes, its that Train - Solid State Interlocking trackside module interference problem (again!).  Same problem as when EUROSTAR trains were introduced at the Southern end of the line way back in 1994!  Nothing new there for NR/DfT to learn then..... ::) :P

He's said right from the start of the IEP project this was the wrong and expensive way to go and has been proved right IMHO.

Detailed analysis in November MR.
Did the DfT bring NR into the mix when specifying the IET?

No need. There's a standard procedure, involving NR maintaining lists of track-based equipment, frequencies to protect, EMC levels, places it is used, etc., vice versa, etc., etc. But predicting levels of EMI in the real world can be tricky, especially with a new design of OLE and train as you can't go and measure either half of the puzzle.

I also wonder whether you get conversations like:

(train) That's going to be hard to meet, now - trains are different from 40 years ago so your track won't have seen this stuff. We suspect you've never tried to to filter our frequencies out - will you have a look at adding that?
(track) Yes, but we aren't going to do a lot as the kit's due to be replaced fairly soon.
(train) In that case, can't you bring that forward to before our trains come into use?
(track) OK, I guess so. (produces a typical NR promised final milestone date).

Or some variant of that. Of course you would expect any small modifications already added to the GWR trains to have been put into the ones testing on the ECML, wouldn't you?

DfT - Government dept
NR -  State owned
ECML - Sate run franchise..............

...............good advert for Jeremy's re-nationalised railways ............

Or maybe something in the risk register along the lines off...

Risk - New trains may interfere with track-side equipment while electric
Mitigation - they're getting diesel engines  (and no cost to us)

Tick.

I'd hope not but I see it enough times in my organisation where a risk and the mitigation or cost is passed onto another project and then surprise when they refuse to deliver it.
   

One point I thought was a surprising omission from that BBC article is that more that half of the VTEC/LNER trains will be just electric. So solving the problem is a bit more pressing.

However, Roger Ford's latest update (this month's e-Preview) was that a fix had been identified, but would mean a big programme of replacing isolating transformers, and that looked hard to do in the available time.

Certainly not new, have read about this elsewhere. Wasn't a similar programme of works required for the Pendolini on the WCML, and for the Eurostars to run on the bottom half of the ECML?

What I think they don't say is that another cause of the problem is that the power supply north of York still needs upgrading, so even if they didn't have the signalling issues then they still couldn't run as they'd trip the circuit breakers.

Perhaps someone was hoping that if they left things for long enough they could pin the bill on HS2?

 

 

For those of us that are interested,we may learn a thing or two from NRs point of view later on this afternoon. See link below.
https://parliamentlive.tv/event/index/40f6c865-7c9f-4caa-890f-cd9ba8dabc47

And this is where things go wrong, generally when experienced Traction, Signalling and Electrification Engineers are brought together these potential issues are raised, explored and a risk matrix produced which allows for further investigation and testing; however project sponsors don't like this stage because it costs money and potentially can add delay to the program.


There is an akin issue  currently with the new Eurostars running through Ashford International

I seem to recall that the early 1960's were marked by lots of problems exacerbated by buying trains off the drawing board without adequate prototype testing.

Hitachi private sector. Lets not forget they are replacing the HST which was a far superior world class product in its day that was in the PUBLIC SECTOR. Thanks to years of neoliberal dogma we've gone from world leader in railway technology to little more than a wealth extraction system for foreign state owned companies.

Not a good advert for the privatised railway. You also forgot to mention the numerous expensive failures of private contractors on the ECML ! In fact if in anyway you think the privatise railways have delivered value for money perhaps you could explain 1) the huge subsidy they get 2) the failure to replace stock in decades in the west (most of which was built by BR 3) the huge fare increases for a worsening service 4) the rise in customer satisfaction when private contracts fail and they are temporarily renationalised. 5) The continuing inability of the competing private companies to have enough staff to actually run the trains. In BR days more staff could be rostered at shortish notice to take trains out that now sit in depots. 6) Railtrack wasn't exactly a glowing success, which was why it had to be renationalised ! After loosing many of their engineering staff they put retail managers in charge, reduced track maintenance to increase profits, and ended up with an unsafe railway.

