In The Dangerous Sound of Silence we looked at the reasons why Crossrail’s delay was not spotted earlier. Possibly more importantly, we looked at why that delay was not fully communicated to those who needed to know about it once it became probable that the project would be significantly late and over-budget. What really matters now is to get Crossrail safely up and running as soon as realistically possible.
Enter Mark Wild
To that end, in November 2018, Mark Wild was appointed CEO of Crossrail. He gave a full and frank account of the task before him in public session to the Programmes and Investment Committee on 11th December 2018. He had also previously written to the chair of the GLA Transport Committee in a letter that has now been published prior to their meeting on 9th January 2019. Based on the information in both his briefing and his letter, we look at how the project is being put back on track.
Until recently Mark Wild was the Managing Director of London Underground. It is generally believed that the previous incumbent of this job was encouraged to move on by Mike Brown, the Commissioner, in order to make the post available to Mark Wild who has a wide range of experience in commissioning and running railways. If true, with extremely challenging projects such as Sub-Surface Resignalling on the criticial-to-deliver list, his hard-nosed prioritisation will probably turn out to be one of the best things Mike Brown has done during his role as Commissioner.
New broom needed
It must have been clear to all by Autumn 2018 that Crossrail really needed someone at the top who was fully dedicated to getting the new railway up and running (as opposed to constructed). Sir Terry Morgan would be a hard act to follow and he did formerly have a lot of experience as the man in charge of Tube Lines, which was a Public Private Partnership (PPP) that for a while looked after the infrastructure of the Jubilee, Northern and Piccadilly lines prior to becoming chairman of Crossrail. But, in that role, he didn’t have direct railway operating experience. In retrospect, it may be that Terry Morgan as Chairman and Andrew Wolstenholme as CEO was a successful double-act that was compromised by Wolstenholme’s departure.
With people losing confidence in Terry Morgan, rightly or wrongly, it was felt a new person was needed at the top. This was not least because it was perceived that it needed someone capable of radical and fresh thinking to look at what was happening. It could be argued that Mark Wild didn’t fully qualify as he was already on the Crossrail Board, although Wild says that he wasn’t involved with management decisions and didn’t know fully what was going on.
As with the Enron collapse in America in 2001, one wonders why the non-executive directors thought they were on the board if it wasn’t, at least in part, to know what was actually going on and prevent happening precisely what did happen. In the case of Crossrail, it seems to be generally believed, not least by the people appointed, that they were there to provide expertise and assistance to the project rather than scrutinise what others had done. In other words, they were there to feed information and advise to the executive board rather than to sanity check what the executive board told them.
Mark Wild formally took over as Chief Executive at Crossrail on 19th November 2018. If his previous association with the project is at least accepted, it is hard to think of a better, more-suited, more-qualified person to take over. Running London Underground isn’t easy but there are people around who can face the challenge and one can argue that the difficult decisions as to how to make London Underground ‘fit for the future’ have already been made. As part of the strategy to get Mark Wild into the Crossrail role, Nigel Holness, former Director of Network Operations, took over the role of MD of London Underground. In doing so he has delayed departure to a new job in Australia.
A new open (transparent) Crossrail?
Not surprisingly, in light of the allegations levelled against Sir Terry Morgan and the previous regime, Mark vowed that under his management he intends that Crossrail will be entirely open and transparent, subject to restrictions due to commercial sensitivity. He promised always to attend the Programmes and Investment Committee meetings to give an update (although that latter was swiftly amended to ‘or send my deputy’).
As Mark had only been in his role for around a month when he reported to the Programmes and Investment Committee on 11th December, he was still trying to assess what was needed and felt unable to commit to much. It was clear that he had already encountered various frustrations, one of which was the lack of an internal communications team – part of the winding down process. This meant he couldn’t even easily fully communicate with the organisation he was in charge of. He also commented on the near non-existence of the external communication team as a result of the same process, which would also need to be revived. We presume this means that at some stage the Crossrail website will come to life again.
A new management team
Something that was becoming abundantly clear was that Crossrail had been winding down its management team too early. Of course, this was done in the expectation that the job would be largely over by December 2018. In fact it was becoming obvious from Wild’s initial thoughts, that if ever there was a time that Crossrail needed a strong management team it was now.
Wild went on to praise the workers on the project. Some had worked for much of their working lives on the project and wanted to finish the job. He tried to allay Committee members’ concerns about morale and assured them that the workers continued to be positive about the project.
As the former MD of London Underground, Wild said he wouldn’t poach staff from existing LUL projects because he knew how disruptive and unfair that was. This too was slightly modified in the course of his verbal report, in this case to ‘without specific agreement to do so’. That clearly restricted the pool from which he could recruit but he assured members he had people lined up and was due to announce his senior team in the next few days – Friday 14th December to be precise.
It appears that no announcement of the new management team was made, certainly we cannot find one. However, the Crossrail website has clearly had some new life injected into it as a new Leadership Team page has appeared with links to details of individual members.
Where are we now?
Readers will not be surprised to learn that the signalling was giving problems. There was concern about ensuring trains successfully transitioned between one signalling system and another. Meanwhile, if we understand the situation correctly, there are significant problems just getting the signalling equipment on the trains to talk successfully to both the trackside-based communications equipment and the trains’ computer systems.
Transitioning
In his letter to Caroline Pidgeon, Chair of the London Assembly Transport Committee, Wild states:
The tests included: rolling stock transitioning between the different signalling systems at Westbourne Park (successfully going Eastbound into the central tunnels)
This is the sort of comment that must not be taken at face value. The clear implication is that the test was unsuccessful going westbound. It is a shame the letter isn’t truly more open and explains what happened when the train went westbound. Presumably the train must have returned westbound to get back to the depot. Did the testing reveal problems or has this simply not yet been tested?
Transitioning eastbound is easier than transitioning westbound at Westbourne Park. The more difficult part of transitioning is to successfully communicate with the signalling system the trains is transitioning to. It is somewhat easier to terminate communication with the signalling system the train is leaving.
To aggravate the problem transitioning westbound at Westbourne Park, the signalling system being transitioned to is TPWS+. This is a system based on the standard TPWS (Train Protection and Warning System) used on most of Network Rail, but it includes additional safety protection to bring it on par with ETCS when it comes to safety. One feature of TPWS (and TPWS+) is the intermittent (rather than continuous) nature of the system. This relies on fixed signals protecting discrete sections of track rather than utilising a ‘moving block’ to provide protection between trains. Stepping up from ‘fixed block’ to moving block should be relatively easy to achieve. Think of it, metaphorically, as lava dropping from the top of a lava lamp. The ‘moving block’ starts in a fixed position before moving with the train (protecting it in the rear). Doing it the other way around is probably very hard.
In the central section the signalling system is a bespoke version of Siemens’ Trainguard system, which has been updated with Crossrail in mind. So it should have been upgraded with facilities for transitioning to and from TPWS+ as part of the update. In the other direction (westbound) you are moving into TPWS+ which is an industry standard that one has to adhere to. You can’t simply ‘tweak’ TPWS+ so it works with Trainguard. Even if you could, that would require a derogation that needs ORR (Office of Road and Rail) approval. Such approval is not given lightly.
Part of the reason that there is the problem described above is that this was never the plan. The signalling system west of Paddington all the way to Heathrow was supposed to be ETCS (European Train Control System). It changed to TPWS+ because of the problems of introducing ETCS on the GWR in the necessary time frame. Somewhat ominously but understandably, it took ORR two years to approve the change because they needed to be satisfied that TPWS+ was as safe as ETCS on the lines affected.
More ominous still, the time allocated to the system integration phase of Crossrail was decided long before TPWS+ was substituted for ETCS and, to the best of our knowledge, the time allocated was not revised upward to take into account the known (or at least suspected) extra complexity. This does seem a puzzling oversight and one wonders, with the benefit of hindsight, whether it would have been better to stick to the original plan and use ETCS throughout on the Paddington – Heathrow section and accept any delays this may produce, rather than exert so much effort getting TPWS+ installed and working with Trainguard.
To make matters even worse, the change of plan now means you also have another transitioning area that originally was not going to exist. This will need to occur north-east of the Heathrow tunnels on the Airport Branch. In hindsight it is clear how much Crossrail were relying on Network Rail being able to introduce ETCS on the Great Western Main Line (GWML) in good time prior to Crossrail opening – as was the plan. It also shows how apparently unrelated issues such as problems on Network Rail’s GWML modernisation project (some of which were in Wales) have affected Crossrail. As has often been pointed out – Crossrail is good for the rest of the country. Unfortunately sometimes the rest of the country can be bad for Crossrail.
The Train Control Management System
A surprise in Mark’s letter is the reason he gives for the Crossrail Class 345 trains not having yet reached Heathrow in service. He states:
The delay in operating the new trains to Heathrow is because of issues in developing the Train Control Management System (TCMS) compatible with the European Train Control System (ETCS) that operates in the tunnels to the airport.
This again raises far more questions than it answers. For starters, to the uninitiated, it is far from obvious what TCMS is. Note that ETCS is the European Train Control System. So you might think that TCMS is to do with the signalling system. Earlier in Mark Wild’s letter there is a reference to the on board Train Control Management Systems (TCMS). One would certainly be forgiven for thinking this is the on-board element of the ETCS signalling system.
In fact TCMS, as far as Bombardier is concerned, covers just about every aspect of on-board train control from heating & ventilation to passenger display screens and door opening. Whereas some aspects of it, such as giving passengers the ability to send and receive emails, are not safety critical, other parts of it are. So it has to work – at least for the safety-critical bits of it.
A brochure from Bombardier describes their offering of TCMS and shows how it will become the bedrock of future builds of trains supplied by them. It is clearly a system that once it is up and running should provide great benefits but, development has been fraught with difficulty – as anyone who has followed the saga of the Class 710 on the Gospel Oak – Barking line will be well aware.
It is therefore far from obvious why the TCMS is delaying introduction of the Class 345 trains in the Heathrow tunnel, whereas the trains can run between Paddington and Hayes & Harlington and are also reported to work with ETCS on the test track. The reason seems to be down to the fact that the TCMS is responsible for filtering out unwanted frequencies as part of the on-board signalling function. It needs to do this in the Heathrow tunnels to avoid unwanted signals from the GW-ATP signalling system installed in there. Older readers brought up on superheterodyne radios need to be aware that this filtering functionality is now generally done with software, so the issue has become a software problem rather than a hardware problem.
No timelines
Currently it would be impossible to say how long it would take before Crossrail would be in a position where trains could successfully operate on routes with multiple signalling systems. Let’s not forget that they need this just to get the trains from the depot at Old Oak Common to Paddington. This was not helped by there not being a reliable signalling system on the trains (something that is not Crossrail’s direct responsibility as the Bombardier trains were procured by TfL and not Crossrail), which made it difficult to carry out meaningful testing at an early stage of the testing programme. Indeed, after the fourteenth attempt in Autumn 2018 they had only just succeeded in getting the software on the trains working sufficiently well to conduct proper tests. This goes a long way to back up Terry Morgan’s claim that a lot of the problems were down to not having a single working train with which to test the signalling, despite some oddly aggressive briefing from the Mayor and others to the contrary.
The problem with software on the trains has highlighted various points not described in detail by Mark Wild:
- Even stage 1 of Crossrail implementation Shenfield – Liverpool Street (which included a service consisting of only Class 345 at weekends) hasn’t been fully implemented. In fairness, probably all that is stopping this happening is the need to loan 7-car trains to run the Paddington – Hayes & Harlington shuttle service.
- Given that stage 2 (Paddington High Level to Heathrow) has only been implemented by using existing class 360 trains and not the new 9-car class 345 trains, and with no class 345s yet able to use the Heathrow tunnels because of issues with legacy signalling still present there, Crossrail has yet to truly achieve any of its staged openings.
- If it is only now that software is working in basic mode, then in reality the testing programme is about a year late. This should have been happening soon after the transformer at Pudding Mill Lane was due to go live.
- Arguably most damaging to timescales is just how interaction between various parts of the project does not seem to have been taken fully into account and timescales have not been updated to allow for changed circumstances. If the trains can’t reliably be used for testing then other more complex signalling functions and the power cannot be fully tested – let alone the interaction between trains and stations, such as stopping precision and platform edge doors.
Those responsible for the train delays may see it as something that can be caught up on later, but the reality is that it impinges on other testing factors so the full significance of the delays are not necessarily taken into account. It should not be underplayed just how much the trains matter.
Stations
Wild also confirmed that various stations were problematic. Surprisingly, Woolwich is progressing well and, by now, should already be handed over to Crossrail. The two real problem stations, less surprisingly, are Bond St and Paddington. One of the things he is keen to do is liaise with MTR Crossrail, the future operators, and establish just which bits of the stations need to be complete to enable them to be opened.
Wild didn’t explain in detail what could be done to open a station without completing all the work, but it isn’t hard to guess. For double-ended stations it may be possible, subject to safety approval, to initially open just one entrance. It is also possible that not all the escalators need to be in use on day one. Temporary arrangements could also be agreed with staff for alternative mess-room arrangements until such time as the proper facilities are ready.
Whilst admitting that there were lots of issues still to be sorted out, Wild saw an initial objective was to get the contractors out of the stations. As long as they were still present it became next to impossible to do meaningful testing within the station. Furthermore, other issues such as having working fire alarms, could not be relied upon so long as the contractors were present.
It was not explained how the issue of completing the stations would be addressed. Would the original contractor be expected to finish the job later or would the contract be terminated and fresh contracts issued to ‘finish the job’ – presumably during engineering hours?
Finishing the tunnels
It came as a bit of a shock to learn that there was still work to be done in the tunnels. True, this appeared to only be retrieval of redundant kit, but it was a surprise this wasn’t already done. Wild believed this could be left as something non-urgent, but at the same time he emphasised that it is something that really ought to be sorted out eventually. There seems no doubt that Elizabeth line will open before it is fully ‘finished’ with work still to be done in many areas.
Intriguingly, (and not mentioned by Wild himself) LR sources have suggested that a lot of the problems with the trains not talking to the track-based equipment are down to problems with the ‘leaky feeder’ cable. Apparently, it is not leaky enough. This would explain redundant kit being present in a new tunnel if the already-installed leaky feeders were supplemented with a replacement and the original cable left in place. It would also help explain Siemens placing adverts in late November 2018 for GSM-R testers – long after that fitting of cables was due to be complete and operational.
The outer stations
Something we are determined not to lose sight of at LR is the fate of the existing outer stations on Crossrail which have been problematic. This appears to be partly due to budgetary constraints and partly because the work is overseen by Network Rail, so Crossrail has little to do with it. Indeed this could be seen as an area where more direct involvement by a TfL insider would achieve better results than formerly where Crossrail and Network Rail both reported to TfL but didn’t really seem to communicate directly with each other on this issue.
For once, it would seem to be better just to repeat what was written by Wild in his letter.
Network Rail’s programme of works for the western stations will see enabling works continuing at four stations (Ealing Broadway, West Ealing, Southall and Acton Main Line), over the Christmas period. These are expected to complete by early February, allowing the main works contractors to mobilise to site in January. Ilford and Romford station improvements, also being carried out by Network Rail, are fully funded. At Ilford, enabling works are also due to be undertaken this Christmas to provide a vital increase in capacity and step-free access, with completion likely to be in early/mid-2020. These improvements are not critical to the opening of the Elizabeth line and Ilford station will continue to operate as this work is undertaken.
Maybe next year, maybe not
On the all important subject of when the Elizabeth line will open, Wild would not be drawn at his briefing given on the 11th December. He explained that he didn’t want to give a date he couldn’t commit to and he couldn’t at this stage even give a spread of dates that was known to be achievable. This was partly down to the unknown factor of signalling, but also down to the fact that a lot more investigative work needs to take place before he feels in a position to assess the possibilities. He expressed grave doubt that it would open in 2019 but didn’t exclude the possibility.
System Testing
The problem, it appears, is the complexity of systems testing. In the words of Mark Wild himself, the new Crossrail stations are the most technically advanced stations on the planet. People talk about the digital city as something in the future but, when it comes to Crossrail stations, it is the here and now.
This is not a new revelation. In Crossrail lectures, most notably (but not only) by Terry Morgan, this aspect has been emphasised with the presenter seeking to justify how long this phase was. With the benefit of hindsight, perhaps two years rather than one year should have been allowed. There is the obvious danger of allocating time required for integration testing based on experience of similar recent projects but, by the time the latest project comes to fruition, things have got even more complex.
What is notable here is that in 2013 Terry Morgan gave a prestigious lecture to a packed Institute of Engineering and Technology (IET). He highlighted the need for systems testing and explained the complexity of it all. There were many questions from a highly qualified audience but no-one in the audience sought to ask a question on whether the year allowed for all the system testing was really enough.
To summarise, Wild said that system testing is “costly in terms of time but not in terms of money”. Obviously delays also have a financial cost because they mean that the opening – and the revenue it brings – is delayed, but the message here seems to be that it doesn’t make any kind of sense to try and short-circuit the testing phase – even when short of money.
Looking forward
The program for the future seems to be
14th January 2019: Full dynamic testing of trains would begin. Testing would continue 5 days a week. It cannot be more than that because there is maintenance to do and staff cannot work extra hours over prolonged periods. This is expected to continue for six to twelve months.
End of January 2019: Mark Wild would be in a position to outline priorities and assess the likelihood of various opening dates.
Early February 2019: Certain members of the TfL board and scrutiny committees will get a private briefing on the current situation to be followed by a detailed scrutiny by board members.
Sometime in January – March 2019: Farringdon station gets handed over.
Late 2019: The stations with a larger amount of outstanding work are handed over.
From the above it seems like Sunday 15 December 2019 is the earliest possible realistic date for Crossrail to open in central London with a date in 2020 looking more likely.
Issues not mentioned
No light was shed on a couple of consequential issues as they were not mentioned.
In the Summer of 2019 Network Rail is scheduled to reconfigure platforms 16-18 at Liverpool Street. This is to provide two further 240m platforms to replace the three short platforms and (together with platform 15) will provide for three full-length platforms for future suburban services.
This platform work at Liverpool St has been planned for years and a lot of follow-on work, such as the reconfiguring of Bow Junction, is dependent on this. Nothing was said about how this would be accommodated or whether the reconfiguration would be delayed. Our latest information is these works may have to continue as scheduled, otherwise other Network Rail plans are dislocated, so there may be new operating pressures.
Even if TfL had the final say, they would still have a difficult decision to make. TfL must be keen to introduce longer class 345 Crossrail trains on TfL Rail, so as to handle passenger numbers better, but they cannot really afford to have Liverpool Street out of action as a terminus. We understand that temporary use of Liverpool Street low level (i.e. Crossrail) is being considered for the duration of the works, with empty trains running on west in order to reverse. The expectation is that this will require trains to be turned at Fisher Street (Holborn) crossover.
Reversing at Fisher Street should be possible, even during the peak period, if the tunnel is handed over solely to run the TfL Rail service to Liverpool Street. This would mean that other testing involving train movements could not take place and, presumably, risk delaying the project even further. Alternatively it might be possible to send the out-of-service trains all the way to Westbourne Park to reverse.
The other issue is what to do about services to Reading in December 2019. TfL’s revised business plan states quite categorically that TfL want to run trains from Paddington to Reading in order to capture the revenue. The problem here is lack of platform availability at Paddington (high level) in peak hours – and off-peak is not much easier. The low level (Crossrail) platforms might be available by then but, presumably, this would entail being able to use the tracks between Westbourne Park and Paddington as two bi-directional lines.
LR understands that talks are underway with the DfT at a high level as to how to provide a Crossrail service from Paddington to Reading in December 2019. Assuming this happens, we can then envisage that there maybe further pressure to run these trains as through Elizabeth line trains as soon as possible to free up platforms at Paddington.
Late but in a better place
2019 is looking like it will be a bumper year for advancement of rail schemes in London – as schemes that should have been completed in 2018 are finally opened. Unfortunately it looks like we cannot say with any confidence whether Crossrail will be on that list. What we can say is that at least the right person for this phase of the job appears to have been appointed. A sense of realism has been introduced and there does seem to be the making of a plan to ensure that Crossrail is opened as soon as practically possible.
Thanks to Jonathan Roberts for supplying his detailed notes taken at the Programmes and Investment Committee meeting and for assistance with this article and to ngh for detailed information on various issues. Thanks also to ngh for considerable technical input clarifying and correcting an original draft.
RE: stations,
Surprised I’m not seeing Whitechapel being discussed – although progressing well, the whole station is still a total mess. Full station concourse hidden in scaffolding.
The idea that they have the software to talk to a complicated signalling system like ETCS, and yet can’t do basic SDR tasks like filtering out stray
ATCATP signals, seems a little suspect to me, though not completely impossible (I suppose the ETCS software they’re currently using could be an off-the-shelf stopgap, intending to be replaced with the not-yet-finished software that does the SDR). In any case, a good article, though it still feels frustratingly like we don’t really know fully what’s going on. I get the impression Wild really has his work cut out for him to figure out exactly what needs doing and come up with a feasible plan to do it.Just for my own understanding… is the ETCS part of the system used all the way to the sidings parallel to Westbourne Park?
I note from the data in the working timetable (20th August 2018) that the trains take 2 minutes there, the same back and rest for 11 minutes.
Re AJ,
I think Whitechapel is best defined as one of Rumsfeld’s known knowns and there is confidence and certainty in the plan.
Re Muzer,
Basic SDR – the problem is that they are trying to filter out a more powerful signal at exactly the same frequency as the one they are interested in, not quite so basic…
There are probably bigger more important issues for the software engineers to sort.
The Belgian solution (decision taken in advance in 2006) to the same issue with almost the same kit was to remove the old kit…
Final paragraph ‘2019 is looking like it will be a bumper year for advancement of rail schemes in London – as schemes that should have been completed in 2018 are finally opened’
Does anyone know if the Stratford – Meridian Water extra 2TPH originally due to start Dec 18 will start May 19?
@Muzer, I have to agree. While there will be issues with multipath reflection etc in tunnels, according to Wikipedia TPWS uses frequencies in the 60-70kHz range. GSM-R uses frequencies in the ~900MHz range. They could not be further apart, and should be beyond trivial to filter. I wonder what the real issue is here?
@SKEG
Not May now, currently programmed as September 2019.
Rest of big Anglia changes delayed towards 2020 I hear.
Let us contemplate that a few more unknown unknowns rise to the surface in 2019 and delay the project even further. It would seem that the financial hit will be exceedingly large for the next major setback in the timetable, as all the slack and adjustment factors have already been used.
Given that Mayor Khan is rapidly learning that the great Money Tree planted in the garden of City Hall is actually quite barren at this time of the century, central government would have to provide all the bail out money for a future major delay.
I wonder if that largesse would have to come from the HS2 budget?
