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ROLLING STOCK


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“They have it at the higher levels – such as the person who signs the plane off to let it out the door – but they can bring someone in who’s done an apprenticeship in car mechanics and he’s allowed to fit things to a plane. In the rail industry, that’s not allowed.”


Third-party work


In both industries, engineers do a lot of outside work, not just in-house. Monarch’s team does work for other airlines, for example, while Draper made the point that Northern does third-party work for East Coast, Grand Central and other operators, as well as the Network Rail New Measurement Train.


“A lot of TOCs are the same in that regard,” Draper said.


But one difference between rolling stock and aircraft maintenance is the infrastructure. As Draper put it: “Even if a TOC gets its reliability right, it can still perform badly if there’s a Network Rail asset failure.


“The infrastructure can be so vulnerable to trespass and vandalism, for example.


“That’s the interesting point about ERTMS and in-cab signalling: there’s been a struggle with the infrastructure, so let’s get it on board the train.”


“Maybe historically our standards have been quite a bit higher, with the regulatory requirements, but rail is there now. You can see we’ve got the same frustrations as engineers. Sometimes as an engineer you’re piggy in the middle, stuck between the operator and the OEM, and you have to bridge the gap.


“But there are definite commonalities: reliability; components; key metrics; on-time departures; customer satisfaction.”


Working culture


Explaining the overall aim of the visits, Draper told us: “We try to gather the best practice and put it into our 20-point plan. That sets out, if you’re going to do engineering or maintenance on the railway system, here’s some best practice – try it out, and here are some places you can go and see it and some case studies. We also encourage people, outside of this, to go and visit people and network.


“We’ve been to a number of places where


Bridging the gap Speaking to RTM,


Williams said: “The


industries are very closely related. There’s a lot that hopefully we can pass on, and the other way round: there’s things I hope to learn from the guys on this visit.


there have been significant things happen. We’ve been to Chester to see the Class 175 performance, where it was, where it’s got to; we’ve been to Central Rivers with Bombardier.


“Originally when they had the CrossCountry sets, reliability was poor, so we heard more about how they worked through getting their performance to where it needed to get to.”


Connor said: “On the Chester visit, as an example, we saw wheelset covers, which mean that rather than building a big hangar for wheelsets, you can put on these small bespoke covers. For a TOC that can be an immense saving.”


Draper added: “We’ve moved away from looking at the pure technical issues, and have been looking too at, for example, people issues. At Bombardier, for example, an important aspect was changing the culture from what it was, to what it is now – can-do, will-do, want-to-do. It’s a lot about getting the right environment for people to work in.


“That can bring better benefits to reliability than just changing some parts or bringing in better kit.”


FOR MORE INFORMATION


www.atoc.org www.bmtrcl.com


rail technology magazine Aug/Sep 13 | 37


All images © Monarch Aircraft Engineering


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