But what if that journey could be streamlined by ‘seamless interchangeability’ across modes and between trains, with separate services joining and splitting where needed to provide passengers with a smooth, connected journey? That was the vision set out by Rebeka Sellick, 57th chair of the IMechE railway division, during an online version of her incoming address last week (1 October).
In the new seamless scenario – one way the industry could evolve in the coming decades – your journey from Boscastle could instead start with a shared autonomous taxi. You could then join a sleeper train service from Bodmin Parkway, which would “flow” around London while you eat breakfast, rather than stopping at a terminal. Family and friends from around the country, and maybe even France, could gradually join the service as their trains connected to yours, with work space and accessibility features provided for everyone who needed them.
Aimed at meeting passengers’ desire for punctual, reliable and spacious trains, and based on research carried out in recent years, Sellick’s ambitious vision – a look ahead to the next 200 years of rail travel, amid ongoing celebrations of the industry’s 200th anniversary – would use homogenous stock with the same acceleration and braking characteristics. Other enabling technologies would include electronic radio traffic management system, including Level Two radio-controlled signalling.
To reach their destination, Sellick suggested, passengers would move to a rear carriage that would detach and take them to a station in a separate loop of track. Similarly, new passengers could join in single carriages sped up onto the front of continuously flowing trains, coupling up to allow people to transfer back along the train.
“It’s a way of making the most of rail’s steel-wheel-on-steel-rail, low-energy, low-carbon advantage – by using the network differently and connecting with other transport modes. Rather than people changing at train stations, individual carriages join and couple onto non-stop trains as they’re going along,” Sellick said to Professional Engineering.
Modelling on the Midland Main Line showed that the overall reduction in stopping and starting would halve energy use and carbon emissions, she said. “It would also hugely increase the customer connectivity, since people will be able to travel from any one point on the network right through to another, compared to having to change trains two or three times.”
She added: “We will be able to optimise carriage occupancy and flex to demand… so there will be more people in each vehicle, but still not uncomfortably many. And that means that we wouldn't need so many carriages, further increasing cost-effectiveness.”
As climate change becomes more pressing, a seamless railway and wider transport system could be enabled by evolving attitudes to carbon emissions, Sellick suggested, with domestic transport currently representing 28% of UK greenhouse gas emissions (89% of which is from road vehicles).
The new chair, who works at AI asset monitoring innovator Cordel, stressed the importance of long-term infrastructure investment and the need for a 100- to 200-year vision in her address.
Sellick highlighted the fundamental advantages of railway technology and called for electrification to be fully embraced, supplied by renewable energy and supplemented by hydrogen and battery traction hybrid power for transition and network edge cases.
Looking to the future, she reminded the audience of the ‘four Cs’ in the industry’s Rail Technical Strategy: (happier) customers, (less) carbon, (more) capacity and (lower) cost.
“The IMechE Transport Hierarchy is clear: the best thing to do is to reduce the amount of transport you have, because it uses energy and creates air pollution. And then, beyond reducing transport, switch to the most efficient mode, so from cars to active travel or to public transport or whatever is most appropriate. And then within each mode, let’s get better at what we do,” she said to Professional Engineering.
Opportunities to improve rail in the coming years and decades include the potential for digital technology to streamline energy management and optimise operations.
“When I’ve got my seamless trains going, how many of them do we want? Where and how fast can they go, relative to the electricity that we’ve got and where the regen (regenerative braking) is happening on the system?” she asked. “Sophisticated energy management would optimise for passengers and freight.”
Other opportunities for greater digitalisation include joining up the data from trains with the data from infrastructure at the same location, for better system management. “How does the train know in advance what’s going to be wrong with it?” Sellick asked.
“We need to connect the train management system, identifying intermittent potential faults before they actually cause unreliability, with the infrastructure, to have much more effective fault prevention and management.
“In the seamless future world, you won’t have to worry about the pain points of changing trains or transferring between one transport mode and another, you can just rely on a connected journey.”
The address also covered the need for an expansion of freight capacity that UK manufacturing industry is calling for, backed by government and the rail industry. “Let’s use rail for what it’s good at, let’s connect well for end-to-end transport – and let’s use rail more than other modes, for the sake of the planet,” Sellick said.
Celebrate 200 years of railway engineering at the IMechE Annual Dinner (27 November), hosted by president Matt Garside at George and Robert Stephenson’s converted workshop, Boiler Shop in Newcastle. Book now.
An IMechE seminar on 6 November will explore how emerging technologies are reshaping maintenance strategies and delivering operational benefits. Book now.
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Content published by Professional Engineering does not necessarily represent the views of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers.