Provocative lecture by Andrew McNaughton to PWI

[Ianno87]

It would be interesting to see some primary sources that show maintenance costs in Switzerland vs the UK, rather than relying on what seems to be an anecdote based on a single excursion 15 years ago. These kinds of things usually turn out to be less clear than at first sight.

And, in both UK and Swiss cases, exactly what is and is not accounted for in the headline cost and whether it is 'like-for-like'.

 

[Grumpy Git]

Airlines manage to achieve very high rates of safety, by quite strictly following written procedures. In fact their safety record is quite directly correlated with the introduction of written procedures including checklists.

I agree entirely. The point I'm trying to make is where "box ticking" is used to protect management where substandard workmanship is a problem.

 

[HSTEd]

Ultimately our maintenance costs are becoming an issue both politically and simply economically, and our infrastructure costs are also frankly huge compared to foreign exemplars.

If we are unwilling to accept more trackside working etc in the Swiss style, what are our other options?

What would, for an example, a railway that required the absolute minimum trackside maintenance look like?

Would it look like the one we have today, or would it have slab track, electrification via overhead conductor rail and an ETCS Hybrid installation that makes trackside equipment on plain line a thing of the past?
Would we accept more track to reduce the number of locations with trackside equipment, thus reducing the need to go trekking out to the middle of nowhere to look at pointwork etc?
Would we use very high performance trains to reduce the difference in speeds between various services on the network, reducing the need for passing loops or four track or whatever?
Would we try to use gauntlet track through obstacles rather than pointwork.

We should examine all our options before we commit to anything - there will be no political will or money for a second chance.

 

[Bald Rick]

We should examine all our options before we commit to anything - there will be no political will or money for a second chance.

There’s certainly no political will to spend about a hundred billion quid slab tracking the network to save perhaps £100m a year on track maintenance.

 

[WesternBiker]

It would be interesting to see some primary sources that show maintenance costs in Switzerland vs the UK, rather than relying on what seems to be an anecdote based on a single excursion 15 years ago. These kinds of things usually turn out to be less clear than at first sight.

I agree completely.

That said, other industries have shown what can be achieved with a long-term approach to continuous improvement. The Japanese-owned plants (particularly Toyota in Derby and Nissan in Washington) showed that lean manufacturing - coupled with high levels of training - could work in the UK, despite years of nay-sayers saying "it can't be done here, the culture is different". So it is always worth making the comparison, but it needs to be done in depth.

 

[Ianno87]

I agree completely.

That said, other industries have shown what can be achieved with a long-term approach to continuous improvement. The Japanese-owned plants (particularly Toyota in Derby and Nissan in Washington) showed that lean manufacturing - coupled with high levels of training - could work in the UK, despite years of nay-sayers saying "it can't be done here, the culture is different". So it is always worth making the comparison, but it needs to be done in depth.

I guess it's not the cost comparisons as such, but the principles and methods used that (could) drive down cost.

 

[GRALISTAIR]

There’s certainly no political will to spend about a hundred billion quid slab tracking the network to save perhaps £100m a year on track maintenance.

BCR - tends to zero rather than infinity I suggest.

 

[David Bullock]

I think that the only good things that were said in this were about parcels and about standardisation. But parcels can only happen with capacity (I doubt people would be too pleased if half a coach on a packed azuma was carting Amazon stuff around). And standardisation can only happen if people know that there is going to be scale, which can’t happen if gvt keep announcing and then cancelling/de-scoping stuff all the time.

Moving away from a regular interval approach as was suggested is a bad move also. It becomes really unattractive to travel by train if I know that there’s a 2-3 hour gap after a peak. I’d love to know what ‘stupid little shuttle services’ are left eating capacity on the mainlines now.

 

[Bletchleyite]

Moving away from a regular interval approach as was suggested is a bad move also. It becomes really unattractive to travel by train if I know that there’s a 2-3 hour gap after a peak. I’d love to know what ‘stupid little shuttle services’ are left eating capacity on the mainlines now.

