New cross-city lines such as Crossrail and Thameslink will clearly help. Not only do they provide increased capacity and new journey opportunities, but they are inherently more efficient as they avoid complex and time-consuming turnarounds at the termini. They reduce the dominance of the termini, and this will help encourage the expansion of the core into areas that hitherto had been relatively inaccessible despite their proximity to the city.

In our follow-up that took a peek into the future, we looked at TfL’s aspiration for a pattern of “strategic interchanges”, linked by orbital services that will build on TfL’s highly successful Overground model.

Examples of Strategic Interchanges (From the MTS)

However we saw trouble ahead, partly because it wasn’t entirely clear what a strategic interchange was, but also because the orbital routes connecting them are getting close to capacity. It is also clear that even with the investment proposed for the next control period (CP5, 2014-2019), as summarised in TfL’s July 2011 recommendations for HLOS2, by 2020 the projected overcrowding on the orbital routes will still be among the worst on the capital’s network. Then just a few short months later, in November TfL reported on their London Overground Impacts Study, which contained the infographic below showing revised projections for overcrowding, which were more severe and will come by 2016 rather than 2020.

Forecast Crowding in 2016

It’s clear that TfL does not have much time on its side to come up with some solutions, but as the Rail Utilisation Strategies have shown, these are not likely to come easily.

The orbital routes and their strategic interchanges will be explored in more detail in later posts looking at London north, east, south and west. But a key theme emerging from these is the difficulty in providing capacity for freight alongside passenger services. The West London Line (WLL), North London Line (NLL) and Gospel Oak-Barking line (GOBLIN) are important strategic freight routes on which metro services have to be interleaved, but these two traffic patterns have very different characteristics and do not mix well.

TfL’s aspirations for a network of strategic interchanges linked by its Overground services will depend on its success in balancing freight flows alongside passenger, and this is becoming a challenge as both markets are growing rapidly. And given that most freight flows in London are destined for other places, surely the obvious solution is to relocate cross-London freight to new routes outside London?

So it is to freight we now turn, and casting the net a long way beyond London’s boundaries, and TfL’s purlieu, and indeed London Reconnections’ realm and comfort zone. We occasionally embark upon distant explorations, for instance on how a new chord at Nuneaton will help ease pressure on the NLL. Mwmbwls’ coverage of the Haven ports and the new London Gateway terminal suggests that London is ill-prepared for the container loads that will soon be churning forth. Perhaps of greatest concern is the inability for DfT and TfL to come to agreement over that most low-hanging of investment fruit: the electrification of the GOBLIN route from Barking to Gospel Oak. If this is a sign of decision-making to come then London has major freight problems ahead ? both road and rail ? and TfL may find its aspirations for the Overground and its strategic interchanges getting stuck in the jam.

But as ever we leap ahead of ourselves, so first a look at the various strategies and what they can tell us about freight in and through London.

No shortage of strategies

Sadly for this author, this is no idle flick through a Rail Utilisation Strategy (RUS) and a swift write-up: freight is covered in pretty much every RUS, plus it has one all of its own. Plus there is also DfT’s 2009 report which sets out its vision for the Strategic Freight Network (SFN) and the investment priorities for CP5 (2014/15 to 2018/19) and beyond.

The Rail Freight Strategy

On top of this TfL produced a Rail Freight Strategy in 2007, which has been built into the 2010 Mayor’s Transport Strategy. The Mayor also produces Supplementary Planning Guidance (SPG) documents to provide further detail on particular policies in the London Plan, including the 2007 SPG on land for transport (PDF), which we will draw upon in future posts.

It would seem rather unfair if we didn’t flag up the ill-fated Strategic Rail Authority’s own 2001 Freight Strategy (PDF). In these heady pre-RUS days, it is interesting that the SRA took such a keen interest in freight, and indeed introduced many of the proposals that were developed in subsequent strategies.

But before immersing ourselves in routes and destinations, the obvious question that arises from all of these worthy documents is: who is in charge, where does the buck stop? Or alternatively, what is TfL’s role in rail freight in London, and how does it relate to DfT, Network Rail, the Train Operating Companies (TOCs), the London boroughs, distribution companies, developers and others?

Perhaps it is all a bit of a team effort. For instance, the SFN investment program is developed by the Strategic Freight Network Steering Group. This was set up by Network Rail in 2007 and brings together stakeholders including the freight operating companies and freight users, the Association of Train Operating Companies (representing passenger operators), DfT, Wales Assembly Government and Transport Scotland. From the TfL February 2011 ‘Rail and Underground Panel, Managing Director’s report, Agenda item 6′: (PDF):

7.22 The Strategic Freight Network Steering Group, of which London Rail is a member, is continuing to optimise spending of the available funding in control period 4 (2009-14) and is looking at investment priorities for control period 5 (2014-19).

7.23 The London and South East RUS draft for consultation looks at long term freight routing options, with the strategy being to avoid freight passing through the London area unless there is no realistic alternative. This approach and the individual routings is wholly consistent with the Mayor’s Transport Strategy

The stakeholder groups for the SFN and the 2007 Freight RUS are very similar. Given that the Freight RUS feeds into all the regional RUSs, including the 2011 London & South East RUS, it is no surprise that they all appear to sing off the same song sheet.

However what happens when investment options run out and the stakeholders find themselves fighting for precious rail space? There is a hint of this tucked away in the London & South East RUS (Sec 9.2.6 p161):

In some instances where capacity is severely constrained, consideration may need to be given to whether the allocation of capacity to freight services should be weighed against the use of that capacity by lightly-loaded passenger services.

At first glance this is eminently sensible: cut lightly used passenger services to release extra freight paths. But this may not be so straightforward in practice given the positions that the TOCs, passenger groups and the regulator might take.

More to the point, the issue that TfL faces is the need to create capacity for additional passenger services and freight paths. And as we shall see, for TfL to create more paths for Overground services on the orbital lines, it needs to persuade someone to invest in improvements in places like Leicester, Kenilworth, Ely and Basingstoke. This must provide TfL with an interesting challenge.