I certainly hope that the potential further financial difficulties with Crossrail will prove to be the death knell of HS2.[Let’s not go off-topic with valueless opinion. PoP]
“Older readers brought up on superheterodyne radios need to be aware that this filtering functionality is now generally done with software, so the issue has become a software problem rather than a hardware problem.”
This is true only insofar as the hardware retains the dynamic range to recover the signal. If there’s an amplification step along the way that saturates an output, very little to nothing will be recovered with software. Short of applying enough power to burn it out, a simple RC filter and other passive analogue electronics are pretty much immune to saturation.
@MrMartin We’re talking about ATP (sorry, there was an ATC typo in my last comment) versus ETCS (the frequencies used by the balises) though, not GSM-R or TPWS here. However:
@ngh: I was under the impression that they were operated on different frequencies (at least that’s what I remember reading in the past), though I’m happy to be proven wrong on this point. Certainly filtering out completely incompatible signals on the same frequencies would be much more problematic.
My understanding (from a friend involved in planning for the Liverpool Street High Level platform lengthening), is that the new lengths of 16 and 17 (and indeed all the Crossrail East sponsored station lengthening) will be to accommodate a 9 car 345 i.e. around 200m not 240m . Which will mean that 16 and 17 won’t be useable for full length GA trains only a 5 car 120m class 720. Romford which currently has off peak GA trains stopping also won’t be able to accommodate 240m trains without such trains resorting to SDO, which they will be fitted with for the many short GA platforms on their network .
The problem, it appears, is the complexity of systems testing.
Well, there’s one system which we know is due to go & is/has been a thorough nuisance throughout – GW-ATP. I would suggest ripping it out yesterday & to hell with the short-term consequences, simply in order to get the bigger, much more important system(s) up & running.
See also NGH @ 18.38 – “the Belgian solution”
Re Muzer and MrMartin,
GW-ATP and the ETCS eurobalises both use 27.1MHz
Agree with the comments re Whitechapel station. Judging by the level of progress (or lack of) with fitting out the D/H&C platforms, it seems that they are still a long way off getting it finished. One has to wonder how many people are actually working on the station every night to get it finished.
For example the wiring up of the platform lights seems to be progressing (judged by the number of sets of dangling wires being connected into a light fitting per night) as if just a single electrician is actually doing the work. (Note here that there is no other obvious work happening in the general vicinity of the remaining light fittings that would prevent further teams working on the lights as well)
Similar examples can be found with things like the tiling of thr stairwells down to the ELL platforms, fixing of the drop downs and attachment plates dor thr false ceiling etc etc.
I wonder if like is hinted at in the article – there may be an issue with retaining staff? Presumably sub contractors have had other work post Crossrail already booked up for years in advance, and I wonder if there is an issue with many of the sub contractors moving on to other jobs after the now passed planned finish date, leaving thr main contractors hunting around to find staff qualified to work track side on the remaining work?
Whilst its very dificult to see exactly what has been going on behind the hoardings – and these things have a habit of suddenly vanishing overnight and a sort of soft opening occures – it does look as if even getting the D/H&C & ELL platforms back accessable by the main station entrance is an event destined for some considerable time in the future.
I do however hope that considerable progress has been made during the blockade of the station last weekend – although as the ELL lines through Whitechapel station remained open (with platforms closed and trains non stopping) I can’t see that much will have been achieved on finishing up the work on these platforms (the new lighting, platform ceilings and walls, new signage etc)
One point of progress that does however seemed to have happened a couple of weeks ago is that some of the existing cctv cameras have had the old wiring removed from them and the wiring looms that have been dangling from the ceilings on the D/H&C platforms next to them for some time, connected into the camera housing – so one can only assume that the new system is being commissioned – I guess we can be grateful for small bits of progress!
As always, a really good piece. One point worth noting though is that as any new leadership team tends to do, they will present things as pessimistic as possible in order to under-promise and over-deliver. So while end 2019 opening is challenging, I suspect it is still the most likely outcome – Crossrail was always at risk for being seen as a project rather than as a railway. Dynamic testing once train/signalling interface issues are resolved should be quicker than assumed in the article – the key is getting beyond the basic software acceptance – effectively its the bathtub effect that once you get it to work reliably on one train/one station, wider acceptance can be quite quick.
I was also under the impression that the GW-ATP balise radio signal at the stated common 27.1MHz carrier frequency is many times stronger than that used by ETCS balises and leaky feeder track loops, hence one system can overwhelm the other if they’re both active at the same time, especially in the Heathrow tubular cross section tunnels where the waveguide effect comes into play. There’s no easy way to power down then restore to use the GW-ATP system on a wide scale quickly and easily for overnight testing under ETCS alone, which is the final configuration in the tunnels for both the Crossrail trains and the new stock for Heathrow Express. Large numbers of individual equipment cabinet fuses throughout the tunnels would have to be removed, and all restored correctly before restart of normal operation the following day.
I am struggling as to why transitioning from the Central area signalling system to the TPWS ATP is any harder when going west from Paddington than it is when going east towards Stratford. I have a very simplistic view that transition from Trainguard to conventional 4-aspect signalling will be as simple as “handover if first conventional signal has a proceed aspect”. If this first signal is at Danger, then Trainguard would stop the train short. A refinement might be that restrictions on speed might be provided depending on which of the three proceed aspects the first conventional signal is displaying. TPWS is irrelevant if it works like this. I hope someone will be along who knows how it actually works.
TPWS vs TPWS+ is a red herring. The latter is merely the provision of train stop grids at more signals and some more speed traps. These extras enabled those doing the “quantified safety estimation” to show that the theoretical safety risk of continuous ATP (which is ETCS level 2) and TPWS+ were equivalent and low, as no one wanted any question that safety had been reduced, despite the fact that the risks are so small that most folk wouldn’t see a single safety failure in a couple of lifetimes!
100andthirty,
Clearly, with any transition you could always force the train to come to a halt and then it should be easy to get it working. I have always assumed that the problem is that you don’t want to reduce capacity or increase journey time and energy used so want to do it in such a way that isn’t a throttle. So getting a train from the central section to TPWS+ at optimum speed, I would have thought, was challenging.
Agree that there is no real difference between TPWS and TPWS+. Also on an open section of track (as the GWML is out of Paddington) you really do wonder if it is the most effective way to spend money to improve (or even maintain) safety. As the safety case acknowledged, TPWS+ gives diminishing safety returns the more complex it gets because you have to factor in the danger of signal technicians being at risk on the track when checking for faults.
Left field idea: If the problem with sorting out train control in the tunnels is having two competing systems in there currently then close the tunnels and rip the superseded one out.
Back in 1988 there was a temporary terminus for Heathrow rail services called Heathrow Junction. Rebuild it while doing the ripout-and-test with no worries about ‘engineering hours only’ working. Yes, LHR will complain, but the sooner the tunnels can take through services the better for them.
@PoP/@100&30 – It seems the problem is having to do the transition on the move. If Trainguard simply finished nicely at the Paddington platforms where all trains stop, westbounds could switch over to TPWS while stationary, and would be protected by the legacy equipment at the platform starting signal on dispatch and beyond. As it is, Trainguard will extend to the turnback facility at Westbourne Park, so terminating trains will not switch out of CBTC mode at all, while those going further west through to GWML destinations and Heathrow must do so on the move in the vicinity of the turnback siding junction. Perhaps one way to solve this would have been to build the Elizabeth Line platforms at Old Oak Common, where all trains are expected to stop, and extend Trainguard there on dedicated tracks so changeover can be achieved for all trains while stationary. That’s not the plan however and would be impossible to accomplish in the timescales involved.
@ALISONW – ETCS equipment is already fully installed in the Heathrow tunnels I believe. The problems occur on attempting to use it in anger while the GW-ATP is also active. When the changeover finally occurs, the old ATP will simply be powered down permanently, and removed as convenient.
This may be off the point also I know you guys are not going to believe me but my article ‘Is Crossrail being delivered late’ was trashed (half the page was turned to meaningless characters) just a couple of days after it had been published. This alone out of all the posts I had done. After that I had to ramp up my blog’s security.
That told me someone didn’t like the suggestion Crossrail was late. Up to that point it had all quite positively been on time and on budget – maybe the truth was unbearable?
[Mod’s note. Yes this is off the point. Either it was a co-incidence, or it wasn’t. Either way we’d prefer not to discuss it here. Malcolm]
Interesting article as ever. A few comments / questions.
I’ve seen it said more than once on other forums that the leaky feeder cable in the CR tunnels doesn’t leak at all as it was wrongly installed. While the CR papers that have been released don’t go as far as saying that there is enough (to my eyes) to confirm that something very serious has gone with the installation of this critical system.
At the TfL Budget review meeting today there seemed to be reasonable confidence in reaching agreement with the relevant parties for 345s to run Reading passenger services from December 2019. There were no commitments about service levels to be run but there is clearly a massive financial upside for TfL to get those services running – £180m over 3 years was quoted.
Again at the Budget meeting there were multiple attempts by Tory AMs to “force” TfL to reveal the dates they’ve assumed for Crossrail’s phased opening. They wouldn’t do so even when the conversation get very very pointed between Gareth Bacon (Chair of the mtg) and Mike Brown. Not often Mike Brown gets close to losing his cool but he nearly did this afternoon. Interestingly the phasing priority now seems to be (1) get the core open (2) get Paddington to Reading running and (3) get the full timetabled linked together service operational. Don’t read into this that the core will open before Dec 2019. Based on what I heard this afternoon I agree that 2020 is more probable for the Core’s opening.
While I’m not surprised to see that the Liv St surface platform works may have to go ahead this Summer regardless of other issues I am really surprised to see the idea of the low level platforms being used. While the Pudding Mill Lane transition point is less complex it is still there and I’m not aware it’s been approved for passenger service. Furthermore I can’t see how you run a 5-6 min peak headway into the low level station if the core tunnel signalling testing may take a year to complete. Have I missed something here? I can’t see how TfL / MTR Crossrail could get through all the assurance process and training plus things like a mock evacuation exercise etc in barely 6 months from now.
I am also quite shocked that you have “dissed” the view of the Mayor and the Commissioner as to who is responsible for the CR trains being able to work with the CR signalling system. The point that the project scope and deliverables for Crossrail include a working train fleet and signalling system *throughout* was made more than once when they appeared in front of the Transport Cttee late last year. They accepted TfL placed the order and funded the trains but that’s a procurement exercise isn’t it? What point am I missing here? Even acknowledging that the Mayor and the Commissioner have a position to maintain I can’t see why they would lie about such a point when it is surely a matter of public record what TfL did and when? Ditto re what Crossrail was supposed to do. There are publicly accessible agreements and contracts that set out the responsibilities.
Re 130, Mark T, PoP,
“I am struggling as to why transitioning from the Central area signalling system to the TPWS ATP is any harder when going west from Paddington than it is when going east towards Stratford. ”
The eastbound transition is done stationary in the platform (8) at Stratford in a relatively simple overall track layout beyond (e.g. continuing on down electric line (normal) or swap to down Main (something very wrong)).
The westbound transition is done at up to linespeed (50mph) parallel to the 3 centre turnback signings (Siemens CBTC signalled), with crossrail trains potentially interleaved with all trains leaving the relief lines using TPWS just beyond the transition area (1 signal beyond the end of CBTC just before the points). Unlike the eastern end the CR lines at Westbourne Park are designed to be much more bi-directional (for depot access) and also potentially used as turnback sidings too. One of the centre turnback sidings can also be used as through road (perturbation as well as taking train back to the depot at an opportune moment). Because of the Paddington track layout the CBTC is interlocked for route-setting purposes with what is happening on all lines except line 1 out of Paddington (the southern most – becomes down main) including the Crossrail Old Oak common Depot approaches. With virtually every bit of track beyond the crossover area “seen” by CBTC beyond its control area bidirectionally signalled too…
On ripping out the ATP system from the Heathrow tunnels: I can’t find any mention that the Heathrow Express 332s support anything more than ATP (no TPWS). This might be a non-starter until they’re replaced in Dec 2019.
Re Mark T,
Old Oak Common etc. Medium term (for OOC opening) plan swap to ETCS on inner GWML so CBTC to ETCS transition (easier) as continuous to continuous supervision swap at Westbourne Park with ETCS to beyond Airport Jn (and all of the Heathrow Branch)
@ROSS – Correct, 332s never received TPWS equipment because they only ever run over track that is fitted with GW-ATP, which predates widespread TPWS fitment. They only have AWS and ATP on board.
Re Ross,
332s – Precisely. Bombardier are also refitting some GW 387s to replace them for HEx use.
Hopefully “By” December 2019 rather than “in” December as the HS2 demolition equipment goes in to the HEx depot next Jan 2nd so has to be all done and dusted by December!
This would of course be made easier if Crossrail does actually start running Reading – Paddington this year… especially if some units are running before the December timetable change.
GWR also want to turn over the off-peak semi fasts to Crossrail.
@NGH – Re ETCS at OOC and beyond. That makes sense in the timescales. They’ll still have to get the CBTC-TPWS/AWS interface working before that though. My gut suggests it is one of the lower risk signalling issues. I would have thought a good method to investigate would be to have the TPWS/AWS always active in the cab, but clearly with no such track equipment in the core there would be no driver interaction with it. The last Trainguard signal/block marker on exit from the core section would release the train in a non speed controlled mode towards the first conventional signal, which would be equipped with sufficient TPWS equipment to safely catch a train at any realistic achievable speed the CBTC could launch it at. Because TPWS would always be active It would cut in as appropriate as soon as the first track transponder of that system is encountered. That is similar to how the French limited supervision KVB train protection system used on classic lines coexists with full supervision TVM430 used on high speed lines. The KVB system is always active on the train in the background but there is no such track equipment out on the TVM equipped high speed segments so no KVB interaction required in the cab while running under TVM. KVB is neccessary to negotiate the transitions to and from TVM and trains always start up in KVB mode. Trains have to go through a special sequence of KVB balises at the transition sites to initiate TVM operation and vice versa.
Given the completeness of stations, and the large bill from the Canary Wharf Group – can anyone explain why a Abbey Wood – Custom House – Canary Wharf shuttle wouldn’t be viable? Even only in morning/afternoon peaks etc.
I’m guessing that Crossrail is trying to maximise the testing time available and doesn’t wish to get distracted by running a ‘live’ railway.
One of the problems with leaky feeder systems is that they can have short dead spots where the signal cannot be received. While the signalling system probably copes with short breaks in communication the big problem comes when a train stops in one of the dead spots and does not communicate and then becomes ‘lost’. The signalling then has to take action to protect the area where the train was last detected and any area where it may be able to move to as the train communications may have failed and it may still be moving.
From what I remember the Victoria Line system has 6 aerials on the train 3 front & 3 back and the train decides which one has a good signal and uses this. This provides some protection against dead spots.
Re James S,
Abbey Wood is the testing base…
@Mark Townend that would make a lot of sense to me, but perhaps it isn’t possible with the way the equipment is designed (I know it’s supposed to be very modular, with different interfaces with the trackside equipment “plugging into” a standard control system).
The comment about the early run down of the external and internal comms teams suggests that with the tunnels and structures pretty well finished and fitting out underway there was a sense of ‘job done’. This reminds me of the advice the GEC Alsthom Managing Director Brian McCann gave to the Class 91 locomotive project team who had signed up to deliver a radical piece of kit in exactly two years. “Start fast and finish slowly and with care”.
So many projects in recent years have started to run out of time and had to finished in a ruddy blush, resulting in over runs – Manchester-Bolton electrification for example. Electrification from Bristol Parkway to Cardiff is now schedule for completion in November this year with the new electric High Frequency GWR timetable due the following month. Extra possessions will be needed to meet this deadline.
Not easy to start fast in today’s railway but we need to get back to having ‘shovel ready’ schemes where work can start the moment politicians give approval. In this case ‘shovel’ includes software, signalling technology , asset knowledge, experienced contractors and so on.
If there is an upside to TfL revenue in running to Reading, is there a similar downfall in GWR revenue? If so, presumably the DfT would have to compensate GWR in some way – is GWR’s desire to hand over even the semi-fasts suggest that these cost more to operate than they earn in revenue?
Man of Kent,
A point that intrigued me. I suspect it is more about GWR concentrating on their core product and will regard it as a bit of a nuisance to run these off-peak only services.
Similarly, they probably find running the Greenford shuttle an absolute pain but suspect they realise there is no real prospect of palming it off to anyone else.
Re Man of Kent,
Yes but factored in to the GWR Direct Award.
Off-peaks – probably partly. They would be a pig to operate in terms of rosters and diagrams etc. As the would have been the Didcot (eventually Oxford) to Paddington services but see significant passenger churn along the way.
From the perspective of someone who knows nothing abut signalling – and not much more about railways – but quite a bit about scoping engineering projects around the time-price-scope triangle, I wonder whether Crossrail’s current problems will ultimately be traced further back than the Pudding Mill transformer explosion. Is there any substance to the argument that the project was infatuated with it’s own importance from the outset and selected more capable and technically complex (but untested) systems over lesser but simpler and more established alternatives, ultimately suffering the consequences when they proved hard to deliver? Put another way, could there have been a technologically simpler, if less perfect, Crossrail that would be operational already?
Stewart,
I think not. From the outset Crossrail really needed to be able to run initially at 24tph and it was always the intention it could handle 30tph. To lower that would seriously weaken the business case. Signalling might be expensive and problematic but in terms of ‘bangs per buck’ the benefits of modern signalling are enormous.
The Crossrail team said from the outset that signalling was probably their greatest risk. There was a lot of early discussion onto how to minimise this. If ETCS had been fully developed then and it supported platforms edge doors then the choice would have been simple.
The other problem is that you are talking of trains holding up to 1500 people. When dealing with those numbers and you haven’t got the excuse of running with legacy infrastructure you need all your safety systems linked up, in place and working. I doubt if those on the project entirely forget the King’s Cross fire.
So basically I think the planning team had no choice and went with what they considered to be the least worst option. In some ways things have not panned out well for them. In other ways they have had unexpected bonuses and I don’t think the option of TPWS+ as an acceptably safe system was around ten years ago (I may be wrong).
One other challenge is the impact of Brexit and then falling pound on availability of workers from Europe. The falling pound has an impact as some workers send money home and this is worth less as the pound falls. I have been told that in some other industries European workers went home for Christmas and have not returned.
Will this impact the number of people available to complete Crossrail ?
@JohnM Yes, if it’s a genuine issue rather than an anecdotal one.
ONS stats show construction industry vacancies to have been no higher than normal in 2018.
https://www.ons.gov.uk/employmentandlabourmarket/peopleinwork/employmentandemployeetypes/timeseries/jp9l/lms
Stewart
V. unlikely. Note the number of commenters, besides myself remarking on the problems encountered because of one out-of-date embedded system that has got to go anyway ( GW-ATP ) but which is being held on to by one operator ( HeX ) who seem in no hurry to help anyone else with the much bigger problems this leftover is causing.
PoP
I think you are correct in that TPWS+ is a “recent” development.
No idea where the idea that the signalling runs on a leaky feeder came from – it simply doesn’t. The trains do not have notable problems with connection to the control centre.
@PoP – TPWS+ was developed over a decade and a half ago, but was solely considered an add-on to protect higher speed junctions. The overspeed and trainstop equipment provided by the original UK wide vanilla TPWS scheme could typically only be relied on to prevent a potential collision following a SPAD at an approach speed of up to about 75mph, although it would reduce the collision speed for higher speed approaches and in some cases could fully protect a higher speed anyway where the distance from signal to conflict point was greater than the typical overlap distance of approximately 200m. TPWS+ was a national scheme following on very quickly after the main programme to place additional overspeed transponders further out on approach to signals protecting higher speed junctions, to catch trains travelling at speeds of up to 125mph. The additional transponders were added only where required on a risk ranked basis, and at around the same time overspeed protection was also added for significant fixed speed limit reduction sites where the change in speed was greater than one third.
Typically TPWS of any variety is only applied at signals protecting a junction conflict, where other techniques such as flank protection and trapping do not already mitigate the risk sufficiently. Plain line headway signals between junctions are typically not equipped unless their risk score is inflated due to other factors such as frequent services stopping at a platform ahead. By contrast, as a ‘full supervision’ system, the GW-ATP track equipment is fitted at every signal along the route, sometimes with additional approach transponders and leaky feeder track loops as well, so has much more trackside equipment than a UK-typical TPWS installation. I guess the implementation of TPWS+ for GWML to Heathrow Airport Junctions will have to equip EVERY plain line signal with at least a TPWS trainstop transponder to be considered as effective as the ATP it will replace for the airport trains. I think it should be termed TPWS++ as it goes beyond what the original TPWS+ was intended to achieve.
Going all the way back to
“The tests included: rolling stock transitioning between the different signalling systems at Westbourne Park (successfully going Eastbound into the central tunnels)”
I am no signalling engineer and I am less familiar with political letters than many of those here, but my interpretation of the above and the reasons for it are the exact opposite of yours.
My interpretation is that outstanding testing includes proving that the eastbound transition at Westbourne Park (from TPWS+ to Trainguard) works correctly. The westbound transition (Trainguard to TPWS) is not mentioned, so is not “outstanding testing”, therefore DOES work successfully.
As you say, Trainguard is a continuous system. Going west, a train will have been communicating with the Trainguard all the way through the tunnel. So surely it is simple for the last Trainguard equipment on the ground to send a message saying “Goodbye”; the train acknowledges it, and the on-train Trainguard equipment goes to sleep and stops trying to control the train. There does not have to be a positive communication with TPWS+ because, as you also say, TPWS+ is an intermittent system. TPWS is not installed at all signals (although it probably IS at all signals in the Westbourne Park area), but even where it IS installed, there are gaps between the signals.
At the entrance to a TPWS area (whether coming out of the Crossrail tunnel, or at the end of miles of low-risk plain line), it is dependent on the human driver to notice whether the train detects the TPWS beacon and behaves appropriately, according to the train’s speed and the signal aspect. The train cannot work out that it has failed to detect (or correctly read) the TPWS beacon. If communication with TPWS is not established properly, the driver has to report it. The train will then have to be taken out of service at the first suitable location (unless it is known that that TPWS equipment on the ground is faulty).
Coming east at Westbourne Park, the Trainguard equipment has to receive its first message, go through the wake-up process, start communicating with the equipment on the ground – all while on the move – and establish safe reliable communication very quickly. The train cannot be allowed to proceed into the TBTC area without operational TBTC.
@kent railman
Good interpretation, there is a Balise in each case which either makes CBTC available as a mode on the drivers DMI, or removes it
Surely if interfacing with existing signalling is such a big problem, would it be better to limit the initial service to the central core only, avoiding any legacy signalling? You just then need to get the trains and stations finished. I know stations and stock isn’t easy either, but at least Crossrail can control that a lot better.
Whilst a full service may not be possible by Dec’19, surely it is better to get some sort of service operational by then, than delay it still further.
Jimbo,
That would be great if the depots were in the central core. But they are not. And you need to traverse legacy signalling to get to them.
