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!
How To Work Outdoors
We all love working outside in the dark and wet, repairing things and perhaps digging holes.
Wouldn’t it be much nicer to do the work indoors in a workshop.
The problem is much worse on the railways, where when say you want to check rails, points or sleepers, you need to make sure the workers are protected from passing trains.
So I was intrigued to see this report on Rail Engineer entitled Video: Mobile Maintenance Train.
Talk about taking your shed with you and parking it over the problem!
It’s such a brilliant concept, I find it amazing that this hasn’t been standard practice for at least fifty years!
Do they have trucks like this, so they can repair potholes or accident damage on motorways?
The Falkirk Wheel
The Falkirk Wheel was the destination of the walk.
I think it is impressive. But is it art, engineering or a spectacular solution to lifting boats between two canals?. Wikipedia says this about the purpose of the lift.
The wheel raises boats by 24 metres (79 ft), but the Union Canal is still 11 metres (36 ft) higher than the aqueduct which meets the wheel. Boats must also pass through a pair of locks between the top of the wheel and the Union Canal. The Falkirk Wheel is the only rotating boat lift of its kind in the world.
It is also unique.
This Google Map gives a view looking down on the area.
Falkirk Wheel
The Forth and Clyde Canal, which runs across the top of the picture is thirty five metres lower than the Union Canal that runs along the bottom.
Perhaps we should create more spectacular machines like this. In the same class, I would include, these from the UK, that I have seen.
All are different in their own way. But certainly at the Falkirk Wheel on a sunny Sunday afternoon, kids of all ages had gathered to watch.
Something To Bragg About!
A few days ago, someone asked me about the overhead wires of a railway and the pantographs, that pick up the 25,000 Volts AC current.
I can’t remember what their question was, but I said it is a difficult problem, as a train like a Virgin Class 390 Pendelino might be travelling at 125 mph in bad weather, so maintaining contact with a constant pressure between the pantograph and the overhead wire isn’t easy.
I was reading something else and found this article on the Rail Engineer web site. Research has been going on at the City University to develop a sensor that monitors the forces at the pantograph head. As you can imagine it is a particularly harsh environment and the engineers have bean using a technology called a Fibre Bragg Grating (FBG) developed in the 1990s, based on the work by the Nobel Prize-winning scientists William Lawrence Bragg and his father; William Henry Bragg.
I won’t paraphrase the article, but it is a must read. Where it will all lead to I don’t know, but I will repeat this last paragraph.
In the long term, the FBG sensor system offers the ability to detect contact forces from the entire service fleet if combined with GPS and suitable telemetry. This offers the potential of continuous real-time monitoring of the entire overhead line network. Then the Braggs’ work on X-ray diffraction of crystals a hundred years ago could well have made overhead line dewirements also a thing of the past.
Just imagine what it would mean to the operators of our increasingly electrified rail network, if delays caused by trains bringing down the overhead wires were to be reduced.
I’ve met people at Cambridge University for whom William Lawrence Bragg was their tutor and they have described him as a quiet man, who was superb in getting brilliant work out of the students, he tutored.
This tale illustrates why we must do more and more research and often that the solution to a difficult problem is unexpected, but brilliant.
Sixty-Eight Today
At the date and time of my birth in 1947, thousands of people were being slaughtered in India and Pakistan. Only the area has moved slightly, but all across the world people are fighting over warped ideologies and religions. In a very long list, I’d include places like Belfast, Ferguson and Johannesburg.
It is so pointless. And one of the reasons, why I have no religious beliefs. The main reason, is probably that two branches of my family felt that coming to England was preferable to staying put and being annihilated, because they were the wrong and more successful religion. I can personally understand, wh we have a migrant problem.
I like to think I try to follow the best humanist principles common to most of the world’s great religions. Or at least those they tend to adhere to, when they are not mistreating those who disagree on the nature of God. She would not be amused!
I also believe in and follow the established rules of mathematics, medicine and science!
In the last few weeks, I have been meaning to write something critical of the so-called Islamic State or as I prefer the Ultimate Men Behaving Badly Tendency.
Compared to others in the past they are certainly up there with the Nazis on the treatment of their opponents and minorities, but at least the Nazis preserved most art, even if they nicked it for themselves.
I doubt I’ll ever see a totally peaceful world, as in my view the only thing that will stop it, is when people see religion to be the way to exploit them, that I believe it is and science, engineering and medicine solves or mitigates the real problems we all face in this world, like war, poverty, hunger, disease and natural disasters, like floods, extreme weather and and earthquakes.
Electrification Of Britain’s Railways Isn’t Easy
There are a lot of reports in the media talking about the delays in electrifying railways in the UK, like this report in the Yorkshire Post, which talks about the Trans Pennine and Midland Main Line schemes.
I have just found this report in the Rail Engineer, which talks about a forty-four day closure of the important Winchburgh Tunnel between Edinburgh and Glasgow to prepare for electrification as part of the Edinburgh Glasgow Improvement Program. The report starts with this paragraph.
A legacy of the rapid early growth of Britain’s railway network is that the UK has one of the world’s most restrictive loading gauges. As a result, typically half of the cost of British electrification projects is the civil engineering work to adapt structures to provide clearance for wires and pantographs.
As anybody who’s ever got to grips with any old building, what it looks like on the surface is very different to what is underneath.
The project described in the article is challenging to say the least. This extract describes the building of the tunnel.
Winchburgh tunnel lies at the eastern end of a five- kilometre long cutting. It is 338 metres long and was opened in 1842, having taken two years to complete. When digging the cuttings and tunnel, the contractor, Gibb and Sons, removed 200,000 tons more rock than expected and consequently made a loss.
The tunnel was cut through dolerite rock, mudstone and shale. In the middle on the nineteenth century, these oil shale deposits once made West Lothian one of the world’s biggest oil producers. This shale was also a factor in an unfortunate accident during tunnel construction in 1839 when a man was severely burnt by firedamp.
The cutting is crossed by two streams, west of the tunnel. A twin four-foot diameter cast-iron inverted syphon was provided to carry Myers Burn under the railway. Swine Burn crosses the cutting on an aqueduct that had to be re-decked as part of the EGIP electrification works. Downstream of the aqueduct is a pumping station, which drains the cutting west of the tunnel. This is an area with significant drainage issues, some of which are addressed by the tunnel works.
So making it large enough for electrification wasn’t easy. As is typical on a project such as this, concrete slab track was used. You don’t see it much on UK railways, as where it is used is generally in tunnels and other places, where you have tight clearances.
In the Winchburgh tunnel slab track was used and they are also using an overhead rail system to get the power to the train.
In searching for a good article about slab track, I found this article on Balfour Beatty’s Rail web site, which is entitled Polyurethane Slab Track.
Balfour Beatty have worked with Herriot Watt University to create a method of using polyurethane to create a method for strengthening track in awkward places.
One example describes how a bridge was improved to cope with modern loads.
While George Stephenson was a forward thinker, even he didn’t predict freight trains running at 80mph with 25 tonne axle loads over his bridge. So he hadn’t calculated for those stresses. The bridge has done a good job of coping with them for 190 years, but it was getting a bit tired.
The article also highlights that Network Rail has 25,000 masonry arches, so you can see why there must be a need for such a technique.
The technique has also been used to increase the headrom for electrification in a tunnel on the Midland Main Line.
It’s all impressive engineering.
Why Are Some Rails Painted White And What Is Saggy Wire Syndrome?
After reading this article on the Rail Engineer web site, I did think about calling this article something like – Who’d Be A Rail Engineer?
But I just had to include Saggy Wire Syndrome.
The article is a technical article about how using steel wheels on steel rails can be a nightmare for the railways and their engineers in hot weather.
When I was a child, the rails had a length of sixty feet and they were separated by a small expansion gap and connected by fishplates. This gave the clickety-clack. Now rails are continuous for several kilometres to give a smooth ride, so occasionally they buckle. To mitigate the problem rails are made pre-stressed to their length at 27°C, so the problems kick in, when the temperature of the track gets above that temperature.
As switches (points) and crossings are particularly vulnerable in hot weather, they are often painted white in the UK, to reflect the heat.
It’s funny, but after having come across Europe through Poland, Germany and Belgium, I can’t actually remember seeing any rails painted white on my journey. Although, there was no clickety-clack indicating jointed rails. Next time, I go to Germany or Poland I must look.
So what is saggy wire syndrome?
This is where the overhead electric wire stretches in the heat and sags, because the tensioning mechanism can’t cope.
The article finishes with this paragraph.
Summer is a real problem. Roll on winter, when the rails shrink as they get cold and eventually break, earthworks get soggy causing uneven track surfaces, and S&C gets flooded and won’t work.
Who’d be a rail engineer?
All passengers should read the article!
There Is No Product That Can’t Be Improved With LEDs
In this month’s Modern Railways, there is an article by Iam Walmsley, about the re-engineering of a Class 73 locomotive for Network Rail. This is a the extract which contains the title of this post.
The cab desk is best described as ‘functional’, a flat plate of stainless steel with everything on it, enlivened by cool teal-coloured LED backlighting, further evidence that there is no product that can’t be improved with LEDs.
This is so right.
An Impressive Structure In Dresden
It may only be a shelter for a number of lines at a tram interchange in Dresden, but I like it.
We should create more structures like this that combine engineering, art, beauty and practicality in suitable proportions.
The Other Big News Of The Past Few Days
With the election hogging the news, some things haven’t been given full coverage by the media.
One is Elon Musks idea of the Powerwall, which is a battery storage device for electricity, described in this article in the Guardian and another piece on uSwitch.
This may all look like an expensive toy or gimmick perhaps with a few specialist applications, but I believe it is a technology that could become commonplace in the future.
The flow is with this device and as my trip on a battery-assisted train at Manningtree showed, btteries are no longer something to power milk-floats.
Using a battery in a modern energy-efficient home or business, which perhaps has a roof covered in solar panels is an interesting way of cutting out paid-for electricity, for a hopefully one-off purchase and installation payment.
I wouldn’t buy one now, as although the Powerwall is deliverable now, improvements in battery and solar panel technology will mean that the systems available in a few years will store and generate more electricity in a more affordable manner. I also suspect, we’ll see replacement window glass units, that can either let light through or capture it for electricity.
We will also see much better control systems, although I suspect the the one Powerwall has is pretty sophisticated.
So I’m hanging back now, but I will be looking to put solar panels on my flat roof in anticipation of these better storage systems.
Musk is right, when he says that energy storage is going to revolutionise the world. But I do think that there will be a host of better or improved ways to do it.
But there is work to do, as this image of south-facing roofs in Ipswich shows, solar panels are notable by their absence.
No Solar Panels
In a few years time, this image will show lots of solar panels.
It is another case of giving the engineers the money to finish the deveopment and householders the right sort of finance for installation, so everybody can realise the dream of a house that doesn’t use any paid-for electricity.
The Anonymous Widower 