Core project
PAUL STEPHEN goes behind the scenes at Network Rail’s Thameslink Programme, where final preparations are being made to switch from conventional to in-cab signalling on its central section in May
and Brighton. All ran via London Bridge, and these trains are shadow-running for GTR ahead of the planned timetable increase from May 20.
Rail Minister Jo Johnson said: “Passengers on the expanded Thameslink route are now starting to see the benefits of almost ten years of hard work, with six new services giving people better connections running between Cambridge and Brighton, Horsham and Peterborough, for the very first time.”
From May, there will be 18 Thameslink trains per hour through the Core section between St Pancras International and Blackfriars, with 12tph then routed via London Bridge and 6tph via Elephant & Castle. The full 24tph planned for December 2018 has been delayed a year ( RAIL 840).
The first trains that ran were the 0946 and 1317 Peter boroughHorsham, and 1000, 1330 Horsham-Peterborough, and 1132 Brighton-Cambridge and 1424 return. A second Cambridge train was due to start on March 12 (after this issue of RAIL went to press), with the 1124 Cambridge-Brighton and 1432 return.
From May 21, there will be an hourly frequency on the Cambridge-Brighton route, with trains leaving the former at 0654 and then xx54 until 1954 (apart from at 1853), while northbound trains start at 0506, and run at 0605, 0707, 0807 and then xx08 until 2208. Journey times are 2hrs 32mins.
On the Peterborough-Horsham route the frequency is hourly, starting at 0424 and running halfhourly at xx24 and xx54 until 2154 (apart from at 0824, 0857, 0926 and 1123). Northbound trains start running at 0525, then the next departure for Peterborough is 0855, and then running at xx25 and xx55.
The May timetable change is expected to generate capacity for an extra 40,000 passengers during the three-hour peak period.
In December, it is planned that 20tph will run through the Core, with an extra 1tph between Cambridge and Brighton and an extra 1tph between Littlehampton and Bedford.
Automatic Train Operation (ATO) will start in May, according to Martin Chatfield, Network Rail Thameslink Programme High Capacity Infrastructure Project Director (see pages 58-61).
ATO is not needed until May 2019, when 22tph start running, followed by 24tph in December 2019 with the introduction of Cambridge-Maidstone East trains.
On May 20, the introduction of higher frequency Thameslink services through central London will commence to serve a wider range of destinations, including Peterborough, Ashford and Cambridge.
The timetable change will result in up to 18 trains per hour travelling in each direction at peak times through the Thameslink ‘core’, between St Pancras International and Blackfriars, which will rise incrementally to 24tph by December 2019.
This core section of Thameslink is a short two-track stretch of railway where routes from three different directions in the south and two directions in the north converge. The key to achieving a central core frequency of 24tph has therefore been to install ETCS (European Train Control System) Level 2 and ATO (Automatic Train Operation) digital in-cab signalling technology.
ETCS Level 2 is a step below full Level 3 moving block signalling, but nevertheless increases the number of available train paths compared to conventional signalling by having much shorter track circuit block sections. This reduces headways by enabling trains to run much closer together.
Alongside ETCS, existing lineside signals are being retained throughout the core for non-ETCS-fitted trains, while also providing a useful backup should it fail.
A traffic management (TM) system will also operate within a wider area of the core ( broadly covering 20 minutes’ travel time in all directions) from later this year to help keep performance as close as possible to the timetabled path of each train, and to mitigate the risk of late-running services.
Linking TM to Automatic Route Setting software will also help signallers based at Three Bridges Rail Operating Centre (TBROC) to recover the timetable in case of disruption.
The task of delivering this infrastructure falls to Network Rail’s Thameslink Programme High Capacity Infrastructure (HCI) team, led by project director Martin Chatfield.
Based near Blackfriars station at James Forbes House ( JFH), HCI began its journey in 2012 to extensively test and commission the digital signalling technology, both hardware and software, before it is pressed into full service in May.
The team’s challenge is unique within NR. ETCS has never before been deployed on this scale on a UK main line. Another team is also working to install ETCS on Crossrail’s western section, but ETCS Level 2 has never been overlaid onto existing systems in combination with ATO, as is the case with Thameslink.
Elevating its status even further, Thameslink is of great interest to NR’s Digital Railway team. Thameslink is an entirely independently governed programme from DR, but it will act as a benchmark for the migration of ETCS to other parts of the network in Control Period 6 (April 2019March 2024) and beyond.
Chatfield explains: “Getting to this point
Thameslink passengers will be getting a metro-style railway like the London Underground - but with much better views. Martin Chatfield, Project Director, Network Rail
hasn’t just happened overnight and the software wasn’t suddenly just switched on. Until 2019 the industry will be continuing to work incrementally to get up to 24tph. We are also providing the tools to allow TOCs to manage the PPM (Public Performance Measure) for up to 700 daily Thameslink services.
“Since 2012 we’ve been working hard on three work packages: deploying the ATO and ETCS to create reliable 24tph capability, managing the necessary signalling re-controls and traffic management introduction, and carrying out a number of station enhancements to help reduce dwell times.”