Kent Railman,
Yes. I understand all that. That’s part of the reason I went to lengths to try and explain why it is not as simple as that. Think of it in terms of just before it leaves the existing signalling setup.
If going from TPWS+ to CBTC you are going from a system that doesn’t need to know where the trains are to one that does need to know where there trains are (and their speed). So as you are leaving TPWS+, the TPWS+ system has more information than it needs. Because CBTC is ‘clever’ it can handle the limited number of trains presented to it.
If going from CBTC to TPWS+ then you are going from an information rich environment to an information poor environment. If not handled very carefully to are going to get problems and unnecessary speed reductions with all the consequences of that.
So take a simple example. You have a westbound train closely followed by another westbound train. There are no trains in the TPWS+ area. The first train transitions fine but the crude R/Y/YY/G signals do not allow for the second train to follow so closely behind. So its speed is checked (rather dramatically).
What should have happened is that the CBTC system somehow ‘knew’ what was ahead and should have slowed down the second train for a smoother (and ultimately faster) transition. But it didn’t know so once the TPWS+ area was entered the second train was unduly checked or even brought to a stand.
Hope that makes some kind of sense. I am not a signal engineer so may be totally wrong but it does seem to me that the difficulties would lie in the opposite direction to the one that you might initially suspect.
Greg Tingey 15:02
You repeatedly make this claim and in general appear to have a loathing for Heathrow Express. But surely the situation is the opposite to the one you make out?
To get rid of the ATP in the tunnels you need to either upgrade the existing trains on Heathrow Express to ETCS or use ones that already have it. A plan is already in place which by railway standards is positively at warp-factor speed to replace the trains with suitable trains – a plan which didn’t seem to exist in any form about a year ago. The problem will be solved by the end of the year it seems.
To provide a solution in less than two years in a way which only leads to limited disruption (and no decrease in service, only a delayed increase in service) is a pretty good achievement. You might not like Heathrow Express but the nature of the owners is irrelevant. Consideration of the passengers (all passengers) means that this is probably the best way to go about it – and I suspect that normally you would be the first to complain that passenger consideration is not at the top of the list.
@Greg T: I am no fan of Heathrow and their approach to Crossrail in the past, but their willingness to hand over operation of their complete service to GWR is actually very helpful and should provide a definitive solution to the problems in the Heathrow tunnels (as well as making the operation of Paddington to Airport junction more straightforward with only one operator on the fast lines).
Though I suspect getting Class 345s to Heathrow is fairly far down Mark Wild’s list of problems to be solved – it’s more nice to have than critical (though the fares income from 4tph to Heathrow would be welcome I suppose).
@Stewart: it’s worth bearing in mind that CBTC was the more proven system, in use elsewhere, compared with ETCS (for intensive urban operation) at the time the decision was made. The issue seems to be more with the integration of a new generation of on-board software for the trains (ultimately a choice made by the train supplier?).
I think that the trains were procured by the people who will be operating them (TfL) not by the people building Crossrail – TfL’s main incentive is to get a train that will work well in the long term, not necessarily one that will work well out of the box.
@ PoP / Greg T / Ian J – I think the HEX / GWR swap around is one of those rare occasions where the objectives of various parties have been openly discussed, found to align well and the parties have worked together to come up with a generally beneficial solution. Clearly the imperative around HS2 construction is a key issue for the DfT but GWR and TfL both end up in a better, more focussed situation in respect of their railway operations.
I’m less certain about HAL’s objectives given Ngh’s remarks about the class 332s being in a poor state of repair. Clearly they won’t spend money now the 387 solution is in sight but if it hadn’t emerged I wonder quite what would have happened. Anyway that’s a diversion away from the main CR topic.
@Stewart
Re: Crossrail being over ambitious
It sounds to me like the opposite might be true; that the choice of CBTC, for example, was a risk averse move as a more ambitious project might have gone for ETCS throughout with the expectation that 24 or even 30tph wouldn’t be a problem by the time it went live.
This, and the possibly wrong decision to drop ETCS in favour of TPWS+, are maybe great examples of why experience and deep technical understanding are vital for good decision making. What seems like a nifty lower-risk shortcut to inexperienced managers can lead to a pandora’s box of issues causing more problems than they solve – and in many cases providing a worse result at higher cost.
Certainly my experience on IT projects is that the complexity of systems integrations is never fully understood at the outset and almost always is more troublesome than anyone anticipated. Hofstadter’s Law holds especially true for this stuff.
POP @21:44
Presumably the problem you describe can be reduced in impact “simply” by having the initial signals closer together (and thus more likely to clear to less restrictive aspects by the time the next train arrives).
The most obvious downside here is that of potentially decreasing the line speed.
I don’t know how close the signals would have to be (and thus the line speed reduced) in order to present a significant benefit in this regard, so maybe doing this would just swap one problem for another?
If the first signal is visible from within the CBTC area, can the driver override and start to reduce the speed of the train (for a non-green aspect)?
Indeed if the first 3 signals are actually _in_ the CBTC area, don’t have controls of their own (can’t show red) but merely repeat the first “real” signal (with one level upgrade) then the driver would have plenty of notice of a restrictive aspect on the first signal outside the CBTC area.
[ I didn’t explain that very well, and I don’t know the technical terms, if it doesn’t make sense I can attempt a more thorough explanation of what I mean]
But anyway this seems, to me, like a minor problem (at worst it presents a delay and discomfort to passengers) as compared to the other direction, where a failed transition presents a potential safety risk.
If the train’s onboard systems fail to detect the upgraded signalling system, and the driver doesn’t notice, they could continue at line speed looking for a signal and tpws/tps audio cue that never comes.
Obviously driver training and route learning should cover this latter scenario, but this isn’t foolproof.
PoP
To get rid of the ATP in the tunnels you need to either upgrade the existing trains on Heathrow Express to ETCS or use ones that already have it. A plan is already in place which by railway standards is positively at warp-factor speed to replace the trains with suitable trains – a plan which didn’t seem to exist in any form about a year ago. The problem will be solved by the end of the year it seems.
Ah, I wasn’t aware of the deatils of that – thank you for the correction, which seems to deal with my objections.
This project, and more particularly the software integration of the signalling systems and trains seems to be a perfect example of the ninety-ninety law whereby the first ninety percent of the development, testing, integration etc. takes up 90% of the time and budget and the final 10% of the project takes up the other 90%……
Sorry – also meant to say – well done for another excellent article!
Re DJL,
Westbound transition from CBTC,
CBTC sees and is interlocked with the first 4 conventional signals. CBTC manages the transition rather than leaving it to the driver to be suitably defensive.
@NGH. Yes, this is obviously much preferable.
PoP was suggesting that it is this very integration between the 2 systems that is proving problematic and describing the consequences of it not having it.
Re DJL,
PS should have said 4 signals on any possible route beyond (at least 15 signals in total given all the possible permutations)
On topic: Knock-on effect of Crossrail later opening (cost overrun/reduced revenues). I see the the procurement process for the capacity upgrade at Camden Town has been canned.
This is really bad news for a number of reasons:
a) Benefits move to the right in terms of crowding. Both in terms of passenger benefits but also the economic impact on Camden itself. The upgrade would also have delivered full step free access.
b) Full segregation of the two Northern line branches moves also to the right. Full seg should result in better service reliability.
Pedantic of Purley @ 8 January 2019 at 21:44
” one that does need to know where there trains are (and their speed). ”
I’m so relieved you’re writing about trains, and not about sub-atomic particles.
ngh @ 8 January 2019 at 01:47
“The eastbound transition is done stationary in the platform (8) at Stratford in a relatively simple overall track layout beyond (e.g. continuing on down electric line (normal) or swap to down Main (something very wrong)).”
Other trains are running between platforms 5 (westbound) and 8 (eastbound) and the tunnel portal at Pudding Mill Lane.
As well as the future peak hour service to Liverpool Street, they include some Anglia trains and the half-hourly c2c Shoeburyness service at weekends and other c2c services when Fenchurch Street is closed.
Could someone who knows explain why this isn’t a problem on this stretch?
AG
Presumably because those “other” trains will not be equipped with the Crossrail signalling kit, can only “see” the conventional signalling & won’t be going down the tunnels.
I assume there will be a TPWS (or similar) “Fixed Home Signal” at danger in front of the tunnel mouth as a back-up, in the same was as TfL have safety switches preventing SSL stock from erm “not quite fitting” into the Piccadilly line tunnel East of Barons Court!
The Evening Standard has a two page spread based on a vist to Bond Street with Mike Brown and Mark Wild. There are plenty of extra pictures of the current state of the station in the online version.
https://www.standard.co.uk/news/transport/putting-crossrail-back-on-track-a4034601.html
Re aP,
Not try to divert attention form anything else going on today are they???
RE @Greg – Fixed reds.
Of course – this solves the safety concern I had about going the other way.
Not sure how I missed that one!
‘”A bit of my job is to bring simplicity,” says Wild’
That’s another issue I have noticed with projects I’ve been involved: With small-medium projects proposals to simplify things were welcome when the benefits were obvious. With complex ones often less so, possibly because the benefits were less obvious as they accumulated with someone else…
@ TINITD 9 January 2019 at 13:20 Northern seg. needs more trains, which were cancelled last year, before Crossrail troubles. Current 24tph may one day become 30tph without segregation.
Re: availability of workers. In addition to the points mentioned already I have read somewhere there also an impact from the late opening of the new White Hart Lane stadium as they are using a lot of electrical and safety resources to (try to) fix their issues. Is that potentially also contributing to such issues?
@ CVM – the very specific issue of workers transferring from CR to White Hart Lane stadium was raised at the Transport Cttee session this morning. Mark Wild said there had not been a transfer or loss of workers. He said the contractors being used by the two projects were different. He did say that some skills had been lost in some parts of the project but that was more in the main project team than with contractors.
He specifically cited the “winding down” of Crossrail’s internal comms team and also their press team. He said these areas were now being built back up again so expect to see the Crossrail website come back to life at some point. He was particularly critical of this “winding down” which I found odd given that much of it was done in full co-ordination with TfL because activities moved into TfL. Heidi Alexander was also deeply critical of Crossrail losing the ability to deal with press queries when the bad news hit. Again I find this slightly odd as she, as deputy chair of TfL, should have been aware of the transitional activities. Heck it was regularly featured in TfL Board papers which is the only reason *I* know about it!
Does anyone know why Camden Town is on hold to pay for Crossrail, but not Holborn? Is it all down to the BCRs? Or perhaps CT is contract ready, whilst H is at a much cheaper earlier stage.
@Greg – re fixed reds.
I would hope that if a train is equipped with two signalling systems, e.g TPWS and Trainguard, and they give conflicting instructions, the train would fail safe to the more restrictive indication. So if TPWS has a fixed red at the entrance to the tunnel nothing would ever be able to go down there, regardless of whether it was fitted with Trainguard or not.
I’m getting confused – is Trainguard the same as ETCS?
@Taz – had not seen a reprieve for Holborn both deferred
” TfL’s business plan in December shows the impact that a perfect storm of government cuts, reduced farebox income and Crossrail delays is having. The Piccadilly line signalling upgrade remains on hold, key station improvements at Holborn and Camden Town have been delayed, and all non-safety critical renewals have been pared back.”
https://www.londonfirst.co.uk/news-publications/blog/crossrail-gets-back-on-track-but-at-what-price
The only mention is we will ‘progress’ the scheme at Holborn,
http://content.tfl.gov.uk/tfl-business-plan-2019-24.pdf
Aleks,
But the business plan you reference at least mentions Holborn is a positive light whereas the only mention of Camden Town is a rather negative one with no commitment. Other indications also suggest Holborn will happen but Camden Town won’t.
More critical, Camden Town isn’t needed for any other update to happen because there is next to no chance of any Northern line improvement to the currently existing line . Even
3231tph to Morden seems only committed in general terms of improving the frequency of Northern and Jubilee line trains. There is no longer any hint of timescale.On the other hand, 27tph on the Piccadilly line with new stock (and old signalling) still is committed and this is still believed to require reconstruction of Holborn station (for crowd management and a new sub-station) as a pre-requisite. So Holborn will get priority over Camden Town unless there are plans for a massive cash injection into the Northern line to boost frequency. I suspect they are absolutely struggling to work out how to find the money for Holborn but they know they need to do it otherwise they will end up with brand new shiny trains sitting in the sidings.
Re Timbeau,
Fixed Reds – Correct and therein lies a problem with transitions – the computers knowing which system to believe.
Sorting the interlocking of the multiple systems is key.
TrainguardMT is a proprietary Siemens metro signalling system they inherited when they bought Matra’s signalling business (hence MT for Matra Technology) that was designed for driverless operation of Paris Metro Line 14. Nothing to do with ETCS but the do work in very similar ways so the interface between them is believed to be far easier to implement. (The Trainguard interlocking computers can be used to provide interlocking for ETCS installations)
@NGH
Now I’m confused by all the alphabet soup.
What are Trainguard, CBTC, TPWS, ETCS, ERTMS, GSM-R, ATP? And which parts of the eventual Crossrail network will use what?
Communications-based train control
Train Protection & Warning System
European Train Control System
European Railway Traffic Management System
Global System for Mobile Communications-Railway (part of ERTMS)
Automatic train protection
Aleks’ reply to Timbeau’s question only goes so far. As must be clear from the discussion so far, a full explanation of all these things would require far more words than will fit into a single comment here.
Which should not prevent anyone with appropriate knowledge from sharing some of it here, of course. Or referring to other sources. But some management of expectations is called for. No-one is going to be turned from a signalling novice into an expert just by reading definitions.
Timbeau
Not for the first time, I think we need a sidebar on the website with a label like: “For short explanations – try here” – or maybe “Alphabet Soup – a gourmet guide”
Let’s see what I can do:
CBTC: Communications Based Train Control A Wiki Link
TPWS: Train Protection & Warning System Wiki Link for TPWS
ETCS: European Train Control System Wili Link for ETCS
ERTMS; European Railway Traffic Managment System Offical Web-page AND A wiki page on the same subject
GSM-R: Global Sytems for Mobile Comms – Railway Wiki Page for GSM-R
ATP: Automatic Train protection was originally the old GWR contact ramp system – very confusing, but now taken to mean: AutomaticTrain Protection – more than one system, it’s a generic term ( I think )
As for which section of Crossrail uses which …
It’s back in our web-page records, or ask NGH, who is probably our best resident expert in these matters.
Hope this helps ….
Re Malc0lm,
Articles already in progress…
@PoP – Holborn is a higher priority and Mike Brown in the Standard confirmed it is going ahead.
“Upgrades at Bank (‘2022’), Holborn (‘progress’) and Elephant and Castle (‘2024’) will proceed, as will step-free access at Finsbury Park, Hanger Lane and Wimbledon Park.”
https://www.standard.co.uk/news/transport/major-london-transport-upgrades-shelved-amid-tfl-financial-crisis-a4015171.html
Camden attracts more press comment by local activists. The point for Taz was that Crossrail had taken the capital budget from both in the affected plan.
The TfL 5 yr plan was updated under time pressure. The rail section states GOBLINX “London Overground will see services commencing in 2021.”
The summary figure for the period 2019-2024 states
“The Elizabeth line will have opened and we will have begun construction on the extension of the London Overground to Barking Riverside.”
Most of the 22 mentions of Barking are for housing not rail. Since publication a construction contract has been agreed with work starting in May – likely taking 2 years ?
I am encouraged by Wild and Brown site visiting together with public reporting ( compared to Khan v Morgan ). Hope they get to all the sites as the service is fully accessible and Brown is already talking about “The task ahead is about simplicity and clarity: what do we actually need?”
Brown glances at the conceptual design as he considers the job ahead. “I could have done without the f***ing art,” he confesses.
I’ll rephrase my question. Have I now understood this correctly?
CBTC is a moving block system, and will be used in the core. Trainguard is Siemens CBTC offering.
TPWS is linked to fixed signals and is used on both the Great Western and Great Eastern Main Lines.
GW-ATP is also used on the GWML, (not to be confused with the old GWR’s ATC contact-ramp system) and is the only system compatible with the HEx 332s.
ETCS was to have been used on the GWML, but TPWS is to be used (retained) instead.
Re Timbeau,
ETCS is being used on the Heathrow Branch and will be rolled out to the inner GWML later, but TPWS is being upgraded in the interim.
Siemens have multiple moving block CBTC offerings.
Just to confuse further, Siemens seem to be using Trainguard as a generic umbrella product name for all train protection systems, regardless of heritage and compatibility. Their ETCS Level 2 product is called Trainguard 200. This is reportedly what’s being retrofitted to Class 387 for the Heathrow tunnel – see https://news.siemens.co.uk/news/siemens-awarded-etcs-onboard-contract. I believe Siemens also have the Digital Railway framework contract for the track-side systems.
I believe the 345s are actually running TPWS/AWS as a sub-function of ETCS in ‘Level NTC’ (National Traffic Control). This is basically a catch-all in the ETCS specification for any system that is already deployed, to allow ETCS proper to be rolled out piece-by-piece. So that sounds like the problem – *if* there is one – is migrating from the Siemens custom CBTC system to and from their ETCS product, and getting it running in the right mode.
A couple of interesting links:
“Signalling Crossrail” from Rail Engineer – https://www.railengineer.uk/2016/01/08/signalling-crossrail/
“Crossrail ETCS GRIP 1-3 options analysis” – http://orr.gov.uk/__data/assets/pdf_file/0007/18637/paddington-0-12-exemption-vse-grip-options-analysis-2015-03.pdf
Having been involved in strategic oversight the Project back when construction had only just started, it was pretty obvious to me that a) Crossrail were averse about providing direction to the various delivery packages, on the basis that they would be ‘importing’ risk that they believed they’d passed down the supply chain by doing so. They were neither prepared nor staffed to act as system integrators – they believed (in the case of stations) that their Main contractors were responsible for this (though those contractors have no influence over the other design/delivery packages working on their sites, as they’re appointed directly by CRL). They didn’t check that their contractors had the required competent engineers to assure the works (and some sites still don’t, so I understand). LU were certainly aware of all the above whilst the Project was still young – at least at the senior ‘working’ level that my contacts inhabited.
Interesting to see the interview with Mark Wild at Bond Street – evidently intended to push back against the Terry Morgan argument that it was just the trains that were the problem by making it clear how behind the stations were too.
It answered a question I had – whether the central section could open without Bond Street – answer, yes but only once Bond Street’s fire alarm system is working so it could be used for evacuation. And design work has only just finished on that system so it is some way off, especially since it has to be integrated with the existing tube station system – another systems integration task ahead, so there is the potential for unknown unknowns as well as the known ones.
@David Johns – Oh no, not the dreaded “passing risk off” concept. It’s little different from what I repeatedly say (ad nauseam) about (especially public sector) outsourcing – you may be able to transfer (some) financial risk, but the risk of service delivery failure (and the concomitant financial cost) will always, but always, fall on you.
“The buck stops here”, as someone once said, I believe.
David Johns……..I thought for a minute you were talking about the Jubilee line extension which exhibited exactly the same behaviour. Were no lessons learned? Clearly not. What grates, though, is that the Crossrail publicity machine over many years fielded people at all sorts technical conferences assuring the industry that the lessons had indeed been learned.
It was only at the most recent event where the Crossrail speaker talked of the difficulty of integrating a pan-Crossrail contract (for the platform screen doors) into the individual station design/construction programmes.
@MikeP – Not so if you are the present SoS, of course, who operates in an entirely risk-free environment. I think, however, his trick is not so much to transfer all known risks but to deny that the unknown unknowns actually exist.
More seriously, I have a confession to make: when a systems integration man was first added to our team, I was sceptical that his slant on things would cut much ice with the specialist engineers, let alone the project managers. Nor did it and he was “let go” in a round of cost savings. I now see we should have all defended him with very much greater determination.
The worry, as I see it, about any delay for Camden Town rebuild is that they’ll lose the access sites. Other projects may not be directly affected by it, but interchange and the ability to cope with the volume of pax using the station certainly will. Partial closure really doesn’t work.
Ian J 00:41,
And even at Bond Street we have recent precedent. The Bloomberg entrance at Bank was severely delayed by system integration problems at that station – most notable the fire alarms. Whilst the delay at Bank is not directly relevant it is a further warning sign that problems potentially exist in that area and Crossrail is probably not immune to them.
If Bond St is needed for evacuation, even if not normally opened to passengers, that presumably means that if the fire alarms don’t work you have to suspend the service.
The article as others have stated creates a lot of smoke and mirrors around the subject of TPWS+ (a misnomer in itself as the TPWS+ concept used on NR was first implemented around the time of WCML over a decade ago and is as MT described – enhanced protection at converging junctions for 125 mph trains). GWML TPWS enhancements for CR is as others have said simply a standard TPWS fit to a wider number of signals that would otherwise not have been fitted under conventional criteria. This was deemed necessary to satisfy the lack of working ETCS once it became clear this would not be delivered on GWML in time for CR start and where GW-ATP was not already fitted. The work to provide TPWS enhancement (call it TPWS-E) to GWML is essentially complete.
TPWS-E was not fitted to Heathrow branch as this was considered to be a retrograde step compared with the existing GW-ATP and all that follows wrt to obtaining Safety Cases etc. The fact they have somehow messed up the system migration strategy knowing possessions of Heathrow Tunnels are sparse is a question best left to those in the thick of it.
As for CR/NR transitions at the trackside signalling interface . Typical arrangements would be to treat each forward signal section as a block of ‘signalling data’. The number of blocks would be determined by how far forward the target signalling system would need to look to display preliminary caution, caution and stop commands to the driver towards the end of Movement Authority (MA). That could be via the cab display with an appropriate target speed or colour light signal aspect depending on direction. Each ‘signal’ section is treated as a block of information, typically comprising the necessary track status (i.e. point detection, train detection status). These will be passed as a series of discreet signalling functions between NR and CR signalling systems to enable the respective interlocking to process the requested MA is safe to display to the driver (via cab display or colour light signal depending where in the transition the train is).
West to East the MA will be displayed by the last colour light signal leaving NR, controlled by the Paddington area NR interlocking. Preceding NR signals must also be able to determine whether clear or caution aspects are shown. These will be dictated by the aspect state of NR’s last signal and the status of the line inside the CR tunnel and the extent of CR MA’s present. As the CR system is ‘moving block’ the CR MA will be dependent on the position of the preceding train. Likewise the CR CBTC interlocking must see an approaching train far enough back to enable the cab display to be ‘prepared’ for when the train enters the CBTC control area.
East to West is similar. The CBTC will be provided with sufficient ‘look ahead’ information from the NR signalling interlocking so that the cab display, before leaving the CBTC control area can display the extent of the movement authority. That may be up to NR’s first colour light signal or beyond to enable the cab display to sign the appropriate target speed for the driver.
Each signal section will consist of a block of information containing the status of point detection, train detection and importantly first NR signal lamp and TPWS healthy status to ensure a train leaving CR cannot be cleared towards a signal with a failed lamp or a red signal with faulty TPWS. All basic signalling principles. The art is how precisely the information is passed between the respective NR and CR signalling systems and how the dynamic of various signalling functions respond to not only ‘the’ train transitioning between the systems but also how the respective systems communicate the dynamic state of the trackside as it affects ANY given movement authority caused by movement of all other trains.
As the respective signalling systems are, due to technical incompatibility of the systems unable to communicate the array of signalling functions direct to each other via a data comms link the link is what might be described as a ‘handshake’ arrangement. The art therefore is understanding the timing of all potential the dynamics between the systems and how they could potentially create an undesirable / unsafe event – then eradicate it.
CBTC (and ETCS) just creates a further interface between Interlocking – CBTC and TMS where the clear implication is that this has also posed plenty of its own problems for the project.
As I stated, this would be typical. How far removed from the reality I cannot say
MIKEP, 100ANDTHIRTY… absolutely right, and all entirely foreseeable! The experienced guys at the working level at TfL knew that when the deadline (and bad newspaper headlines) loom it will always be the railway operator who takes the hit – no matter what theories anyone has about where the blame lies. The public will remember that Crossrail is a TfL brand and was late and over-budget – no matter whether it was the contractors’ fault or not. You just can’t export that risk to anyone else!
The TfL guys also knew that when you procure such a massive project via many separate contractual packages, you have to be really active and positive about integrating all that engineering from the outset. You can’t rely on the individual contractors to do it – they have little effective influence over each others’ work. From what I’ve been told, senior TfL and CRL staff were not receptive of the ‘doom mongers’ that forecast these issues. Many went in the various decimations that LU / TfL engineering have put itself through over the last five years or so (at precisely the time when it should have been strengthening that capability).
Further problems may have been due to the fact that (predictably) most of the Main Contractors were civil engineering heavy – many didn’t employ enough resource (if any) to oversee their MEP and fire engineering sub-contractors – hence many of the problems now seen with integration issues and re-work. Again, I clearly recall my LU / TfL colleagues (mostly very able MEP discipline specialists – some of which were got rid of in the above-mentioned ‘transformations’) saying years ago that this was going to bite CRL when it came time to commissioning and delivery.
It would be such a shame if it emerged that the TfL organisational culture was such that potentially bad news was ignored or even suppressed – the Emperor clearly being unclothed!?
@ David Johns – not at all surprised to hear what you say about TfL re-organisations and loss of knowledge / experience / competence. It is worth bearing in mind that the demand for a single engineering function came from the Mayor. A policy that I thought was ludicrous at the time and your remarks would seem to confirm my thoughts. Worse I have now heard the Commissioner twice publicly “diss” certain parts of surface transport and the people who worked there. I dread to think what he says behind closed doors about people who have left the organisation. Oh and he seemingly doesn’t like art on the system either if the Evening Standard accurately reported his recent comments at the Bond St CR stn visit.
One thing I will say – as an former LU person – is that the engineers were *always* deeply sceptical of any large scale project that they were unable to “control”. I saw this in spades with the JLE and while some of the concerns were no doubt justified the depth of the scepticism always struck me as too much. Large projects have a life of their own and can become a menace but that doesn’t excuse what I’d call pretty unacceptable positions taken by some disciplines. The end objective is to get the new line / project into operational service and everyone should work sensibly towards that objective even if through gritted teeth and muttered “I told you soes”.
WW
Oh and he seemingly doesn’t like art on the system either ….
Frank Pick would NOT be amused …..
MIKEP, GRAHAM H, I think it is worth pointing out that saving on system integration and passing the risk often works well and does save money. On the former, if there hadn’t been so many individual issues that they started to interact in non-obvious ways, then I think we wouldn’t now identify this as an issue.
On the latter, maybe ‘passing risk’ seems a misnomer? It appears to me that it is in effect process of saving money by changing known unknowns to unknown unknowns (i.e. not spending money that would have identified risks and developed management strategies and letting contractors do whatever they feel best).
Incidentally, I feel the whole thing is going to play out in South Wales too, with Transport for Wales insistence on defining outcomes and an internal structure that is all about boards, ‘providing advise’ and contracting…
@Christian Schmidt – depends on the nature of the project in question – a “simple” engineering project such as relaying some track or building a bridge may use relatively few separate specialist work streams, building a new railway and populating it with a train service is clearly an order of magnitude different. I might add that matters continually develop – many of the risks we can now see might not have been on anyone’s radar screens a generation ago. That goes for soft policy issues as well as hard engineering ones: who would have thought regulatory issues would impact on rolling stock procurement a generation ago, for example?
Christian Schmidt: ‘Passing risk’ is not a misnomer, whether or not it happens as you describe. A well-drawn contract can indeed pass financial risk on to another party – the whole insurance industry is based on that. The claim was made, very plausibly, that reputational risk cannot be offloaded in the same way. This is at least partly true, though effective PR support might in some cases help, when things go wrong, to push damage to reputation onto a sub-contractor.
Whether a special effort needs to be made to integrate systems depends on the overall complexity of the project, of course. Like anything else, too much effort will waste money, but too little effort can result in various kinds of failure.
@ AlisonW 12 January 2019 at 14:29 Loss of access sites due to project delays is a good point, but maybe not for these locations. Camden Town has had restricted opening for market days since 1999, and no prospect of increased interchange from a divided service until new trains are eventually ordered. The Hawley School site has been bought by TfL for the new ticket hall, and the deep level shelter shaft remains available for fast access to the planned new deep tunnels. I believe that Buck street will be closed for construction as a worksite.
The Holborn plans started with new deep level interchange routes to be constructed from the Aldwych branch platform connected to the tram subway above, and from around the current ticket hall area. Later plans added a second ticket hall under Procter Street which would be constructed with temporary closure of that roadway. If the most urgent need is now for a new sub-ticket hall sub-station for the more powerful trains planned for the Piccadilly and later Central lines, perhaps this could be the first part completed to support the 27tph upgrade to the Picc. line. Other parts of the scheme will be needed before further frequency upgrades on both lines.
Taz
I’ve mentioned this before, but Holborn, espcially the “Picc” platforms desperately needs more / enlarged tunnels, never mind better access “higher up”. I try not to use the Picc there as the crowding actually scares me [Hyperbole removed. PoP]
I didn’t find it remotely convincing that the train “software” was both running passenger announcements and doing the SDR signal processing in the radios. I would be absolutely astonished if the radios aren’t discrete radio modules of whatever sort. As a result I wasn’t very surprised upthread when it turned out the issue is nothing to do with software. Rather, per Mark and NGH, it’s a radio frequency coordination problem.
It is, however, astonishing that anyone thought putting two dissimilar radio systems together in a tunnel on the same frequency without any mechanism to deal with contention would work, especially on a band like 27MHz that will pass through pretty much anything.
If I understand it right, ETCS uses GSM-R, the railways flavour of good old 2G mobile, in licensed spectrum to communicate with the trains BUT it also uses these euro balise things by the trackside, and the communication between the train, the balise, (and also the points? not sure) is on 27MHz using SORP (Some Other Radio Protocol), quite well documented from a radio point of view here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eurobalise
I am struggling to find actual information about GW-ATP radio, but as I understand it the architecture is similar, with beacons/balises by the track, and it’s apparently on the same channel. I have the impression the transmitter power in both is surprisingly high. As a result I am astonished anyone thought this could possibly work.
The Rail Engineer piece mentions that Trainguard uses Wireless LAN (which being Ethernet has collision-detection to cope with contention) and operates at 2.2GHz.
Re Alex,
“It is, however, astonishing that anyone thought putting two dissimilar radio systems together in a tunnel on the same frequency without any mechanism to deal with contention would work, especially on a band like 27MHz that will pass through pretty much anything.”
And that is what has amazed me for the last 4 years that all the work form 2010 onwards didn’t even think to examine the Heathrow tunnels as major potential issue, until it became one.
Part of the problems is that the beginning of ETCS and GW-ATP are very much pre internet and bit clouded in mystery unless you do a lot of digging and know some really useful (older) people.
In the early days of what would become ETCS (very early 1980’s) there was much discussion about which technologies to use and there was certain sensitivity about doing anything too similar to existing French or German to ensure that it didn’t get political, the solution was to settle on lifting lots of thinking but not the technology itself (shown to work in practice so lower risk) so as not to show favouritism towards a manufacturer (ACEC) from the then new Belgian TBL system later to become known as TBL1, Post Clapham and Purley BR when looking for ATP systems in hurry and selected 2 systems for a trial . One system was ACEC’s TBL system which was modified into GW-ATP with GEC soon buying ACEC (pre Alstom merger days). The original TBL (aka TBL1) kit was pre EMC regulations and has a massive field amplitude (both electric and magnetic) compared to Eurobalise (and Euroloops – also lifted from TBL!).
The Heathrow tunnels are also a later custom modification of the GW-ATP so a unique signal for the software to discriminate, hence testing is needed to record what a real crossrail train encounters (as it will vary from train design and material choices, antennae positioning on the train etc.)
The original ETCS thinking was stand alone computers call EVCs (also lifted from ACEC thinking) would do the Eurobalise signalling processing and the other signalling work with other modules plugged in and interface trains systems, unfortunately in the interim (decades) the train also grew very large complex computer systems (aka TCMS) with most train hardware now IP network interfaced in, with what is now Bombardier at the forefront and the EVC function has got rolled into an ever increasing TCMS (with lots of integrated interacting computers)
Articles on this to come soon when I have finished writing (and drawing) them. PoP had to simplify things down for this article (as Crossrail do in most cases too)
And it’s 27MHz, used in many parts of the world for unlicensed citizens’ band radio (and many other parts of the world for illegal citizens’ band radio). You can buy transceivers on eBay UK for £60.
This would strike me as an inherently noisy, cluttered bit of spectrum, on which it would be virtually impossible to minimise interference.
And the wavelength is 11m , so the half-wavelength is 5.5m, very close to the tunnel diameter. It’s 45 years since I studied waveguides at university, but surely to use 27MHz is just turning the tunnel into a waveguide, all the way from the tunnel mouth to Heathrow.
Re Alan BG,
It uses a narrow reserved bit at 27.12MHz so not as bad as it could be.
“And the wavelength is 11m , so the half-wavelength is 5.5m, very close to the tunnel diameter. It’s 45 years since I studied waveguides at university, but surely to use 27MHz is just turning the tunnel into a waveguide, all the way from the tunnel mouth to Heathrow.”
The tunnel geometry/shape/dimensions put it just over the waveguide threshold as I been saying for well over a year, hence the need for decent testing to measure what you are actually trying to filter out.
Christian Schmidt – I daresay there a multiple examples where savings have been made on system integration. However, what I’ve been told is that CRL for a very long time assumed that their supply chain would do the bulk of it – for what reason I don’t know (altruism perhaps)?
An example: you might have half-a-dozen separate contractual packages (all let directly by CRL) doing major works on one station site, & the Main Contractor has no real influence over anything they do apart from whether or not they have access to the site and their safety whilst they’re on there. Neither the MC nor the other contractors can instruct or enforce technical requirements on parties with whom they have no direct contractual relationship. Sure, you might expect the individual contractors to ensure that their works interface with each other, but ‘interfacing’ ain’t ‘integration’! The situation was reportedly worsened by CRL’s ‘hands off’ approach during the critical design stage of the works (I understand that they’re more active now construction is approaching its final stages).
WRT fire alarms in particular – one of the biggest problems is integrating the new parts of the system with the ‘legacy’ systems on the existing LU/NR stations whilst keeping those stations open and safe. The decision as to when you do this is critical – there’s a great deal of risk involved in integrating the new parts of the system into the operating station whilst construction works are still on-going (false alarms etc). BUT, if you leave it too late you won’t know whether the integrated system will work or not – and you generally need it all working before you rip down any sub-surface hoardings.
There are only certain people who are ‘licenced’ to work on a fire alarm system serving an operating LU railway station & whatever work the MEP sub-contractor does normally has to be integrated into the live system by the LU maintainer – who are the main employer of that scarce resource. Once the works are integrated then you’re pretty much restricted to engineering hours-only working for some activities – so if you do it too early you end up delaying physicals works – so MEP delays have a knock-on effect on non-MEP works. Compounding the problems are the fact that in some cases the existing fire alarm systems on the LU stations are obsolete…
David Johns,
Thanks for that. I long suspected that fire alarms were one critical part that was giving problems but could not be sure until now.
Back to an earlier point, this means that the Crossrail board should have been concerned when the Bloomberg entrance to Bank was experiencing problems with fire protection as it shows up just what an issue it is and how it can hold everything back. But I suspect ‘external’ events were considered irrelevant and the warnings weren’t heeded.
Re David Johns,
” daresay there a multiple examples where savings have been made on system integration. ”
I disagree slightly disagree, might it be better to suggest “cuts” rather than “savings” as cuts may or may not produce savings, in this case they have undoubtedly added to costs.
“However, what I’ve been told is that CRL for a very long time assumed that their supply chain would do the bulk of it – for what reason I don’t know (altruism perhaps)?”
It appears that Altruism has happened at some place more than others e.g. Woolwich (late addition and the last station contract being an advantage? Canary Wharf (not managed by CRL) or does it somewhat correlate with the main contractor as I commented up the other recent article there is an interesting correlation with problems and whether one of the contractors in the main station contract JV has a history of doing Metro and Airport work…
Re PoP,
I’d add that lots of newish Fire alarm equipment (especially panels and interfaces) of the digitally addressable type have proved to be less that reliable as regards continual faults and false alarms than analogue systems, the initial digitally addressable systems or some current systems. I know of a few systems fitted this decade where all the problems magically sorted themselves when the panel was replaced (after lots of other works that didn’t fix things).
NGH – Canary Wharf not a good example! I was privileged to be hosted on a tour a year or two ago – the CRL staff present moaning bitterly at the amount of re-work left to do on a supposedly ‘complete’ station! Vast amounts of brand-new kit either having to be ripped out and replaced or re-fitted because it didn’t comply with the required standards.
Just to be clear – I’m not sure that much of the ‘blame’ for lack of integration management could be levied at any of the main contractors (bearing in mind that most are site-specific or system-specific joint ventures). Even if they had wanted to adopt the integration function, they would have no means of doing it because they have no direct influence on the work of the other delivery packages.
I hear that many of the CRL engineers (who you would naturally need to rely upon to step up to the plate and help sort out this final part of the project – commissioning, completion and delivery into service) are seconded from the consultancy world, & they’ve naturally drifted away to other projects, as ‘nominal’ completion approached. Mark Wild might want to back-fill (and possibly augment) his engineering resource with TfL personnel… but this is at the same time as TfL engineering is licking its wounds from multiple voluntary redundancy episodes and more recently ‘Transformation’, which resulted (quite deliberately, it seems) in the loss of so many of its senior people.
Still, that’s what these folks get paid the megabucks for…
On the subject of conflicting frequencies:
The obvious solution would be to change the frequency of the new equipment.
This might pose a problem in terms of long-term compatibility with other installations, but perhaps a hybrid setup where the problem area(s) use one frequency and all others use the standard frequency. Trains could then configured to pay attention to both frequencies, using whichever one gives a stronger meaningful signal.
The problem sections could then be converted to the standard frequency at a convenient time after the conflict is removed (i.e. GW-ATP decomissioned) to avoid complications in the future.
This might mean additional hardware and/or software on the 345s, but only the 345s.
Unfortunately such a setup likely requires additional testing now impossible to complete on a sensible timetable. But if the problem had been spotted earlier the solution could have been quite straightforward.
Hindsight is a wonderful thing!
Re DJL ,
Really?
a) Precisely which frequencies would you suggest?
b) who manufactures the required signalling positioning equipment for that frequencies?
As a reminded the Belgians decided in 2006 the best approach to sorting to TBL1 and ETCS conflicts was to bin TBL1.
As a reminder TrainGaurd MT uses Eurobalsies for positioning too so you would still have to solve the 27MHz problem…
Well they way I understand it there are a few factors that could determine suitable frequencies
1. Required bandwidth (high frequency is better)
2. Required range (lower frequency is better, this can be countered with increased power, but there would be practical limits to this)
3. Interference with other transmissions in the target area. (*ahem*) or fixed infrastructure (e.g. tunnels walls)
4. Legal restrictions (which in some cases could be fixed by… changing the restrictions)
For most practical uses there is no shortage of suitable frequencies, often in totally different parts of the spectrum and the choice is somewhat arbitrary.
Changing the frequency of transmission or reception is reasonably trivial (your transistor radio can do this, as can your phone, tv, etc.) Although in this case I think its more likely that you might duplicate the receiving equipment with one set permanently tuned to one frequency and other tuned to the other.
All fixed equipment would use only one frequency. The trains would use both (or multiple)
Are there other restrictions I’ve missed that means 27MHz really is the only choice?
DJL,
As I understand it, I may be wrong, 27MHz is part of the ETCS specification and standard.
So basically ETCS is the only standard that ETCS equipment suppliers will support. Besides you would effectively be creating a non-ETCS system. We are still in the EU and may even have to abide by their rules for the foreseeable future so you would need a derogation for that (Crossrail got it for CBTC but only in the central area and even then they had to issue an assurance they would change to it as soon as practicable when such a process was technically possible). And no doubt ORR would have to approve it too.
If that’s the only reason then, frankly, its a crazy reason!
The regulation states that you have to use a system that isn’t designed to work in the conditions you need it to work in – and that’s just tough?
I’m all for specifications and standards. They are useful and important. My job would be basically impossible without them.
But sometimes you just have to deviate from the standard, even if only temporarily, when the standard is not fit for purpose.
Also: Clearly I need to read up again on CBTC and ETCS. I had been thinking CBTC is an upgrade to ETCS, not the other way around, whereas your comment suggests the opposite.
This being the case, what is the reason for the derogation in the core, why not use ETCS from the outset?
DJL,
This being the case, what is the reason for the derogation in the core, why not use ETCS from the outset?
Because ECTS at that time was in its infancy whereas Trainguard (or another CBTC option) was already a mature product. And then (and still now) ECTS does not work with platform edge doors. Nor has it ever been implemented on a really intense metro system. Furthermore, because Trainguard (and rivals) is proprietry system it doesn’t have to adhere to standards which means any problems encountered can be solved with minimum regulatory approval – just what you are advocating.
Crossrail initially specified CBTC to reduce risk in the central section and, despite problems, it was almost certainly the correct decision. Network Rail allegedly tried to push Crossrail in using ETCS throughout the centre but Crossrail didn’t fancy being a guinea pig.
Because there was no realistic alternative, the EU allowed a derogation. Crossrail isn’t far removed from metro services such as those run by London Underground which are exempt anyway.
Bear in mind the real problem is that GW-ATP has grandfather rights. We are in a wholly exceptional situation because, had this occurred anywhere else, Network Rail could have been pragmatic and rolled-out the easiest, least cost solution (get rid of GW-ATP in the tunnels). We still have the pragmatic solution being implemented but Heathrow Airport Limited owning the tunnels has introduced some additional complexities that stopped it being implemented at a quicker rate.
@PoP: I fully expect ETCS to head the same way as GSM, i.e. as a global standard. Implementing a system at a different frequency just increases the cost as the Americans found out when implementing GSM at 1900 MHz.
Re PoP and DJL,
ETCS is now regarded as being capable of stopping trains with the precision required for platform edge doors.
The frequencies are very precisely defined in the ETCS spec.
The Heathrow Tunnel is a non standard GW-ATP installation, someone sold the the airport the concept that doubling up on all the trackside transmitting and receiving equipment would improve reliability…
The Crossrail plan is updated software to filter the out the unwanted GW-ATP signals / interference, the roll out of this software has been de-prioritised to focus on getting the core signalling working. the expectation is that the software solution will work, plan B is turn off GW-ATP
Trainguard may be a proprietary system but to minimise costs it uses lots of off the shelf technology (often ETCS specification). The on train eurobalise reading equipment (used for both ETCS and TrainguardMT positioning) will still be needed for the core so will still need to be modified /immunised to GW-ATP so the computer isn’t “confused” by GW-ATP.
Shifting to a different frequency for temporary ETCS use would take an awful lot of work that would take longer than any other way of addressing the problem as it would involve fitting lots of extra equipment to the train and altering the software (!).
Re SHLR,
27.12 happens to be globally available for the purpose unlike most of the other potential frequencies which are geographically limited. It is already the defacto for new installations standard way beyond Europe.
ngh,
ETCS is now regarded as being capable of stopping trains with the precision required for platform edge doors.
Correct me if I am wrong but this is surely just the first step.
You need Platform Edge Doors clearly defined in the ETCS specification. They need to be integrated not just provided as an add-on extras. Then you need at least one manufacturer to produce ETCS-compliant doors and interlocking involving some means of establishing that the train is correctly located. This all then they needs to be tested. And, if fundamental problems occur, the standard needs amending.
PoP- NGH is simply saying that the stopping precision Thameslink Siemens cl. 700 trains are now achieving routinely using their ETCS-derived ATO system would be sufficient to allow PEDs to be used if they were provided on that route. Clearly, any door subsystem used would need an additional confirmation from the train via the specific additional dedicated ETCS balises provided for the task, or the GSM-R radio channel, that the train is stationary in the correct position before releasing, and the interface must also provide a ‘PED closed’ interlock in the other direction through the balise or radio channel to allow dispatch. One way to achieve this would be to interface the door system using signalling manufacturers’ standard LEUs (lineside encoding units as used in level 1 signalling systems) connected to active balises. So you are correct that some further development is required, but it is actually fairly simple integration work that has to be done anyway between any signalling and door system combination, as doors and their control systems are not typically manufactured by signalling companies so there’s no common proprietary interface to simply ‘plug in’.
NGH, Mark Townend, PoP. ATO is not currently part of ETCS. For Thameslink, over a small area, ATO has been superimposed on ETCS ATP to deliver a workable solution. This has probably encouraged the system owners to work together to develop a specification for ATO integrated into ETCS.
The principles of ETCS were not followed for the Thameslink ATO. ETCS works on the principle that the geographic features of the railway that ETCS has to respond to are held in the trackside equipment and are transmitted to the train. This principle is be extended to the ATO specification. This specification will also include specific transmission packets for ATO. Once the specification has been published, then development of systems and equipment might commence.
In comparison, the Thameslink solution has the geographic features on the train borne ATO equipment (the map) and communicates via packet 44…the general catch all packet for whatever those implementing ETCS want. Put simply, Thameslink ATO is a proprietary solution with all the constraints that implies.
Stopping accuracy is a function of ATO as has been pointed out, but confirmation of correct stopping, zero speed and then control of platform doors, is an ATP (ie ETCS) function.
Final point…..GSM-R has serious bandwidth constraints and introduces time delays. Introducing packet switching and migration to more modern, lower latency comma, e.g. LTE is on the agenda, but not yet available to buy.
