Network Rail draws up list of ‘no regret’ electrification schemes - New Civil Engineer

[tbtc]

^ Your previous post seemed to be suggesting that rail could offer a better alternative to the electrified motorway concept. But the key feature of the electrified motorway is that individual trucks could join or leave the road "train" at every junction, without delay to the others continuing through. To match that flexibility, a railway train would have to stop every few miles to attach and detach individual wagons, shunting the remaining portions to re-marshal the train.

^^ This^^

Rail freight is great when you have "half a mile" of wagons/ trucks/ containers all wanting to get from A to B at the same time - just like passenger services are great when you have a hundred people all wanting to get from A to B.

What rail is a bit rubbish at is dealing with a hundred different "flows" - at least with passenger services you have "self loading freight" able to board and alight without too much work for the staff.

We can sustain a passenger service like Aberdeen to Penzance, where there might be a thousand people who use the train for parts of the journey (maybe some seats are occupied half a dozen times en route) - we can sustain a passenger service like Manchester to Liverpool, where the same train can shuttle back and forth all day with a good level of demand (even if a set is empty leaving Liverpool it will have picked up sufficient passengers from local stations by the time it reaches Manchester, and vice versa).

However the economics of freight trains are a bit different - you need dozens of wagons that all need to get from the same place to the same place and can be accommodated at the same time.

So, freight from a coal mine to a power station was great (the wagons could sit around at the Pit until there were enough of them to make a train load), containers from a port to an inland distribution centre are great because they can come off the boat at the same time and be ready for onward travel.

But many lorries aren't doing those kinds of journey, its dibs and drabs, its not the kind of market that heavy rail can do well, much as I'd enjoy watching a loco shunting around to take the nineteenth wagon out of the rake and add an additional one to replace it. Fun on a 1:64 model railway, not always practical on the 1:1 railway!

 

[MarkyT]

^^ This^^

Rail freight is great when you have "half a mile" of wagons/ trucks/ containers all wanting to get from A to B at the same time - just like passenger services are great when you have a hundred people all wanting to get from A to B.

What rail is a bit rubbish at is dealing with a hundred different "flows" - at least with passenger services you have "self loading freight" able to board and alight without too much work for the staff.

We can sustain a passenger service like Aberdeen to Penzance, where there might be a thousand people who use the train for parts of the journey (maybe some seats are occupied half a dozen times en route) - we can sustain a passenger service like Manchester to Liverpool, where the same train can shuttle back and forth all day with a good level of demand (even if a set is empty leaving Liverpool it will have picked up sufficient passengers from local stations by the time it reaches Manchester, and vice versa).

However the economics of freight trains are a bit different - you need dozens of wagons that all need to get from the same place to the same place and can be accommodated at the same time.

So, freight from a coal mine to a power station was great (the wagons could sit around at the Pit until there were enough of them to make a train load), containers from a port to an inland distribution centre are great because they can come off the boat at the same time and be ready for onward travel.

But many lorries aren't doing those kinds of journey, its dibs and drabs, its not the kind of market that heavy rail can do well, much as I'd enjoy watching a loco shunting around to take the nineteenth wagon out of the rake and add an additional one to replace it. Fun on a 1:64 model railway, not always practical on the 1:1 railway!

I am certainly not arguing for a return to the 1950's! I am suggesting that the Tesla semi concept, claiming to outcompete rail environmentally for US-style interstate distances of many hundreds if not thousands of miles, is bogus, as it appears that a significant proportion of the payload would have to be replaced by batteries to get sufficient range, and that's before we start to analyse other aspects of the logistics. I don't think overhead wiring of interstates or motorways for similar distance hauls is practical either, and battery power is more feasible anyway for many shorter round trips, which are a large percentage of journeys and would never be suitable for rail. So for the very long hauls, transhipping to rail for the trunk segment must be a better option, avoiding the payload penalty and the individual staffing and all the complexity of those self-propelled vehicles whether battery or overhead powered. A viable strategy for an environmentally-minded government might be to provide incentives to set up a sensibly spaced grid of open access terminals across the country, making transhipment more attractive such that the remaining round trip road hauls to and from the terminals all become feasible using battery-powered tractors. There may also have to be some limited expansion of 'shunting' as in swapping portions of largely intermodal long-distance trains en route to ensure attractive network of service to all terminals can be maintained, as it's probably not possible to provide an attractive service frequency between all pairs of terminals solely with end-to-end full-size trains, but in no way would that be a return to the big marshalling yards of old dealing with individual wagons. Automatic couplers would be a good thing for such operations at intermediate sidings and at terminals, with yard work by radio-controlled (or even partially autonomous) battery shunters where a line haul engine isn't available.

