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And how can man die better,
Than facing fearful odds (Macaulay)
Nothing lifts the spirits like a boldly stated challenge thrown in the teeth of what Tony Blair calls corrosive cynicism. We haven't had a decent fight against odds, oh, since Chris Green took on the Virgin Challenge.
And before that? Well there was Brush delivering the first Class 60 in 13 months from date of order. And before that there was the Class 91 rolling out on Valentines day 1988 – two years to the day after the contract was signed in a motorway car park.
A lot of money could have been made taking bets from people who were certain Brush and GEC would fail. Today you could get very good odds against Virgin meeting its subsidy profiles. So what price the Desiro challenge?
Let's write down calmly and objectively what my old chum David Wilson, Director and General Manager of Siemens Transportation Systems and his team have said they will do.
*Design and build a brand new, dual voltage electric multiple unit for the UK market, powered by a new generation version of the Company's three phase drive fitted to the Heathrow Express and Northern Spirit EMUs.
*Get network-wide, not route specific, acceptance, including electrical safety cases on both 25kV AC and 750V DC.
*Deliver 84 25 kV AC 20metre vehicles to First Great Eastern starting in December 2002 with the fleet in service by the 2003 summer timetable.
*Deliver 785 750 V DC 20 and 23metre vehicles to SWT to the schedule shown in Table 1 with the first six units in service for November 2002.
| Quantity | Vehicles | First unit | Last unit | Vehicles/week |
| Class 360 - FGE | ||||
| 21x4 car | 84 | 12/2002 | 04/2003 | 4 |
| Class 350 - SWT (note a) | ||||
100x4 car 32x5 car |
400 160 |
11/2002(c) 01/2004 |
end 04/2004 09/2004 |
5 7.5 |
| Class 35X (note b) | ||||
| 45x5 car | 225 | 07/2003 | end 05/2004 | 5 |
| SWT Options (by end 2007) | ||||
Class 350 - 302 vehicles Class 35x - 114 |
||||
(a) 20 m long vehicles
(b) 23 m long vehicles
*And then maintain the SWT fleet, meeting stringent performance and train quality targets with meaty penalties/bonuses, depending on under or over performance.
According to Siemens the SWT order, valued at £640million before options and 20 year train service provision contract, is not just the biggest contract in the Group's 158 year history in Britain, not just the biggest ever for Siemens Transportation Systems, but it is the biggest order that the entire Siemens AG has won in the past 20 years.
Phew. Now, that's what I call real corporate cojones.
And Siemens won it fair and square in a double shoot-out with Alstom – first mano-a-mano for the SWT contract and again when SWT and the Strategic Rail Authority compared the Angel Trains/Siemens package against the outcome of the SRA's independent procurement exercise.
While the SRA had confirmed HSBC Rail as its preferred financier for SWT, its Director Commercial & Rolling Stock Toby deBurgh went all coy when I asked him who their preferred manufacturer or manufacturers were. However, Informed Sources reckon that it was Alstom who lined up for a second kicking at the feet of SWT.
But not necessarily. A very informed source told me that the final evaluation between SWT's deal and the SRA mystery package was more about politics than money. Since the national media picked up threats of factory closures, including Derby, should Siemens win the deal, Adtranz could have been in the frame since they do tend to call ‘foul' more than most.
On the other hand, if Alstom were playing the political card, it must have encouraged Siemens no end. When the opposing team moans ‘come on ref' it always lifts your spirits.
Thanks to First Great Eastern getting their cab specification wrong (on Bustlin' Bob's operator led railway too), Siemens delivery mountain became a little bit steeper than I first thought. Originally the build- up went like this:
*Class 360 for FGE – delivery to start June/July 2002 (or 12 months time as we call it in England ) and run through to December 2002. Say a comfortable four-car unit a week.
*Class 350 for SWT – six units (24 cars) to be available for service in November 2002, then 20 cars a month until July 2003 when the 23m long five car main line Class 35X Desiros cut in, also at a nominal 20 vehicles a month, making 40 a month or 10 vehicles a week.