As you know I'm a big, big fan of Takt and the connectional benefits it provides, but that doesn't have to be 3tph all day (see London-Manchester) - it could be a lower standard frequency, e.g. hourly or half-hourly, with additional extras laid on top on key flows. For connections you'd still use the services in the Takt because those ones are planned to connect, but if one of the extras came up in a journey planner as ideal for your journey, great.

Unsurprisingly, you will often see this approach used in Switzerland, the home of Takt.

It's also been about in the UK for a while in places. For instance, the 1990s Southport line service was 1tph* to Castlefield, but then there were also peak extras to Victoria added which were "off pattern" providing for a considerable direct journey flow.

* Slightly off-pattern if I recall but the point still stands.

 

[Greybeard33]

Andrew McNaughton gave an amended version of this talk, entitled "Electrification in a Post-Wovid world - Opportunities and Threats" to a subsequent PWI online conference on Cost Effective Minimum Clearance Electrification. He recycled much of the same material, but added some provocative views on over-engineering of OLE structures and the need for bridge replacement/raising in electrification projects.

Andrew's talk starts at 2h10 in this video:

The question and answer session after the talk is also worth listening to. Andrew's parting remark: "If we believe we've got to reconstruct all the bridges, there won't be electrification!" This from the chair of the National Electrification Efficiency Panel.

Andrew's slide pack can be downloaded at:

https://www.thepwi.org/technical_hub/presentations_for_tech_hub/211011_cost_effective_minimum_clearance_electrification/04_electrification_in_a_post_covid_world_111021__a_mcnaughton

 

[InOban]

However much some posters may disagree with individual parts of his presentation, nothing can undermine the central position: our railway system is too expensive - to operate, to maintain, and to upgrade - for any sensible government to fund.

Everyone, and I mean everyone, NR, the unions, the ORR and RSSB everyone, must come together and accept that 'if we do what we've always done, we'll get what we've always got ' , a system which is too expensive for the users and too expensive for the taxpayers (most of whom rarely if ever use trains).

Get Real

 

[Nicholas Lewis]

I agree completely.

That said, other industries have shown what can be achieved with a long-term approach to continuous improvement. The Japanese-owned plants (particularly Toyota in Derby and Nissan in Washington) showed that lean manufacturing - coupled with high levels of training - could work in the UK, despite years of nay-sayers saying "it can't be done here, the culture is different". So it is always worth making the comparison, but it needs to be done in depth.

We spent a lot of time and money in track renewals trying to bring Kaizen principles into the supply chain but whilst we made some progress it wasn't culturally receptive such that it became self fulfilling.

Nissan and Toyota had the opportunity to build the workforce from scratch and indoctrinate them in the Toyota Way and create a culture and an environment that gives the workforce a big say in how they organise themselves. To my mind without a clean start its always going to be a challenge to significantly change the way the workforce operates so it can only ever be done in increments.

 

[Taunton]

Doesn't that rather ignore the point that many petrol cars don't make it to 100,000 miles, whereas EVs will easily exceed that.
The better longevity of EVs and their higher purchase price should result in longer replacement intervals, and I bet that calculation hasn't factored the carbon cost of replacing the petrol car with a new petrol car before 100,000 miles.

But is it right?

Not particularly. Only a minority of cars come to the end of their life due to failures in the drive train. Accident damage, running gear faults, bodywork corrosion, general unreliability developing in electrics (especially), untraceable faults, etc are the majority. At the prices quoted for replacement of the mainstream battery on electric cars is coming in at 50% of a new car price, that is going to render them not worth repairing at an even earlier stage than conventional cars. Of course, there aren't many that have come to this age of the battery yet, but they are generally accepted to have a finite life less than the rest of the vehicle, and as time goes on they have less and less range. And of course they will still be liable to major traction motor or control gear etc faults. Just like a Class 84!

 

[Brissle Girl]

The discussion about Swiss practice reminds me of this platform split in two by a line coming in at a junction at one end of the station. It wasn't the quietest of stations either.

What chances that design being approved in the UK?

 

[Bletchleyite]

The discussion about Swiss practice reminds me of this platform split in two by a line coming in at a junction at one end of the station. It wasn't the quietest of stations either.

