Moving to the South Western Railway
Jim Morgan the Infrastructure Director of the South West Alliance recently gave a lecture and answered questions at the Basingstoke and District Railway Society and this is a summary of his presentation.
The Alliance was created in late April 2012 and has therefore been in existence for two years and the appointment as Infrastructure was a return for Jim Morgan to this particular area. In Network SouthEast days he was Infrastructure Manager and Deputy MD for the South Western Division, subsequently becoming Zone Director for Railtrack South West. He then spent time with First as an operator.
On one side the Government had asked Sir Roy McNulty to advise on obtaining better value for money from the railways in this country and he had advised that a key area for savings was in the interface between the operators and Network Rail as the aims of the two were not aligned and this lack of alignment led to significant wastage at the interface.
Alongside the Government pressure Sir Brian Souter who is Chairman of Stagecoach Group but was then also the Chief Executive was keen to achieve vertical integration or tracks and services and Sir David Higgins as the Chairman of Network Rail was also keen to demonstrate a positive response to the external pressures. There is also close alignment of the territory of the two organisations and SWT operate around 85% of the operations on the Network Route concerned. (Network Rail is devolved into a number of Routes with the relevant Route MD covering the lines from Waterloo to Exeter and to Portsmouth).
Negotiations commenced and it took time and came under careful and close observation by the Department for Transport. A lot of time was spent establishing what could be done in co-operation and what needed to be retained by the two separate organisations. In particular track access arrangements have to be controlled by Network Rail as European legislation forces a separation between tracks and the users. This separation is likely to be strengthened by future planned European legislation.
What factors drive the TOC – mainly and simply a desire to make a profit based on meet the demands of the passengers. SWT is answerable to their Shareholders and of course have to live within the Franchise Agreement which is let by the Department of Transport. On the other side Network Rail is driven by a wish to reduce the costs of the railway whilst improving performance, meeting the conflicting requirements for passenger and freight operators as well as achieving the standards set by the Office of the Rail Regulator.
Tim Shoveller as MD has two contracts – one with SWT and one with Network Rail. Mr Morgan described the structure as “Meeting Rich” but that is common of many companies these days. There is a higher level Governance Board involving more senior people within Stagecoach and Network Rail where disputes are resolved – but the feeling was that now this was not being used regularly as there was a keenness to resolve matters within the team.
A key element as far as Mr Morgan was concerned was the Schedule 8 performance payments between SWT and Network Rail. SWT is in revenue support so 80% of the payments made by NR go to the Department of Transport, so reducing these payments improves the “NR” part of the joint p/l account by reducing costs and keeps money away from the DfT. So improving performance benefits the users.
And the Alliance has to accept the condition imposed on NR not to allow undue discrimination between operator – so the freight operators and other passenger franchises have to have fair track access. There are regular meetings (every two months) with the other parties involved and it was implied that Freightliner are particularly vocal if they are not getting a fair share of access.
There were some comments on the attitudes of other operators on the patch as well – The Underground and Overground do not pay that much for track access and it appears the Overground is having great success in delivering passengers into Clapham Junction with their new services.
On his return to the area Mr Morgan felt that whilst the track and signalling were “satisfactory and safe” the general standards did not excel and in particular south of Basingstoke the condition was below par (I think he actually said “poor”). This was particularly noticeable by Cross Country drivers who would come off the much better standard on the West Coast and find the route rougher – so would tend to give much harsher reports on track condition than the SWT drivers who tended to know that was the local standard and accepted it.
However the aim now was to start work in building “The South Western Railway” – a single business. Initially the process improvement teams looked at various aspects:
- Track maintenance efficiency
- Timetable changes
- Investment in Train Crew
- Emergency Intervention Unit
- Focus on sub-threshold delay.
On track maintenance efficiency one of the changes was to delay the 04:00 Guildford to Waterloo by 30 minutes. It was almost entirely used by (typically five) rail staff and the additional time available to the rail relaying team could not only replace a rail but they can also correctly stress it, enabling a saving on a second possession and also avoid the need for speed restriction over the rail concerned.
Train crew – more of them particularly at Waterloo to speed recovery from delays; re-diagramming so that driver and guard stay together rather than coming from different services.
The Emergency Intervention Unit – this is a BT Police vehicle with a mobile commander on board who can take decisions to get services moving again. There are in fact two of them with at least one on the streets to get to an incident rapidly.