All very nice and progressive. Until the need to redesign the front end of the Class 360s (see below) put the start of delivery back. FGE now aspires to have the full fleet in service for the May 2003 summer timetable. So I make it 16FGE plus 20 SWT vehicles a month, nine a week, from December 2002. This is a lot of vehicles to deliver and commission simultaneously at two locations at the start of a contract, when nothing ever works ‘out of the box'.
As you can see from the table there will be three tranches of Desiros. The 100 four-car units formed from 20m long vehicles, plus the 45 five-car units of 23m stock represent the SWT Mk 1 stock replacement fleet and are due to be in operation by the end of May 2004.
Then comesthe ‘growth build' of 32 five-car units with 20m long vehicles. Delivery will be phased in between April and September 2004. Presumably, cup and coned Mk 1 VEPs will stay in service to cope with growth until replaced by the five-car Class 350s.
Also in the contract are ‘binding', that is fixed price, options , for another 416 Desiros, made up of 302 20m and 114 23m vehicles for delivery by 2008. Total potential build is 1201 vehicles.
This delivery schedule means that SWT will now have to ‘cup and cone' most of its fleet of 144 four-car Mk1 slam door stock EMUs. The last of these will be withdrawn in September 2004 as delivery of the Desiro ‘growth build' is completed.
All Mk 1 units running past 31 December 2003 will also have to be fitted with the Train Protection & Warning System under the current Railway Safety Regulations. Sir Alastair Morton of the Strategic Rail Authority mused the other day on whether Mk 1 mod's would be insisted on. Derogation: impossible in my book.
For these aspirations to be realised Siemens has to get new AC and DC safety cases in parallel. Central to this will be the Wildenrath Test Centre.
One of the test loops is to be electrified at the 750V DC third rail of Railtrack's Southern Zone and fitted with representative track circuits. Well, ho hum. Adtranz installed track circuits on a test track at its Vasteras plant in Sweden and look where it got them.
To my mind, the best approach was still that of tiny Dutch company Holec, now part of the Anglo-French conspiracy. As part of the Class 323 safety case, Holec ran a SIGINT three phase drive stealth train over the network sucking up data on traction return currents, track circuit characteristics and overhead line current and analysing it on the spot, as well as storing it for future use. Next best was Alstom, whose stealth train didn't have the multiple on board PhDs with lap tops, but stored the data for action replay on the static combined test rig at Preston .
Siemens has drawn the obvious lesson and will now calibrate its ‘replica' Southern Zone at Wildenrath against the real world. A Class 421 Mk 1 EMU, instrumented and fitted with monitoring and recording equipment by Siemens, will be run round the Southern Zone later this year . The train will then be taken to Wildenrath and run on the DC test loop which will be adjusted if necessary to produce the same readings.
Wildenrath's DC test loop will also replicate some of the Southern's little quirks. For example, the current trains receive from the third rail is not the pure DC you get from a battery. It is produced by rectifying 50 Hz AC from the national grid and this imposes a ‘ripple' on the DC which can upset three phase drive safety monitors.
Southern Zone track circuits largely run on 50 Hz AC. Because of this the interference current monitors on three phase drives look for 50Hz first of all and shut down the train if they find more than a few Amps. A Eurostar sitting stationary was using up much of its 50 Hz allowance because of ripple current.
Of course, it's not as simple as that. Southern Zone has two types of rectifier, six-pulse and 12-pulse. So half of the Wildenrath loop will be fed with six pulse and the other half 12 pulse, allowing the change between supplies to be simulated.
Also provided will be gaps in the conductor rail. Arcing caused when shoe gear crosses a gap generates frequencies which can also cause spurious tripping of safety systems.
Talking of Holec and arcing, you will recall that the safety systems of that company's three phase traction equipment in the Class 323 EMUs in Birmingham shut the trains down the first time ice on the overhead line caused arcing, generating forbidden frequencies within the resulting electrical ‘white nose'. And what happened when the CAF/Siemens Class 333 AC EMUs for Northern Spirit encountered frost on the contact wire for the first time? Ooops.
I had much fun twitting David Wilson about this well recorded ‘surprise' phenomenon. So, when talking about the DC test loop at Wildenrath he emphasised the point that ice on the third rail could also be replicated!