 

[Dr Hoo]

This discussion of freight terminals and networks is a bit off-thread in relation to 'no regrets electrification' projects but does raise the point that in order to be effective it would be necessary to achieve gauge clearance for containers, capacity for additional freight trains and so forth as well as wiring of much of the rest of the 'through' network, even sections that might otherwise be rather down the pecking order such as the Joint Line through Lincolnshire, Derby-Stoke and the Durham Coast.

This is before the planning and highway connection issues of the 'grid' of depots are considered.

 

[Philip Phlopp]

^^ This^^

Rail freight is great when you have "half a mile" of wagons/ trucks/ containers all wanting to get from A to B at the same time - just like passenger services are great when you have a hundred people all wanting to get from A to B.

What rail is a bit rubbish at is dealing with a hundred different "flows" - at least with passenger services you have "self loading freight" able to board and alight without too much work for the staff.

We can sustain a passenger service like Aberdeen to Penzance, where there might be a thousand people who use the train for parts of the journey (maybe some seats are occupied half a dozen times en route) - we can sustain a passenger service like Manchester to Liverpool, where the same train can shuttle back and forth all day with a good level of demand (even if a set is empty leaving Liverpool it will have picked up sufficient passengers from local stations by the time it reaches Manchester, and vice versa).

However the economics of freight trains are a bit different - you need dozens of wagons that all need to get from the same place to the same place and can be accommodated at the same time.

So, freight from a coal mine to a power station was great (the wagons could sit around at the Pit until there were enough of them to make a train load), containers from a port to an inland distribution centre are great because they can come off the boat at the same time and be ready for onward travel.

But many lorries aren't doing those kinds of journey, its dibs and drabs, its not the kind of market that heavy rail can do well, much as I'd enjoy watching a loco shunting around to take the nineteenth wagon out of the rake and add an additional one to replace it. Fun on a 1:64 model railway, not always practical on the 1:1 railway!

The swap body concept might be worth a revisit, I guess. Gauging might possibly be less of an issue if the swap body is smaller and will be used for short distance trips, fitting with the limited range available from electric HGVs.

This discussion of freight terminals and networks is a bit off-thread in relation to 'no regrets electrification' projects but does raise the point that in order to be effective it would be necessary to achieve gauge clearance for containers, capacity for additional freight trains and so forth as well as wiring of much of the rest of the 'through' network, even sections that might otherwise be rather down the pecking order such as the Joint Line through Lincolnshire, Derby-Stoke and the Durham Coast.

This is before the planning and highway connection issues of the 'grid' of depots are considered.

I keep saying this, and I think someone said I was giving children cancer or something, but gauge clearance can often bring other benefits when things like bridges are built - weight limits being removed, roads being widened, street lighting and pavements being added etc. The overbridge estate is getting older and more fragile with each passing winter, gauge clearance helps there too.

 

[Nottingham59]

The MML was a ‘financially positive’ case, ie net financial cost to Government was a net benefit. This means that the cost of the work is set to zero, which makes the BCR infinity.

Erm, not quite. That's what they said at the time, but the BCR calculation was done by comparing full electrification against the costs of fully-diesel traction, over 60 years. This compared the benefits of running electrc trains all the way to Sheffield, against the cost of electrifying only half the route, because the wires already reached Bedford. That indeed gave a positive financial case.

What they didn't do was compare the costs of full electrification against a bimode service, where you get (nearly) half the benefits of electrification with zero* investment in infrastructure. If they had done that, then the BCR of electrifying to Sheffield would have been much worse.

They published the spreadsheet used to make the BCR calculation, but I don't know if it's still available online. I thought at the time that it was disappointingly simplistic financial analysis for such a large investment decision.

* And in the end, the OHLE south of Bedford needed a lot of upgrading to cope with 125mph running, so the original cost case was flawed in that regard too.

