News


‘English services must not terminate at Edinburgh’


by Arthur Allan


Protests have greeted a suggestion that the government might give up on through services from London to destinations north of Edinburgh as a cost-saving measure.


One campaigning group warned that East


Coast services to the far north could lose a quarter of their custom if passengers are forced to change trains at Edinburgh. Electrified lines currently end in the Scottish


capital. In his recent review of the Intercity Express Programme (IEP), Sir Andrew Foster noted that the main reason for the programme’s controversial bi-mode element, combining electric and diesel traction, was ‘a sense of sacred duty to protect through-journeys’. He suggested an alternative might be ‘more passenger-friendly train changes: for example by providing better porterage, ensuring the physical proximity of appropriate onward connection trains, and guaranteeing to hold them’.


Scottish politicians and pressure groups


attacked the idea in advance of transport secretary Phil Hammond’s decision on IEP, expected in October. Scottish transport minister Stewart Stevenson


said: ‘It is not acceptable that the Department for Transport goes ahead with the Intercity Express Programme, while ignoring the realities of delivering cross-border services to Aberdeen and Inverness.’


In a letter to Hammond, Paul Tetlaw of


sustainable transport group Transform Scotland expressed ‘grave concern’ at the option. ‘Making people change trains in Edinburgh will clearly lead to loss of patronage, as travellers opt for other modes. Our figures suggest that this is typically a 25 per cent loss,’ he said. Robert Samson, Passenger Focus Scotland


manager, said: ‘Passengers in Scotland will be concerned. Whether the IEP goes ahead or not, a way needs to be found to run trains from Inverness and Aberdeen through to London.’


Electronic ear listens out for worn wheel bearings


Sixteen microphones mounted in a box beside the track at Swaythling in Southampton listen to each axle of every train that passes on the main line from Waterloo to Weymouth: some 300 trains a day.


It is the first use in Europe of


the Australian-designed system that aims to identify worn bearings weeks before they become a serious problem, improving reliability.


‘It records the noise that each


bearing makes as it passes the microphones,’ explains Siemens’ fleet director, Steve Walker. ‘That information is stored. It is correlated with the previous noise that specific axle made each time it passed the listening station. So over a period of three months, it creates the signature tune of the bearing. It can detect a degradation rate of the bearing over time.’ The trackside system uploads the information to a computer server in Australia. Technicians at


the Siemens maintenance depot at Northam in Southampton then receive a warning when the computer judges that a bearing needs replacing. The bearings normally last between 850,000 and a million miles. The system can detect damage to the bearing surface so small that it is measured in microns, and invisible to the naked eye. ‘The Rail BAM systems allows us to plan bearing replacement, rather than simply making a best guess based on train mileage,’ Walker explains.


‘On the third rail electric routes,


sometimes they get damaged by arcing, for example. If there is debris on the track or heavy icing, sometimes the power can arc from the rail to the bearing. It reduces its operating life.’ The system allows problems


to be corrected as part of routine maintenance, and reduces disruptive unplanned removal from service.


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SEPTEMBER 2010 PAGE 9


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