Thameslink Core - ERTMS/ETCS and ATO

[DerekC]

I see that the Class 700s are to get an ERTMS upgrade:

https://www.networkrailmediacentre....leet will be,the East Coast Digital Programme.

Thameslink fleet set for additional digital upgrade​

Region & Route: Eastern
Industry partners in the transformational East Coast Digital Programme (ECDP) have signed a £32.7million contract to upgrade the Class 700 Thameslink fleet to the latest specification of European Train Control System (ETCS). The five-year contract was signed by Cross London Trains, DfT, Govia Thameslink Railway, Network Rail and Siemens Mobility.

The 115-strong Thameslink fleet is the largest passenger fleet in a programme designed to replace conventional signals at the side of the track with state-of-the-art digital signalling - providing continuous, real-time information to the driver’s cab.

The technology will mean more reliable and greener services for passengers and freight, creating the next generation railway.

Coupled with the retrofit of ETCS to Great Northern’s Class 387 Electrostars [see past press release] and the wider ECDP fleet fitment programme, the Class 700 upgrade will help unlock the potential for the remarkable benefits of digital signalling to be rolled out to other parts of the UK network

These trains were fitted with ETCS and and ATO from the start. The ETCS infrastructure was commissioned a few years ago (I forget the date) with a considerable ta-ra. The upgrade will be to make the trains compatible with the latest version of ETCS on the ECML. Is ETCS and ATO in regular use in the Thameslink core?

 

[Javelin_55]

I could be wrong but I believe all drivers competent to use it in the core must do so Monday to Friday, with it being relatively optional at the weekend for some reason.

There remain a number of drivers who aren't passed out on it and so they will stay in NTC throughout.

 

[Benjwri]

with it being relatively optional at the weekend for some reason.

It’s dual reason, happens weekends and late evening, it maintains competency incase there is a failure while causing less disruption as the timetable is less intense.

However the main reason is train skip stops in the core at these times, and ATO is not capable of skipping stops.

 

[Javelin_55]

It’s dual reason, happens weekends and late evening, it maintains competency incase there is a failure while causing less disruption as the timetable is less intense.

However the main reason is train skip stops in the core at these times, and ATO is not capable of skipping stops.

Ahh, there you go. Knew there must be a good reason! Cheers.

 

[DerekC]

It’s dual reason, happens weekends and late evening, it maintains competency incase there is a failure while causing less disruption as the timetable is less intense.

However the main reason is train skip stops in the core at these times, and ATO is not capable of skipping stops.

Useful info - thanks to all. ATO could do skip stops - it's just that somebody would have to pay Siemens to make the necessary software changes.

 

[Bald Rick]

Is ETCS and ATO in regular use in the Thameslink core?

Yes; from experience about half the drivers are now qualified to use it and do so.

 

[Mattydo]

A number of RBC connection failures this week have gone to underline that the system still isn't perfect and manual driving to light signals still becomes the only option to get a train moving. Maintaining competency therefore is important. Skip stop function is available and indeed during the week, running ECS, is used with the right mode enabled to prevent door release. However it does require a manual input each time and therefore manual driving in ETCS when (predominantly city Thameslink) is closed is required as it prevents someone forgetting. Also when maintenance is being carried out at the weekend ATO can be... "Twitchy", and therefore manual driving must be used. The same is true of overnight in the week and the lunchtime "optional" period is for competency.

To be clear the use of ETCS is always mandatory for those trained, unless authorised to revert due to a failure which is fairly common still.

ATO must be used Monday to Friday 05.00 to 23.00 and is prohibited at all other times.

Drivers may choose to not use ATO between 11.00 and 14.00 for Competency unless in disruption or you have a delay.

 

[Bald Rick]

The difference in performance is quite startling, trains can easily make up 4-5 minutes delay in ATO from London Bridge to St P.

 

[Mattydo]

Deleted

 

[IndianPacific]

It’s dual reason, happens weekends and late evening, it maintains competency incase there is a failure while causing less disruption as the timetable is less intense.

However the main reason is train skip stops in the core at these times, and ATO is not capable of skipping stops.

‘ATO’ is capable of it, the problem is that the assumption was Traffic Management would come along and feed it the correct journey profiles. Without that feed the train assumes it’ll stop everywhere.