But it still takes us back to the original question: when it comes to the crunch, who decides? This of course appears to be in a state of flux with the recent announcement of the Mayor’s Rail Vision. Although the prime focus is on passenger services, it represents a fundamental shift in terms of strategic decision-making for inner London rail services, and inevitably this will include freight. As this saga unfolds, we’ll explore this further in Part 3.

Things come, things go

The first thing to know about rail freight in London is that most of it goes through ? even if some of it goes up to distribution centres in the Midlands and comes back in lorries. TfL’s 2007 Rail Freight Strategy sums it up nicely:

3.14 This situation reflects London’s position as the hub of the UK rail network. The railways were built as a series of radial routes serving the main London termini. The ‘orbital’ routes (North, West, South London Lines, Gospel Oak to Barking route, etc) allow freight to pass between these radial routes. This arrangement has worked well historically, but competing needs have emerged more recently due to the significant growth in both passenger and freight services.

3.15 TfL wishes to introduce step change improvements in the quality of orbital passenger rail services in the next few years. At the same time the volumes of freight transiting London – but not serving the city – are expected to continue growing at a faster rate than rail freight in general, mainly due to major port developments. Strategic solutions are required which recognise the orbital routes’ new role as intensively used mixed railways. In this light a major task of this strategy is to set out TfL’s view of which routes should be developed

Perhaps we should argue that these “competing needs” have emerged because London has grown beyond its historic core, i.e. it is a spatial growth towards the hitherto safe realms of the orbitals. Therefore we have a systemic problem, and this is unlikely to involve a choice of what route should be developed, but rather what the new system should look like.

The 2007 Freight RUS provides some useful context before we zoom into to London and 2011. The maps below show the national base case at 2005, showing the freight services that ran and relating this to the freight train paths available. This is the second thing to know about rail freight: more freight paths are booked in the Working Timetable than are actually used, in order to provide operational flexibility, to adapt to customer requirements and market-driven fluctuations and for operational flexibility. On mixed-use routes with competing demands for limited spare capacity, such as the Great Eastern Main Line (GEML) and the southern end of the East Coast Main Line (WCML), utilisation of freight paths tends to be higher than average. This is also where creating additional paths in the timetable is likely to be problematic.

2004/2005 Average Daily Freight Trains (One Direction)

Actual Freight Path Utilisation on Key Sections

Around London it is clear that the East Coast Mainline (ECML) uses most of its freight paths, and traffic on the GEML is relatively intensive. In contrast the Channel Tunnel routes from the south east do not pose a problem: a minimum of 35 specified paths/day in each direction between the Channel Tunnel and Wembley Freight Operating Centre were protected by Network Rail for the duration of the Channel Tunnel/Railways Usage Contract up to 2052, and at present most of these paths are unused.

The 2007 Freight RUS estimated demand for 2014-15 and then factored in the impacts of the new London Gateway port at Shell Haven and its effect on traffic from the Haven Ports (Felixstowe and Harwich Bathside Bay), and of W10 gauge enhancement between Southampton and the WCML. These are Sensitivities 2 and 3 on the map below, which shows the traffic growth in London in more detail. Clearly the orbitals are going to take the strain.

Additional Trains by 2014/2015

What the map does not show is the effect on specific points such as key junctions, or the route options and their limitations. For this we need to look in more detail at the London area and at the specific freight flows, which we explore in Part 2.

Before that a little more context, on the Strategic Freight Network and what this might mean for London, and more specifically on the vexed issue of loading gauge.

Strategic Freight Network (SFN)

The concept of a Strategic Freight Network was outlined in the government’s 2007 White Paper:

9.29. The Government envisages that the SFN would both complement, and be integrated with, the existing rail network. It would provide an enhanced core trunk network capable of accommodating more and longer freight trains, with a selective ability to handle wagons with higher axle loads and greater loading gauge.

9.30. With the provision of appropriate diversionary routes, such a network would deliver not only greater capacity and reliability, but also improved seven-day and year-round availability. It would also allow the network to accommodate disruption more easily.

The SFN is not is a separate network of dedicated freight-only routes, but rather a program of enhancements to the existing network. This program is developed by a stakeholder group led by Network Rail, the membership of which includes TfL, and which appears to be broadly the same group which developed the 2007 Freight RUS.

In September 2009 DfT published its Strategic Rail Freight Network: The Longer Term Vision (PDF), which clarifies the SFN’s purpose and the challenges:

Conflicts occur between passenger and freight requirements (and between different types of passenger services) at numerous points on the railway, eroding network capacity and reliability. At present the network is almost nowhere optimised for freight, which reduces the efficiency of the UK’s rail distribution logistics…

The SFN is intended to provide a framework for targeting investment and network management better to meet freight requirements and to resolve such conflicts. This should both improve the logistical efficiency of the railway and secure network capacity and reliability gains to the benefit of all users.

That gives us a little more information on the decision-making process behind freight investment, but it also raises the interesting issue of attributing benefits and costs to different rail operators. We have seen how the enthusiasm to take the investment lead can be dulled if agreement cannot be found on sharing the costs and the rewards, for instance with GOBLIN electrification. Perhaps the SFN will provide a better framework to identify and prioritise investments, with Network Rail undertaking the investment and claiming the costs back from the various rail operators. Indeed NR is required by the Office of Rail Regulation (ORR) to publish SFN proposals in its Strategic Business Plan, so one assumes this is the route through to investment.

The 2009 vision document outlines the investments committed in the current CP4 to 2014 and the more ambitious aspirations for CP5 and beyond. To flavour the more detailed discussions our following posts, these include:

• Upgrading for longer 775m and heavier trains on key intermodal routes, which should become the design standard for new terminal developments and enhancements
• Moving to a 7-day/24-hour capability which requires new approaches to engineering possessions and the development of diversionary routes with appropriate capability for each strategic freight route
• More efficient operations with the aim of through running of freight trains in preference to layovers in passing loops

Each of these has major implications for London’s rail network in terms of timetabling and route infrastructure. For instance, timetabling regular paths and signalling for 750m freight trains on lines shared with metro passenger services is likely to be challenging, and indeed may not always be possible.