Chatfield is keen to stress the importance of the last point, as high frequencies cannot be maintained through the core without reducing dwell times at stations from their current two-three minutes, to less than 60 seconds.
To help achieve this, mobility ramps have been installed mid-platform at all core stations to expedite wheelchair access, while passenger information screens will be improved and station signage increased.
He adds: “It’s not just been about providing a system to run 24tph, but having a whole-system approach in order to change passenger behavior.
“We’re trying to concentrate on talking up the benefits of this, as Thameslink passengers will be getting a metro-style railway like the London Underground - but with much better views.
“That means that trains will be pulling into stations as the tail lights of the one in front are still disappearing from view, which I don’t think all Thameslink passengers will be used to.
“New and improved signage and information screens will help with that [transition], and help maintain performance throughout the core.”
Testing of ETCS and ATO commenced in 2013, following the opening of a purposebuilt lab at JFH containing an exact replica of a Class 700 cab.
Dynamic testing then began at Network Rail’s ETCS National Integration Facility (ENIF) at Hitchin approximately a year later using NR’s Class 313 ERTMS test train on a specially designated section of the Hertford Loop line.
The HCI team then switched to overnight testing on the core itself, in April 2016, using a Class 700 train specifically provided for this purpose by Siemens.
Chatfield adds: “We used ENIF for a couple of years and the ‘313’ while we awaited our own Class 700, which we tested there before taking it into the core. I guess that means we must be one of the only NR projects to have ever been given our own train.”
RAIL was invited to tour the lab at JFH on February 19, where it is given a tour and demonstration of the simulator by senior programme engineer David Harris.
As the only facility of its type in the UK, Harris says that two or three requests are received every month to visit the lab by
a range of suppliers, operators and other industry bodies.
This offline testing centre contains at least one sample of each component needed to run ETCS and ATO. This includes a dummy balise (ETCS transponder), a balise reader, AWS and TPWS (which would provide train protection if ETCS fails), GSM-R connection, all on-board equipment, plus real trackside interlockings and a radio block controller.
The laboratory has the capacity to simulate 60 trains and to operate any one of them in order to replicate the connection that trains will have with other equipped trains in the core.
It will remain in use with HCI until at least November when a further use will be found for it.
“All of this is real kit,” adds Chatfield. “There are balises, interlockings and a doppler radar downstairs, so we’ve got an entire railway in a double-storey Portakabin.
“We’ll try and find a purchaser for it when we’re finished, perhaps within NR, or offer it as a maintenance facility to the routes or equipment maintainers.”
RAIL then heads almost 30 miles south to Three Bridges Rail Operating Centre (TBROC), where control and signalling of the Thameslink network is being consolidated into a single site.
On the first floor, new workstations have been installed and are fully operational for the Thameslink core’s north and central sections, having already been re-controlled from West Hampstead and Victoria.
Elsewhere in the room, there are workstations for London Bridge, Charing Cross and Cannon Street A and B. Work has also begun to accommodate panels from Lewisham and Grove Park in May. There will also be a screen for the traffic management system that will be run in shadow mode and then become fully operational in early 2019, when it will become interfaced with signallers’ workstations via Automatic Route Setting.
Meanwhile, on the ground floor, full training for ETCS, ATO and TM is being delivered in a simulator room for the 24 signallers based at TBROC. Not only will
We must be one of the only NR projects to have ever been given our own train. Martin Chatfield, Project Director, Network Rail
they have to be able to work with the new systems, but they must be able to signal trains in the conventional fashion and switch back to lineside signalling in the event of ETCS failure.
Looking ahead, and Chatfield says that the existing infrastructure could support the introduction of 24tph by the end of 2018 as originally envisaged.
In fact, it could potentially support 30tph, although this would be reserved for times of extreme disruption-only as some services would be required to run nonstop, undoubtedly inconveniencing some passengers.
The industry has agreed that it would be beneficial to passengers to introduce the timetable in four phases, to enable experience to be embedded between stages.
As for Chatfield and his approximately 35-strong HCI team, they have been incorporated into NR’s Infrastructure Projects signalling team and seconded back to Thameslink, so that its digital signalling capabilities are not lost at the end of the programme next year.
They may then be deployed to the possible future Digital Railway projects which were outlined in NR’s CP6 Strategic Business
Plan, published on February 13, such as resignalling schemes at Feltham or on the southern portion of the East Coast Main Line into King’s Cross and Moorgate.
Chatfield welcomes the opportunity to continue the pioneering work of Thameslink, and to cultivate more talented young engineers.
“There’s a very collaborative team here with our technology suppliers Siemens and Hitachi Rail Europe. ETCS engineers weren’t exactly growing on trees in 2012, and they still aren’t, so it has been a very open process with suppliers, which will be carried through to the next schemes.
“The amount of staff development here during testing has been phenomenal, however, and we’ve had three or four graduate engineers move on to highly skilled jobs abroad and elsewhere in the supply chain, and that cycle continues.
“Upskilling has always been very important to me and keeping hold of people has been quite difficult, but we have been very successful at providing career paths and hopefully we will now provide the industry with lots of future capability.”