Trains are late, infrastructure enhancements unfunded and uncertain – ideal for a new Regional Partnership in 18 months’ time
Informed Sources
Almost exactly 20 years ago, Railtrack’s Head of Freight was standing in for the company’s Commercial Director. At the first board meeting he attended in this temporary capacity, the lack of progress with the West Coast Route Modernisation (WCRM) came as a shock.
Three years after Railtrack and the then Office of Passenger Rail Franchising had signed up to spending £1.35 billion on the West Coast main line (WCML), as I wrote at the time, ‘the costings were vague, the reliance on untried novel technology was commercially naïve and, if there was a work programme that ended up with a 140mph railway in May 2005, or even 1970s 125mph railway by 2 June 2002, nothing seemed to be happening’.
It took until 9 December 1999 – called ‘Black Diamond day’ after the symbol on the progress chart – for Railtrack to produce a detailed programme for the WCRM. The cost had risen to £5.8 billion – over £8 billion at today’s prices. With hindsight, we know that the WCRM would never recover from this lackadaisical start and would end up costing £10 billion in modern money after being heavily de-scoped.
YESTERDAY ONCE MORE
That acting Commercial Director was Robin Gisby. Now he is Chairman of London North Eastern Railway (LNER). Nominally, as DfT’s Operator of Last Resort (OLR), LNER’s role is to run the Inter-city East Coast (ICEC) franchise while starting the task of working with Network Rail to bring together the teams operating the track and trains on what Transport Secretary Chris Grayling calls the ‘LNER Network’.
Once the teams have been ‘brought together’, LNER will be tendered as the private sector component of a ‘genuine’ public private partnership, some time in 2020.
Yes, of course I know that even if Chris Grayling knew what he had in mind, the timescale is completely bonkers. And that is even before you get around to asking just what sort of pig would be in the poke being offered to the, assumed, gullible private sector bidders.
FREE ISSUE
‘Since November 2017 the Department for Transport has paid approximately £4.9 million across advisors, consultants and lawyers, to establish two viable options (to replace Virgin Trains East Coast), with the majority being an Operator of Last Resort expense. The cost is more than covered by the £21 million performance bond to be paid by Virgin Trains East Coast.’
Written Parliamentary answer, 4 June 2018
So the primary task of LNER is identical to that posed by the West Coast Route Modernisation two decades ago. Add in the fact that Mr Gisby’s time at Railtrack also included a spell as East Coast Zone Director and it is quite a serendipitous appointment.
SENSITIVE NOSTRILS
It helps that, stressful as it may have been at the time, that spell as Railtrack’s temporary acting Commercial Director means that the LNER Chairman’s nostrils are attuned to the smell of a project going wrong. And it was stressful back in 1999.
Mr Gisby’s opposite number at Virgin Trains West Coast was Chris Green, who could also smell a failing project. Mr Green had the advantage that Virgin’s contracts with Railtrack had been crafted by none other than the legendary Tom Winsor (the lawyer who later was Rail Regulator).
Railtrack was contractually committed to provide Virgin with a schedule of works for the WCRM by 28 May 1999. ‘Can I have it please?’ asked Mr Green, putting Virgin’s lawyers on standby. But at 08.30 on the 28th, Railtrack handed over an eight-and-a-half page Schedule for Passenger Up Grade 1 (PUG1).
PARALLELS
‘What’s past is prologue’ says Antonio in The Tempest. The parallels between ECML in 2018 and the WCML in 1988 grow stronger the more you think about it. Although in some respects the situation is worse.
As the correspondence between David Horne of Virgin Trains East Coast (VTEC) and Rob McIntosh, Network Rail’s London North Eastern & East Midlands Route Managing Director (‘Informed Sources’, March 2018), highlighted, there was no correlation, no equivalent of the WCRM ‘Schedule of works’, between the enhancements Stagecoach/Virgin assumed they were going to get and what Network Rail thought it was committed to provide in Control Period 5 (2014-19), to enable new inter-city timetables planned for 2019 and 2020.
GENUINE PARTNERSHIP
‘When it is fully formed the new LNER operation will be a partnership between the public and private sectors. In all circumstances ownership of the infrastructure will remain in the public sector, but the railway is at its strongest when it is a genuine partnership between public and private.
‘The final structure of LNER will need to be shaped in conformity with the primary legislation which governs the industry. But my objective remains to move to a situation which leaves one single team operating the railway, with the simple goal of ensuring it continues the work that the existing operators have done in improving passenger services.’
Chris Grayling, Transport Secretary, 16 May 2018
Nor were the access rights granted by the Office of Rail & Road to VTEC, plus, we should not forget, FirstGroup’s open access London-Edinburgh service, backed by a signed commitment by Network Rail to deliver the necessary capacity enhancements. Even today, Network Rail is still working out what is affordable and what is necessary (‘Informed Sources’ March 2018).
CONFUSION
As an example of the confusion, consider the latest signalling work-bank for Control Period 6 (2019-24). This includes signalling associated with one of the high profile ECML capacity enhancement schemes – Huntingdon to Woodwalton four-tracking.
This project has not been authorised, let alone funded, yet the signalling work-bank shows Siemens commissioning the associated resignalling scheme over Christmas 2020. Yet, according to informed sources, reinstatement of the fourth track has failed the Network Rail investment board.