But to put this SFN vision in context, the 2011 London & South East RUS includes demand projections and train path requirements for each of the intermodal routes, which we will explore in Part 2. These are based on a 6-day railway and 640m trains, and note that there is yet no investment funding committed for this. So the SFN vision is a considerable way ahead of the investment reality..

On specific routes, aspirations include:

• East-West Line (Oxford-Bedford with upgraded links to the West Coast Main Line (WCML) and MML
• 4-tracking the Midland Mainline (MML)
• electrification of freight routes, including the MML (see below), GOBLIN and routes outside London that could take cross-London freight, e.g. Ipswich to Nuneaton

According to the 2009 vision document, DfT has also asked Network Rail to undertake two freight routeing studies to recommend:

the preferred routes between London and the South-East, and the Midlands and North of England, and the enhancements necessary to accommodate rail freight activity forecast to 2030 (the ‘Routes to the North’ (RTN) study); and an optimal cross-London freight strategy (CLFS)

We’re interested to know more about these studies. Will they be published, and have the conclusions already fed through into the 2011 London & South East RUS?

Before we look at loading gauge, perhaps it’s worth reiterating the question above: who decides? The SFN is being developed by a stakeholder group, led by Network Rail, but presumably with DfT (one of the stakeholders) ultimately providing the investment funding. This approach may be reaping rewards in providing a comprehensive overview of the challenges and at least a vision to work towards but, given that the network is close to capacity in the London area, is it closing the gap between aspiration and investment reality?

How big is a train?

So finally to the conundrum of loading gauge. Your LR writing team, also being of varied shape and size, have collectively discovered a peculiar fascination with the topic, so much so that you can expect a post on this alone in the near future.

Loading Gauge Envelopes and Container Sizes

In the London area, loading gauges range from W6 to W8, but are predominantly W7 or W8. W10 gauge allows 9’6″ high containers to be conveyed on standard-height wagons and this is important to maintain rail’s attractiveness in the intermodal market. But in London only the NLL and more recently GOBLIN have been cleared for W10. Equally, the mix of loading gauges means that diversionary routes can often be long and circuitous, or trains have to be cancelled when the main route is unavailable.

The 2009 SFN Vision document maps out the aspirations for loading gauge:

• Combining MML electrification with infrastructure enhancements to provide a UIC GB+ loading gauge route to the north
• W12 to be implemented as the standard loading gauge for all strategic container routes including diversionary routes, with small in-fill gauge clearance schemes being progressed as opportunity and funding allows
• Extending a European UIC GB+ gauge freight link from HS1 to the MML which, along with electrification, provides the opportunity to create a UIC GB+ gauge cleared route to the Midlands

We’ll return to this potential new European gauge route through London in Part 3, but the diagram above shows why such a GA or GB gauge route requires segregation due to its extra width and the need to set back platform faces. HS1 was built to European gauge and in theory GB+ freights could run through to the NLL at Camden Road East Jn, but because there are no facilities there to tranship or unload cargo these trains terminate at Ripple Lane where the HS1 route runs along side the LT&SR Tilbury Loop. Therefore creating a European GB+ gauge route to the Midlands clearly requires some thinking through and a robust strategy, rather than a piecemeal in-fill approach.

The London & SE RUS takes the pragmatic approach:

Currently only the CTRL is cleared to GB+ and its further application may remain restricted to new lines…

Whilst a business case does not exist at this stage for specific enhancement projects to deliver W12 on the routes highlighted… it is recommended that W12 gauge is considered as a starting point whenever structures are renewed across the network, or new structures built on the routes highlighted as W12 aspirations… In some cases it may not be practical to renew a structure to W12, but for all those routes… structure rebuilds/new builds should not deliver less than W10 clearance.

So, that’s enough context. In the following article we focus on intermodal (container) traffic, which is by far the largest freight growth sector and the most relevant to London. We’ll explore the four main traffic flows: from Southampton, Essex Thameside (Tilbury and the new London Gateway at Shell Haven), the Haven Ports (Felixstowe and Harwich Bathside Bay) and the Channel Tunnel. Then in our final part we’ll explore some of the options and the implications, including what it might mean for TfL, the Overground and its strategic interchanges.

Below are a selection of photos showing various rolling stock in the seventies. These pictures were all taken by Nick Agnew, whom we thank for allowing us to reproduce them here, via MA.

1938 Tube Stock at Hounslow Central on the Piccadilly, July 1975. The train is about to head one station on to Hounslow West, then the Line’s terminus.

Articulated rolling stock isn’t a new idea. The converted ex-1935 tube stock units 10011 and 11011 (L14A and L14B) were part of an early unsuccessful trial production run. They were used as shunters at Acton until well into the seventies.

The silver stock with its wonderfully flared sides, pictured at Bromley-By-Bow on the District in 1997

A Circle Line Train at High Street Kensington, October 1973, again the flared sides are obvious.

A snowy day on the ELL in March 1973 – note the clerestory roof on the old rolling stock.

Very quickly, an exclusion zone was established around the site and workers and bystanders moved to a safe distance. On the railways, services into Fenchurch Street were also suspended. Army bomb disposal experts were summoned from Colchester and work began to make the 1000kg High Explosive device safe – work made more difficult as the bomb sat directly on top of a gas main. In the end, it took almost a week to make the bomb completely safe. Luckily no lives were lost, but the disruption to lyocals, travellers and the workers was extensive.

The discovery of the device was a stark reminder of some of the darkest days in London’s history.

St Paul’s During The Blitz

During the course of World War Two, almost 1.5m incendiary devices and somewhere in the region of 50,000 High Explosive (HE) bombs were dropped on the Capital. Of these, it is generally accepted (based on a Home Office statistical analysis in 1942) that approximately 10% failed to detonate for some reason or other. Those that still remain a problem today are largely of the HE variety.

German Pilots Pose With Their Bombs

Many of these bombs were identified and made safe at the time. Many others detonated shortly after they landed, at a sometimes tragic cost to those trying to defuse them. In the often chaotic and confusing atmosphere of a bomb site, however, some were left behind.

