New technology?

24/10/2019

The splendid brick-arch railway viaduct crossing the River Can in Chelmsford’s Central Park was built around 1840; certainly by 1843 it was carrying trains. It has been repointed in many places, some of the facing bricks have been renewed, and the area is subject to flooding every few years. Nevertheless, a structure built nearly 200 years ago – to carry far fewer and much lighter trains than those using it today – continues to function faultlessly.

If only the same could be said for the modern railway using overhead 25,000 volt overhead lines. Yet again, today, these lines failed, disrupting the travel of tens of thousands of commuters using the line between Norwich and London.

It is easy to carp, but I do wonder whether the design margins on these structures are really adequate given the level of use they get, coupled with the cost of disruption when they fail. Furthermore, railway fares in this country are notoriously some of the highest in Europe. Are we not severely short-changing our hard-pressed commuters by demanding premium ticket prices for a barely adequate service?

One more thought occurs: how can we encourage people to leave their cars at home and use the railways when they are so expensive and the wretched trains keep breaking down?

2 Comments

Clive

24/10/2019 08:24:58 pm

Peter, first of all, what's this got to do with Brexit? I'd rather forgotten that there were other topics to discuss. I think you've been a bit harsh -the trains are reasonably reliable, and while the 25k overhead cables cause chaos when they fail, their other qualities are significant. They allowed us to discard heavy, smelly diesel-powered trains, and are infinitely better than the third rail option. You mention the weight, but the lightweight units are nothing like as heavy as the early diesel locomotives. They weighed between 100-130 tons, just the locomotive, never mind the carriages. The line towards Chelmsford from the south is quite a steep gradient in railway terms, and whatever noise there is at the moment, the noise from a diesel loco trying at full throttle to get up the hill into Chelmsford was considerable. As for the cost, the apparently cheaper fares across Europe are a mirage. If the French knew how much their TGV network was costing them -ie the tax revenue needed to supplement fare revenue, they'd be horrified. In Italy, the fares are very cheap, but that's again because they don't even pretend to make the network pay for itself. We used massively to subsidise trains here too, but the ghastly Maggie set out a programme across a number of years to put an end to that. I think the only remaining subsidies are for the South-East commuter network -so even at their apparently usurious level, it seems the fares you pay still don't cover the cost of the service.
I would of course defend your right to whinge and carp, but maybe the more pressing issue is how an already 'at it's limits' network will cope with an ever greater population. We only have two tracks towards London. They're flogging the idea that building a new station at Boreham will help, when it will simply, at best, mean that the trains will arrive at Chelmsford already full. You cannot stretch capacity beyond a certain point, and there is no new capacity. You can't lengthen the trains without doing the same to the platforms, which is unthinkable. The trains cannot realistically go much faster than the 90-odd mph they do now. You can do what they are doing, which is to introduce new trains that will be more reliable, more environmentally-suited, and maybe will not drag down the wires as often as now. Remember the Norwich trains were built in 1987. Done. Carry on, old boy.

Peter Maggs

24/10/2019 10:13:37 pm

Lad, don't mention the 'B' word ...

All the points you make are perfectly valid. Personally, using the railway two or three times a month, I find the service to be perfectly good, but I am not travelling every day.

I don’t doubt that what you say about the hidden subsidies to the railways in France and Italy are correct. Also, that the 25 kV powered trains are far better than diesel, but the enormous cost to UK plc of between 20 and 50 thousand people being unable to get to work in the morning (or home in the evening) remains, and the so-called ‘compensation’ is no compensation at all.

Engineering design is always a trade-off. The old canard that an engineer can do for $10 what anyone else can do for $20 remains largely true. But, for example, bridges just cannot be allowed to fail because if/when they do, people frequently die, so they tend to be designed with enormous factors of redundancy. I am suggesting that the design redundancy in the overhead lines is insufficient given the consequences of failure.

As regards the capacity of the system, it’s a fair point. But on the London Underground during the rush-hour, it is not uncommon, particularly on the Circle and District Lines, to observe the back of the departing train, whilst the next one is approaching the other end station. Of course they are travelling quite slowly, but I do wonder whether the technology that already exists for driverless cars, could not be employed to allow much faster suburban trains to travel much closer together. That could double or triple the capacity at a stroke.

New technology?

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