Earn more, spend less

Between 1994, when the railway was privatised, and the pre-Covid year of 2019, railway passenger numbers more than doubled. Yet over the same period the railway’s cost to the taxpayer increased by 270%. With high fixed infrastructure costs, increasing passenger numbers should have decreased its cost to the taxpayer.

Thus, as shown on the graph, while rail privatisation may have been successful in increasing passenger numbers, it has clearly failed to meet its prime objective of reducing rail’s cost to the taxpayer. Moreover, the graph shows that after British Rail (BR) introduced sector business management in the early 1980s, rail’s cost to the taxpayer was reduced by 46% between 1985 and 1993.

One of the reasons for this is that, at that time BR introduced the business profit centres. The impact of this is illustrated by our feature on how 125mph track renewal handbacks were achieved on the East Coast Main Line in the mid-1980s. While this was an impressive achievement by the engineers concerned, it was only possible because the BR Inter-City director authorised expenditure on nine dynamic track stabilisers as he considered that the resultant reduced journey times would generate additional revenue.

Although spending money to make money in this way is a basic business practice, Government does not apply this philosophy to the rail network. Currently, the Treasurer receives passenger revenue while the Department for Transport is responsible for cost control. Network Rail CEO Andrew Haines has described this arrangement as “evil”. It is to be hoped that Great British Railways will see the reintroduction of profit centres at an appropriate business level.

In recent times, there has been significant increases in the cost of infrastructure projects as highlighted by HS2 and costly electrification projects. For example, the original 12km Docklands Light Railway opened in 1987 at a cost of £217 million in today’s prices.

As shown in the table, the Scottish Airdrie to Bathgate and Border projects each delivered a substantial amount of infrastructure for respectively £520 and £612 million at today’s prices. Our website has a feature about these projects which considers, with some justification, that these Scottish projects are amongst the most cost effective rail projects delivered since privatisation.
Our feature on the Railway Industry Association (RIA)’s annual conference shows how high rail project costs are a real concern that threaten future rail enhancements. It is important to understand why costs are so high and how projects can be delivered at an affordable price. Hence, we would strongly suggest that previous cost-effective projects, such as these two Scottish projects, are benchmarked to learn the lessons from them.

Our feature ‘implementing cost effective electrification’ describes the work done to reduce the number of structures that need to be rebuilt for electrification projects, provide risk-based standard and simplify electrification approvals. These worthwhile initiatives will only bear fruit with the steady stream of electrification work that the network requires.

Peter Stanton’s feature on the PWI electrification conference includes an explanation of how the delivery of electrification in Germany is the subject of a performance and financing agreement. Among other topics, this event also considered a proposal to extend DC third rail electrification.

As part of our light rail focus, Paul Darlington describes Australia’s biggest public transport project, the Sydney Metro, which is building 113km of new metro rail that will be operated by driverless trains. Closer to home, Rail Engineer visited the Very Light Rail (VLR) innovation centre in Dudley for a progress update on the Coventry VLR system. This feature also reports on the Revolution VLR which has been tested at Ironbridge.

The eight tram systems in the UK and Ireland use seven different grooved rail sections in their embedded street tracks which total just over 100km. Malcolm Dobell explains the subtleties of embedded rails and the benefits of standardising these grooved sections.
Back to heavy rail, the railways of Southern England have 5,200km of track and carry 1.6 billion journeys each year. Clive Kessell reports how a RIA Unlocking Innovation event considered innovations that could help meet the challenges of operating such a heavily trafficked railway.

Forty years ago, a signaller at Carlisle Power Signal Box noticed that his panel showed a divided freightliner train. He switched the rear portion away from Carlisle station onto the Goods Avoiding Line where it crashed to produce significant wreckage, though no-one was hurt and there was no service disruption. We explain why this accident occurred and how its lessons are still relevant.

We also describe the recent fatal collision at Talerddig in Wales on which the Rail Accident Investigation Branch (RAIB) reported low levels of wheel/rail adhesion. Yet understanding all the factors that led to this tragic event must await RAIB’s report.

Wheel/rail interface is a complex and persistent problem. As we have reported, the ADHEsion Research challenge (ADHERE) has led various low adhesion initiatives. This month we report on a trial that successfully demonstrated how machine vision can analyse high-resolution images from forward-facing cameras to identify areas of low adhesion. We also report how RSSB is developing a model to evaluate rolling stock and infrastructure design features to guide trains when they are derailed as part of the development of a derailment mitigation strategy.

Rail Engineer was recently in Berlin to attend the biennial InnoTrans event. This is the world’s largest rail marketplace at which over 2,900 exhibitors in 42 halls promote their products. Our overview of this event gives an indication of its scale and variety and shows why this is a must-see event for anyone wishing to see the scale of the worldwide rail industry.

An important new addition to the UK’s rail industry is the Siemens Mobility’s rail manufacturing plant in Goole. Matt Atkins was there when this plant opened on 3 October. As he reports, this plant will assemble 80% of London’s new Piccadilly line trains and all future Siemens trains for the UK with the first Goole-assembled train expected to be completed in Spring 2025.

The rail industry is essentially its people who need to be nurtured and developed. This was Iain Rae’s key message in his address as the new chair of the IMechE’s Railway Division (RD). In this, he emphasised the importance of diversity and inclusion and used his own experience to offer advice to young engineers about their development. He also exhorted those with influence to develop future rail engineering leaders.

This is certainly a message that Rail Engineer supports.