In most cases this was by accident – in the rubble and destruction caused by one bomb it was all too easy to miss another which had failed to explode. Similarly, if a bomb fell in the Thames or another water source it was not always spotted, and even if it was then defusing it was not really practical if it didn’t detonate (most did – one infamously causing a great deal of damage to the Northern Line’s Charing Cross loop, which luckily had already been decommissioned and sealed off from the rest of the network).

Sometimes, the need to get things moving again or the location of the failed device in question simply meant that leaving it in situ was safer than trying to defuse or move it – better to simply note the location and cover it up. Known as “abandoned bombs” many of these still lurk beneath the Capital today. In 1996, for example, the MoD revealed – in response to a parliamentary question by Simon Hughes – that abandoned bombs were still known to exist in Norwood, Ladywell and Deptford Council cemetaries, as well as a wide range of other places both north and south of the river (if you’re the type of person that worries about this kind of thing then you might want to avoid renting or buying on Hazel Grove in Staines).

Breaking the Myth

It’s important to point out here that all of these unexploded devices – be they known or unknown – are harmless whilst they remain undisturbed, as are the many unexploded anti-aircraft shells that likely lurk beneath the Capital somewhere as well. Unexploded Ordnance (UXO to its friends) is unexploded for a reason. HE needs an external catalyst to trigger it, an impetus normally provided by a detonator, and – to put it bluntly – the Germans were very good at making detonators. The detonators on German bombs were generally electric or clockwork, which made them more reliable, but also meant that if they did fail their complexity makes them unlikely to simply start functioning again. The Television and Cinematic image of the uncovered bomb that suddenly resumes ticking is thus essentially a myth – although it is worth pausing to spare a thought for Germany here. The Allies dropped twenty times more bombs on Germany than were dropped on the UK and Allied detonators were far simpler, more temperamental and prone to failure – the tragic result being that whilst no deaths due to uncovered ordnance have occurred in the UK since the War, a number have on mainland Europe.

Aggressive disturbance of UXO can, however, on rare occasions replicate the action of a detonator. A major impact from a piling machine or even an excavator (something which tragically cost the life of a German plant operator during some Autobahn repairs in 2006) could be enough to set an unexploded bomb off, if the HE inside hadn’t degraded. Violent vibration might also be enough should a chemical detonator somehow have retained enough integrity and leaked some of its contents into the soil.

All the above means that, generally speaking, the presence of many elements of UXO beneath the soil of London has little effect on, and poses little risk to, daily life in London. There is one area, though, where it potentially poses a greater risk – large-scale construction.

The Need for Careful Digging

Major construction projects often involve a good deal of demolition and digging, both of which can cause UXO to be uncovered and which could – in a truly unlucky situation – cause it to be detonated. As a result, there are few large-scale construction projects in the Capital today that don’t have one eye on the ground. The possible presence of UXO has meant that most large London projects have had to carry out some level of ground investigation, or factor that possibility into their plans, since the end of the War.

Nowhere is this more true than on the Capital’s transport projects. The design of the Hungerford Jubilee Footbridge had to be amended after London Underground – who have an understandable fear of UXO – objected to the plan to drop pilings in the Thames. The pilings, LU pointed out, would be close to the Northern Line tunnels beneath the river, and whilst they were perfectly confident that the piling contractor would be competent enough not to drop a concrete pile through one of the running tunnels, they weren’t confident that there was no UXO down there. Nothing had been recorded, certainly, but the thought of a pile being driven straight into an unexploded bomb, causing an underwater explosion that might then rupture the running tunnels, was just too horrible to contemplate. The design of the bridge was altered (at some cost) shortly after.

One London transport project though, more than any other in recent times, has involved being aware of (and looking for) UXO – Crossrail.

Crossrail’s Awkward Path

The reasons for this are simple. The Crossrail project involves construction and excavation on a scale unseen in London for a long, long time. To major station works at Liverpool Street, Farringdon, Tottenham Court Road and Bond Street must be added work on the tunnelling portals from which the running tunnels will be bored and the depots and line enhancements elsewhere. Perhaps more critically, Crossrail (like the Olympics) involves a huge amount of work in East London. It was the East, home both to various heavy industries and to the docks so vital to Britain’s war effort, that suffered most during the Blitz. Using the unmistakeable outline of the River Thames as a marker, the Luftwaffe made East London – and the docks more specifically – the most heavily bombed civilian target in the whole of Britain. There’s a reason that the streets of Hackney, Tower Hamlets, Newham and more have a thoroughly post-war look about them – it’s because whole swathes of those boroughs were bombed to the ground.

A Heinkel 111 Over Wapping

For Crossrail, this meant that from the very beginning the issue of UXO had to be at the forefront of their planning, one of the results of which has been a seven year relationship with special risk consultants 6 Alpha Associates.

6 Alpha are one of those discrete, and decidedly niche, firms that exist largely outside of public consciousness. In this instance that niche includes a great deal of expertise in the fields of UXO and EOD (Explosive Ordnance Disposal). On the Crossrail project, this meant a role in the early ground preparatory works – more specifically, a complete UXO survey for the length of the entire line.

“Sadly it’s not as glamorous a process as it sounds,” explains Lee Gooderham, the head of Alpha 6′s Explosive Remnants of War Section, “mostly its about collating documents from various archives and we’re lucky in London because the civil authorities – particularly the Port of London Authority – kept incredibly detailed records.”

It’s these records that form the basis of the UXO surveys and risk assessments that now underpin the Crossrail project. Indeed the scale and detail of this survey work has resulted in the creation of the first real industry-wide guidelines for the construction industry on how to plan for and deal with the issue of UXO. The combined efforts of the ARP wardens, Fire Watchers, the Observer Corps and other civilian volunteers have left modern engineers with a meticulous and reasonably accurate idea as to where bombs were dropped on specific nights. When combined with disposal records, these help paint a picture as to where any large-scale UXO might be, meaning that more detailed geophysical ground surveys can be targeted on the areas where the risk makes it warranted.

Much of this basic survey work has now been completed, but if you know where to look (and what to look for) you can still see some of the more detailed geophysical survey work taking place – particularly in areas where the current plans for Crossrail have changed from what they were seven years ago.

Right now, for example, this is most evident in and around Silvertown – because Crossrail’s plans with regards to the Connaught Tunnel have recently changed.