The trains also have a skip stop function that the driver can initiate but again, since the assumption was it would rarely be needed I not sure how accessible it is.

 

[Nicholas Lewis]

The difference in performance is quite startling, trains can easily make up 4-5 minutes delay in ATO from London Bridge to St P.

I know its excellence love the way trains accelerate through the platforms reminds of the Victoria Line 1st gen only took the main line 50 years to catch up!!

 

[DerekC]

A number of RBC connection failures this week have gone to underline that the system still isn't perfect and manual driving to light signals still becomes the only option to get a train moving. Maintaining competency therefore is important. Skip stop function is available and indeed during the week, running ECS, is used with the right mode enabled to prevent door release. However it does require a manual input each time and therefore manual driving in ETCS when (predominantly city Thameslink) is closed is required as it prevents someone forgetting. Also when maintenance is being carried out at the weekend ATO can be... "Twitchy", and therefore manual driving must be used.

What kind of "twitchy"? Would that be related to adhesion issues?

To be clear the use of ETCS is always mandatory for those trained, unless authorised to revert due to a failure which is fairly common still.

ATO must be used Monday to Friday 05.00 to 23.00 and is prohibited at all other times.

Drivers may choose to not use ATO between 11.00 and 14.00 for Competency unless in disruption or you have a delay.

Could you explain the last point a bit more - is that to maintain competency at manual driving?

 

[Mattydo]

What kind of "twitchy"? Would that be related to adhesion issues?

Could you explain the last point a bit more - is that to maintain competency at manual driving?

Yes, say you hadn't driven through the core much at the weekend recently this time gives you the opportunity to drive manually in ETCS mode.

As for twitchy it has a tendency to drop out unexpectedly, this can be an ATO fault or just a loss of ETCS communications, leading to the anchor going out and your pleasant morning coffee becoming a risk to your lap. I should say the vat majority of journeys are absolutely fine. The system is fine. I imagine it's the integration of that system into an old rail network that causes these occasional glitches.

To me it is evidence that the idea of a nationwide ATO roll out in the near to medium term future is more fantastical than even I had realised (and that's setting aside bias). ETCS however hopefully it's more swift. It's a great system and hopefully as they learn from pilot schemes it becomes more reliable. It's a huge safety increase over AWS/TPWS and it also allows for far more efficiency.

 

[jon0844]

‘ATO’ is capable of it, the problem is that the assumption was Traffic Management would come along and feed it the correct journey profiles. Without that feed the train assumes it’ll stop everywhere.

The trains also have a skip stop function that the driver can initiate but again, since the assumption was it would rarely be needed I not sure how accessible it is.

There's so much that the 700s were supposed to do but never actually happened.

While control can check in real time how busy a train is, what toilets don't work, the temperature on board and in theory any wheelchair users that were logged on the passenger asisst app (useful if skipping stops or when trains are stranded and may need evacuating), the train loading data isn't shown on the CIS at stations, and I'm not sure the screens can show toilet issues without manual intervention.

Likewise, those screens were supposed to show train running info for other services, not just TfL, and that too has never happened.

Now many 387s have screens that are just showing digital posters and nothing useful.

I'm told this will all come down to the. necessary business cases to the DfT, so frankly I can't see a lot of things happening and if a driver needs to faff around editing stopping patterns and means there's even the slightest risk of making an error, there's no way it's going to happen.

 

[Bald Rick]

the train loading data isn't shown on the CIS at stations

That’s a deliberate choice, because as the trains move through the core the loading position changes very rapidly, which could cause confusion for passengers.

 

[jon0844]

That’s a deliberate choice, because as the trains move through the core the loading position changes very rapidly, which could cause confusion for passengers.

Yes, in the core for sure as there's a huge turnover of passengers but it would be useful elsewhere.

There is historical data that some systems show, but that isn't much good if a normally empty service is packed due to an event.

 

[gravitystorm]

These trains were fitted with ETCS and and ATO from the start. The ETCS infrastructure was commissioned a few years ago (I forget the date) with a considerable ta-ra. The upgrade will be to make the trains compatible with the latest version of ETCS on the ECML.