If anyone faculties (ahem) crayoning a new frequency for the Crossrail trains balises to work at, you can check your working here…
http://static.ofcom.org.uk/static/spectrum/fat.html
Re PoP, Mark T and 130,
The ETCS specification has a lot of room for known unknowns to be added as it was anticipated that users would want to add functionality often at a national standard level (that later tends to get adopted in other countries).
An early example of this was the use of eurobalises and packets 44 and 68 for Tilt Authorisation and Speed Supervision (TASS) on the West Coast Mainline when the Pendolino and voyagers were introduced (decades before there will be any ETCS used for signalling on the WCML). The UK also got its suggested SDO implementation method via packet 44 into the standard and the first use of that was on Thameslink with the 700s with dedicated balises and is now the default method for new SDO/CSDE implementations in the UK (whether ETCS is used for signalling or not) and is being adopted elsewhere too.
Thankfully the train and platform edge doors are made by the same firm and they are used to Bombarider’s TCMS.
@ngh 2019/01/15 at 10:29 am
Is Altruism one of those new cleverly named consortiums?
@LBM
Consortia
Long Branch Mike 16 January 2019 at 15:56
“Is Altruism one of those new cleverly named consortiums?”
Al Truism is an Arabic expression, referring to a circular argument.
I thought everyone knew that!
@Milton Clevedon, Alan Griffiths
Thank you both for correcting me.
In terms of accessibility Crossrail is quite poor and will remain so after it finally opens. Tomorrows Londons evening paper the Standard shall have something on this aspect of the new line.
Rather unfortunate, if not worrying wrong side door opening on a 345 at Stratford a day or so ago, reported here http://www.fromthemurkydepths.co.uk/2019/01/18/crossrail-train-opens-doors-onto-track-at-stratford/
These things can occasionally happen with any rolling stock . Obviously no reason given, could be driver error, or a technical issue with the train, worrying never the less?
@James Heath: It doesn’t seem to be there…
Hi. I have alway regarded the people who write and read this page to be a brains trust and I would like to ask that brain a question. In our ongoing battle with TFL to improve rail services at Hanwell (prior to the sunlit uplands of 2020(?) when Crossrail is up and running) the latest hitch to the new Elizabeth line trains stopping at Hanwell (they miss Hanwell our on the Paddington-Hayes service) is the lack of Selective Door Opening (SDO). Hanwell will need this as the Grade II listed station cannot easily have lengthened platforms. GWR trains have used SDO at Hanwell when they have provided relief services. TFL say that adding Hanwell to the Hayes service has to wait until SDO available. But we thought that SDO came as standard on the new trains; that it had been used at West Ealing and Acton until their platforms were extended; and anyway isn’t just a software change on these trains to add another station and its requirements to the train’s ‘brain’? Sadly all this is subject to the TFL wall of silence about Crossrail progress – so if anyone out there can help us (Hanwell Station Users Group) understand what the problem is with SDO I/we would be very grateful. Cheers Dave Newsome
Dave Newsome,
As no-one with detailed knowledge has replied I will reply speculatively.
There is no SDO requirement using 7-car class 345 trains on the eastern side (Liverpool St – Shenfield). Therefore I am fairly sure this function isn’t available in 7-car trains. The class 345 trains on the Hayes & Harlington – Paddington service are merely 7-car trains borrowed from the eastern side. So I very much doubt there is any SDO capability at present. Of course the class 360 are only 5-car trains so don’t need SDO to call at Hanwell.
It should be possible to add SDO by means of a software upgrade. I suspect there is no way Bombardier are going to risk the functionality of the 7-car trains they already have running by implementing a major software upgrade for the sake of one station.
This was one reason that not having 9-car trains on the western side meant that less was being tested. What I fear is that it was assumed that they could port the later software from the class 710 trains tested and operating successfully on the Gospel Oak -Barking line. And we all know the actual state of that don’t we?
Re Dave Newsome,
To add some detail to what PoP has said:
The 7 car do have SDO but it only included some requirements that would exist long term i.e. after conversion to 9 car that were know about very early on and needed to test functionality e.g. centre doors not opening on some platforms at Paddington due to platform curvature and hence stepping distance issues.
The original (and still current plan) was that the 7 car units would be swapped with 9 car this summer and then the 7 cars converted to 9 car aligning with the Liverpool Street platform works. Hence they don’t want to make any software changes to 7 car units (unless they really have to as it diverts effort from elsewhere).
Software changes (including on the Aventras) are normally batched up to make regression testing easier hence the Hanwell SDO will be probably be in a lower priority batch.
The software changes on the 9 car units are currently focused on getting core signalling issues addressed rather than issues with Western area services running e.g. Heathrow ETCS issues have been de-prioritised (see above article and comments) and I’d expect Western SDO issues to be sorted at the same time as “Heathrow”.
@NGH
“centre doors not opening on some platforms at Paddington due to platform curvature and hence stepping distance issues.”
I thought all new platforms had to be straight to prevent precisely this problem. Is that incorrect?
Or are you referring to existing high-level platforms? (platforms which, I think, will not be used during normal operation once the system is fully operational)
Re DJL,
The later: the existing high level ones (long term irregular use only)
ngh,
Not so. They will be regularly used for timetabled services first thing in the morning and last thing at night to provide a Heathrow service at both ends of the day when the tunnels will be closed for engineering and maintenance.
If timetabled then, almost by definition, it has to be regular. Infrequent, maybe.
Re PoP,
I include provision of engineering access / disruption elsewhere as irregular (in the same category as P3/6 at London Bridge occasionally seeing Thameslink trains.
With reference to the PEDs system integration issues I hope they do better than the original Jubilee Line System. This tried to communicate with the PEDs when it stopped at a platform and if it received no reply the train assumed that it was at a platform (the majority) without PEDs. As a result the train doors opened leaving the PEDs closed. This had two impacts
1: People would stand in the doorways expecting the PEDs to open and the train operator would then attempt to get the PEDs to open by first closing the triain doors – this resulted in quite a lot of people being hit around the head by the train doors.
2: Some passengers would use the emergency open handles on the train side of the PEDs to open the doors. As the train was not communicating with the PEDs this was not detected by the PEDs and could result in the train departing with some PEDs doors open. I seem to remember that there was an indicator light on the trackside but it was not very obvious to the train operator and a number missed it resulting in trains departing with some PEDs open.
If there are any JLE PEDs experts here from what I remember there was no automatic close if a train departed – the doors would remain open till the next train arrived – is that correct ?
It is this sort of thing that makes the system specification and integration quite challenging. It would have been better for the non-PED equipped platforms to communicate this with the train but that was not how the system was designed.
I don’t think I have missed a post pointing this news item out.
Porterbrook announced on January 22nd that they have ‘signed a contract with Bombardier Transportation to fit digital signalling equipment and complete specialist on-board conversions to Class 387 trains set to serve the Heathrow Express rail link.’ and that ‘The work will be completed by December 2019,’.
https://www.porterbrook.co.uk/news/post.php?s=2019-01-22-porterbrook-makes-new-digital-trains-a-reality-for-heathrow-express
So now we have a fuller picture and yet another date to look forward with wonder.
For those who enjoy wading through pages of redacted text TfL has now published the two KPMG reviews on Crossrail’s Finances and Governance Arrangements. They are weighty documents and not easy to read (very dry).
https://tfl.gov.uk/corporate/publications-and-reports/crossrail-project-updates
I dare say JB or others may follow up on these so good luck to them in finding the juicy bits!
‘Juicy bits’ in the Standard
The KMPG report was the basis upon which the Department for Transport granted an extra £2 billion of loans and cash. KPMG had calculated that an extra £1.6 billion to £2 billion was needed. But today it emerged that there was only an “80 per cent likelihood” of the maximum figure being accurate.
A Transport for London spokeswoman today said there was contingency to increase the budget by up to £2.45 billion if necessary.
The KPMG report, which has key sections blacked out, said costs were soaring primarily as a result of problems completing the 10 new stations.
This had “significant potential” to affect the project’s final cost. Bond Street and Whitechapel stations are known to be particularly problematic.
The “single most significant impact” on the final cost will be the time it takes to “demobilise” the army of contractors working on stations, KPMG added.
Aleks
Bond Street and Whitechapel stations are known to be particularly problematic.
Do we have any idea why this is so, in specific terms?
Electronic comms? Really “tight” working conditions? Previous contractors not operating properly? Legal/safety issues, such as fire alarms/escapes/precautions? Something else?
And, of course, again … how ( never mind why ) was it allowed to get into this mess in the first place?
@GT it’s speculation until we get reports.
Some 10 months ago we had news that the construction of Bond Street, Paddington, Liverpool Street and Woolwich stations was running worryingly late, so much so that planned public Open Days were cancelled. Those were the last scheduled events for the Crossrail PR team, the intention was that TfL would take over for the launches.
Bond Street was the first site inspected by Mark Wild & Mike Brown so we have the video.
Whitechapel is a little surprising though constrained and complicated. It had the power issue, it’s also a junction, the passageways and site constraints are tight, and they are rebuilding former entrances.
My feeling is that as the money ran out fewer teams were making progress.
If testing had begun in the middle of January as announced surely some news would have emerged.
@RAYJAYK – A notable extract from your linked article:
https://www.porterbrook.co.uk/news/post.php?s=2019-01-22-porterbrook-makes-new-digital-trains-a-reality-for-heathrow-express
“Fitment of digital signalling to the Class 387 trains for use on the Heathrow Express route will result in ‘type approval’ from the Office of Rail and Road, enabling ETCS to be fitted to all Electrostar fleets.”
The various Electrostar fleets have similar computer systems on board and, along with the cab desk layout, these are already designed specifically to be ‘ETCS ready’ so I have no great reservations about this work. As NGH has explained previously, under the hood the on board computer systems are largely the same as employed on the same manufacturer’s new cl.345 Aventras, so lessons learned on those trains should be transferable. The main concern is to be able to test the units on ETCS in the airport tunnel railway. With the difficulties encountered so far with Aventras operating reliably under ETCS while GW-ATP is still active, so the same issue is likely to be encountered with the Electrostars.
My suggestion for allowing comprehensive testing to take place with both Electrostars and Aventras in the tunnels on ETCS before service introduction would be to install a temporary remote control switching system in the tunnel equipment cabinets to allow widespread isolation of the GW-ATP equipment quickly for overnight testing, then quick and reliable restoration to use in the morning for start of the next day’s service. As is typical with train protection systems, there was no remote isolation system designed into the system originally as there was no scenario envisaged where this would be necessary. To power down the system, many individual equipment cabinets have to be visited in the tunnels to remove supply fuses, then all restored and verified again in the morning again before the next day’s service.
Mark: An apparent difficulty with your idea (from a very inexpert viewpoint) would be the elapsed time required to design, manufacture and test such a remote switching system. Particularly the testing and proving safe.
What are we to make of ALEKS, 25 Jan 23:42:
“The “single most significant impact” on the final cost will be the time it takes to “demobilise” the army of contractors working on stations, KPMG added.”??
Surely all the contracts included the standard clauses about finishing off and leaving The Site clear for the Employer? Why should it cost anything to ‘demobilise’ them?
As one of the taxpayers financing this I would expect something a little more positive, such as:
For each completed contract the amount of over or underspend (presumably redacted and only the grand total visible).
For each uncompleted contract the amount owed due to additional work ordered, and either the amount of any damages due from the contractor for delayed completion that’s his responsibility, or the amount he is owed due to delays that are the Employer’s responsibility (probably due to other contractors who’s damages probably won’t cover the additional costs). Again, redacted and only totals published.
If the project was being well managed is that so hard to do? Or is no one actually in control?
@MALCOLM – Good point, but such a system could offer significant value in reducing the number of staff required to isolate and restore the GW-ATP when required for ETCS testing so might be worth . It would be relatively simple in concept and could be fast-tracked in design and installation. There would be the dreaded system compatibility issues to consider no doubt with the harsh EMC conditions in the tunnels. The last thing wanted would be for the ATP signal to actually trigger a false isolation of itself!
An alternative much simpler idea could be to put a simple manual isolation switch on the outside of each equipment cabinet operated by a key. Thus a smaller number of staff could walk or trolley through the tunnels at the start and finish of each testing shift and very quickly isolate or restore the ATP equipment. A simple mechanical switch would be much easier to demonstrate as safe and reliable. Some sort of key counting or interlock system might be used to confirm all transponders were reconnected before handing the track back into regular operations. Whatever solution was adopted, it would be sensible to have a cl.332 unit available for an empty test run around the tunnel network following a test period to ensure all ATP is working properly again, and give time to fix any problems before the start of normal service.
@ RogerB
I have had a look through the report, and as far as I can understand, ‘demobilise’ seems to be an unnecessarily roundabout way of saying ‘getting the contracts finished’. I may be wrong though
@RogerB the redacted report released by TfL was conducted by KPMG last summer. The situation has moved on and finances deteriorated so 20% may now be 100%.
Work on the project has slowed as contractors had “little money to make” by finishing the job under the original contract terms. Lucrative one-off payments are to be thrown at contractors to incentivise them to “pick up the pace” of works.
Chief executive Mark Wild said it could take up to three years to fully complete the project.
The NEC3 form of contract used to promote collaboration has not given client Crossrail Ltd enough “clout” to force contractors to perform.
“There simply are not enough people on site as they [contractors] are not making enough money to finish the job off and can make much more money going elsewhere and so that is what they are doing.”
All stations are now expected to be completed by the summer, with the exception of Bond Street station which is likely to take much longer.
The whole dis-integration of the programme makes is quite difficult to unravel just where accountability [for delays] lies.
Wild confirmed that none of the line’s central stations have yet been completed while crucial dynamic testing of trains and signalling systems has yet to begin in earnest after a series of ineffective tests in 2018.
Revised plans will be tabled to the TfL board this month. “The precise sequence is difficult: you’ve got to go to every single contractor, every subcontractor.”
Referencing a meeting held in August to flush out ideas, Wild said: “Siemens, Bombardier, Costain/Skanska, Balfour Beatty – they are the people actually delivering the work. They were asked if they had any ideas. It became clear they didn’t.”
source https://www.newcivilengineer.com/latest/exclusive-crossrail-to-pay-contractors-lump-sums-to-finish-job/10038800.article
@Herned – usually in engineering speak, mobilise and its antonym, demobilise, describe the process of setting up the plant on site ready to do the work, and contrarywise. Although this a critical process, it usually doesn’t take a lot of time, even if it requires careful planning weeks or months in advance. That makes it all the more puzzling as a source of major delay in completing station works, as here. Perhaps they meant our old friend, systems integration?
Work on the project has slowed as contractors had “little money to make” by finishing the job under the original contract terms.
And so they follow the money and go elsewhere.
Former maintenance firm Tube Lines was believed to quite blatantly do a financial calculation and calculate the cost to them of overrunning engineering works carried out by them. If this was less than the cost of having to go back a second time to complete the job then they would let the works overrun – regardless of inconvenience to the travelling public.
The person in charge of Tube Lines? One (then) Terry Morgan, now Sir Terry Morgan ex-chairman of Crossrail. So he should have had an inkling this is what would happen if the contracts weren’t very carefully written.
@ Graham H
Yes… however, the way the report seems say that demobilisation is the risk, but what they mean when you read the detail is that the risk is getting to the point of demobilisation i.e. contractors finishing their tasks, rather than the actual demobilisation itself
@ Aleks
The KPMG report released this week includes data up to December
@Herned – “The findings and recommendations presented in this report reflect fieldwork which concluded on Friday 7 December 2018.
The outturn cost which will actually be achieved critically depends on:
• The extent to which appropriate steps are rapidly taken by Sponsors and CRL to address the issues covered in this report, and in our related governance report, which are the basis for our recommendations provided to Sponsors for consideration; and
• Whether additional significant risks materialise which have a material impact and which have not already been identified by CRL within its RAP 2 document. ”
* RAP Remedial Action Plan
* RAP 1 (superseded) proposed programme showing the Stage 3 opening in July 2019
* RAP 2 update on 2 October 2018 -Start dynamic testing 06/01/19 ; Commence Trial Running 31/08/19 ; Stage 3 Open 31/12/19 (KPMG pdf Pg 126 print pg 117)
Mark Wild’s recent assessments are that the present condition is worse than assumed in RAP2. The language of ‘lucrative incentives’ being thrown around may conflict with financial governance. If KPMG are to monitor controls to completion that will itself generate high fees. Evaluation and investigation of the completed scheme will likely be years for performance and control assessment prior to any future project design.
All the attention of the past year is on funding and opening Stage 3. Half the legacy stations do not even have appointed contractors.
KPMG “We reviewed the Sponsor Funding Account (SFA) balance calculations (i.e. additional funding requirements) in CRL’s RAP 2 Model. As we would expect, the calculations do not include NR ONW, full rolling stock22 or the Old Oak depot cost.”
NR are picking up the tab for the 4 largest rebuilds but accessibility and refurbishment are on TfL.
KPMG “CRL advised of a recent spike in accruals (i.e. costs incurred but not yet paid out).
The headcount reduction in CRL’s finance department due to the planned demobilisation has led to some weaknesses in financial processes and controls.
CRL’s finance department currently has insufficient resources to ensure effective financial control until the completion of the programme.
CRL did not intend to prepare a business plan for 2019_20.
The CRL Audit Committee met for the last time in June 2018 and was in effect disbanded in July 2018.
The CRL Board continued, until relatively recently, to pursue a pre-planned demobilisation of central resources around a December 2018 Stage 3 opening.”
This may be a stupid question, but if I understand correctly it seems a lot of the delays with Crossrail is due to the testing of the new signalling equipment with the new trains. If that’s the case, why bother use ECTS anyway? Isn’t the older, existing signalling system enough?
Greg Tingey,
What would proving it achieve? The fact is whenever you rely on contractual arrangements there will be people or firms who only regard their obligation to do what is in the contract and will happily not do some of the work if there isn’t sufficient incentive to do it.
On the Northern line, a lot of staff complain there are still (non-safety-critical) glitches in the ATO system that haven’t been fixed. But the signalling performs to specification and provides the requisite number of trains per hour. One suspects they will never be fixed unless London Underground coughs up money for them to be sorted out. None of this is helped by the fact that London Underground probably needs its suppliers far more than its suppliers need London Underground – and with very limited competition between firms that can actually supply the goods and get them to work you don’t really want to shut one of them out.
What really gets me about all this is that I have had my house extended twice and completely understand all most of these issues as they apply equally to small projects. Problems with the contractor getting suitable staff, not in any hurry to finish the job because they have most of the money and another job to start, not understanding (or caring) about simple system integration and the importance of doing things in the right order and testing them before the next stage – I have seen it all. You don’t need years of experience in the trade to understand most of these problems. Needless to say the second extension went a lot better than the first because I understood the issues and was able to look out for them and either prevent them or mitigate against them.
Greg Tingey,
Should add …
Oversee a project yourself and there comes a point where you stop thinking about how much is complete and start thinking about how much there is still to do. Personally I do this when it is around 70% i.e. substantially over halfway when you can see the end in sight. I note that Crossrail always referred to xx% complete and never yy% still left to do. I wonder if, subconsciously, that gave them the wrong mindset and made them think about what they had achieved* rather than focus on what needed to be done.
* and ngh has pointed out to me that Crossrail seemed to measure progress by how much of the total had already been spent. You definitely don’t want to adopt that attitude with your builder or he will front-load your bills to indicate he is making progress and reduce his exposure when he walks off the job.
It is worth just noting that the Jan 19 Crossrail update to the London Assembly lists the stations and dates where construction demobilisation has been achieved. It also confirms that dynamic testing of the trains and signalling in the core has recommenced. It shows that some progress is being made but obviously there is a lot more to do.
On the points raised about governance I do find it odd that TfL has been rather quiet about things like Crossrail’s audit committees being scaled back etc. There were repeated papers to the TfL Board about Crossrail’s central resources being scaled back with activity being transferred to TfL to ensure oversight was continued. Did these transfers take place? Did TfL have adequate resources in place to continue the transferred activities? Did its own reorganisation of “central directorates” also pose an issue about resource levels? These are also legitimate questions which I am very surprised no one seems to be asking.
On the wider points about financial control I am somewhat amazed (my naiviety no doubt showing again) that people are now saying NEC forms of contract were not managed properly or were somehow inadequate. They do need a decent level of resource to run them properly so I wonder if there was a view that such resource was not needed or that those in post didn’t do their jobs effectively. You also need a commitment from the contractor to be open about progress or lack thereof and also a refusal to take on extra scope with supporting paperwork and prices / money. Makes me wonder how Crossrail survived for nearly a decade if things were as bad as is now being said.
Dear ALEKS. Thank you for all your digging.
The first thing that worried me was KPMG’s “The precise sequence is difficult: you’ve got to go to every single contractor, every subcontractor.” There is no point in talking to subcontractors, that will simply muddy the water. They will say all sorts of things that have no contractual significance.
The second one was “CRL’s finance department currently has insufficient resources to ensure effective financial control until the completion of the programme.” So they admit they weren’t managing it properly, and I still suspect that payments will have been made that shouldn’t have been, which is why contractors have no incentive to complete.
Unfortunately it’s unlikely there will be enough people in KPMG with experience of running engineering contracts to get to the bottom of it all.
@MarkTownsend; I tend to agree with the concept that re Heathrow Tunnels if he clever Plan A concept of a software based filter doesn’t allow ETCS testing in the tunnel with live GW-ATP sat idle alongside then temporary power down of the ATP Transmitter may be the way forward.
However, as a critical item of the vital signalling system introducing another system to locally disable the ATP transmitter (or another component part of the ATP system) introduces the potential of more safety approvals, both with the concept and the execution / equipment type approval.
Whichever solution is eventually adopted a likely requirement is going to be access to install an interface between the control method and the ATP kit. The solution to the former surely lies in the existing interlocking and its trackside interface? No concerns with equipment safety approvals and limited new equipment installation should be achievable hence problems of finding space in tunnels is resolved. The downside is that the methodology would need approval which is not rocket science. There shouldn’t be a shortage of resource to do the work with a sense of willing co-operation from the signalling system suppliers (which won’t be Siemens) and the work itself could be done in a matter of a few weeks once commenced, given prompt access to the tunnels.
Nevertheless, I guess they’ll be pinning all their hopes on a slick and elegant software solution to resolve it. The question is I guess; if plan A doesn’t work how many Plan A+’s will they try before moving to plan B I wonder?
@WW http://content.tfl.gov.uk/january-2019.pdf
None of those locations were on the ‘of concern’ list.
The principal focus of our planning for the completion of stations, shafts and portals
has been to determine dates for Tier 1 Substantial Demobilisation (TOSD).
The TOSD date defines when the Tier 1 contractors will have finished the vast
majority of the physical works to the extent that the workforce can be demobilised
(the principal driver of cost).
Farringdon (21 December 2018),
Woolwich (19 December 2018),
Custom House (21 December),
Shafts and portals:
Pudding Mill Lane (31 October 2018),
Connaught Tunnel (15 October 2018),
North Woolwich (9 November 2018),
Victoria Dock (30 November 2018),
Mile End (7 December 2018) .