A Return to the Connaught Tunnel

We last visited the Connaught Tunnel in September 2010. First constructed in 1878 to take trains beneath the Victoria and Albert docks, the tunnel had lain disused since the North London Line connection to North Woolwich was permanently closed in 2006. As the photos that you can find here show, after years of closure the tunnel had become the epitome of an “abandoned line” – a pitch-black subterranean passage filled with fractured track, torn-up sleepers and a ground surface that one squelched through rather than walked upon. The tunnel was, however, intended to be a crucial part of the Crossrail project. Just as the Thames Tunnel (Marc Brunel’s largely forgotten masterpiece of engineering) still forms a crucial part of the London Overground, it was decided that the Connaught Tunnel would play a similar role for Crossrail.

The tunnel today is a very different place from what it was a year ago. Vinci won the contract to renew it, and work has been underway to clear, clean and renew the tunnel. As can be seen from the photos below, the majority of the tunnel has now been cleared, and work is underway to remove the ballast, lower the tunnel floor (so that the Tunnel is large enough to carry the OLE) and renew the drainage.

The Tunnel, Looking South

Work Continues In The Tunnel

Looking North Out Of The Tunnel

More extensive geophysical surveys carried out as the renewal project has advanced have, however, raised questions as to whether the point where the tunnel passes closest to the passage that links the Victoria and Albert docks is as strong as it needs to be. This was a known risk – the dock bed was lowered in the thirties in order to allow larger ships to enter. So much so that several instances of ships scraping across the top of the tunnel were recorded and iron rings were added inside to reinforce it.

The Channel Connecting the Docks

The plan had been to remove these rings, backfill the tunnels with concrete and then effectively bore new tunnels through that, but as Linda Miller, the Tunnel’s Project Manager explains, two factors now make this impractical. Firstly the tunnel’s roof is even closer to the surface than was thought – to the point where divers investigating the site were able to feel the brickwork through the mud at various points. Secondly, has been the appearance of something that those tunnelling beneath the Capital fear almost as much as UXO – unexpected tunnels.

In Connaught’s case, these are three smaller service tunnels that now appear to run alongside the main tunnel. The first hints that these might exist came from an 1878 schematic of the tunnel. The specific purpose of these and their original relationship with the Connaught Tunnel itself remains unknown, but geophysical surveys of the dock bed have established conclusively that they exist and that – worse – the lowering of the dock led to them being breached from above.

An 1878 Diagram of the Tunnel

The 1878 Cross Section

Both of these factors mean that if the iron rings were removed, there is no guarantee that the tunnel could stand up to the pressure of the water from above and its sides long enough for the backfilling to take place. Instead this section of tunnel will now be reconstructed in the same way that it was built in the first place – a cofferdam will be put in place and the tunnel will be rebuilt using cut and cover.

An Overview of the Work, Courtesy Gregor the Engineer

Reassessing the area

It is this that has resulted in the renewed need for detailed UXO work. The Connaught Tunnel itself bears the scars of a direct hit suffered in 1940 and the archival surveys suggest there are potentially five or more elements of UXO in the area.

The concrete plug for the 1940 bomb damage. This was clearly put in place over three days. Ahead of a comprehensive survey, friendly debate currently rages amongst the engineers as to its likely quality.

As a result, the area now plays host to a Fugro survey van, from which more detailed magnetic surveys can be carried out. From here, the ground can be probed at regular intervals and possible UXO discovered, investigated and dealt with by an EOD team if necessary.

The Survey Truck In Action

The Ground Probe Inside the Truck

UXO is a small world – it emerged that Lee Gooderham and on-site EOD man David Bird had previously worked together clearing ordnance after the Iran-Iraq war.

As can be seen above, it’s a relatively nondescript van for a rather serious purpose. Another subtle reminder of the London’s part in the Second World War. As the construction of Crossrail continues, and with other projects such as HS2 lurking on the horizon, more UXO work will likely be needed in the Capital. Hopefully it will continue to yield little in the way of physical results, but as those Olympic workers discovered in 2008, it’s still best to check, just in case…

As the first quarter of 2012 dawns, however, the landscape already seems to have shifted considerably. Of the three schemes it is now only the Croxley Rail Link – the project that would have seemed the least likely of the three to proceed at all just three years ago – that now seems likely to make it off the drawing board, at least in the short term.

Yet despite this it is the prospect of extensions to the Northern and the Bakerloo Lines that continue to draw headlines.

Given the dire need to improve Tube connections in South East London this is perhaps understandable. No doubt the fact that both represent solid London political fodder helps as well. What it means, however, is that in recent months the reality behind the carefully chosen wording of strategies and press conferences has sometimes become difficult to discern. What follows, therefore, is an attempt to summarise in the simplest terms the current situation with regards to both schemes.

Taking the Northern Line to Battersea

We have covered at length the development of the proposal to take the Northern Line to Battersea and December 2011 seemed to see the scope of this project finally agreed. TfL, REO (owners of the Battersea site and the extension’s major private sector backer) and both Lambeth and Wandsworth councils reached provisional agreement over the route the extension would take. Out of all the routes consulted on publicly, Option 4 appeared to have been decided upon. This would see the Northern Line extended from Kennington to Battersea, with an intermediate station, “Nine Elms,” in Wandsworth somewhere in the vicinity of Sainsbury’s on Wandsworth Road. An option for further extension to Clapham Junction at a later date would be included within the design (a detailed breakdown of this can be found in the associated report to Lambeth Council).

By December, it seemed that the main question that remained was over funding. The project work undertaken by TfL (and paid for by REO) had established that the developer’s own initial public estimates of possible cost (approximately £390m) were highly optimistic and certainly didn’t include the cost of an intermediate station. After detailed cost evaluation, the inclusion of the associated costs of an extra station and the inclusion of a 35% optimism bias it seemed likely that funds and assurances equivalent to approximately £850-900m would be needed.

Nonetheless, the business case for the station was still strong, and it was believed that funds could be found. No money would be available from TfL or Central Government, but S106 commitments from developers would cover an estimated £300m – with £200m of that crucially coming from REO’s Battersea plans. Alongside that it appeared that additional local transport funding and business rate commitments could be found which, if combined with some form of Tax Increment Funding (TIF), would likely prove enough to cover the total cost of the scheme.

