Return to Archive -by date - by topic.
Replacing IC125 won't be easy – or quick
At its meeting in February 1989, the British Railways Board, under its railwayman Chairman Sir Henry Johnson, received what was probably the most important techno/commercial proposal of the nationalisation years. It came from Chief Engineer Traction & Rolling Stock T.C. B. Miller and sought funds for the development of a new InterCity diesel train.
This was no mere paper study. Terry Miller was promising a six coach train plus two power cars, ready for testing just 22 months after authority was given.
In May 1970, the decision that ensured the survival of InterCity was taken. The BRB Investment Committee authorised £70,000 (£680,000 in today's money) for the development of a ‘high speed diesel electric multiple unit train.
In August that authority was cancelled and a new one issued. Terry Miller now had £7.72 million in modern money to build a prototype. Was money ever better spent?
In June 1972 what was now called the High Speed Diesel Train (HSDT) rolled out at Derby . And then sat idle while the Unions wrangled over the cab layout with a single central driver's seat.
This cost a year of vital development running which was to handicap the production fleet. But the Great Western's new 125mile/h timetable took effect in October 1976.
Suddenly, BR was No 2 in the world speed rankings behind Japan 's Shinkansen. The high speed service's impact on ridership – dubbed the ‘nose cone effect' – resulted in further orders for the East Coast and Cross Country.
Today, Terry Miller's masterpiece is still the train by which Intercity trains are judged in Britain – often unfavourably. Quite simply the engineers at Derby gave the Mk 3 coach a bodyshell which nothing since has matched for lightweight and structural stiffness. It is that stiffness, plus air suspension and the BT10 bogie, which gives the Mk 3 its unsurpassed ride and ambience.
Now the oldest IC125s are approaching their 30 th birthday. Pull out your ‘Observer's' books for the early 1970s and see what was new in the air and on the road when the HSDT was being built. Nothing in transport has been so good for so long.
But even with re-engineering this ageless train will have to be replaced. When the Rolling Stock Companies were sold, some IC125s were expected to remain on lease up 2011/12. Time is running out to develop a replacement by then.
Christopher Garnett , Chief Executive of GNER, is leading the charge for HST2. While Sea Containers is now bidding to keep the franchise, Chris is quite prepared to speak his mind on the IC125 replacement issue, even if it risks upsetting the SRA Chairman Richard Bowker .
He is concerned that the current financial crisis will see SRA ‘ducking' the replacement issue and going for ‘something cheap and nasty such as the Voyagers'. Tactful, given that Richard Bowker led Voyager procurement when he worked at Virgin.
Even more tactful when you remember that Bombardier's original offer for Cross Country re-equipment was based on a mix of loco-hauled coaches and diesel multiple units. The all DMU fleet was a late change.
Actually, Mr Garnett's view is that while Voyagers are suitable for the Cross Country franchise, where the average journey is 90 miles, ‘they are not a four hours to Edinburgh train'. And, of course, with a lusty 750hp diesel under every vehicle they are never going to match that IC125 ambience.
Nor are the economics of DMUs that clever if, as seems logical, we are going to run longer trains to cope with a combination of restricted capacity and ridership growth. Every high speed DMU has a small locomotive under the floor with all that entails in terms of maintenance of engines, cooler groups, transmissions, fuel and auxiliary systems. Yes it does wonders for overall reliability, but think of the maintenance needed by Midland Main Line's nine car – count them – Bombardier Meridiens.
At some point, locomotive haulage becomes cheaper to buy, run and maintain than an all vehicles powered multiple unit. BR's rule of thumb was that the balance swung to the locomotive or power car when formations of five or more coaches became standard. So on the future 10 car railway DMUs are a subsidy muncher.
On the East Coast, up to 20 HST2 sets would be required to replace the existing InterCity fleet and meet GNER's aspiration for higher frequencies. But that is not an economic number in procurement terms. Hence the need for a single design to cover all requirements.
Which brings us to Great Western, which has been looking at IC125 replacement for some time and gave us all a nostalgic chuckle with its retro-enthusiasm for the Bombardier gas turbine powered Jet Train. Currently Great Western operates around 40 IC125s and a ccording to informed sources has worked up a joint proposal with GNER for.
This has now been presented to the SRA. Those who read last month's review of the Rolling Stock Non Strategy will not be surprised that nothing further had been heard at the time of writing.
With a base requirement for HST2 of, say 60-70 units, depending on growth assumptions, would give a worthwhile production run on a par with Pendolino. At which point, we need to do some old style procurement scheduling to get a grasp of the likely timescale for HST2 should it go ahead.