Does anyone have any insight into what's driving the costs here? £32.7m to upgrade an already ETCS-equipped fleet to a newer ETCS version seems like a lot of money to me, but I have no inside knowledge. The article mentions having to replace hardware on the trains, so is that perhaps what's driving the cost up? Or is the software development a substantial amount of work? I would have thought that given both the hardware and software is standardised, and the trains are already fitted so presumably don't need much structural modification, any upgrades would be a business-as-usual kind of routine thing, rather than a multi-tens-of-millions-of-pounds project.

My concern is that upgrading this fleet to a new baseline could happen again at some point in the future, e.g. if ETCS is rolled out somewhere else on the Thameslink network, with a different baseline. Are these scale of costs - £284k per unit - likely to happen every time a train is updated to handle a new ETCS version? Or are there some special circumstances here that mean this is a one off?

 

[Nicholas Lewis]

Does anyone have any insight into what's driving the costs here? £32.7m to upgrade an already ETCS-equipped fleet to a newer ETCS version seems like a lot of money to me, but I have no inside knowledge. The article mentions having to replace hardware on the trains, so is that perhaps what's driving the cost up? Or is the software development a substantial amount of work? I would have thought that given both the hardware and software is standardised, and the trains are already fitted so presumably don't need much structural modification, any upgrades would be a business-as-usual kind of routine thing, rather than a multi-tens-of-millions-of-pounds project.

My concern is that upgrading this fleet to a new baseline could happen again at some point in the future, e.g. if ETCS is rolled out somewhere else on the Thameslink network, with a different baseline. Are these scale of costs - £284k per unit - likely to happen every time a train is updated to handle a new ETCS version? Or are there some special circumstances here that mean this is a one off?

Its a ludicrous amount of money for what sounds like a hardware change rather than a full scale having to install equipment cubicles and associated cabling and changes to existing systems. Its difficult to see how the business case stacks up for ETCS system wide but clearly no choice here as the units are mainstay of route. Im surmising the 717's incorporated required hardware from build?

 

[DerekC]

Its a ludicrous amount of money for what sounds like a hardware change rather than a full scale having to install equipment cubicles and associated cabling and changes to existing systems. Its difficult to see how the business case stacks up for ETCS system wide but clearly no choice here as the units are mainstay of route. Im surmising the 717's incorporated required hardware from build?

I agree it's a lot of money, especially given that the Class 700s were equipped with ETCS baseline 3 from new. There is a set of slides here that gives some idea of what's included in the latest specifications:

https://www.era.europa.eu/system/fi..._malfait_and_juan_hernandez_fernandez_era.pdf

 

[Nicholas Lewis]

I agree it's a lot of money, especially given that the Class 700s were equipped with ETCS baseline 3 from new. There is a set of slides here that gives some idea of what's included in the latest specifications:

https://www.era.europa.eu/system/fi..._malfait_and_juan_hernandez_fernandez_era.pdf

Can't help thinking every new baseline just adds more functionality because you can not because you necessarily need it

 

[Edvid]

Does anyone have any insight into what's driving the costs here? £32.7m to upgrade an already ETCS-equipped fleet to a newer ETCS version seems like a lot of money to me, but I have no inside knowledge. The article mentions having to replace hardware on the trains, so is that perhaps what's driving the cost up? Or is the software development a substantial amount of work? I would have thought that given both the hardware and software is standardised, and the trains are already fitted so presumably don't need much structural modification, any upgrades would be a business-as-usual kind of routine thing, rather than a multi-tens-of-millions-of-pounds project.

My concern is that upgrading this fleet to a new baseline could happen again at some point in the future, e.g. if ETCS is rolled out somewhere else on the Thameslink network, with a different baseline. Are these scale of costs - £284k per unit - likely to happen every time a train is updated to handle a new ETCS version? Or are there some special circumstances here that mean this is a one off?

Rail Engineer recently published an article on this very subject (and ETCS rollout in general):

ETCS – more deliberations - Rail Engineer

Looking back over several years of articles written for Rail Engineer covering the European Train Control System (ETCS), it is somewhat depressing to observe that none of the predictions for system introduction have come to fruition in the timescale stated or at the forecast price. Right across...

www.railengineer.co.uk

Rolling Stock Complications

It has been said on numerous occasions that retro fitting rolling stock with ETCS (or indeed any other technical addition) is not the preferred approach. The ideal situation is for trains to come out of the factory ready fitted but, even if this is the case, upgrades to either the hardware or software are likely to happen during the lifetime of the train.