The major question, therefore, was one of borrowing. TfL were unwilling to take on the upfront borrowing that would be need to carry out the project (unsurprising as the organisation, whilst perfectly secure and solvent, is already very close to its borrowing limit) and thus this would need to fall to the developer or a combination of the boroughs involved. It was an issue, but one that was by no means insurmountable.

Then just before Christmas it was confirmed that REO would be placed in Administration – Lloyds and Nama, to whom the developer owed $380m – had called in their loans and REO, a subsidiary of troubled Irish developer Treasury Holdings, were unable to pay. In order to recoup their costs, the banks wanted the Battersea site sold.

As it stands, therefore, the Northern Line extension to Battersea is now effectively on hold. Without the Battersea development (and more importantly the £200m S106 that brings to the table) the project cannot proceed.

TfL have confirmed that the Mayor has requested that work towards a potential TWA submission at the end of 2012 will continue based on the current scheme. If a new developer has not bought out the site and agreed to the S106 arrangements, however, this will not be submitted, as both the DfT specifically and the Treasury have indicated that whilst they support the scheme in principle, they will provide no public funding. With REO’s exit from the scene it is not yet clear who will carry any extra cost incurred by the TWA process.

Extending the Bakerloo

It has become a much publicised fact that the Bakerloo Line is the only one of London’s Tubes that currently has spare capacity. Given this, it is perhaps no surprise that there has been much talk of its extension.

This has become particularly prevalent after the inclusion of a Bakerloo Extension in the long term aspirations expressed in the Mayor’s updated transport strategy. Perhaps encouraged by this, Lewisham then carried out their own investigation into a possible extension of the line. Since then, the Mayor has reiterated his desire to see the Bakerloo extended and his intention to broach the subject with the DfT and Treasury.

Unfortunately, no concrete plan is currently being developed to extend the Bakerloo. TfL have confirmed that, as part of the production of the new MTS, the possibility was investigated and a number of options updated and revaluated (business case comparisons to extending the DLR instead were apparently also made).

As a result of this TfL have confirmed that, as it stands, the best business case would see an extension to Hayes, with one of two routes likely (and almost certainly not Lewisham’s suggested scheme):

1) Hayes via Old Kent and Lewisham
2) Hayes via Peckham and Camberwell Green

TfL Planning Director Michelle Mix, speaking in front of the London Assembly Transport Committee last week, admitted that of these the first option had a far stronger business case due to the inclusion of New Cross.

Although TfL’s report into the extension isn’t public, it is thus reasonable to suspect that the proposed route of such an extension would be similar to Option 3 of the 2007 study undertaken by TfL.

Despite a strong business case and spare capacity, though, it is financing that once again means that a Bakerloo extension is currently a non-starter.

At the Committee meeting Mix confirmed that the baseline cost estimate for a Bakerloo Extension is currently £3.5bn – £4bn. Sufficient money for such a project certainly doesn’t exist within TfL and, as with the Northern Line, neither Central Government nor the DfT are prepared to make such a commitment. Without a significant commitment from an external source – such as a developer – no work on extending the Bakerloo is likely to take place for the foreseeable future.

As a result, Mix confirmed that TfL currently considered the extension of the Bakerloo to be a very low priority project, with current efforts in that area focused on securing funding to upgrade the Line rather than extend it. Indeed she also confirmed that, to her knowledge at least, there had been no discussion between the Mayor and the Government so far over the topic of a Bakerloo Extension.

A Return to the Wishlist

As can be seen above, therefore, without a financial White Knight, talk of both Northern and Bakerloo Line Extensions should very much be taken with a pinch of salt. Both projects have significant merit, but with TfL’s financial efforts focused elsewhere they lack the funding required to be taken further. They may both have significantly stronger business cases than Hillingdon Council’s desire to take the Central to Uxbridge, or the similar extension of the Central to Harlow, but they must remain on London’s wish list nonetheless (a list that perhaps in practical, rather than political, terms the Bakerloo extension never really left).

As a result it seems likely that those looking to see the colours of the Underground map stretch further will have to content themselves in the short term with looking north. There at least some hope can be found as indeed, perhaps, can some lessons. As the history of the Underground has consistently demonstrated (and Herts Council’s persistence with the Croxley Rail Link proved), more often than not expanding London’s transport infrastructure is about being able to whip out the right plan quickly at the right time.

If nothing else, at least for both the Northern and Bakerloo Lines it now seems that those plans exist.

The Waterloo & City line was, of course, not technically part of the London Underground for some time. Originally constructed for the London & South Western to connect Waterloo to the City across the river, it was taken over by Southern in 1923 and did not officially become part of the Underground until privitisation in the 1990s.

For a long time, it had a single connection to the mainline railway – an Armstrong Lift located next to the main Waterloo terminus where the old Eurostar terminal is now. The first video below shows this lift in action, with it being used as part of the process to remove the old 1898 Jackson and Sharp wooden rolling stock and replace it with the new 1940 stock built by English Electric (Class 487s to their friends).

Ultimately, the 487s would have an impressively long life. They would remain in service until 1992, when the line would receive the current 1992 stock. The second video, below, shows the 487s and the Armstrong Lift towards the end of both their service lives.

The sight of an Underground train in British Rail colours will certainly seem strange to anyone born after about 1985, but helps demonstrate that London Transport (and its governance) has always been an ever-changing beast. Indeed its tempting to wonder what comes next – perhaps future generations will find the idea of London suburban services in non-Overground colours equally bizarre.

Britain had been invaded.

The invading force (the Germans, if the soldiers tasked with responding were to be believed) appeared to have gained that greatest of military assets – suprise. Now, having secured a beachhead, they were pushing towards Shoeburyness.

For Captain R.K. Bagnall-Wilde of the Royal Engineers, the officer on the spot, this was a potentially disastrous situation. If the enemy reached the town they would secure a strategically important point on the Thames Estuary and Britain’s ability to resist the invasion would be seriously compromised. The facts were simple. Shoeburyness needed to be held at all costs but only a small number of troops were stationed in the town – certainly nowhere near enough to successfully dig in and defend it.