The rolling stock, signalling software and rail infrastructure have all been assessed as ready for planned Main Dynamic Testing (MDT).
@RogerB not too much digging just joining some dots. KPMG would not be asked to consider engineering or make judgements about completion certificates. They were looking at the status of the programme in September 2018 not how it had been run in the past. Being moderately generous the assumption is that the programme had indeed been well run for a decade. The management bonuses may have been supported by criteria but should they have all been paid out prior to completion? To lose significant elements of the team complicates extending for over-runs. No one took control early enough to prevent employment contracts ending or even continue to fund them outside the budget. Indeed parts were following the set run down programme.
Notes previously about ‘demobilisation’
The majority of Crossrail’s heavy lifting and spend is mechanically assisted. The concluding phase is labour intensive – wiring, panelling, testing, systems.
Mark Wild’s quote about the ‘principal driver of cost’ refers to this stage being workforce labour. His budgeting concern is how quickly he can reduce cost lines.
Redrafting “The TOSD date defines when the Tier 1 contractors will have finished the vast
majority of the physical works to the extent that the workforce (the principal driver of cost) can be demobilised. “
14 January 2019 Crossrail chief executive Mark Wild: “The main dynamic testing phase has commenced and is an important step forward for the Crossrail project. Over the next six months we will be testing all the railway’s systems to ensure they are safe and reliable and to identify any faults or software bugs in the very complex systems that are needed to operate the railway. Everyone involved in the project is fully focused on ensuring the Elizabeth Line is completed as quickly as possible and brought into service for passengers.”
The dynamic testing programme was due to start in November 2017. In the first week, two test trains will operate – the first between Pudding Mill Lane and Paddington and Westbourne Park and the second between Abbey Wood and Canary Wharf. Testing will take place in both the eastbound and westbound tunnels.
After completing this phase the programme will then move into the trial running phase followed by the trial operations phase. Meanwhile “the completion of the rail systems infrastructure in the tunnels remains a key issue and productivity has been disappointing.” Completion of work in tunnels has slowed as testing of trains is given priority.
(apology despite preview pane review that last post displays horribly!)
Re: Heathrow Tunnels.
I would expect the ATP kit to have been designed to withstand power outages. Is the simple answer to cut the power supply. This raises the question of Uninterruptible Power Supplies (UPS). If each piece of kit has its own UPS then cutting the power supply at a major point will not work. Is this is why it has been said that individual fuses must be pulled? It will also not work if the new kit takes its power from the same cables through the tunnels.
The ATP is powered by the signalling supply network. It was designed in from new with the signalling equipment in this application. They need the signalling powered up to test the trains under ETCS.
Like others, I’ve attempted to glean what I can from the the KPMG Financial and Commercial report. In addition to the failings in financial control (Aleks post 27Jan at 11:51 above), I was also interested in the KPMG assertion that project risks have not been adequately recorded or modelled. (Page 52)
“There are some inconsistencies in how risk has been calculated in RAP 1 (remedial action plan) which result in an incomplete assessment of risk.”
and
“In RAP 2, infrastructure risks, dynamic testing risks and catastrophic risks have been modelled together using a Monte Carlo analysis. While this is a reasonable approach for modelling risk generally, the modelling of the high-impact / low-probability risks (strategic risks) in this way results in contingency sums which are far lower than would be required should those risks materialise. This is not an appropriate way to assess these types of strategic risks…”
Not the only time an inappropriate model has been used. Relying on Monte Carlo simulation to model risks when that is not an appropriate tool was also one of the issues in the Banking Crisis a decade ago….
@ GINGERTOM – remote isolation relays over the SSI could work, and might be easy where spare outputs are available on existing trackside functional modules. Some locations might need additional TFMs. Not sure I’d want to give the signaller control over this though. It would be like having the ability to turn off the signal lamps!
Re: Heathrow Tunnels.
Why not wait until we have the new trains which use the new signalling system and then just rip out ATP. Bus the airport passengers while the new signalling is installed and tested. Surely it wouldn’t take more than a week or two, would it? And it would surely be the cheapest option.
RE: ANECONSPEAKS
Simply because it needs testing beforehand as there is no guarantee that it can be got working quickly when the almost inevitable unforeseen problems reveal themselves.
Does this make it official – RAP2 is dead and Dec 2020 may not be possible.
Mark Wild “I can’t see how this job can be delivered in calendar year 2019, I don’t actually know when it will be delivered after that.”
It came as one figure close to the project warned it could be “two or three years” before services are running fully through the central section between Abbey Wood and Paddington.
The Transport for London board was told yesterday by the new Crossrail chairman Tony Meggs “We still don’t have absolute clarity with exactly where we are. We still don’t know what we need to know.”
Mr Wild said morale had dropped “off the cliff”, and he was “less certain” how long it would take to complete the nine “huge” new stations, with Paddington, Whitechapel and Tottenham Court Road among those with the biggest problems.
This is quite bewildering. It does look as though Crossrail management were paying themselves those hefty bonuses while not actually managing the project.
Are they now saying that not all the work had been tendered, and that contracts still need to be drawn up? If so how could they have announced a December 2018 completion?
If, on the other hand, all the contracts had been let then surely someone had a big Gantt chart somewhere that showed all the dependencies and ‘what they need to know’?
@RogerB : They did not announce a December 2018 completion rather that was set at the commencement of the project. They had been working towards it and ran out of time.
Projects run over budget because they are set with tight constraints as control.
As for ‘a’ chart Mr Wild said: “There are 60,000 individual items on Crossrail that need controlling and integrating. The task is huge. I still don’t have an opening date for you.”
Mr Khan, as chairman of TfL said the details being provided by Mr Wild was “one million miles from what we received in the past”.
George Osborne as editor of The Standard right now we have drift where we need focus.
Deep under London’s streets, thousands of Crossrail workers are trying to put together the pieces and get it open. They need all the help those at the top can give them.
Why would Osborne know anything?
@ALEKS No they did not. They announced a 2017 completion date as work began in 2009. The overall budget reduction of £1billion in 2010 eventually forced by 2011 the revised date of December 2018. Thus the latter was announced, and solidly adhered to for almost seven years until August 2018.
Good notes, we also had opening dates for Fleet Line and Thameslink 2000. No one is booking tickets for HS2/CR2. ‘Opening’ dates should be made when systems are progressing in testing, budget targets are outlines.
Wild’s stance of let’s see where we are, what needs to be done and how long it will take sounds like a plan.
I’m sorry Mr Wild, Microsoft Project can manage 400,000 tasks, given enough memory.(Specifications for Microsoft Project, Project 2010 Project Standard 2010).
Why isn’t someone managing it?
(Let’s hope ‘Latest date allowed for calculation’ isn’t a constraint – December 31, 2049)
@ALEKS
It’s probably worth remembering that the Liz Line can only start/change on one of these dates:
2019 Sunday 09 December
2019 Sunday 17 May 2020
2020 Sunday 15 December,
2020 Sunday 16 May 2021
2021 Sunday 13 December,
2021 Sunday 15 May 2022
2022 Sunday 12 December,
These are the already-fixed dates for train timetable changes published by Network Rail Capacity Planning.
Crossrail boss Mark Wild said: “I can’t see how this [completely finished] job can be delivered in calendar year 2019.”
Logic suggest that the main constraint to having *any* Crossrail service is at Paddington “lower level”, because most of the planned services terminate there.
If the trains and signals are working (and tested) it would be technically possible to run an Abbey Wood to Paddington service and back whilst not letting out passengers at any other stations.
If you take Paddington lower level as operational, the next logical step is to run the Shenfield to Paddington service this way. However, this means the next station needed to be operational is Liverpool Street, as the TfL Rail trains stop there now.
So, with Liverpool Street and Paddington open, the trains could run the full schedule of services, with the exception of the Heathrow ones: until then those trains would need to start from Paddington High Level to use the current old stock. But the trains to Reading could run and call at Paddington, Liverpool Street and go to Abbey Wood as planned.
I understand that Canary Wharf is “finished”, so any Abbey Wood trains can then call there. Abbey Wood -> Canary Wharf -> Liverpool Street -> Paddington -> Reading would at least be a useful service!
This “outline” service would then be able to add in the missing stations on any date, as the timetable wouldn’t need changes. This might release the pressure on TfL and the Mayor.
Clearly Whitechapel, Farrindon, TCR, Bond Street and Heathrow are vital the the service in the longer run, but trains just pausing there for the next year or so would be better than the current nothing.
The timetable dates are from here
https://cdn.networkrail.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/Calendar-of-Milestone-dates-2020-Principal-timetable.pdf
And should have read
Year 2019 Principal Change Sunday 09 December 2018 Subsidiary Change Sunday 19 May 2019
Year 2020 Principal Change Sunday 15 December 2019 Subsidiary Change Sunday 17 May 2020
Year 2021 Principal Change Sunday 13 December 2020 Subsidiary Change Sunday 16 May 2021
Year 2022 Principal Change Sunday 12 December 2021 Subsidiary Change Sunday 15 May 2022
RogerB 31 January 2019 at 21:48
What’s the formula relating 60,000 items to up to 400,000 tasks?
Even I know that an item has to be made, delivered, moved within a complex and part-built station, fitted, tested, paid for and work with other items. So with the benefit of A level Physics and Maths (rather a long time ago) I’ve guesstimated 7+ tasks per item. 7 x60,000 = 420,000.
@BB
Abbey Wood – Paddington low level is self-contained, so it should be possible to start it up at any suitable time, not be constrained by ORR timetable change dates.
Re Timbeau and Brian,
Agree on the flexibility on timing of starting up Abbey Wood – Paddington LL
But they are plenty of issues:
a) All the underground station act as evacuation points so they would have to be ready enough to handle this (which would then slow down completion of the rest off the outstanding station works)
b) Paddington is one of the stations with the most outstanding work to complete.
c) tuenback Fro Canary Wharf – Custom House – Abbey Wood is tricky unless is run as a very infrequent service
d) Over 90% of CR Pax in the first full operating year are expected to be those transferring from existing other services in some form (~75% current TfL).
e) Overall TfL fares turnover and revenue impact wise (first full operating year) the gains come from taking over GWR stopping /S-F services from Paddington to Reading circa 40m pax journey per year and circa 13m pax p.a. from SE at Abbey Wood and Woolwich otherwise it is just canabalisation from other currently TfL run services.
Hence the big revenue priority for TfL is getting the non TfL services into the fold, hence the main focus should be GWR to Paddington HL services transferred in this December and this doesn’t impact getting the core stations finished or core testing, The secondary impact is getting some kind of Abbey Wood service going.
The GWR Pax numbers are 3x SE and the average GWR fare is 80+% higher than the SE ones (and mostly excluded from the fare freeze so the GWR revenue bonus for TfL is about 5.5x the SE one.
9car 345s from Reading (and hopefully Heathrow branch too) to Paddington from this December is the biggest item by a long way TfL need to focus on as regards Crossrail net income, conveniently it also doesn’t get in the way of core finishing testing and opening.
@MarkTownend Signallers are trusted to reset axle counters! (yes I know there procedure and design features which mitigate reset under a train) but you get my drift. Indeed any signaller initiated ATP isolation could also require an associated second stage control which unless activated as well would prevent route setting from key signals in the tunnel.
Alternatively and also to avoid IECC alterations to facilitate the ‘control(s) it should be possible to restrict the ATP isolation to a technicians / signalling tester enabled control from the interlocking terminal. I agree availability of suitable spare outputs from the trackside modules is a prerequisite. However, IF all else fails these sort of issues pale into insignificance I’d suggest.
That said, while live ATP interferes with ETCS kit can we assume the opposite isn’t true? Is ETCS powered down during normal working in its uncommissioned state?
@ngh – It may be significant that Mark Wild specified Canary Wharf to Abbey Wood for testing. Maybe for the potential revenue gain to TfL or just because that self-contained section is closer to being ready.
c) tuenback Fro Canary Wharf – Custom House – Abbey Wood is tricky unless is run as a very infrequent service
Woolwich is also ready. Journey time from Abbey Wood to Wharf is 11 minutes. Even running two trains in separate tunnel shuttles with turn-arounds gives 1.5 turns per hour.
So alternating 20 minute service of 3tph of 200m trains should be sufficient for the loading without the City-w/e-Heathrow-Thames Valley constituent.
(That pattern would have alternating platform direction but they are all island platforms.)
If a higher peak capacity is required then using the Custom House cross-over it should be possible to achieve 6tph. The trip to Canary Wharf is 3 minutes.
As you say running to Paddington HL and serving the Wharf gives TfL most of the revenue.
My caveat is that the overcrowding and inconvenience is suppressing travel. The excluded constituents for the time being use other carriers.
Also the loadings past Slough are likely to be low most of the day over relatively high mileages (maintenance and access charges) so the revenue may not contribute much surplus towards capital overspend.
The Abbey Wood shuttle should be given serious consideration as it would be the start of a genuine part of the Elizabeth Line and help the cause of raising more funding to finish the rest. It is the only route section not paralleling an alternative. It delivers a service to the Canary Wharf sponsor. It builds operational experience for future stages,
Abbey Wood section is also self-contained so a soft start is possible like early Thameslink with daytime trial public runs. There is no timetabling impact. Peak demand will not overload the system like it would if also trying to serve the City and West End.
An Abbey Wood-CW operation would also leave the core clear for the longer testing programme required when those stations are finished. TCR is a new addition to the list of problem sites.
Re Aleks,
You are over reading into things, Mark Wild also specified Paddington – Pudding Mill Lane for the other initial test train the simple reason is that you don’t have to worry about the interlocking at Stepney Green Jn being functional for basic testing.
( More importantly Tfl / CRL also needs to worry about the logistics of the summer Liverpool Street works and running service which is far more mind focusing to them than Abbey Wood to Canary opening which you seem to be obsessed by, just for the sake of new infrastructure opening while ignoring financial realities)
Woolwich isn’t finished just handed over, there is a massive difference.
TCR isn’t a new addition to the problem station list, it has been on it for at least 2 years especially the new western entrance.
The borrowing is arranged so there is no need to open something just for fundraising purposes.
A minimum of 6tph would be need to cope with expected peak loading on Abbey Wood – Canary hence the quandary difficult to operate at the required level standalone and relatively low revenue.
The less prestigious GWR service take over is actually the big revenue prize.
Modelling suggests suppressed demand on non existing Tfl (inc bus) or NR modes isn’t worth worrying about till everything is fully open and settled down for a good year and still small revenue wise than either GWR or SE abstraction. Existing LU / DLR and NR service users are expected to be far quicker to change usage patterns.
This is probably a question directed mostly at ngh but nothing to stop others “in the know” responding too.
I am slightly conflicted by the “doom and gloom” that we’re hearing via media outlets as it seems somewhat contrary to earlier more measured remarks by Mark White. Are we being given a “under promise, over deliver” bit of “spin” or are things markedly worse now than they were even 3 months ago? We seem to be going backwards in terms of “progress” or is this just the result of robustly challenging the state of work actually done, errors / faults found and realising a load of work is outstanding and thus has to be programmed and resourced. To hear that *construction* work is behind schedule at Paddington is somewhat concerning when Mark White’s previous construction related remarks were focussed more on Bond St and Whitechapel.
I agree with ngh’s assessment that grabbing the GWR stopping services in December has to be a priority for TfL. It brings in money but it also facilitates a number of solutions for other parties so it’s likely to meet least resistance provided TfL can resource the service properly and reliably.
Crossrail chair Tony Meggs sitting in on his first Crossrail board meeting discussed four priorities for the board moving forward which included:
– A proper plan that is robust affordable deliverable
– To enhance the government’s regime
– Rapid grip on program costs – ensuring that money is spent prudently
– Creating an open and transparent relationship with stakeholders and sponsors. In a bid to rebuild trust that has been “eroded” over the last few months.
Wild said dynamic testing starting on 14 January for four whole days was going “brilliantly” and that stopping accuracy had improved massively. According to Wild, teams have many weeks and months of more testing ahead as contractors aim to reach the “highest marks of safety and reliability”. Work will then continue to improve maturity and build up to a stage where four trains run closely together.
The “orange army” of 6,000-7,000 workers is costing Crossrail £30m a week with productivity said to be low. But demobilisation had begun most notably at Woolwich and Farringdon to bring down spending costs. Only when this is done, can work progress on the complex integration work between stations, Wild claimed.
from http://www.infrastructure-intelligence.com/article/feb-2019/crossrail-won’t-open-year-and-staff-morale-has-“gone-cliff”-new-boss-says
@Aleks
I presume you mean (in the second priority) ‘to enhance the governance regime’. I strongly suspect that enhancing the government’s [sic] regime is beyond any human endeavour at the present.
@ Aleks – having read that linked article I can see that we’re not really any further ahead than what was said by Mssrs White and Beggs to the London Assembly Transport Cttee a few weeks back. 95% of the remarks are the same and while getting the test trains running is a small step forward it’s not much of an advance really. Still think the coverage in the Standard is not getting us anywhere in terms of genuine understanding. Feels like a bit of a “smoke screen” to me.
Of course, one has no idea about how accurately Mr Wild’s statements are being reported, but if the reports are accurate it doesn’t inspire confidence. He is trying to make it sound as if stopping at platform edge doors and running four trains at once is groundbreaking technology.
Can I have one of those 4,000 plus pounds a week jobs?
@QUINLET Your interpretation sounds correct. I suspect meetings are being audio recorded with auto-text transcription. Crossrail disbanded their corporate
communications team last summer. The new leadership is rebuilding a structure with hopefully better disclosure. At a time where media is devalued less journalism remains.
Even when TfL managers make statements and London has world leading technology implementations it is a trawl to locate a point of publication.
The KPMG Review found that the Crossrail Board last year lacked the necessary skills and experience to ensure effective decision making and appropriate challenge.
@WW Media reports about the budget and programme issues hitting Crossrail, which Wild labelled as “very fair”, were part of the reason for the lack of motivation.
Wild said: “The most important thing is that they [Crossrail staff] are given the platform to succeed. My job is to corral people. It’s my job to engage them and push them on.”
Wild said the new leadership team was going through the project with a “fine-tooth comb”.
@ROGERB Note that TfL’s January board meeting said finishing the tunnels was still a significant problem with ’disappointing’ efficiency rates.
At the Inquiry on 10 January 2019 held by the London Assembly’s transport committee chief executive Mark Wild said: “None of the stations could have been ready for December. None of them.” The boss of Crossrail admitted the £17bn scheme is so far behind schedule that none of the stations on the central section of the line would have been anywhere near ready in time for last month’s original opening date. Wild, who took over as chief executive in November, said there had been a lack of understanding of the “enormous” amount of work remaining by the leadership of Crossrail.
“It is clear to me at that time [July 2018] we really didn’t have a clear understanding of the work to do to make this an operational railway. I don’t think one person has hidden anything, I don’t think there has been any lack of transparency I think what’s happened is the enormity and complexity of Crossrail was not fully understood.”
Former chief executive Simon Wright left after just eight months in the job.
Aleks,
To some extent I think that is the heart of the problem. Crossrail was seen as a construction project not a project to build a modern operational railway. It seems to be a common mistake in this country yet abroad they totally get it. Look at the new Gotthard base tunnel and the amount of time allowed for fitting out with railway works and for testing. In this country I don’t think we generally understand that the timescale is years not months.
At least on the East London Line extension to Clapham Junction they had a full six months of testing and preparing for operational readiness – though I strongly suspect that was dictated by the need to wait for the timetable change rather than a full appreciation of what’s involved. For Crossrail, a massively bigger scheme they seemed to have only allowed a year and when that got eaten into because of a transformer explosion they still thought they could do it.
What none of this explains is why some of the basic construction is not ready (like the tunnel walkways, allegedly). Construction was supposed to be the thing that Crossrail was good at and understood.
Re PoP,
A common mistake abroad too, the Berlin Brandenburg Airport saga got really messy (from delay to we have no idea) when the German rail regulator started asking all the right questions as a knowledgeable 3rd Party with the ability not to sign off on opening… At which point the “emperor” could no longer claim he had any clothes on. [Fully integrated railway station]
Before that point there was a “we can get this sorted attitude” exactly like Crossrail until someone took the kool-ade away.
Crossrail isn’t any where in the Brandenburg league screw up territory though.
@PoP agreeing with your comment reading through and then the punch line. The construction too was/is underestimated. In all the TV and foreign comparisons it was always the scale of construction TBMs/soil/land reclamation that was emphasised. Many observers would probably think laying the rails afterwards was the easy bit.
Patricia Moore Turner & Townsend’s first female managing director of its UK business appointed last March has hailed the changes at the top of Crossrail in order to get the late-running scheme completed adding the scheme was one of the “most challenging construction projects that we’ve seen in this country”.
Could it be both ‘sides’ have been underestimating the other?
ngh,
I am not for one moment suggesting that they can’t really screw up a project on the continent. For really spectacular results look at nuclear power stations in France and Finland.
But their screw-ups on the railway tend not to be that great. Brandenberg Airport either wasn’t a railway project or it was and no-one recognised the fact.
Fascinating stuff and lots to learn. In March 1998 the East London Line was reopened after a 3 year closure during which the Brunel Tunnel was completely refurbished, a new signalling system installed and the depot restored. As the lead member of the operating team taking over in March we had been promised 8 weeks of ownership before opening. Four weeks for testing and four weeks for trials. In the end we had 5 days for the lot. We opened on time but it was hectic. And we ran a ropey service for a few weeks afterwards but it wasn’t a meltdown. I was torn between delaying opening for a few weeks or just going for it in order to concentrate minds. We had a lot of political pressure which wasn’t helpful. I can only imagine the pressure on The Crossrail team now.
Mike@FPK,
Thanks for the insight. That could have gone so horribly wrong.
Not wanting to diminish your achievement but at least you presumably had the advantage that it was all tried and tested equipment. The trouble with totally new schemes is they are inevitably always at the cutting edge of technology to get full use out of the scheme.
I think with the original District Line pretty much as soon as construction was finished the Board of Trade inspected it and it opened the next day. Its not like that now!
PoP,
I spent a lot of time with the Railway Inspectorate. The big risks were the new pumps and alarm kit and the new signalling control which was basically a pc in a room in the depot at New Cross rather than Canal Junction signal cabin. The LU engineers who advised me were top notch and I trusted them absolutely. I spent a great deal of time with them also. They convinced me we had adequate redundancy (with regard to the tunnel pumps) and absolute fail safety with regard to the signalling. So we went for it.
I note with interest that a second series of the £15bn Railway is due to broadcast on the BBC on 13 Feb. Should make interesting viewing to see whether anyone was “concerned” (ahem) about progress and how many times “we are opening in Dec 18” is mentioned.
@Aleks
“In all the TV and foreign comparisons it was always the scale of construction TBMs/soil/land reclamation that was emphasised. Many observers would probably think laying the rails afterwards was the easy bit.”