 

[Irascible]

^^ This^^

Rail freight is great when you have "half a mile" of wagons/ trucks/ containers all wanting to get from A to B at the same time - just like passenger services are great when you have a hundred people all wanting to get from A to B.

What rail is a bit rubbish at is dealing with a hundred different "flows" - at least with passenger services you have "self loading freight" able to board and alight without too much work for the staff.

I have often wondered about how practical self-loading container vehicles would be; the obvious problem with returning to pickup-goods operation is that you have to keep trying to shove your freight train back on the main line so I'm not suggesting stopping at every station & dumping containers in the car park(!) - although that might work for much smaller containers for logistics companies like UPS/Amazon/whoever - but if you could off/onload at locations which weren't full-size container depots then you gain considerable flexibility & perhaps multi-modal operations become viable for more traffic. The thought that went along with that was the idea of a container equivalent of a marshalling yard with robotic "shunting" of containers, which unfortunately sounds like a rather huge investment. One of those ideas I suspect has already been looked at & run into a wall. ( The obvious wall right now is "why bother, throw it on a lorry", so that might change if haulage costs do ).

 

[Bald Rick]

The thought that went along with that was the idea of a container equivalent of a marshalling yard with robotic "shunting" of containers, which unfortunately sounds like a rather huge investment.

London Gateway is like that. It’s mostly automated, albeit on a large scale.

 

[mr_jrt]

I keep saying this, and I think someone said I was giving children cancer or something, but gauge clearance can often bring other benefits when things like bridges are built - weight limits being removed, roads being widened, street lighting and pavements being added etc. The overbridge estate is getting older and more fragile with each passing winter, gauge clearance helps there too.

My folks live near the MML up near Burton Latimer, I was very surprised that when the bridge next to the Weetabix factory was rebuilt it was rebuilt like-for-like as a single lane (can't recall if pavements were added, but I don't think so?) I can only presume intentionally to prevent lorries from trying to use it to access the factory?

 

[alangla]

Realistically, any Shrewsbury wiring would almost certainly trigger resignalling.

You would think so, but Larbert to Dunblane was electrified with the existing boxes retained. The physical signals have largely been replaced certainly, but in the case of the nearby Grangemouth branch, the (almost never used) OHLE was installed over semaphores

 

[edwin_m]

You would think so, but Larbert to Dunblane was electrified with the existing boxes retained. The physical signals have largely been replaced certainly, but in the case of the nearby Grangemouth branch, the (almost never used) OHLE was installed over semaphores

Mechanical signalling is intrinsically more immune to interference from electrification, as it doesn't fundamentally rely on electricity. But certain components will have had to be replaced or modified, including non-immune track circuits and signal where the OLE affects sighting or safe access. Power signalling can be immunised, but replacement is probably cheaper for older schemes unless the immunity was included when built.

 

[mcmad]

Err, Larbert was resignalled along with Carmuirs West and Grangemouth junction and all 3 are now controlled out of Edinburgh. Stirling Middle North remains for now. Even there, the boxes are largely just the mechanical frame interfacing with electronic equipment outside the box.

 

[alangla]

Err, Larbert was resignalled along with Carmuirs West and Grangemouth junction and all 3 are now controlled out of Edinburgh. Stirling Middle North remains for now. Even there, the boxes are largely just the mechanical frame interfacing with electronic equipment outside the box.

Thanks. I hadn’t realised that area had transferred.

 

[Brystar35]

While I am a Foreigner in the United States seeing these plans from the Transport Committee, Network Rail and all that I am super happy that the UK is pursuing a Modernization program such as this where a Zero-Net future is possible and to me its awesome.

I love the idea that Alot of the major Railway routes especially the Main lines are electrified with OLE which makes sense since they are heavily used and that means line speed increases and more capacity, HS2 as well being implanted which is amazing, also Battery and Hydrogen Rail powered trains where OLE is not possible or financially possible instead of diesel is a very smart move and that can be done on the investment of the trains and infrastructure as a whole.

I hope the UK goes with this it needs more electrification of its Railways at least the Major Mainline and major routes needs to be electrified, Electrified Railways are cleaner, carry less weight, able to run more services, more capacity increases, also with Battery and hydrogen Rail, there can be Bi-Mode trains running on battery and Hydrogen powered, no pollution at all. I hope Network Rail and the Government can work something out with this.