Meanwhile, DfT’s High Level Output Specification (HLOS) for CP6 is solely concerned with maintenance and renewals. All enhancements will be decided and funded by DfT and the omens are not good.
NOT EVEN AS PRECISE AS A SEASON
Q: To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, what the timetable is for the Power Supply Upgrade Phase 2 on the East Coast main line to be completed.
A: The power supply on the East Coast main line from Doncaster to Edinburgh is being upgraded incrementally to support the introduction of the new Inter-city Express trains and other electric rolling stock. Upgrades around Doncaster are planned for delivery in 2019 and the full set of upgrades is planned to be in place by the early 2020s. Hansard, 4 July 2018
CLARITY
This is where I must confess to getting it wrong. I was arguing in favour of Stagecoach continuing to run the ICEC franchise under a management contract purely on the practical consideration of continuity of management at a difficult time. What I did not allow for was that VTEC Managing Director David Horne and his management team would TUPE across to the OLR.
This means that while the existing management can continue running the daily railway in parallel with handling the transition from IC125/225 to IEP and bringing in the May 2019 timetable enhancements, Chairman Gisby, supported as necessary by the members drawn from the OLR consortium, can focus on the big issues, starting with nailing down the infrastructure.
IEP INTRODUCTION
In its comparison of the two options for running ICEC post-VTEC, DfT noted that ‘the OLR leadership team are confident in their plans to manage the Inter-city Express Programme, and they have experience of introducing new rolling stock in co-ordination with infrastructure developments and other operators’. In addition, ‘the key staff in the train operator who are leading and delivering the (IEP) programme are expected to transfer under the OLR option, which significantly reduces risks around continuity’.
FUNDAMENTALLY GOOD
‘The East Coast franchise is a fundamentally good business which continues to deliver strong revenues to the Government.’ Jo Johnson, Transport Minister
As noted in the previous item, the delay to the start of testing on the Great Western main line set back IEP deliveries by three months. LNER is now to get the first of its 13x9-car Class 800 bi-modes on 19 November, with deliveries then running at one set per week.
This should ensure sufficient units are available for the start of the proposed Bradford, Harrogate and Lincoln services in May 2019. However, availability is subject to prompt resolution of the current signalling interference issues when running under electric traction between Northallerton and Berwick.
These emerged at the beginning of June and resulted in IEP running in electric mode being suspended over the affected section. As this column went to press, Hitachi confirmed that the ban was still in force but stressed that the cause of the interference remained unknown, making it unfair to attribute blame to either trackside equipment or the train.
Network Rail took a bit longer to respond to my request for information on the issue. A spokeswoman told me: ‘We continue to work with Hitachi on testing of the Inter-city Express Trains as part of their introduction to service. Electro Magnetic Compatibility forms a key aspect of this testing and is currently taking place along the East Coast main line. As the testing in ongoing, it’s too early to say what fixes may be required, whether this be to infrastructure or rolling stock’. While Hitachi and Network Rail are working together to resolve the issue it is up to the rolling stock supplier to demonstrate compatibility with the infrastructure. But that assumes that the infrastructure is compliant with the specification Hitachi was given. It is worrying that the cause and effect remain unknown two months after informed sources reported the ban on running.
Informed sources suggest the traction return current from the Class 801 EMUs is affecting the data links that transmit data between the Solid State Interlockings (SSI) and the Trackside Functional Modules (TFM) that control points and signals. But why should this affect just this section of the ECML, which was signalled with GEC Alsthom Mk IIB SSI as part of the ECML electrification in the 1980s?
This was the original production version of SSI running at a frequency of 1MHz. The current Mk III specification SSI runs at 2MHz, but this difference should not affect the TFM data links.
Interference issues also emerged during testing on the Great Western main line, including with signalling on adjacent London Underground lines. These were resolved and according to a Hitachi spokesman, once the definite cause of the ECML problem is found, ‘we’ll find the solution, which our teams have many years’ worth of experience in’.
ACCESS RIGHTS
However, of greater concern to the creators of the proposed Partnership will be the ability of the infrastructure to support the firm access rights to the sixth Long Distance High Speed (LDHS) path on the ECML granted to VTEC by the Office of Rail and Road in May 2016. VTEC had sought rights from May 2019, but ORR, wisely, put this back to May 2021 given the uncertainly over the necessary infrastructure enhancements.
All these factors combine to suggest that any return of LNER to the private sector, which would depend on being able to offer a stable ICEC business, could be five years away. I can’t see any private concern willing to ride into the East Coast Valley of Death for a fourth time until a proper East Coast Route Modernisation, with a firm specification and committed funding for any enhancements, is underway and on schedule.
ONE TEAM
‘The East Coast Partnership will be the first of the new generation of long-term regional partnerships. The East Coast Partnership will be operated by a single management team, under a single brand and overseen by a single leader. It will see the train operator actively collaborate with Network Rail to bring its expertise and a passenger view to the planning of infrastructure management and to developing future plans for route infrastructure; create a unified “one-team” identity and brand across Network Rail Route and train operator; and ensure staff share in the success of the railway. Moving to this model will require changes in the way both the train operator and Network Rail are organised and work together in order to better align their incentives.’
DfT statement
