Is Vivarail True Disruptive Innovation?
Disruptive innovation is defined like this in Wikipedia.
A disruptive innovation is an innovation that helps create a new market and value network, and eventually disrupts an existing market and value network (over a few years or decades), displacing an earlier technology.
I’ve always been a great believer in this sort of innovation.
When we started Metier Management Systems and created Artemis, project management was worthy, time-consuming and if a computer was used it was an expensive mainframe. So we took a small but powerful industrial computer put it in a desk, added a VDU and a printer to do the same PERT and financial calculations much faster and often much physically closer to where the answers were needed. I have heard argued that one of our reasons for great success in the early days of North Sea Oil, was that you could find space for an Artemis system in Aberdeen, but not for a mainframe. The city was crawling with dozens of our systems.
After Artemis, project management was never the same again!
If we look at the building of trains, it is supposed to be an expensive business, with large manufacturers like Alstom, Bombardier, Hitachi and Siemens make expensive complicated trains, that are virtually computers on wheels. But at a price and to a time-scale that is such, that say a train company needs perhaps some extra four coach diesel multiple units to support say a Rugby World Cup or Open Golf venue, there is nothing that can be delivered in a short time.
Over the last few years, disruptive innovation has been alive and well in the train building industry. In the 1970s and 1980s, we built a large number of trains and electric and diesel multiple units based on the legendary Mark 3 coach. Wikipedia says this about the coach.
The Mark 3 and its derivatives are widely recognised as a safe and reliable design, and most of the surviving fleet is still in revenue service on the British railway network in 2015.
It is truly one of the great British designs. My personal view is that the ride in a Mark 3 coach, is unsurpassed for quality by any other train, I’ve ever ridden, in the UK or Europe.
A Mark 3-based multiple unit also survived the incident at Oxshott, where a 24-tonne cement mixer lorry fell on top of the train. There were injuries, but no-one was killed.
So what has the Mark 3 coach got to do with disruptive innovation?
They are like a well-built house, that constantly gets remodelled and improved by successive owners.
The structure and running gear of a Mark 3 coach is such that it is often more affordable to rebuild and improve Mark 3-based trains, rather than order new ones.
If Terry Miller and his team in Derby, had not designed the Mark 3 coach and the related InterCity 125 in the 1960s, I suspect that UK railways would be in a truly terrible state today.
These trains still remain the benchmark against which all other trains are judged. Two journeys sum up the class of a Mark 3 coach.
- Travel in First and enjoy Pullman Dining on a First Great Western service between London and Wales or the West. Is there any better rail journey available without a special ticket in the world?
- Travel in Standard on Chiltern to Birmingham and enjoy the ride and the views from the large windows, in the style that the designers envisaged for all passengers.
But the Mark 3 coach has created this industry in the UK, that can take well-built old trains and turn them into modern trains, that are often the equal of shiny new ones from the factory.
So where do Vivarail fit in all this?
London Underground has always specified the best for its railways and expected the trains to last a long time. In some ways it had to, as when it depended on Government favours for new trains, it could not predict if the replacements would ever be forthcoming.
Until the 1980s, most trains were built by Metro-Cammell in Birmingham and regularly fleets have lasted for forty or fifty years, as they were built to handle the heavy use in London, where journeys can be over an hour of full-speed running with frequent stops and often with far more passengers than the trains were designed. Take a Piccadilly Line train from say Kings Cross to Heathrow in the rush hour, if you want to see the sort of punishment that London Underground trains are built to take. The last of these Piccadilly Line trains were built in 1977 and under current plans, they will have to stay in service to 2025.
The oldest London Underground trains still in regularly passenger service, are the Class 483 trains used on the Isle of Wight. Admittedly, they are running a service in a less-stressful environment after fifty years service in London, but the trains were originally delivered to London Underground in 1939 or 1940.
The London Underground D78 Stock, that has been purchased by Vivarail for conversion into the D-train, were first delivered in 1980, so they have only taken about thirty-five years of London’s punishment.
The trains were also extensively refurbished in the mid-2000s.
It also has to be born in mind, that although London works its Underground trains very hard, they also get first class servicing.
Several factors have all come together to create an opportunity for Vivarail.
- There is a desperate shortage of diesel multiple units all over the UK. Partly, this is because of a need to replace the ageing Pacers, but mainly because of the growth in passenger numbers and the reluctant of Government in the 2000s to invest in much-needed new diesel trains.
- Network Rail’s well-publicised problems with electrification, only makes the need for more diesel trains more important.
- A lot of trains will have to be taken out of service as they don’t meet the disability regulations.
- The UK’s world-class train refurbishment business, which has honed its skills on creating new trains from old for forty years, is ready for a new project.
- There is now a supply of well-maintained, corrosion-free D78 Stock, that may not be sexy, but are as tough as teak, that are surplus to requirements.
It should also be said, that train operators and passengers want more flexible and better specified train services on difficult lines that are unlikely to be electrified in the near future and are difficult lines on which to provid a decent reliable train service.
Read any of the serious literature about the D-Train and it shows that the engineers are taking the project very seriously and are thinking very much outside the box.
- Power units are based on Ford Duratorq diesel engines mounted on rafts under the train, with two to each power car.
- These rafts can be changed using a fork lift at a remote location.
- Flexibility of interior layout to suit the route.
- Extensive use of LED lighting, Wi-fi and other modern technology.
- The crash test has been released as a video. How often do you see that?
But perhaps this article from Rail Magazine entitled Catering for VivaRail’s rebuilt D-Stock, illustrates their innovative thinking better than ever.
The more I read about the D-train, the more I think it will surprise everybody.
It is true world class disruptive technology. And British technology too!
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