[...]

The situation is more complex where trains are procured by the government under a Private Finance Initiative (PFI) with a rolling stock supplier and typically a range of financiers. Associated with the deal are significant conditions as to how the train is used, maintained, and made available for service. The leasing cost is high and the penalties for non-availability are onerous. Taking trains out of service to equip them with minor changes, let alone ETCS, is regarded as high risk which acts as a deterrent to making the change. Thus, the cost of implementing the change is artificially higher as a result of the penalty and risk regime imposed. The implications are significant for projects that need to make changes to trains.

Implications for the ECDP

At face value, the rolling stock situation on the ECDP should be relatively easy. The Class 800 Azuma intercity trains were all built with ETCS ready fitted. Similarly, the Class 717 inner suburban units that replaced the 313s were equipped with ETCS as part of the build contract, but even here some minor software changes will be needed. More difficult are the Class 387 Electrostar trains as these need to be retrofitted – a task made harder by the very small cab resulting from the inter unit corridor connection.

[...]

However, both the Class 700 Thameslink trains and the Class 800 Azumas were acquired via a PFI deal, which for the reasons stated above have made their upgrade a serious challenge. Carrying out the technical changes is relatively straightforward, but it is a major commercial exercise where clear thinking and willingness to succeed from all involved is required.

The Class 700 Conundrum

When commissioned in 2018, the full Thameslink service revolutionised north-south cross London journeys. With the potential for 24 trains per hour in each direction, reliance on manual driving was not deemed possible for this to be achieved, so ETCS with an incorporated ATO package and short block sections was seen as highly desirable. The ETCS software specification had been signed off at European level at v3.3.0. This boded well for extending ETCS along the East Coast Main Line, the Midland Main Line, and eventually to routes south of the river. The system has proved reliable and the ATO works well.

A recent contract has, however, been announced to upgrade the Class 700 trains with a later version of ETCS, incorporating some hardware and software changes so as to be compatible with the national reference design specification being matured through the ECDP delivery phase. The contract value is £32.7 million which, for the 115 trains in the fleet, works out at £140,000 per cab. This is an enormous sum of money for a train already equipped with ETCS, albeit the development applies to other fleet variants like the Class 717.

[...]

The impact of PFI is the main reason for the high cost. While there could be some ‘sharpening of pencils’ with some of the engineering elements, the changes to the cab and the software updates have to be incorporated into the current PFI and its associated performance and penalty regime. Carrying out all these things within one upgrade is preferable to doing them separately which would only create more complex commercial interfaces where core safety operational systems are partially in and out of the regime. It will also mean a new ‘first in class’ exercise has to be carried out. Once proven, trains will need to be taken out of service for the modifications to be made, all of which impacts on the PFI contract for train availability and performance, thus incurring costs.

The question that needs asking is why the upgrade cannot be undertaken during the times when the trains are in for routine maintenance? It is understood that the way in which costs are incurred for the PFI financed rolling stock is being challenged by Network Rail as the infrastructure manager.

 

[zwk500]

Can't help thinking every new baseline just adds more functionality because you can not because you necessarily need it

Remember that ETCS is trying to harmonise several dozen networks across a common set of operating principles. It's not intended that every piece of functionality will be needed by every railway all of the time.

Although the hybrid train detection could be a game-change for the UK. The cost of installing continuous detection on AB lines is holding back a lot of upgrades which if it could be reduced substantially would massively help.

 

[Fragezeichnen]

They do remove things too. Radio Infill is being deprecated, since it was only ever implemented on a couple of routes in Italy. Level 2 and 3 are being combined into Level R, since they are essentially identical on the on-board side. Route Suitability reporting is likely on the chopping block too, since no-one uses it.

That said, the ERA also comes up with a lot of changes which just make you think "why?"

 

[snowball]

Nice quote in that Rail Engineer article: "Nowhere in the world is the railway's commercial structure more complicated than in the UK."