I was upset to see that the Great Western Main Line didn't complete its huge electrification plan the way it was meant to do but i hope with this new plan it can be possible plus more, More Jobs, economy boost and more, It could be like the New great deal was for the US in the 1930s and 1940s but for the UK, especially nowadays with this recession going on.

 

[Wtloild]

I think reducing the number of diesels idling away in the cramped confines of both Manchester Victoria & Birmingham New Street would be major wins.

 

[HSTEd]

I think reducing the number of diesels idling away in the cramped confines of both Manchester Victoria & Birmingham New Street would be major wins.

You require no further electrification to do this.

You simply have to spend the money to buy additional electrodiesels.

 

[waverley47]

Are we actually any closer to seeing this list? It would be great but I have a feeling the response from government will be lackluster at best.

 

[edwin_m]

The fundamental issue here - perhaps everyone thinks it's obvious but I haven't seen it mentioned on any related threads:

The government will have to pay for railway electrification.

The government may not have to pay for road electrification, because they assume with a few nudges the market will provide electric vehicles and users will buy them.

So from the government's point of view, and if you accept their assumption, road electrification is better value for money.

 

[Bald Rick]

Indeed, and also delivers substantially more decarbonisation.

Quite a large elephant in the box room.

 

[takno]

The fundamental issue here - perhaps everyone thinks it's obvious but I haven't seen it mentioned on any related threads:

The government will have to pay for railway electrification.

The government may not have to pay for road electrification, because they assume with a few nudges the market will provide electric vehicles and users will buy them.

So from the government's point of view, and if you accept their assumption, road electrification is better value for money.

The counter to that is that the government is still paying out some pretty epic subsidies to electrify roads, and will probably have to kick in a lot more if they want to electrify the sorts of cars going up and down motorways.

If they are serious about elimination of non-essential carbon, the choice is probably between electrifying the railways, and closing them and pushing all the passengers into electric cars. The extra roads to accommodate those passengers won't be cheaper than electrification

 

[Bald Rick]

The counter to that is that the government is still paying out some pretty epic subsidies to electrify roads

Not that much though, at least not compared to the cost of, say, electrification of half the remaining diesel rail traffic.

 

[Roast Veg]

EV adoption is still limited in public consciousness owing to petrol station coverage and capacity vs charging point coverage and capacity.

 

[WAO]

While I am a Foreigner in the United States seeing these plans from the Transport Committee, Network Rail and all that I am super happy that the UK is pursuing a Modernization program such as this where a Zero-Net future is possible and to me its awesome.

You should be aware that the British political and administrative elite's world class ability to produce long written reports is not matched by its track record in implementing them. We're well suited to railways and electric ones at that being a smallish, flattish island and our 3rd world level of 1/3 rail electrification does actually carry 2/3 of our traffic.

Our railroads have been disrupted since the 1990's by business school theories (we only copy bad US ideas) but our fragmented but talented industry has survived this and even grown considerably. Watch this space to see whether NR's "no regrets" succeed.

WAO

 

[Bald Rick]

EV adoption is still limited in public consciousness owing to petrol station coverage and capacity vs charging point coverage and capacity.

It really isn’t. 1 in 6 cars sold in December was a Battery EV. Add in the plug in hybrids and it was 1 in 4.

2021 is the year where Battery EVs become a normal choice for new car buyers - including fleet.

 

[Roast Veg]

It really isn’t. 1 in 6 cars sold in December was a Battery EV. Add in the plug in hybrids and it was 1 in 4.

2021 is the year where Battery EVs become a normal choice for new car buyers - including fleet.

I very dearly want this to be true. As a young person in the market for a first car the prospect of only ever owning EVs is extremely attractive. "Limited" does not mean completely suppressed, rather I was identifying where the government is required to fund EV adoption.

 

[InOban]

I'm sure that I read somewhere that there are more charging locations than petrol stations.

 

[Domh245]

I'm sure that I read somewhere that there are more charging locations than petrol stations.