What chances that design being approved in the UK?

That appears to be a narrow gauge line, and those operate rather like street tramways. So while I am not aware of that specific thing in the UK it is basically a barrow crossing, and all tramways in the UK have those.

 

[Horizon22]

Good comments about capacity being such a valuable asset. The way capacity is managed on the railway still moves far too slowly when it comes to adjusting to the realities of changing travel patterns. Even leisure travel as he highlighted - between say 1300-1600 on a weekend, its very quiet. The "squeeze as many trains in as possible" era needs to end and fast. Just look at how well the service ran during various lockdowns - whilst nobody can suggest that level of reductions, people need to move away from the outrage when a service goes from 4tph to 3tph, for example.

 

[Brissle Girl]

That appears to be a narrow gauge line, and those operate rather like street tramways. So while I am not aware of that specific thing in the UK it is basically a barrow crossing, and all tramways in the UK have those.

It's the metre gauge Bernese Oberland railway, and certainly doesn't feel like a narrow gauge railway like we have in the UK. Indeed, to an uninformed passenger, it looks and feels like any other standard gauge train.

 

[Bletchleyite]

It's the metre gauge Bernese Oberland railway, and certainly doesn't feel like a narrow gauge railway like we have in the UK. Indeed, to an uninformed passenger, it looks and feels like any other standard gauge train.

I actually think the Welsh Highland Railway (Caernarfon) does a bit, minus the wires and the old style new build rolling stock. But that doesn't detract from my point that the rules of operation of those lines in CH are close to equivalent to UK street tramways (e.g. lots of open crossings, walking on the track being acceptable etc) and indeed they have a lot of street running.

 

[deltic]

Perhaps someone should ask a former Chief Engineer of Network Rail how the culture of over engineering developed?

And why they designed HS2 for 400kph running

 

[Taunton]

Would it look like the one we have today, or would it have slab track

Hopefully not. There have been two huge closures of the tunnel into Glasgow Queen Street, firstly in the late 1970s to install slab track (which itself seems to take for ever), then for no less than 6 months in 2016 to drill it all up again for electrification clearances. Apparently this has to be repeated on slab track every 60 years, but reading the detail of the more recent project there had needed to be a lot of intervening work here (and doubtless weekend closures) to deal with issues in the "maintenance-free" track bed.

Regarding costs, across Glasgow there was the (in)famous electrification to Paisley Canal, done in an innovative and extremely cheap and timely manner. Apparently the engineers responsible were vilified for showing up everyone else, all sorts of excuses invented why this approach was not applicable elsewhere (this attitude alluded to in the lecture in the "ooooh, too difficult" attitude), and nothing that clever or cheap is going to be countenanced again.

 

[Brissle Girl]

I actually think the Welsh Highland Railway (Caernarfon) does a bit, minus the wires and the old style new build rolling stock. But that doesn't detract from my point that the rules of operation of those lines in CH are close to equivalent to UK street tramways (e.g. lots of open crossings, walking on the track being acceptable etc) and indeed they have a lot of street running.

I'm sorry but the two are completely different in terms of gauge, speed, capacity, frequency of service, weight of train, etc, etc. Still, don't want to digress too much so I will leave it there.

 

[Bletchleyite]

I'm sorry but the two are completely different in terms of gauge, speed, capacity, frequency of service, weight of train, etc, etc.

However, the fact is they are operated in the manner of a UK street tramway in terms of e.g. open crossings, walking on the track etc. That is a fact.

SBB, while its safety rules are weaker than the UK's, is very unlike the narrow gauge lines in terms of its operations and much more like other Germanic countries' mainlines, e.g. walking on the track not allowed.

 

[deltic]

It would be interesting to see some primary sources that show maintenance costs in Switzerland vs the UK, rather than relying on what seems to be an anecdote based on a single excursion 15 years ago. These kinds of things usually turn out to be less clear than at first sight.

I think the last detailed comparison was the 2011 McNulty review which reported that on average Switzerland, Netherlands, Sweden and France were up to 40% more efficient than Britain's railways. Full reports can be found at https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/realising-the-potential-of-gb-rail

 

[Starmill]

Now I’m not going to contradict that because I don’t have the evidence.... but I will say that Andrew does have a habit of having certain beliefs or theories, not all of which are correct. I have had to unpick a few of them for him in the past.

His points about cost appear to me to have been set up to be deliberately highly provocative.

However his more general points about rail's market seem absolutely bang on to me. Indeed they're very similar to what you and I have been posting here for some time, but of course there's much general disagreement about them.

 

[yorksrob]

I'm not convinced that leasure travel is as peaky as he makes out.

Seems to me to be rather more varied and sustained than "out after breakfast and back before tea" around here.

 

[WesternBiker]

We spent a lot of time and money in track renewals trying to bring Kaizen principles into the supply chain but whilst we made some progress it wasn't culturally receptive such that it became self fulfilling.

Nissan and Toyota had the opportunity to build the workforce from scratch and indoctrinate them in the Toyota Way and create a culture and an environment that gives the workforce a big say in how they organise themselves. To my mind without a clean start its always going to be a challenge to significantly change the way the workforce operates so it can only ever be done in increments.

That's true of the car manufacturers themselves - although a lot of senior staff were of course brought from the existing industry - and retrained. (Mindset was of course a key part of the recruitment.)

But I worked with the supply chain, where we trained up British engineers in lean manufacturing to spread it through the automotive supply chain (one of the best courses I went on was the Nissan Supplier Development course for team leaders). It helped that you had a main customer who was both insistent and willing to invest heavily and for the long term - over 10 years - in that supply chain. The advantage they had was of course (often but not always international) competition: make the journey or you won't be a supplier any longer...

 

[Starmill]

Regarding costs, across Glasgow there was the (in)famous electrification to Paisley Canal, done in an innovative and extremely cheap and timely manner. Apparently the engineers responsible were vilified for showing up everyone else, all sorts of excuses invented why this approach was not applicable elsewhere (this attitude alluded to in the lecture in the "ooooh, too difficult" attitude), and nothing that clever or cheap is going to be countenanced again.

I think that's a bit of a simplification. The Paisley Canal electrification is possible to replicate on other routes that are physically similar to Paisley Canal providing you accept the same constraints. There are very few similar routes on which it could be appropriate!

 

[Wychwood93]

And why they designed HS2 for 400kph running

I would suggest that cost wise it makes little difference - Spain has the newer lines designed for 350kph - it is unlikely that HS2 or the LAVs in Spain will be required to run at 400/350kph. The track curvature will be there if they actually need it - I would like to think that HS2/LAV will be maintained to deal with the speeds that they actually run at. It becomes a waste of money if either maintain it at a speed that is not used.

 

[Elecman]

I think that's a bit of a simplification. The Paisley Canal electrification is possible to replicate on other routes that are physically similar to Paisley Canal providing you accept the same constraints. There are very few similar routes on which it could be appropriate!

Kirkham to Blackpool South , Preston to Ormskirk, Oxenholme to Windermere are 3 I can quicKay think of.Passenger service only and no Freight

 

[Nicholas Lewis]

That's true of the car manufacturers themselves - although a lot of senior staff were of course brought from the existing industry - and retrained. (Mindset was of course a key part of the recruitment.)

But I worked with the supply chain, where we trained up British engineers in lean manufacturing to spread it through the automotive supply chain (one of the best courses I went on was the Nissan Supplier Development course for team leaders). It helped that you had a main customer who was both insistent and willing to invest heavily and for the long term - over 10 years - in that supply chain. The advantage they had was of course (often but not always international) competition: make the journey or you won't be a supplier any longer...

They still had a fresh start and were able to select who they wanted and then train them as a collective. The auto market is also very competitive and im sure that drives peoples behaviours. The railways have delivered a lot of transformation in working methods and conditions over the last 40 years and whilst more can be done its not a continuous running production line when it comes to delivering infrastructure work. Perhaps we can get a better balance back between time available for routine mtce vs operations with commuting now reduced and improve productivity of the teams.