Meanwhile the start of testing has slipped slightly. In July 2000, the message from Siemens was that the first Desiro UK unit would be delivered to Wildenrath in August 2001. At the press conference on April 23 we were told that testing is now due to start in October this year.
| Stage | Date |
| Programme (P) | signed off |
| Design (D) | End September 2001 |
| Test (T) | Late May 2002 |
| Interim (I) | Non passenger August 2002 |
So you see what I mean by a fight against odds. And I have to say that none of my chums who have been there, done that and got electrical safety cases significantly more difficult than either the Class 332 and Class 333 think Siemens have a chance of a DC safety case by November 2002.
Yet I am going to bring down their opprobrium upon my head by saying that I expect Siemens to be there or there abouts in 18 months time. Why? Because of the impact of reputational risk.
If Siemens' biggest contract for the past 20 years goes pear shaped, the blow to the group as a whole would be immense. If the trains don't arrive in time and in quantity, Stagecoach could be brought down too.
Do I have to point out the parallel between Alstom and Virgin West Coast? Because of the clear and present reputational risk Alstom Group has thrown resources at this monster UK contract – and brought into play some of my chums who, while not rated in the Alstom greasy pole climbing league, are the sort of experience blokes you need in a fight against odds. As you can read in Tony Miles exclusive report from the Pendolino front line, Mission : Impossible is looking a bit more feasible
When the corrosively cynical asked me whether GEC could deliver the 91 or Brush the Class 60, my reply was simple – ‘they will, because they have to'. A Siemens chum, veteran of their earlier safety case battles, expressed it more succinctly. Discussing the company's approach to Railtrack's convoluted demands when it comes to safety case information he came up with the acronym JFDI. Hoping that Father Ford the Railway Padre is not reading I can report that it stands for Just F***ing Do It.
I look forward to footplating a revenue earning Class 350 out of Waterloo in 2002. Now let's see if Alstom and Adtrans, oops Bombardier try to take some money off me.
Looking for the maintenance upsideTotal train service provision is popular with manufacturers. Looking after the traction and rolling stock you built has three big advantages. First, you can ensure that the kit is looked after properly, secondly, you can afford to design the train for whole life cost and not first price and, finally, you find out at first hand how your equipment performs in service and can use the feedback to redesign and retrofit improvments. Oh yes, and you can also make money as the first three advantages kick in. So Siemens has taken on some challenging, but not heroically so, targets under its 20 year maintenance deal for the Class 360 Desiro fleet. Indeed Stagecoach told me that one of the endearing features of Siemens, compared with other bidders, was the perception of total train service provision targets as an opportunity not a threat. All the Desiros will be maintained at a new depot, probably ‘in the Southampton area'. As is now common practice, balanced examinations will eliminate heavy overhaul. Siemens is designing the trains for what it calls 'pit stop' maintenance, using repair by modular replacement. A bogie change will take two hours, and could be done between the peaks. Backing the maintenance deal is a performance regime which Stagecoach describes as 'very onerous'. There is a parallel regime for train condition.
Two regimesPerformance is based on a nominal reliability of 60,000 miles per casualty. Train cancellations, short formations and delays under and over 15min are converted into penalties or bonuses on the basis of the effect of each on the benchmark. While passengers might not agree, some failures are more heinous than others. Thus, the penalties and bonuses calculated from the performance regime are modified by a three by two matrix of service type (inner and outer suburban, plus main line) and time of day (peak/off peak). This matrix determines the 'value' of each train, making the most expensive peak hour train worth four times an off peak service. The most expensive peak train failure would be worth around £4000. There will also be an incentive scheme linked to the condition of trains leaving the new depot. As well as cleanliness, equipment out of service will also attract penalties. Top of the list is a toilet out of order which would cost £250 a time. Deals like these require tough nerves initially. It was noticeable that at the SWT Desiro press conference it was a bit like the famous Faulty Towers sketch with no one mentioning the Class 333s which continue to behave like other new trains. But equally, who remembers the Northern Line fleet's introduction now that Alstom is quietly earning bonuses on a similar total train service provision package. Of course, it may be that I am biased on manufacturers maintaining their own kit. Finsbury Park and all that.
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