WORKSHOPS, DEPOTS AND MANUFACTURING XXXX
will be extended by Network Rail under their eight-car works for Southern, by March 2014.
Train storage, maintenance and signalling
Sidings and depot facilities have also had to be altered to cater for the longer trains.
A major part of the project is Silwood Triangle, where 10 trains will be stabled. It was chosen because London Overground already owned the land, and because it is close to the New Cross Gate depot. The site, in north Lewisham, needed full planning consent – but Edwards told us that achieving this was better than plumping for a sub-optimal site just to get around the difficulties associated with the planning process.
Work at the site began in April 2013, and should be finished by April 2014. It includes revisions to track alignment, new track and walkways, infrastructure for the signalling, and new staff welfare buildings, fencing, car parks and access roads.
modifications to other equipment within the depot so the longer trains can be maintained and to allow the trains to be converted from four to five carriages on site. These works will be complete by October 2014.
The headshunt at New Cross Gate station is also being extended.
Separately, the Willesden Junction train
maintenance depot is being extended towards the station, and London Overground is also deciding on a new stabling/cleaning facility to accommodate 12 five-car trains in north London.
These works require extensive signalling
changes at the depots and stabling facilities, and linewide alterations including the moving of starting signals and stop markers, the relocation of axle counters,
and
modifications to the Train Protection Warning System (TPWS) and Automatic Warning System (AWS). The signal changes will have a “slight impact” on train timetabling, meaning there will be consequent changes to the Train Describer (TD),
Customer
Information Screens (CIS) and Automatic Route Facility (ARF).
New carriages
The first longer train enters service on the East London Line in late 2014. In total, 29 trains are being extended on the ELL, one a week for just over half a year.
Edwards said making use of the Silwood site was a “good win” for London Overground, adding: “There was a discussion about utilising Network Rail sidings down towards the Norwood Junction or West Croydon, but we’ve gone for sidings near our central core – it’s a turnout off our infrastructure that London Overground owns and maintains. It’s a piece of scruffy scrub land which was light industry and scrapyards,
very
much brownfield, which we’ve redeveloped in a big way.”
Cleshar is the contractor for the majority of the works in the Silwood Triangle.
There are also ongoing depot reconfiguration and station works at New Cross Gate, being delivered by Spencer: extension of the train maintenance shed northwards; extension of the wheel lathe/heavy cleaning shed northwards; changes to the interior layout of the sheds to accommodate the longer trains; alterations to the bays used to store and maintain the trains to stable 13 five-carriage trains instead of 21 four-carriage trains; and
Edwards said: “The insertion of the fifth car will happen at New Cross Gate, unlike when we went from three-car to four-car a few years ago, when it was done at Derby. To reduce outage time, we’re going to take the unit out of operational service for a week, insert the fifth car, fully commission, fully test, and send it back out into operation.”
Of course, all the fixed infrastructure works have to be ready for that first extended train.
London Overground will also need new drivers, because although it’s an extension rather than expansion, Edwards said changing stabling arrangements means changing driver rosters and a need for more drivers.
The main marketing campaign promoting the five-car extension to passengers will begin in summer 2014.
Commenting on the tight timescales of this project, Edwards told us: “When compared to a traditional DfT or Network Rail programme of work, the pace of delivery here is significantly faster. We’ll bring in the first fifth car at the end of 2014, when we didn’t gain board approval to do the work until February
The traction maintenance depot at Willesden Junction
2013. I often say it’s a three-year programme of work delivered in 18 months.”
That means taking risk-based decisions along the way, such as buying the switches and crossings seven months before detailed design was actually completed. “They become a fixed point,” Edwards said, “so we said ‘right, we’ve ordered the S&C, everything has to fit around them’. That’s how London Overground has developed, making risk-based management decisions and design decisions along the journey based on the information known at the time. We’ve been successful in doing that.”
The future
Edwards acknowledged that over a 20 or 30-year timeframe, the five-car extension alone will not be nearly enough to offer the capacity required, although Crossrail will help from 2018.
But the Class 378s can’t be configured to run in six-car formation, so Edwards said the next opportunity for serious capacity improvement after this extension would be at fleet renewal time in the mid-2020s.
Until then, LOROL could run additional train services – going from 16tph on the East London Line core to 18tph, for example. Going beyond that would require ATO (automatic train operation), Edwards suggested, copying the example of the Thameslink core, Crossrail, and London Underground.
He told RTM: “If we stretched and sweated the fleet, we believe we could be running an 18tph service between Shoreditch and New Cross Gate. But the reality is, that’s not where demand is – the demand is south. The demand is for bringing passengers up from the Crystal Palace, West Croydon areas into the central core. So therefore [we are in a] tricky position; that’s where the demand is, that’s where the business case is – unfortunately that’s not where the paths are…so the next discussion to be had with the industry is ‘can we sweat two additional paths south of New Cross Gate’.”
Huw Edwards
www.tfl.gov.uk/londonoverground FOR MORE INFORMATION
rail technology magazine Dec/Jan 14 | 77
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