Such a complex system requires a wide range of approaches to maintenance, reliability and fleet planning. Last week (13-14 May), IMechE’s Rolling Stock Lifecycle Conference brought together experts from across the industry to discuss the best ways to manage and maintain the network.
Held at the institution’s headquarters in Westminster, the event featured a wide range of perspectives. “There were some really interesting, quite subtle challenges that were teased out, not only by the speakers and the data they brought, but also by the questions,” IMechE Railway Division chair Rebeka Sellick told Professional Engineering.
By enabling connections between professionals, the conference encouraged engineers to explore new technologies and ways to deploy them. The end result, Sellick said, will be that people are able to do their jobs better – and trains on the network should improve as a result, with benefits for all passengers.
Here are three ways rolling stock could change in the years to come, as discussed at the event.
Data can bring reliability – and higher capacity
Modern trains are awash with data. Nine-car trains used by Great Western Railway provide 48,000 signals at every moment, according to Tom Lendhill, head of engineering west at Hitachi – and that figure does not include ancillary sources. “From a data perspective, we’re pretty much there, right? We’ve got a lot of information to use and build on,” he said. “The key is: how do we use it to actually give us some benefit?”
Lendhill set out some ways that Hitachi is doing so, including optimisation of maintenance intervals based on system operating states, and use of vibrational technology for early detection of rotating equipment failures.
Data-rich approaches – including obsolescence management and preventative maintenance – can solve invisible challenges, Sellick said. “In some of the case studies that we were presented with today, they were able to digitally spot things that were intermittent, faults that hadn’t yet manifested in terms of an impact on the service.”
For passengers, Sellick said, the potential benefits are clear. “What do the customers really want from the railway? They want a reliable railway.”
By boosting reliability, sensors and remote monitoring quickly lead to other benefits, including capacity. “If you’ve got trains running reliably, there are more available seats that are passing at any given time, to take more people onboard,” Sellick said.
Lower floors could close the accessibility gap
There are roughly 6,000 platforms on the mainline network, said Bridget Eickhoff, principal infrastructure engineer at the Rail Safety and Standards Board – and most are not in the standard position, with horizontal gaps or large steps up to board trains.
“This has made the platform-train interface – PTI, as we call it – a challenge for many passengers, and completely inaccessible for quite a number,” Eickhoff said. Fixing that height or offset everywhere would require a budget that is not available, however, and the horizontal gap is the bigger safety and accessibility issue.
Closing that gap is therefore a systems challenge. Portable ramps deployed by staff are “not a solution”, Eickhoff said, with many different variants needed for different rolling stock and a lack of independence for users. Some platforms do not have enough width to accommodate them, she added.
Lower train floors, on the other hand, could tackle a lot of the associated issues and make it easier for passengers to board. This leaves less space for under-floor equipment, however, which is a particular challenge for self-powered vehicles. They also require smaller wheels, with a knock-on effect for speeds. “Manufacturers know this,” Eickhoff said. “They’re preparing for this. They have solutions, they have trade-offs.”
Those lower floors will also require sliding steps, to further close the gap. “Those are current technologies, certainly for regional trains,” Eickhoff said. “I think they should be OK for end doors – I don’t see why they shouldn’t be – but it’s not so much current technology… and it’s more challenging for very high-speed operations, and it’s more challenging for self-powered units.”
Will substandard toilets get flushed out?
Of all the places people fear being caught short, trains top the list. According to a recent survey by probiotic brand Symprove for IBS Awareness Month, trains are the last place people want to use the toilet.
Despite many passengers being unhappy with the available facilities, some improvements have already been made. In his talk titled ‘The most important seat in the train’, experienced railways boss Chris Gibb set out his efforts to tackle ‘flush-to-track’ toilets to improve cleanliness and hygiene on tracks and at stations.
While that practice has now ended, much more can be improved for passengers, and cleanliness is an obvious focus. “Cleanliness is much easier to achieve if the toilet is well-designed and well-built, and that’s why I’m appealing to everybody in this room to put this in their mind,” said Gibb, a retired former managing director at Virgin CrossCountry and previous board member at Network Rail.
“When somebody is in a drawing office designing a train toilet, it’s hard to imagine what that train toilet is going to have to go through. For a start, it’s going to move: it’s going to move laterally, vertically, horizontally. So anything that can’t survive that is not going to work.”
Sharing photos from a personal archive of out-of-order train toilet signs, Gibb said other problems include inconvenient taps and difficult-to-clean areas. “You can see the design and build issues that we just build in, to even our newest trains,” he said. “We just build in areas that get dirty and very difficult to clean. Please, please, when you’re designing these things, do them in a way that they are easy to clean.”
Some stations flag out-of-order toilets on arrival boards, and operators invite feedback via text message or social media – but smarter solutions could start to make a bigger difference. “Do you know, as a fleet engineer, how many toilets are out of order and how they’re performing?” said Gibb. “I don’t think we do know. We have remote condition monitoring on an amazing number of assets in the industry now, but we don’t know the condition of the toilets reliably.”
Already used for certain applications by some operators, remote monitoring could play an important role in improving the standard of onboard facilities.
Lower-tech solutions could also improve passenger perceptions – Gibb suggested replicating Network Rail’s Loo of the Year competition for onboard facilities.
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Content published by Professional Engineering does not necessarily represent the views of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers.