TRACK EQUIPMENT & MAINTENANCE
Sitting back and hoping for warm winters is not an option: something has to be done to make the railways more resilient to ice and snow. RTM speaks to Network Rail’s Mark Ellerby about the steps it has been taking in south east England.
badly affected by extreme winter weather in recent years, as ice and snow on the conductor rail can interfere so badly with traction.
T
A trial of conductor rail heating strip technology was done last winter, on 29km of track across Kent and Sussex, using a constant wattage strip supplied by German company Eltherm and switches from Hove’s LC Switchgear. Network Rail is now confident this type of technology is the best way forward and this winter has extended conductor rail heating across 106km of track across the south east.
Commercial scheme sponsor Mark Ellerby of Network Rail spoke to RTM about the work, which is part of a wider package of resilience measures.
He said: “It’s been a two-year programme, spread over two phases. Phase 1 was spread across Kent and Sussex, and was effectively a widescale trial of third rail heating, to see that it would actually work. That was last winter, when in total, we installed 29km, across Kent and Sussex. That’s all installed and up-and-running.
“The switch operation is literally manual, people go out and switch on each of the installations. We’ve now proven the technology can work; it’s been quite successful, and we’ve been able to iron out some of the creases as well.”
Roll-out
This year, the technology has been installed on a much larger portion of the network, and using more sophisticated systems.
Across the South East, the winter has seen the installation of third rail heating across 46km of track in Kent, 27km in Sussex, and 4km on the Wessex route, meaning that on top of last winter’s 29km, there is now a total of 106km of heated rail.
The locations chosen have been those that tend to be affected the worst by icy
he electrified third rail network south of the Thames has been particularly
weather, both because of their importance in the local network, and because of the geographic conditions that can make achieving traction more difficult. Kent has got the bulk of the conductor rail heating purely because of weather patterns and the history of train failures caused by ice in the county, whose geography makes it particularly susceptible.
BETTER PREPARED
In early December, transport secretary Justine Greening announced £16m in extra funding for the third rail heating programme.
She said: “Severe cold weather will always cause some disruption but the Government has worked with our industry partners to minimise the impact on passengers and businesses in future. Both airports and the railway are much better prepared than in the past and our current salt stock in Britain is over 2.7m tonnes. Today I am announcing £16m of investment in our rail infrastructure to help keep trains moving in snow and ice.
“But I’m also asking the industry to raise its game and communicate better with passengers in severe weather. However much resilience train operators have built in, when problems do occur it’s a lack of information that makes delays so frustrating and makes it more difficult for passengers to plan their journeys.”
Getting to 30mph
Ellerby explained: “The principle is to allow a train to accelerate under its own traction up to 30mph. It’s to give it that chance to get away from the station, or a signal location where we might stop a train in normal service, or indeed in perturbated service, and key junctions, sidings and stations.
“It’s enough heating strip below an eight- car train and in front of it to allow it to get up to 30mph, as at that speed its shoe is naturally able to act as its own ice scraper and take traction.
“We’re now looking at additional sites, to see if we can bolt anything else onto the programme – which is an extra challenge. But the biggest challenge, quite frankly, was getting to the point where we had technology we could use.
“The most interesting part of the technology we have installed this year is the remote switching technology. In phase 1, it was literally on-off, nothing fancy. For phase 2, we’ve introduced some different switching technology.
“It works firstly on ambient temperature, so the panel itself senses the outside temperature. When it drops, it switches on
rail technology magazine Dec/Jan 12 | 33
©Wayne Berry
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