Although the very obvious things to point out there is that a "charging location" will be a single charge point whereas I can't think of a single petrol station with only a single pump. Additionally because of the significantly longer occupation time for a charging point vs a petrol pump, there is still a high chance of a location being occupied

 

[themiller]

Although the very obvious things to point out there is that a "charging location" will be a single charge point whereas I can't think of a single petrol station with only a single pump. Additionally because of the significantly longer occupation time for a charging point vs a petrol pump, there is still a high chance of a location being occupied

The only time I had to wait to get onto a chargepoint was during a week on Skye. The point at Portree was out of use due to the car park being redeveloped so I had to charge at Broadford where I waited 10 minutes to get onto a rapid charger. I used the time to visit the local shops which I would have gone to during charging. We went on a walk after plugging in so no time wasted. BTW charging is free at most Chargepoint Scotland chargers if you buy a card for £20 which is valid for a year! A weeks driving at no fuel cost is brilliant.

 

[Class 170101]

It really isn’t. 1 in 6 cars sold in December was a Battery EV. Add in the plug in hybrids and it was 1 in 4.

2021 is the year where Battery EVs become a normal choice for new car buyers - including fleet.

Unless the infrastructure improves and charging is faster surely petrol still wins over Electric cars. Of course it assumes that we do as many miles post pandemic as we did pre-pandemic. If we do less miles then only charging overnight or at a long stop will work, but for high mileage drivesr I can see electric charging times as a barrier unless one charge would cover a daily mileage for someone reliant on their car for employment.

 

[Irascible]

Unless the infrastructure improves and charging is faster surely petrol still wins over Electric cars. Of course it assumes that we do as many miles post pandemic as we did pre-pandemic. If we do less miles then only charging overnight or at a long stop will work, but for high mileage drivesr I can see electric charging times as a barrier unless one charge would cover a daily mileage for someone reliant on their car for employment.

Which is where alternative instant-charge "batteries" like hydrogen, or other alt fuel systems come in, so perhaps the focus shouldn't be 100% on EV but more about not-an-ICE.

60% of the parking here is on-street & there's no infrastructure for public charging ( I'm not even sure our local grid can stand mass car charging, to be honest ). Quite some way to go yet. Cash-strapped local councils have rather higher priorities right now too :/

 

[The Ham]

Indeed, and also delivers substantially more decarbonisation.

Quite a large elephant in the box room.

Indeed, however the other thing to note is that we need to get to net zero, as such we don't really have a choice of either/or. Especially given that currently the rail network emissions per km per person isn't that adrift from EV (especially when you consider the maintenance of the infrastructure).

As such the more electrification of the railways the note likely it's going to surpass EV emissions. It may even be that even with EV's there's still a push to get people to use rail as it would result in yet lower emissions.

That's before you consider that rail users are more likely to walk/cycle for local trips and so their milage emissions are likely to be lower still.

Which is where alternative instant-charge "batteries" like hydrogen, or other alt fuel systems come in, so perhaps the focus shouldn't be 100% on EV but more about not-an-ICE.

60% of the parking here is on-street & there's no infrastructure for public charging ( I'm not even sure our local grid can stand mass car charging, to be honest ). Quite some way to go yet. Cash-strapped local councils have rather higher priorities right now too :/

The charging of cars wouldn't really add that much peak load to grids. Yes those commuting would plug their cars in as they get home during peak load time, that doesn't mean that's when they'll be charged. Also if you've got a car with a 120 mile range and your drive to work is 20 miles you'll actually only need a 75% charge every other day (and 20 miles is double the average commute distance by car).

Other factors come into play, such as WFH. Which not only reduces numbers traveled by means that you could go to the office 2 days a week and charge during the day as any other time the rest of the week (including when you're own solar panels are creating electricity).

With regards to public charging, whilst some areas have very high numbers of parking on street. It's quite likely that these are in urban areas where public transport or cycling could cater for more of the travel than is currently the case.

That includes the use of e-bikes which mean the user can put in very little effort and still get to where they're going at a very much reduced cost (even when buying a set of decent waterproofs) over using other vehicles.

However even if you were to be a fair weather cyclist that would still reduce the power draw required.

Whilst the likelihood of our raining on any given day in a lot of places in the UK is fairly high, the likelihood of it raining when someone is actually traveling is low. Even then there's a fair chance that the rain would be fairly light.

That's not just from a place of theory, as I walk to work having dropped my children at school and then walk home (one day a week that includes walking the wrong way to go and get the children from their childminder before walking home) and rarely do I get rained on very much (although I'm aware that there's other areas which are wetter than where I live, but even then the general principle holds).