For a project like the Gotthard Base project it probably was – certainly they had no problems fitting out stations!
timbeau,
Oh yes they did! In fact their record is appalling.
Number of stations planned: 1
Number of stations constructed: 0
Number of stations abandoned: 1
Total stations completed for normal passenger use: 0%
Sedrun base station was cancelled as a station in normal use partly because of the sheer logistics of getting passengers to and from the service. The platforms still serve as an emergency exit which was regarded as essential to the project.
@WW 2nd series was in 2017
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt3772482/episodes?season=2&ref_=tt_eps_sn_2
Series 3 Episode 1 of 2 WED 13 FEB 2019 21:00 BBC TWO
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b08ry6fy
this returning series follows the construction workers of Crossrail as they battle to finish the final stages. If Danny can’t complete all of the hundreds of tests needed to prove its safe and reliable, the railway won’t open on time.
The episode ends with the shock news that the team fail to complete the Elizabeth Line on time.
Surprising they did not update the title. I feel for Danny.
Re WW,
“I note with interest that a second series of the £15bn Railway is due to broadcast on the BBC on 13 Feb”
Surely it should be the first series of the £17bn railway? 😉
@MIKE@FPK
Good to hear that it all worked, sort of. ELL passenger volumes recovered within 10 weeks. Which is roughly what TfL might also be desiring, in terms of initial switch in demand, when Crossrail sections or stations open. It is aligning revenue hopes with delivery timescales which is the most critical element now. An unknown timescale currently.
Aleks,
The second series was, rather unfortunately, called ‘The Final Countdown’. Perhaps the final series to be broadcast once it is opened could be called ‘The Final Final Countdown’.
Re Aleks
Given T&T’s record in
[NR CP5 electrification cost estimates and timescales]rail projects may be saying nothing might have been better?Where was this quote from? (It is traditional to cite / link to sources)
@ngh https://www.bdonline.co.uk/news/tandt-boss-backs-crossrail-management-rejig/5097364.article
T&T project managed The Shard. The company was founded in 1946, and to date has 104 offices in 44 countries. They were also contracted to provide cost planning services for Sydney’s North West Rail Link, Hong Kong International Airport’s third runway project, Carmichael coal mine QLD port and rail programme.
Re PoP,
It included the construction of an integrated underground station complete with integrated ventilation system and fire alarms system (the 2 big problems for the airport).
1. The architects and lead engineers had no experience of stations let alone underground ones.
2. They were claiming and people were believing them when they said we can all get this sorted in 6-9 months, the rail regulator disagreed and pointed out the problems were an order of magnitude bigger, later going public when they were ignored.
Integrating fire alarms and ventilation into existing LU stations is an issues for crossrail too but a recognised one.
There is a very good chance Crossrail will be open before the new airport terminal. (Through in the meantime Ryanair designed constructed and opened a new airport terminal at Brandenburg in just 18 months so all the “new” terminal number signs will have to be changed before it opens).
Re Aleks,
Always beware of self promotional articles in places desperate for content.
Construction News or Construction Enquirer (see the levels of anonymous tip offs they get) are usually much nearer the mark and less glowing on average as they will air the emperors laundry and long before anyone else does.
(I do know who T&T are and their track record…) The proposals for Carmichael rail link got binned (in late 2018) and replaced with a cheaper scheme linking to an existing railway network instead.
@NGH – I couldn’t agree more – the simple uncritical repetition of articles from the (trade) press is often valueless and can be misleading. I have written too many press notices for ministers and others which, obviously, merely say what ministers or commercial interests want you to hear. The “why is this b—— lying to me?” criterion should be applied every time. It’s very unfortunate that so much of the trade press in this and other sectors has become merely a product display rack, sometimes thinly disguised as “industry awards” or “people on the move”. One doesn’t have to read them so one doesn’t. But you knew all this anyway.
@ngh – did not see any ‘self’ promotion. She was being supportive of the Xrail management which could be a play for business. The quote was supporting the view of the construction being a challenge as well as operations.
Trade press is partisan but at the moment is the only sector paying attention to project statements as the mainstream media are too distracted elsewhere.
Re Graham H,
I was always taught a good historian casts a critical eye of their sources, the same applies to engineering.
The other thing that gets me on the trade press (and railway consultancies) is the sheer level of copy ‘n’ paste regurgitation of content which is often of dubious provenance. In one item i’m looking at the moment one of the last original bits of work was done was by BR Research (in its dying days) and has been reused as innovative and accurate in a new form every few years since (and internationally too). And the key work before that also still used was done by DB before I was born (again regurgitated frequently). When people understand where the data came from the it has a hair raising effect.
Re Aleks,
I do see self promotion:
1. Picture of CEO
2. Some CEO history
3. CEO statement supporting new management
4. CEO bigs up how “challenging” the project is and then how their firm are helping save the day.
Fairly text book self promotion.
@NGH – same with any discipline really – the important bit of the training is the critiquing of sources and results. That’s what makes this site different and more valuable than mere news sites.
Crossrail recruiting website is active, terms seem limited
http://www.crossrail.co.uk/careers/current-vacancies/crossrail-ltd-vacancies/
Are we still a couple of months from knowing a fuller picture? No further articles until TfL board reports.
Transport for London’s new home is 5 Endeavour Square Stratford and the local property agent has this on their website
“In December 2019 the TfL Rail service will be re-branded as the Elizabeth line as part of the Crossrail project. In May 2020 the Elizabeth line service will be extended beyond Liverpool Street to Paddington, with onward connections from there to Reading and Heathrow Airport.”
possible source office gossip? RAP3? could this be a Liverpool St rebuild target.
Re Alex,
Or just adding a 12 months to all the previous CR dates?
The estate agency business nationally is not good one to be in at the moment, Foxtons have even had to give up their Park Lane office because they couldn’t afford the rent + rates bill.
Hence estate agents will need to be as optimistic as possible about delays to bring in transactions (sales or letting agreements) in this year. Estate agents will get hit by the no tenant fees rules coming in this June so it will be a hard year for them hence the need for any optimism they can get.
NGH
Bankrupt Estate Agents?
PLEASE, pretty please!
Aleks,
You need to get into the London Reconnections habit of treating both obvious and disguised press releases with cynicism and deep questioning. In particular ask yourself why they have deciding to impart the information (or misinformation) given. It is not just Russian underhand operations or dodgy practice in America. Remember Cambridge Analytica and how the web can be manipulated?
As ngh points out, estate agents have particular reason to try and be positive. That gives everyone else all the more reason to be sceptical about them.
When it was announced that the East London Line was going to be extended to West Croydon all the local estate agents promoted the ‘fact’ that the tube was coming to West Croydon and even put Underground signs on their maps. Worse still, the council got suckered into believing this and even had it headlining their monthly propaganda rag. Implicit in all this was the idea we would get tube frequencies at West Croydon.
Needless to say, when I pointed out to the council that they were entirely wrong I got a bit of a weasel apology but no public retraction. The necessary correction took time to filter through and we were still getting council-supplied maps of Croydon showing our new ‘tube station’.
Similarly TfL board meetings seem to lack some reality at times and the associated publications have things just disappearing or performance targets or completion dates changed with out any mention that the status has changed from previously.
Greg,
Estate Agents do effectively go bankrupt. A lot disappear without trace especially as chancers think there is easy money to be made and don’t factor in that you really need an established reputation. Remember the Building Societies trying to muscle into the business in the 1980s and getting badly burnt?
Estate Agents probably don’t actually go bankrupt often because they have few creditors and their established name means that, as a last ditch face-saving attempt, they are taken over by another estate agent. Also, a lot of the income of estate agents is by commission so if they aren’t doing well the company outgoings go down and eventually they work for another estate agent – or get a proper job.
I bet estate agents have been really hit hard because of Crossrail delays. I would imagine they were hoping to sell on the wave of the Crossrail opening boom prior to a period where there would be an likely slump due to Brexit uncertainties (especially if there were no deal). I am sure you won’t be shedding any tears.
@ngh it’s different to 12+ months by reversing the stage launch order and solving peak conflicts.
[Speculative comments snipped. PoP]
The current plan has platform extension carried out during live service. From a Liverpool Street station manager Adrian Gogay interview in 2015 “Initially Platform 18 will close, because of the need to extend Platforms 16 and 17 to accommodate Crossrail’s new trains. The nine-car Class 345 Aventras that will serve the station are much longer than the current Metro trains, so the infrastructure must be accommodated accordingly. And there is little scope to do the work. It is a tight window – the work must be done ready for the tunnel to open, so it will be done in May to December 2019.”
Aleks,
You really have to query what you write. The last sentence seems to be complete nonsense. Surely, (as originally perceived) the work can only be done once the tunnel is open? And why must it be done by December 2019 (according to the original schedule as it was in 2015) ?
Re Greg and PoP,
I’m seeing a lot of EA branch office amalgamation going on locally as sales and letting volumes have gone down. Sales transactions have been down for years as increasing stamp duty amount reduce sales velocity with people living in properties far longer on average now. They were saved by post 2008 by increasing their letting businesses (now the dominant income sources) and charging ever more exorbitant fees from both parties (often for doing the same thing once). Deposit protection and other legal requirements have been catching up with them with the ultimate no tenant fees (as per Scotland) coming in soon. The tenant cost of moving tenancy had been steadily increasing (mostly greedy EA led) reducing letting transaction volumes but providing and easy tenancy renewal income stream (which is about to be turned off).
Landlord will just have submitted their first tax returns including the start of the “section 24” mortgage interest treatment changes which may benefit so estate agents with potential sales.
The web is also having a big impact with online only estate agents now doing lots of transactions (with lower fees) and developers no longer having local estate agent partners for medium and big developments as it is cheaper and more effective for them to market directly. Open data initiates are also having an impact as it is easier to access pricing data.
A perfect storm is brewing for EAs…
I had a discussion with a North London estate agent about six months ago. While Thameslink would be relevant to his upmarket catchment area (just possibly also Crossrail), he said that the sole reason that business was terrible was B******t.
In the same way that the stock markets have already factored in Brexit, Crossrail has been used by estate agents to market houses in its catchment for a long time, so any boom will not be very big when it actually opens.
An estate agent told a colleague of mine, when he was looking to move house to ease his commute, that Ealing would be a good choice because Crossrail was on the way. He told us this story at his retirement party five years ago, after a quarter of a century commuting on the Central Line.
All highly relevant as the Treasury undoubtedly considers future stamp duty income when considering supporting such schemes as Crossrail 2- and looking at what the benefits were to them of Crossrail 1.
Re PoP,
Also worth adding China’s enforcement of capital controls which has hit the Battersea Development* hard at the high profile end but also further down as London property was seen as good place to keep cash outside of China.
*Hence no rush to finish the Northern Line Extension and contribute.
With rise of online estate agency and lower transaction costs the Treasury will also be getting substantially less Corporation Tax, VAT and Business Rates from the sector in the future.
Re answer=42,
There is usually never a single reason always a good warning sign not to believe what is being said. With enforced affordability check by lenders as part of Mortgage Market Reform (MMR) changes the gulf between what buyers can pay (inc cashflow issues with stamp duty) and what sellers are wanting. B****t is effectively adding some strong coffee to wake people up and reassess what they are thinking of doing. Blaming buyer confidence, with the implication that all will improve when that changes is foolhardy.
@PoP the quote was from the LivSt (Network Rail) manager not written by myself.
I have seen both versions, like you it makes sense to me from a customer perspective that work on the TfL Rail platforms proceed ONCE usage is transferred elsewhere. Given the capacity constraints at the terminus we assume that the LL Xrail platforms will have sufficient peak capacity in the early months to cope.
The NR operational view would be that before 200m trains are introduced to the Shenfield line they need to have a diversionary capability to HL platforms in the event of a portal/core failure.
I have not found a detailed schedule of how or when the work will occur and I guess it would be subject to the wider uncertainty.
[News links snipped. LBM]
Aleks,
Just because someone quotes something doesn’t mean that it is worth putting in a comment especially if either it is probably wrong or nonsensical. Also, I may add, if it is just a bit of self-promotion (not you – the person who originally said or wrote it).
We are struggling at the moment to keep some semblance of order. Quotes all over the place relating to multiple topics some of which are of dubious relevance aren’t helping. Quality not quantity.
It takes one moment to cut & paste but it risks devaluing the quality of what appears and tends to drown out the thoughtful comments that others have written.
Re Aleks @ 10:53
No it isn’t different.
The previous plan was rebranding everything “TfL rail” to “Elizabeth Line” in December ’18 when Abbey Wood – Paddington was meant to open. The EA date you quote is 12 months later. Liverpool Street to Paddington opening May 2020 is also 12months later than the “plan” as was. Note the EA makes not mention of Abbey Wood to Paddington opening or a change in stage opening order.
What peak conflicts?
The “plan” for LST platform works didn’t have platform extension carried out during FULL live service as such the snippet is partial (and partially wrong too) and only refers to part of the plan which has led to some misunderstanding on your part.
The plan was:
1. Introduce 9car 345 service from Shenfield to Paddington in May 2019 (i.e. divert 12tph 7days a week down the tunnel)
2. Leaving 4tph residual peak only Gidea Park to LST high level services utilising only P15, This would allow most of the P16-17 platform lengthening work to take place.
3. Several weeks is needed to completely replace the points and signalling at the end of P15-18 during which time the 4tph peak extra won’t run. This is the “tight” window as it has to occur during the summer holidays to minimise disruption.
4. Works complete pre September busy period and 4tph peak Gidea Park – LST Peak extras restored.
With the disruptive Bow Jn works scheduled for the summer after delaying would have wider consequences. Plenty of tight windows all over.
Someone has got perhaps a little too enthusiastic in predicting when more stations will go “step free” in the latest Customer Service and Ops performance Cttee Papers. In the main report (page 78 of the pdf) there is reference to Moorgate (Elizabeth Line) going step free between Jan and March 2020. There is also a mention of Ealing Broadway and Whitechapel going step free at the same time. The first vaguely official mention of a potential Crossrail core opening in early 2020. Obviously parts of Whitechapel and Ealing Broadway can go “step free” without any Elizabeth Line service being in operation.
@ngh 5 February 2019 at 14:33
I don’t think that my interlocutor thought of B*******t as a temporary question of confidence (and I certainly don’t, though others do). In certain London property market segments, the number of people selling up / not renewing rentals and leaving (and not being directly replaced) has an observable effect. As to whether this explanation is, as my interlocutor thought, the only current impact on the market, I bow to your judgement.
In terms of property, the price can and will adjust. Not so easily with transport.
Having watched the latest series of the “however many billions of pounds it is today Railway” on BBC2 I am left wondering why some installation tasks don’t seem to have changed in decades. I refer to the escalator installation technique and the cable pulling which was shown on the last show. All of the installation works that have been shown are heavily reliant on a combination of skill and brute force and almost all of them have encountered problems. Obviously showing people surmounting problems makes for better television programmes but I was left wondering “isn’t there a better way of doing this?”.
I’m not an engineer so I accept I may be asking a nonsensical question but how do you get cabling ducts and racks designed that create problems for the cable installation people? Ditto for how do you “forget” that you redesigned the bottom of the Bond St escalator shaft to deal with a drainage problem and then find your bits of new escalator don’t fit together and then have to “improvise” (being kind) a solution on site? Surely after umpteen years of planning and design these sorts of things shouldn’t arise and designers / architects / engineers have surely got an endless list of acknowledged problems from past projects to learn from? The ingenuity of the site workers is good but couldn’t a whole load of these problems be avoided in the first place? It would surely save time and money. I am quite happy to be told to stop being silly by any engineers who’d like to explain why the real world isn’t as I’d like it to be. 😛
@WW:
It’s because everyone works in silos…. So the team building the racks turns up, does their job, then leaves. Next the cable guys turn up…
If you wanted to do it well, you’d have them both on site at once…
@WW, SHLR
There’s a lot more that goes on behind the scenes. I can only speak to my aerospace engineering experience, but in reading articles on TfL’s station design and construction process, station construction is now quite similar.
[Background: Engineers used to use blueprints to design and spec, but that often did not indicate where components didn’t fit together well – it was up to experienced engineers to notice this. More often, it was only at the mock up (if budget and schedule permitted) stage, but more likely actual construction to find out physical problems. As this was quite far in the engineering design process, it was expensive to re-engineer.
With the increasing complexity and cost of aircraft, as well as quite limited space, close proximity to other components and systems meant that engineers started to look at ways to identify and resolve physical, electro-magnetic, and temperature issues more efficiently. The emergence of 3D computer aided design (CAD) allowed a virtual construction of an aircraft or building, which would instantly identify impinging components. Which proved quite effective.]
With complex structure construction, I presume that TfL or their lead contractor maintains the master digital CAD system to integrate all subcontractors’ work together. However if subcontractors don’t update their changes on the CAD software quickly, or another subcontractor sends workers out for specific but doesn’t check last minute for any changes, these kinds of drainage problem and escalator shaft kerfuffles can still occur. With increasing complexity there are still many many opportunities for designs and decisions to slip through the cracks. Furthermore construction as built is often slightly out from what is spec’d, as anyone doing home DIY will attest. This can cascade a small variance to a larger one as on-the-spot solutions are made.
Regarding the cable racks and duct issue, the hardware was likely designed or purchased by a different company than the cable installers – hence the mismatch. Hopefully the problem will be fed back to the cable racks and duct designers for an improved design (albeit too late for Crossrail).
WW. The point was made on the Crossrail programme that the escalator had been manufactured before the need to change the concrete had to be made. It was good that there was a little wriggle room to accommodate the discrepancy.
The minor problems encountered during the installation of the exceptionally large cable looked quite normal to me. Perhaps I’ve been institutionalised!
I haven’t yet seen the programme but looking at it from the opposite end from Long Branch Mike, as a householder, I have regarded cable runs as one of those things that need a lot of preparation, their importance is not appreciated by ordinary mortals and if the cable is of any substantial length or weight it is always awkward to do. At the other end of the scale, if it is sensitive to kinks (e.g. CAT5e, CAT6) it is also awkward to do.
In Network Rail you see whole gangs of men manhandling them and whole possessions dedicated just to building the run or putting the cable in. In my experience from the doing the smallest of projects to observing the largest of them in various construction industry scenarios they never appear to go smoothly.
I have to admit I’ve found watching these new programmes a bit depressing, it was so obvious that the original deadlines had no hope of being met.
I did have to chuckle though in the first of these recent programmes as I had the sub-titles on the tv and when the young driver was undergoing training the trainer said ‘accelerate to line speed’ and the sub-titles read ‘accelerate to light-speed’! Perhaps if Crossrail were to go through a wormhole it might arrive at a time when its finished and open!
Speaking as an architect, none of what I saw was surprising. Although there is increasing sophistication with off-site preparation and component design, when you are shoving it all together in a hole in the ground, construction remains a very old fashioned manual trade-based activity. Mechanical & electrical installations are always the most challenging part of my more modest projects, followed by the sheer time it takes to get all the finishes and fixtures done once the shell is in place. We always learn lessons on each project, but the glitches that arise on the next one are invariably different from the last. Some of the engineering feats on this are mind boggling.
Stan Hornagold, project manager and former programme director on the London Underground public-private partnership: “Whether the mayor was told in July or August is neither here nor there. It’s ridiculous. Either date is about a year too late.”
When the complex M&E equipment began to be installed problems were encountered, such as at Paddington station, where equipment had to be taken out and replaced. In February 2017 Construction union Unite branded Crossrail the “hokey cokey line” because of equipment going in only to be taken out.
Juergen Maier, chief executive of signalling contractor Siemens, February 2018, made clear that problems besetting “civils and energisation contractors” had delayed the installation of the signalling system by a year.
Terry Morgan – The squeezed testing timetable meant taking civils contractors off the project to allow trains to run through the tunnels – with a programme of five days of construction and two of testing brought in. But with much construction work still to be done, and little success on the testing side, this attempt simply “compromised the construction work as a consequence”.
Mark Wild “We’ve worked very hard over the past two months to get contractual buy-in from the tier-one contractors. I think for the first time on Crossrail we have the buy-in from contractors contractually to these dates (demobilisation on the last of the stations in June-July-August). It still doesn’t mean we’ll achieve them; it means we’ve got alignment, which we’ve never had before.”
Wild also admits productivity on the central section stations, for which Crossrail is responsible, has been “low” – having fallen to just 30%-35% of where it should be, while “only half of the installation work is completed at the stations”. The nine station builds were all originally let under NEC target cost contracts, leaving Crossrail liable for the overruns. Wild said he was “deploying the full intensity of focus to get the job completed. The stations are the big problem.”
‘Down The Hatch’ is one of those hilarious ‘We Joined The Navy’ books, written by John Winton and published in 1961. In this case the centrepoint is the crew’s escapades trialling the Navy’s latest submarine. The wardroom is described as “slightly smaller than the driver’s cab of a long-distance locomotive and, at sea, provided the living, eating and sleeping space for six men”.
Cabling and pipework are discussed. ” ‘How do you figure out all these pipe systems? They don’t seem to lead anywhere.’
‘Actually these systems are better than most,’ Derek said. ‘They’ve been planned on a mock-up first… Most submarine systems look as though they were designed by Salvador Dali. Of course, they were put in under the old Olympic System.’
‘The Olympic System?’
‘The fastest dockyard matie won, sir. Every morning while the submarine was building, the men from the various dockyard departments lined up on the dockside holding their bits of pipe. Then when the whistle blew they all doubled on board and the man who got there first had a straight run. The others had to bend their pipes around his. The beauty of the system was that it didn’t matter what size the pipes were. If the electrician was particularly agile he could put his bit of quarter-inch electric cable in first and watch the boiler-maker bend his length of eight-inch diameter special steel piping around it.’ ”
Perhaps we need a new John Winton – “Down The Hole”?
In response to the cable pulling question, cable ducts were designed ages ago based on the assumption that manual cable pulling would be used. The cable duct supplier could probably design a more efficient solution but it would be a lot more expensive for the first customer. On the other hand, the cable pulling contractor bases his estimates on the traditional pulling method because that it was they have always done. If there were a new, non-standard design of duct, the cable pulling contractor will charge more for the first job as he doesn’t know whether it will be easier or not until he does it for the first time. So age old practises continue due to a lack of joined-upness, and no-one is willing to spend time/money seeking a better way.
@WW, PoP et al
Just found this informative RailEngineer article entitled Systems integration: navigating increasing complexity which describes some of the complex engineering necessary in ensuring all of the component subsystems in station construction and expansion projects work as designed.
One of the problems could be that installing a Eurobalise (for ETCS) does not always require power. They are triggered automatically and powered from an energy transmission from the train.
The downlink uses an amplitude modulation on the 27.095 MHz frequency. This frequency is used to power the passive balises.
The uplink uses frequency-shift keying with 3.951 MHz for a logical ‘0’ and 4.516 MHz for a logical ‘1’.
Above is from wikipeadia so may not be reliable.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eurobalise
Today I found this article which says that the existing Heathrow Express trains will be fitted with ETCS by the end of this year.
https://www.porterbrook.co.uk/news/post.php?s=2019-01-22-porterbrook-makes-new-digital-trains-a-reality-for-heathrow-express
Does this mean that they plan to remove GW-ATP from the Heathrow tunnels so that the ETCS signalling will work?
Existing Heathrow Express stock being taken out of service and Great Western to take on operating contract and use a dedicated fleet of 12 class 387 which they already have and will be adapted specifically for this service.E.T.C.S also required for Crossrail(Elizabeth Line) class 345 trains which will also serve Heathrow.
This saves Heathrow Express the need to build their own dedicated depot at Langley as they will be losing their existing one at Old Oak Common to H.S.2 construction.Besides which I undrestand the existing Heathrow Express stock is beginning to show its age I gather.
We were expecting a big announcement this week but this has been pushed back by a few weeks.
Inquiries by the Commons public accounts committee and London Assembly transport committee are being held. Wild told the Transport for London board yesterday that the running of trains in new tunnels under central London should have started on March 18. However, testing was “paused for four or five weeks” after “significant” problems were discovered, a number of “near misses” occurred in terms of worker injuries.
Tony Meggs said: “I think we are getting a solid grip on this project. I would not underestimate the work that still remains.”
Asked by Heidi Alexander, deputy mayor for transport, for an update on station completion, Mr Wild said: “The real challenge is the fact we have incomplete station work. That is a massive issue. No station is complete. Every single station has a huge amount of work still to do.”
Next month’s reveal is a “window” of dates for the central stretch to open, and to give an estimate of the final cost.
Implementing a TfL Rail service between Paddington (high-level) and Reading at the end of 2019 requires Network Rail’s contractors to install platform cameras at Paddington and extensions for nine-car lengths. Stations enhancement works at (West Drayton, Hayes & Harlington, Southall) has Hochtief preparing documentation prior to an unconfirmed date to start on-site. Work to enhance West Ealing, Ealing Broadway and Acton is being re-priced with bidders to exclude scope undertaken as part of enabling works. Network Rail has extended the planned award to early April to select the preferred bidder and conclude the procurement process.
Work required on stations outside London was described as “minor” but no details are reported. The Crossrail page for Iver as an example gives Iver station will benefit from a number of improvements in preparation for Elizabeth line services, including a new information system, security systems and CCTV. Transport for London will install lifts and construct a new entrance building at the station before the first Elizabeth line services begin in 2019.
[Snip. Stuff not Crossrail related about the Northern Line Extension moved here.]
Finally 09:00 Commons Public Accounts Committee report finds an “unacceptably laissez-faire” attitude to project costs from the overlapping organisations. The DfT and Crossrail Ltd “are unable to fully explain how the programme has been allowed to unravel”. With TfL all three bodies were “unwilling to pinpoint responsibility to a single individual or entity”.
A “fixation on a delivery deadline of December 2018” led to warning signs being missed or ignored when the programme was in trouble.
There are questions about governance structures – who was in charge of what bits? – and a lack of oversight and clarity. The Dft gets particular criticism.
Committee chair Meg Hillier said: “It is unacceptable that Parliament and the public still do not know the root causes of the failures that beset this project. Accountability in the use of public money is of fundamental importance.”
The DfT has been asked to publish an accurate governance structure for the project and “set out clearly what consequences there have been for well-rewarded officials whose costly failures are paid for by taxpayers”.
Meanwhile at the Transport for London board on Wednesday chair Mayor Sadiq Khan said “I’m very impressed by the openness …which was not the case with previous chair. The cultural difference is remarkable.”
Sadiq Khan to the GLA: I said in my manifesto that I would be an open and transparent Mayor with my administration being the most transparent ever.
The National Audit Office is set to release a value for money report on Crossrail in a month.
The public Accounts committee published their latest CR report this morning focusing on delays and governance:
https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201719/cmselect/cmpubacc/2004/2004.pdf
1. CR admitted to thing being badly behind with the signalling and other systems installation behind before the Nov ’17 transformer explosion.
And they admit that Silos existed now too!!!
2. Overly obsessed with Dec ’18 opening of the core:
3. Not opening in 2019: :
4. Self Denial:
5. DfT even asked after the transformer explosion whether it was still on tack for Dec ’18 core opening:
6. DfT/TfL not wanting to believe bad news:
vs
7. System Integration … or not!
And the Public Accounts Committee report repeatedly blames the DfT not TfL for almost all the problems. So who is going to pay for the cost overrun? For the most part, not DfT who have only given TfL a loan that needs to be paid back.
re PoP,
But it is far easier for PAC to investigate DfT rather than TfL (central vs local government) hence they go after DfT first (as per all other CR reports over the years)
Perhaps we need clarity in accountability between the three investigations.
Mayor Sadiq Khan as chair of TfL, or TfL itself are both outside the Parliamentary committee’s remit. The London Assembly investigation, due to be published this month, is expected to raise concerns with Mr Khan’s oversight of the project.
NAO is systemic and value for money.
PAC were targeting individuals to explain what the “consequences have been” for senior executives at Crossrail, including the former chief executive Andrew Wolstenholme, who received a £1.7m pay package between April 1 2016 and March 31 2018, when he resigned. “These executives were paid to bring expertise into the programme and deliver an operational railway and failed to do so”,
On his departure, the Institution of Civil Engineers director general Nick Baveystock said: “Andrew Wolstenholme has achieved something amazing during his time as chief executive of Crossrail… By keeping Crossrail on time and on track he has shown the world that we, as a nation, can still lead the world in infrastructure delivery.”
The investigations are to be updated monthly and will surely have overlap. PAC have pointed at 2014 which is earlier than previously acknowledged.
‘The Department for Transport acknowledges that it did not do enough in response to the recommendations in 2014 that governance arrangements should be changed to reflect the programme moving from construction to integrating the elements of the new railway, such as stations and signalling systems.’
The range of possible opening dates later this month will surely have an associated range of additional costs.
Mark Wild’s April TfL update:
The Earliest Opening Programme will need to be examined for cost and commercial impact. The staff associated costs previously budgeted has increased significantly as the project is re-resourced and strengthened. The wide range of dates will progressively narrow as we refine down the information in the schedule, calibrate against productivity achieved, milestones achieved and progress of dynamic testing.
A “red team review” is being undertaken to look at the programme development so far including an assessment of the organisational capacity, programme interventions, schedule logic and dependencies and our technical and engineering strategies.
We will then need to undertake a “black team review” which will assure the complete programme including cost, time and commercial risk.
Another report hot of the press from the Assembly Transport committee.
Summary Blurb here:
https://www.london.gov.uk/press-releases/assembly/crossfail
Download full report here:
https://www.london.gov.uk/sites/default/files/final_-_london_assembly_transport_committee_crossrail_investigation_report.pdf
SK is already in full denial mode saying they were all kept in the dark by the former crossrail management…
The independent reviewer (Jacobs) multiple reports that there were problems were ignored.
The London Assembly’s transport committee’s report ‘Derailed: Getting Crossrail back on track’ recommends that future infrastructure projects should strive to keep designs simple, incorporating standard rather than bespoke features. It notes that Crossrail stations had been designed ’to a high architectural specification’, where ‘The design features are complex and bespoke – for instance, in Paddington station.’ The committee goes on to lambast Crossrail’s lack of co-ordination on the station designs, which has put many of them behind schedule.
Meanwhile Crossrail station designer Weston Williamson & Partners (WW&P) has received a Queen’s Award for Enterprise. Following its work on the new Elizabeth line stations at Paddington and Woolwich, WW&P won contracts on the Melbourne Metro extension, the Sydney Metro and a line extension in Toronto as well as work at the Canadian city’s airport.
Another report recommendation is that Crossrail and similar future projects should have systems that encourage transparency, openness and a sense of accountability on all levels.
Last week Crossrail released figures for overspend on each segment contract but I have not seen any analysis of it. I gather Paddington and Bond Street were the highest.
Crossrail chairman Tony Meggs has reported he is ‘getting a grip’ on Crossrail every month since last year. In March he said “I think we are getting a solid grip on this project”. In last week’s leaked range announcement Mark Wild said his new leadership team was “really getting a grip”.
More fallout from this now in the press
Mike Brown appears to be in the firing line, this time
@ALEKS
If you read the report, it is just section 5.6 that refers to the “keep designs simple”.
This is a reference to “Box 1: Crossrail signalling explained” on page 38.
It’s not the station design that is not “simple”, but the use of “three separate signalling systems”, not the station’s external designs.
Quite what the simpler alternative would have been is not said.
Re Brian,
Indeed, what the report actually says is very different to what is reported and simplified. The report itself also needs reading between the lines.
The thinking as regards station design simplification is around the building systems element so that every station isn’t so unique in terms of the systems integration.
The solution would have been to have more common suppliers and design elements specified and fewer firms of engineers and architects involved in the design work.
The downside is that the supply contract become bigger with more commonality.
The signalling issue will largely solve itself as ETCS matures so this shouldn’t be an issue as regards CR2.
A now obvious part of the signalling issues that the report is referencing is that Crossrail thought they were buying an off the shelf CBTC signalling system which had all the functionality required. In reality the Crossrail TrainguardMT installation required significant new chunks of functionality building* (with shades of the second SSR re-signalling contract with Bombardier and to a lesser extent the third contract with Thales).
And that is before any of the rolling stock related signalling issues or installation issues.
*aka Copenhagen divergences (a phase that will probably become better known over the next few years)
NGH
Copenhagen, as in “Wilberforce” – I assume?
Or Belle Isle, as the case may be….
Greg Tingey,
Copenhagen as in the capital city of Denmark as in the song “Wonderful, wonderful Copenhagen”.
It has an automatic railway with automatic platform edge doors using the same signalling system. But London needs an enhanced version. As I understand it, not so much divergences as additional features required. So I suspect we will hear more about “Copenhagen delta” meaning increase on Copenhagen. The question is: is it a small delta or a large delta? Or to put it another way, ẟ or Δ? I suspect it is a large delta, Δ, which means you can’t make assumptions about a smooth transition.
PoP, GT…..Almost certainly, one such difference is the London requirement for much shorter over-run areas at terminal stations on the 4LM lines, the space isn’t there. Compare Hammersmith with Stratford Jubilee for the stark difference.
Crossrail has announced its plan to “complete the Elizabeth line”
No Bond Street for now…
http://www.crossrail.co.uk/news/articles/crossrail-ltd-outlines-plan-to-complete-the-elizabeth-line
The opening window has now been officially announced as between Sep 2020 and Mar 2021. And Bond Street likely later than that.
http://www.crossrail.co.uk/news/articles/crossrail-ltd-outlines-plan-to-complete-the-elizabeth-line
What are the issues at Bond st?
Late completion of the station box has just knocked on. Nothing there is particularly more complicated than any other station.
So, if we read the “Notes to Editors”, this is just the opening of Abbey Wood- Paddington. Plugging the GEML and GWML into the core will be even later.
The Queen will celebrate her Platinum Jubilee in 2022…………….
Even that announcement is pretty confused:
“When the Elizabeth line opens the railway will operate as follows:
Paddington (Elizabeth line station) to Abbey Wood via central London
Liverpool Street (main line station) to Shenfield
Paddington (main line station) to Heathrow and Reading
TfL Rail services between Paddington and Reading will commence in December 2019”
The inference is that the three services listed first will start at the same time. Why? they are fairly independent of each other.
And it seems half of the third service will have started a year earlier anyway.
It doesn’t inspire confidence.
@RogerB When the Liz line opens those will be the three service patterns. The inference not spelt out is that all three will be branded at the same time.
Tony is still strong and stable: “The Crossrail Board is pleased with the progress by the new Crossrail leadership team to get a grip on the project ”
It is the first time they have posted to their site since last July. They are hiring some 165 bodies back into corporate hopefully including Communications. I look forward as a stakeholder to being engaged about progress on complementary works to station improvements begun three years ago at low cost that could have been completed to deliver immediate passenger benefits at an early date.
@Roger B
Two of those services (Liverpool Street main line – Shenfield and Paddington main line to Heathrow/Reading) are already running, and with the exception of the Reading services are already operated by TfL Rail.
@ Timbeau, indeed.
So the words “When the Elizabeth line opens the railway will operate as follows:” are nonsense.
If they can’t issue an accurate press release one has to wonder how well they will be able to manage the project.
Re Roger, Aleks and Timbeau,
I think that press release is a work of art from their chief comms magician as it is very much open to interpretation with people reading what they want to from it. It may appear confused but is actually very very precise but allows people to dream.
1. It doesn’t not say all 3 will be branded Elizabeth line when Abbey Wood – Paddington opens, note the careful use of “railway” rather than “Elizabeth line” or “it” at that point.
2. Liverpool Street (main line station) to Shenfield is already operated by TfL rail and Paddington (main line station) to Heathrow and Reading will have already be operated by Tfl rail at that point. All it is doing is confirming that Abbey Wood – Paddington will open before the rest as there will be 3 separate operations.
3. The comms team hadn’t been scaled down so don’t expect it to get scaled up massively. They just haven’t been allowed to say anything in 9 months.
4. For the surface stations expect most engagement to come from the same overworked NR local comms teams as before as NR are doing the work!
5. Note that Stage 5a in December 2019 will be branded “TfL rail” not Elizabeth line.
@ngh – Yes. I saluted the draftsman of the release. The most likely branding outcome seems to be that the Padd (EL)- Abbey Wood section will be Elizabeth Line (TfL Rail hardly seems appropriate for the central core) whenever it opens and the two surface operations will continue as TfL Rail until they can be linked into the core. Banal but safer in terms of reputation
@ALEKS Crossrail have posted to their site on a few occasions since July last year, this includes pages and press releases – which I have noted on my blog. I believe these were done under pressure from local councils and councillors.
My non-existent money is on the other sections being joined-up & operating fully really quickly, once the central core is seen to be operating satisfactorily.
Depending upon the state of delay at Bond Street, one might even envision the whole thing opening before Bond St finally joins the show!
Any more up-to-date information or educated guesses on that?
Graham H wrote “Banal but safer in terms of reputation”
Also less confusing to commuters and tourists. “Get the Elizabeth line from Heathrow to Paddington, where you change to the Elizabeth line to Liverpool Street, where you change to the Elizabeth line to Shenfield.”
Barcelona has two lines — L9 and L10 — that have opened in “north” and “south” stretches with gaps in the middle and it’s ridiculously confusing.
Re Greg,
The GWML:
About 4tph through running could easily work with the December 2019 GW TT so realistically through running needs to be aligned with the big December or May Timetable changes hence May 2021 is the most probable with a slight chance of December 2020 but you would want Paddington – Abbey Wood open and known to be successfully running before committing to through running hence September 2020 start for Paddington – Abbey Wood is almost too close make decision on thought running for December TT change.
ETCS Airport Jn to Acton is due for go live for December 2020 TT change…
GEML through running with almost full overall service outside May /December TT changes should be possible but not ideal and running all the LST (high level) – Gidea Park services might be difficult. (What other operators do getting stock into or out of Ilford needs coordination).
The 7 to 9 car conversion issue and LST high level works also need to be thought about.
Hence it would be
impossible“brave” to start through running at exactly the same time on both GEML and GWML. The maximum driver and train requirements need to be careful thought due to turn back inefficiencies so phasing is key. (Along with the useful float of the best 315s.)Re Greg,
PS – The reason Bond Street is flagged is that it has the most risk of impinging on the earliest (September 2020) Abbey Wood – Paddington start if things keeping going badly. It shouldn’t do if things go ok but it might if they don’t.
Abbey Wood – Paddington starting may be later in which case the Bond Street delay issue decreases
With start up now from Paddington High Level to Reading before through trains to Shenfield introduces a rolling stock bottleneck. Original plan saw through trains to Shenfield using 9-car trains, releasing current 7-cars for lengthening and reintroduction with Reading services. What will happen now?
@Taz Padd – Reading will not use as many 9 car as Reading – Abbey Wood. There are not many 7 car 345s and they are keeping 20 315 units in service. Once Liv St platforms are lengthened the extended 7 car 345s will return to service as 9 cars replacing the 40 year old 315s under current expectations. Really long delays would have maintenance overhaul issues.
@TAZ HAWKINS
One of our national newspapers reports
“Pictured: Brand new Crossrail trains worth MILLIONS of pounds sit idle in depot, as passengers are told new underground line faces ANOTHER delay… until spring 2021
More than 50 new Crossrail trains are sitting idle in a north-west London depot
The trains should have been up and running by now on the new Elizabeth line
Just 15 of 70 new trains are being used for existing, limited, Crossrail services
Crossrail bosses have warned the wait could be another two years until 2021”
I would venture that 55 trains lying around is enough to deal with the stocking issue you describe.
Re Brian,
The original rolling stock plan was based around the 5 stage Crossrail opening plan, the timing of the Liverpool Street platform works (was this summer) in relation to that plan (i.e. between stage 4&5) and the retention of some 315s.
Stage 5 was to be taking over Maidenhead and Reading services from GWR and simultaneously starting to run them through the core along with through running of Heathrow services. Hence a reasonable amount of stock available between Stage 4&5 to enable the LST platform works and the lengthening of the 7 car units.
There are now several issues in that there is a new “stage 5a” starting in December 2019 with Paddington – Reading so less stock (and Drivers) will be available and the LST platform works still need to be done a quiet time of year (the original plan was simple as 12tph of 9car 345s would be running through the core from Stratford (as part of stage 4) and that could cope in the quieter summer period, the revised plan (from early last Autumn) when it was obvious the core wasn’t going to open was to run those 12tph to Liverpool Street Low Level then empty out, run the trains empty to Westbourne Park for turnback then pick up passengers again at Liverpool Street Low Level. The situation has since got worse so enough of the core being ready to do the LST platform works in summer 2019 is very very low hence delaying to summer 2020 is sensible but then the original rolling stock plan doesn’t quite work as Stage 5a and also Stage 2 in full e.g. 4tph Paddington Heathrow (that was meant to happen May 2018) have already happened.
@ Ngh – sorry for another phasing question. At what point do you expect a full 4 tph service into Heathrow with 345s? Is it later this year or sometime in 2020? I note the first reference in a previous post to ETCS stretching from Heathrow to Acton by Dec 2020. That’s new one on me. I assume this is effectively a move of a signalling transition point so far as the 345s is concerned? I also saw a brief reference on social media to an issue over the constructed length of the bay platform at Hayes and Harlington being too short for a 9 car 345 when they tried to fit one in there. This is clearly speculative but are you aware of this having happened?
So is a rough sequence of service build up something like
Dec 2019 – Paddington (surface) to Reading
Unknown – 4 tph Paddington to Heathrow T4 with 345s
Sep 2020 – Mar 2021? – Abbey Wood – Paddington Low Level
May 2021 – Shenfield into the core??
Summer / Autumn 2021 – Bond St opens
Unknown – Liv St (surface) platform works
Dec 2021 – Full integrated service with increased services west of Paddington??
I recognise there is a strong linkage between getting the core working reliably before anything is tagged on from the east or west so things may slip if the Core opening is later within the stated “window”. I also wonder if there will be a requirement for fire access / egress to be possible at Bond Street even if the station is not open. That could have an interesting bearing on how the work proceeds and what parts of the station may need to be accessible in an emergency.
The latest NAO report on Crossrail just published:
https://www.nao.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/Completing-Crossrail.pdf
Confirms initial core opening is just Abbey Wood – Paddington with no dates for GEML and GWML through running.
Over £2Bn over budget by the end of 2016. (including some contingency but…)
Not much will surprise avid LR readers, but this is the first report to properly start to lift the lid!
LR article may well follow…
@ Ngh – having read the NAO report the things that surprise me are
– the strategic decisions re contract structures and numbers
– the bizarre approach to detailed design of the railway systems (i.e. no detailed design)
– the management decisions re contract cost escalation and poor management of the NEC3 process (huge volumes of compensation events and processing backlog)
– the lack of a proper project programme instead relying on an “aspirational” programme.
– the astonishing cost increases esp on stations.
I hadn’t previously been as agitated as others about what has gone on but this is monumental mismanagement of key activities with huge financial consequences. I know something like Crossrail is never easy to deliver but those involved should not have made these mistakes.
@WW Welcome aboard – your question above ‘Design & Delivery @ Bond St’ was asked yesterday at the London Assembly Crossrail Hearing by AM Joanne McCartney
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZyCPRsI7gk4
AM Caroline Russell asked about the completion of above ground Crossrail stations.
Mike Brown admitted that Network Rail stalled work but had new funds in this Control Period and we’re “getting a grip” on the programme (LR editors maybe scripting these soundbites like ‘simples’). Mark Wild believes that the western branch will be complete in 2020 except the 3 large projects. Mark Wild also stated that the Eastern Branch (except Ilford) will be complete in Spring 2019. Assuming June is Summer then his optimism is about to crash into a reality check. All confirmed this work was vitally important.
No one appears to consider Crossrail as a total railway but focus on their ‘bits’. Neither did anyone dare to bring up platform toilets or scheme completion.
re. Your programme outline above – Mark Wild confirmed that Stage 4 – Shenfield to Paddington was still intended to go live 6 months after Abbey Wood to Paddington as in the original plan.
@ Aleks – thanks for the link. I tried to watch the session live but the webcast kept stalling. Interesting that at Bond Street it is apparently the lower non passenger levels of the station that are the issue and that relates back to delays with the tunnelling. At least Mark Wild said any delay in opening is likely to be measured in months rather than a longer period.
Everyone will make will make their own interpretation of what he did (not) say.
Mark Wild invited the opportunity to explain Bond Street, declared the open transparency principle, then waffled for the allocated 2 minutes to not answering the direct question. His inclusion of ‘the tunnel’ in the last 10 seconds suggests careful manipulation so as to record disclosure in subsequent inquiries.
We know that tunnel bores were on time and budget, world class, and praised. The fitout was late everywhere not specific to Bond Street. Respecting moderation the ‘rumour’ is the station chamber section connectors not being correct. So the reference is likely the specific Bond Street Station ‘tunnel’ (chamber). Given the exoneration of the contractor and Skansa’s previous declarations of ‘not being late’ working to their contracted schedule, it seems a deal was struck to prioritise the lowest platform levels to free the running tunnels for dynamic tests.
Inside London’s Nightmare Station (Bond St) B1M https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1S3J1d9BpUo
Mark Wild is included – The access shafts were too small for the plant and the tunnel sections had to be dismantled for new linings.
Mention is also made of the planned issues – deep pilings, geology, restricted site, finish point of TBMs for extraction, expensive area
On the plus side recommencement with direct control was easier as much of the running work was finished.
ILFORD Station rebuild delayed completion due to cracks in the concrete bridge decking. The interiors were being fitted out whilst resolution was developed. Delayed opening now expected with full through running.
315s still in service.