Doesn't bode well for May/Mogg/Johnson or whoever is actually running the Tory party, does it !

Perhaps there's a failure to reach expected standards of quality and quantity in an efficient and timeous way no matter what the umbrella structure is.  Perhaps we're looking at two ways and there could be a third that's better? Does the umbrella make much difference / is there ever a way that a way that satisfies everyone will be found?

What a depressing set of thoughts ...

Thank you for putting me right Jeremy..... "neoliberal dogma"- now I do like that one - is that the same as a "capitalist running dog" ?  ;D

Sorry to say, but I am afraid that your post, in response to my lighthearted jest, highlights what is wrong with so much with the UK rail system today. Everything is either black or white - Nationalisation will solve all the problems ..........no........privatisation will solve all the problems - and so on and so on.
The root cause of the problem is that the railways will never run at a profit. If you want a railway system then the tax payer will have to subsidize it - either directly, through a grossly inefficient State run bureaucracy, or though a privatised sub-contractor, run by a money grabbing neoliberal.
 I suffered at the hands of a State owned/run railway system for many years, would I want to go back to that ? No thank you. There were some good points about it though, trains would be held to connect with a late running train and the staff (from top to bottom) were professional railwaymen. Perhaps above all, everything was "joined up". In general though, the state of the rolling stock was pretty dire. I still have nightmares about my weekend trips from Plymouth to the IoW and back, in the 1960s. (And the ECML in the 80s !! - thank God for the Boeing 757)
Privatisation - well, passenger traffic has doubled and the trains are much cleaner - so it can't be all bad. Umpteen different TOCs running trains, belonging to someone else, specified by yet someone else, on a network run by yet another company, with the whole thing overseen by the DfT - what a recipe for chaos ! Just how much time/effort/money is wasted in trying to "attribute" delays to the 1030 from Paddington !!!!

There has to be a better way using the best of both systems - perhaps we should lock (say) Richard Branson and Mick Cash in a room and tell them they 'aint coming out to they have come up with some sensible ideas. If only as much time and effort were spent trying to permanently resolve the actual problems as are wasted arguing about whether Jeremy Corbyn or Mark Hopwood should be running GWR or how many guards/drivers/TMs should be on a train.

Who suffers from all this stupidity ? The poor fare paying passenger (and tax paying non-passenger)..........................

Pedantry alert.

The Class 800/801 trains for the East Coast franchise (LNER this week) are not IETs. Intercity Express Train is a designation used by the Greater Western franchise.

LNER's Class 800/801 trains are called Azuma.

Pedantry Alert No.2

They are both actually Class 800 Super Express Trains..... ::)

... further pedantry.  ;)

The design name was Hitachi Super Express, a product of Hitachi's A-Train AT300 family. The Class 800/801/802 for GWR, LNER and TPE, along with the Class 395s at Southeastern, are all part of the Hitachi AT300 family, a subset of the A-Train product line.

Hitachi Super Express was the manufacturers name given to the Class 80x before they were given different names by operators.

GWR - Intercity Express Train
LNER - Azuma
TPE - Nova

For reference, the A-Train product line consists of:

AT100 - Metro
AT200 - Commuter
AT300 - Intercity High Speed
AT400 - Very High Speed

With Hitachi depots in London and Bristol, and Hitachi facilities in the South West, along with factories in County Durham and Italy, it'd be no surprise if orders for new regional trains for the Greater Western franchise are awarded to Hitachi for AT100 and AT200 products. Being part of the same product line offers up component and maintenance commonality, and Hitachi now have experience of building a bi-mode product. It'd make sense for the Greater Western's DMU fleet to be replaced by bi-mode AT100/200 products. You have the trains in place to run under wires if there are future electrification extensions in the decades to come. We'll see what the next franchise brings...