Bagnall-Wilde’s immediate objective, therefore, was simple. The nearest available troops were at Warley Barracks near Brentwood in Essex and the Captain needed to get them to Shoeburyness. Fast.

It was a big ask. With the enemy already moving towards their target, Bagnall-Wilde would need to assemble his reinforcements and get them to Shoeburyness faster than any forced march would allow. Luckily, the Captain had an ace up his sleeve. One the Germans wouldn’t expect. For Bagnall-Wilde had been given permission by British Army Headquarters to call upon a relatively new technology – motorised transport.

And so Bagnall-Wilde turned to the people who perhaps knew more about moving large numbers of people by motorised vehicle than anyone else in the world at that  point in time – the London General Omnibus Company.

Proving a Point

There was, of course, no invasion of Britain in 1908 – though relations with Germany were by then cooling rapidly and many thought it was an increasingly real possibility. The rest of the above scenario, however, is perfectly true. Captain Bagnall-Wilde was ordered to organise a response to an enemy invasion and the soldiers at Warley Barracks were indeed mobilised. The “London General” was also called upon to do its duty to King and Country. All, however, were part of a major military exercise – The War Office Trials of 1908.

By 1908, large-load motorised transport of materials and men was becoming increasingly common. For the War Office, however, the precise role that motor vehicles might play in Britain’s armed forces was still unclear. Did motorised transport represent an effective way of getting men quickly to a point of crisis, and if so could it be relied upon to do so quickly and reliably?

It was this that the 1908 War Office trials were set up to establish. This wouldn’t be the first time the War Office had carried out experiments with buses – they had carried out a very limited exercise involving steam buses and some men of the Essex Regiment earlier that year – but it would be the most extensive. The results of this exercise would help determine the War Office’s opinion on motorised transport for some time to come.

The London General

Given the importance of the exercise, it is not surprising that it was to the London General that the War Office turned for help. Established in 1855, the company had swiftly come to dominate the London Omnibus scene, buying out many of its smaller competitors along the way. Quick to spot the potential that the age of motoring held, the General had begun to switch from horse to motor operation as early as 1902. By the time of the War Office Trials this transition was well under way, and a reputation as a motorbus company first and foremost had recently been cemented by the  takeover of its two biggest rivals – the London Road Car Company and the Vanguard Company.

A London General de Dion Bouton in 1905, courtesy LTM

As 1908 drew to a close, therefore, the newly amalgamated London General stood proudly dominant over the London bus scene. Under the watchful eye of its visionary Chief Engineer Frank Searle, its busworks at Blackhorse Road (formerly owned by Vanguard) were about to become the spiritual birthplace of London Buses. It would be here in 1909 that Searle’s X-Type, the first bus truly customised for the streets of the Capital, would roll off the production line and here in 1910 that its legendary successor, the LGOC B-Type, would be born.

The B-Type ‘Ol Bill’ at the Imperial War Museum, by DanieVDM

Uncle Frank

Indeed it was to their Chief Engineer that the General’s senior management turned when the War Office asked them to take part in the Trials. Searle swiftly decided that he’d take personal command of the expedition and that a total of 36 buses would be required along with three suport vehicles. He asked each of the formerly separate motor companies that now made up the amalgamated General to contribute to  the exercise. From the General would come twelve 30hp de Dions. From the Vanguard, twelve Milnes-Daimlers. Finally, the London Road Car would contribute twelve 40hp Straker-Squires, the chassis of which were already being used to create motorised ambulances for the US Army.

A Straker-Squire in 1906, courtesy the LTM

The Exercise Begins

At 5:30am on the morning of Friday the 18th, with the fog lying thick on the ground, the General’s transport fleet assembled at Upton Park depot. All 36 buses reported present and correct, and each was – as planned – accompanied by a breakdown tender of the same type carrying spare tyres and parts. Searle himself brought his own own car, from which he would lead the expedition, accompanied by several other personnel from the General and a journalist from Commercial Motor Magazine.

The first stage of the exercise was planned to be quite simple. Upon leaving Upton Park Depot the buses would split into three columns based on the type of buses driven, each of which would be headed by a driver familiar with the roads outside of London. Each column would then independently make its way to Warley Barracks in Essex where the fleet would mass and pick up the waiting troops that Bagnall-Wilde had arranged for the exercise.

At first, things seem to go to plan. All the columns departed on time, and were soon making good progress. It swiftly became clear, however, that old rivalries die hard. Searle’s decision to split the fleet into columns based on the type of bus driven may have made sound logistical sense, but it also meant that the columns were also effectively split along company lines. Soon it became clear that as far as these columns were concerned, this was a race.

It’s not recorded what the people of Essex must have thought of that morning’s activities. The sight of over 35 buses speeding out of the morning fog, overtaking and retaking each other on narrow country roads, must have been both impressive and alarming – especially as many of the buses still carried their route-cards, proudly declaring that they were headed for Shoreditch or Hammersmith. It was a potential recipe for disaster, but even though Searle eventually realised what was happening, it was impossible to prevent it from his position in advance of the columns.

Luckily, all the buses made it to Warley without major incident (and purely for the record,  it appears that Vanguard’s Daimlers’ won). There they found men from the 1st Norfolk and the 7th Essex Regiments waiting to board.

A Vanguard Daimler in 1906, courtesy the LTM

The Hypothetical Relief of Shoeburyness

Perhaps to help dissuade further rivalry, but also to preserve the military’s need to split the reinforcing force (standard practice to ensure that in the event of mishap at least part of the reinforcements would get through) it was decided that the buses would undertake the next stage of their journey in two columns rather than three. The men were thus split into detachments of 25 and embarked. Each man carried full battle kit and a day’s rations. Half were given 150 rounds of ammunition, whilst half were given 90 rounds and entrenching equipment. Additional equipment – including stores and Maxim guns – was also placed on each bus. Overall, the intention was to make the loads as representative of what might be needed in a real combat situation as possible.