On the track side what has been achieved – 160 route miles of lineside clearance – four times the length cleared in the prior year. Use of the High Output Track Relaying train has enabled all of the joined track between Basingstoke and Salisbury to be removed and relaid. This required the car park at Grateley to be removed from public use – which the operator agreed to assist in getting the work done. It saved a huge number of weekend closures and work rate averaged 700 yds per night relaid with a new record of 1197 yds in a single night – much higher output than achieved elsewhere on the network. The High Output train will be back at Christmas to relay around Farnborough North (one of those places where the Network Rail territory is not aligned with SWT). Interestingly sleepers capable of taking a third rail are to be used. And there will be tests at Wool to see if the train can handle relaying with the third rail. This could be important for future usage. Significant ballast cleaning is planned between Worting Junction and Eastleigh.
For this year the track renewal budget is up by 40% on the prior year and Mr Morgan is looking for a further 20% (well if he is not paying the money through schedule 8 to DfT why not spend it on the track – virtuous circle?).
Also in the immediate plans are Waterloo International where platform 20 comes into use with the May timetable. Platforms 21 and 22 follow in July and providing a cost effective solution to decking over the “orchestra pit” then platforms 23 and 24 will follow along with re-instatement of the Windsor reversible line and some track changes to get a suburban train service into and out of the platforms. This will free capacity to allow platforms 1 – 4 to be lengthened and we then get 10 car trains on the suburban network.
However more capacity is needed on the main line too. There is a need to go to 28 trains in the peak and it has to be remembered that Thameslink needs ERTMS for 24 trains per hour. So a Driver Advisory Service plus in cab signalling have to come. A physical restriction is Clapham Junction – recently between there and Vauxhall SWT have added 80 staff to help manage the passenger flows.
The Alliance is about to be extended to 2019 and the SWT franchise will then see a similar extension subject to closing the contracts. But what will happen post 2019? Current thinking is that it will not be plain vanilla franchise and the DfT may well be looking for an “Alliance Partner”. A lot depends on how the DfT themselves develop over this period as there is talk of creating a new agency to take over franchising activities.
Electrification was discussed. The current third rail is lossy with between 16% and 20% of the delivered power being wasted in heat. AC is more efficient but the Basingstoke – Southampton Docks proposal is not really suitable for the passenger railway. The 455 fleet will remain around for 15 – 20 years – a decision needs to tie in with their eventual replacement. Interestingly the opinion that with in cab signalling then both ac and dc electrification could co-exist was also voiced.
A Track Recovery Programme was being implemented with the intention of reducing the numbers of level 2 failures – usually twist defects. With the level of use the traditional fix tends to last about 10 days and there excess number of dipped rails. There are currently around 7000 “wet beds” – where the slepeers are “floating” in wet ballast. These need to be excavated and before the autumn rains came about 1500 had been removed. However the bad weather over the last few months had seen 1200 new ones appear. A lot of this is down to inadequate work on drain clearing and keeping the cess clean. (Why the lack of attention? – no-one pays for it to be done and it is very dirty!) Anyway the ORR is raising the item up the agenda and there is now a big programme underway – largely using new staff who are not afraid of such dirty work! And weedkillers are not as effective these days for good ecological reasons – so more attention needs to paid to the buddleia. And finally the excess rail laying around is to receive attention. 3 MPVs have been converted to collect rail and these will be out and about recovering the waste of money lying beside and between the tracks.
Finally tack possessions are not effective. Currently once a possession has been taken, boards setup, the straps put on the third rail and those procedures reversed at the end of the possession then it leaves about 2 hours 20 minutes to actually do the work. This is simply not long enough. So discussions are ongoing with safety people within NR to produce revisions – railways on the continent can apparently take a safe possession in a few minutes (five was quoted but this seems unlikely) and a similar number to return to train working at the end of possession. Whilst it is unlikely that this will be matched the aim is more working time.
Earlier Mr Morgan had also spoken about the impact of the weather this winter and the efforts taken to keep the railway running. The NR appointed contractor for the area Geoffrey Osborne had been approached on Christmas Eve concerning the landslip on the Portsmouth line and work had gone throughout the holiday period to bring the line back into service as quickly as possible. That was nothing when compared to the slip on the Botley line which had cost something like £6m to repair. All of this had cost huge amounts of time delay but Mr Morgan had nothing but praise for the way the contractor had responded to a telephone call asking for assistance. The costs were not the concern – getting the lines open again to passengers was the priority. This probably marks the greatest sea change and is perhaps the strongest reason for wanting to see the Alliance being pioneered at Waterloo extended elsewhere on the Network.