Dominating the schedule is the need to prove the engine in InterCity service. Yes, I know every manufacturer will tell you that their engines are performing perfectly in the toughest applications – those monster dump trucks in open cast mines is a favoured pedigree – but we know that rail traction is uniquely demanding and the binary driven 125mile/h high speed train on British main lines is the most demanding of all. Remember the Mirrlees MB185 which was going to topple the Valenta?
Before committing to an engine we need two years' front line service hauling IC125 trailer cars to current timetables. And since we will almost certainly need more power than IC125, that means new power cars, of which more anon.
Assume that someone makes a decision, and at present that someone can only be the SRA, and assume that the pre-series demonstrators are ordered by the end of this year, which is improbable. Say the order is for two batches of three or four power cars from two builders. Design, manufacture and acceptance is going to take two years minimum, which brings us to the end of 2006.
Now we need at least two years in intensive front line service, building up the hours so that an engine strip at the end tells us something. This means we can decide which engine to buy at the end of 2008.
Procurement of the first batch of power cars and the new Mk 5 coach is going to take most of 2009 – during which time the demonstrator power cars continue to be thrashed. If the contract is awarded by the end of the year, the first new train could roll out some time in 2011.
Say one train a fortnight and, allowing for production to build up, that's three years to replace the existing fleet. So some IC125s are going to have to run for another 10 years.
Minimum, because these are optimistic timescales. Apart from SRA technophobia, someone has to fund the £15-20million for the pre-series power cars.
And, sadly, I have to say that the chance of SRA doing any of the above is miniscule, since it involves money which the SRA does not have. And the odds are that it will have no discretionary funding in the new Comprehensive Spending Review.
But there is an upside. If it is certain that the existing IC125 fleets are going to have to run for another ten years, then it is worth the ROSCOs spending serious money re-engineering them to improve performance during this profitable residual life. And my engineering chums at the ROSCOs know what they want to do.
So IC125 is dead, long live IC125-E for evolution. And the recent performance improvements at GNER, following the heavy overhaul plus a some re-engineering, may have increased SRA enthusiasm for a major life extension programme.
All we need is confirmation from SRA that IC125 will run on for another 10 years to trigger substantial enhancements, including trial installations of new engines and other enhancements such as new alternators, a full interior rebuild for the power cars and re-engineering of the of the coaches to include retention tank toilets.
And the prospective engines to be tested – Porterbrook favours Cummins and Angel/Great Western are working up an MTU-based proposal – could power HST2 with more cylinders. So there is some long term potential, too.
Hang on, you may be asking, what about the Paxman VP185 which was revealed to the rail traction world in this very column 10 years ago to the very month. Well, personal grief time.
Paxman suffered from the curse of Alstom and did a Class 458. Lovely engine, shame about the customer support is the verdict of the train operators and ROSCO. Despite my passing on this message repeatedly Paxman have blown it and now that they are German owned, the UK traction market is probably of little importance anyway. All very sad.
But re-engineering still InterCity East Coast short of irreplaceable IC125s. No problem. Even if we can't afford HST2, there ought to be enough subsidy around to lease more Meridians, giving Midland Main Line an homogenous fleet, the resulting cascade providing more capacity for East Coast and Great Western.
Those who like reading the writing on the wall might note this passage from a speech by Richard Bowker to the Institution of Mechanical Engineers in June 2003.
"At the end of the day, as with everything else on the railway, our rolling stock strategy will be about ensuring good value for money and procuring what we can afford. Our involvement in the market must be about getting downward pressure on prices and making sure that we get full and whole-life use out of assets before hastening to replace them.... We have all heard passengers talking about their ‘new trains' when travelling on a refurbished HST or a Mark III set on West Coast Main Line. We cannot afford to replace the entire fleet, nor would it be the right thing to do, so refurbishment has to be an important part of any strategy."
Which brings me back to Terry Miller. There is something wrong when a failed engineer turned journalist has his name on one side of a locomotive but one of our greatest engineers, whose vision and genius keeps will have kept Intercity competitive for 40 years, goes un-honoured.
Will someone, somewhere take this hint and name a Class 43 T.C.B Miller MBR? The debt the railway owes him is still growing.
Oops. Huge oversight last month which could have got me into big trouble with the Cats' Protection League, not to mention a possible RSPCA prosecution. So here is the disclaimer which should have gone with the analysis on the SRA's Rolling Stock non-Strategy. ‘No kittens or adult cats were mistreated or distressed in any way during the writing of that item'. And to prove that sleeping kittens are safe in this column, here is Kizzie, the Junior Informed Sources cat, having a kip on a pile of old regulatory documents while I was writing this month's Safety Report. |