With the buses now heavily loaded, the  second stage of the trials thus began. It had been decided that in order to minimise disruption for both the men of the General and the Army the relief of Shoeburyness would be hypothetical rather than literal. Both columns would proceed at their own pace to an agreed meeting point a sufficient distance away, where the men would be disembarked. They would then immediately be re-embarked and  brought back to the barracks. They may not literally get to Shoeburyness,  but overall the buses and men would cover some 2000 miles in aggregate mileage – more than enough to help establish the practicalities of moving troops by petrol power.

The two columns left Warley at 8:30am but soon problems began to emerge. Too late, it became clear that through some miscommunication all three support vehicles had followed the first column, leaving the second without backup. Luckily, in the end only one of column two’s vehicles suffered severe enough problems to force its abandonment before the columns met up at the disembarkation point and the mistake could be corrected, and that vehicle was able to rejoin the column on its return.

Another problem soon manifested thanks largely to the extra weight the buses were now carrying. Back in London the rules of the road (then largely overseen by the Metropolitan Police) stipulated that buses should have an upper weight limit of 3.5tons empty, and 6tons loaded, and the roads of the Capital were designed to support this. Many of the Essex roads that the buses now advanced along, however, simply weren’t constructed to withstand that kind of load – especially as the amount of men and equipment on board the buses meant that many were well over weight. Worse, much of that load was concentrated upon the double-width wheels of the rear axles.

As a result the buses of both columns were soon carving heavy ruts into the road. This made it nice and easy for any vehicles that had fallen behind to follow the route, but the heavily damaged surface certainly didn’t make for an easy drive. This proved to be a major problem for column one, where a number of buses found themselves stuck and had to be helped by the recovery vehicles. Indeed on the return leg one of the Daimlers broke through the road surface completely, sinking up to both its axles, and had to be pulled free with great effort.

Overall, five buses would ultimately fail to complete the trip out to Hadleigh Crossroads – the designated rendezvous point - and back, with the expedition arriving back at Warley barracks just before 5pm that evening.

Despite these loses, however, the exercise had generally been successful, with soldiers from the lost buses having been successfully transferred to the remaining vehicles with little difficulty or delay incurred.  Indeed none of the buses had ultimately been lost to mechanical failure – to a vehicle, they were lost because they had moved off the road to allow oncoming traffic to pass and become trapped in soft ground due to their weight.

Lessons for the Future

That vehicles transporting troops should stay to the centre of the road at all costs was one of the first recommendations thus specified in the Report produced on the exercise for the War Office in its aftermath. This was, however, one of the few blights on what had been an otherwise impressive performance from both Searle and the men and motors of the General. Indeed in general the report was positively glowing.

With some lessons and the right vehicles, it argued, motorized vehicles were very much ready to step up and meet the military’s demands. The aforementioned issue of buses lost to soft ground needed to be guarded against, and vehicle weight needed to be kept down as much as possible (it was noted that none of the buses lost were de-Dions, which were much lighter then the other buses used).

Other recommendations were also made, which would soon become standard practice. Drivers should be as familiar with the vehicles they drove as possible and the use of different makes minimised. Routes should also be clearly defined and err towards the most simple and obvious rather than the fastest – particularly if the route was unfamiliar to the drivers used. Vehicles in a convoy should also try and travel about 60 yards apart, as this seemed to compensate for differing vehicle speeds and gear changes and kept the overall speed of a column consistent. In light of the losses, the report also recommended that one vehicle in eight be empty, allowing it to take up the load should another vehicle have to be abandoned.

Finally, the report noted that whilst the buses had proven well set up for transporting the men themselves (although a “no smoking or spitting” rule had apparently proven tricky to enforce), thought should be given to vehicles better suited for carrying their equipment. This would in part lead to later work to create standardised lorry designs for army use.

Overall, the report spoke highly of the promise of motor transport for the military, claiming that speeds of up to 12mph were realistic and achievable targets for moving men in this way. Indeed as Roy Larkin, points out in in his excellent book Destination Western Front: London’s Omnibuses Go to War, it perhaps speaks a bit too highly – suggesting that for the War Office a shift to motor transport had already been decided upon mentally if not officially.

Looking to the Future

The 1908 Trials were certainly a success – a coming of age, in a way, both for military transport and London Buses. If the Trials had proved a disaster then subsequent uptake of motor vehicles by the military, and the creation of the subsidy scheme which offered a small stipend to companies that agreed to allow their vehicles to be requisitioned in wartime, might both have been delayed. Ultimately, however, the impending technological heat of World War One always meant that motor transport would appear on the Army’s radar sooner rather than later.

Nonetheless, the 1908 Trials helped define many of the rules of the military road that would later become codified during World War One. They also represented the first motorized cooperation between London’s bus companies and the War Office – a relationship that would later see Frank Searle’s X and B-Types become a familiar sight to Tommies in the Great War as transport, ambulances and even mobile pigeon coups. It was also a partnership that would continue beyond the First World War well into the Second, when London’s buses would find themselves called in to help with everything from the aftermath of Dunkirk to evacuating children to the country (an operation, it is worth noting, masterminded by Frank Pick himself).  All on top of keeping London moving during the Blitz and beyond.

The 1908 Trials, therefore, may not ultimately have been a turning point in history but they were certainly an important milestone. Just over a century ago, London’s Buses and Busmen were called into battle for the first time and, as in the very real wars that would come later, they demonstrated that they would never be found wanting.

The £16.3m contract was won by Stadler, who committed to produce, test and deliver 6 Variobahns in sufficient time for them to enter service by June.

As a result, several of these trams have been gracing the streets of (and Stadlers’ testing track in) Chemnitz. The first unit has also now been delivered to Therapia Lane Depot, arriving on Monday. The new tram will be inserted into the normal timetable over the next two months, although it will not pick up passengers. It is currently expected to enter passenger service at the end of February. The other new units will shortly begin to arrive as well and will undergo a similar testing regime.

Undergoing Testing, courtesy and copyright of Volker Dornheim

Undergoing Testing, courtesy and copyright of Volker Dornheim

Following a Chemnitz Tram, courtesy Volker Dornheim

Alongside a Chemnitz Tram, courtesy Volker Dornheim

Not Picking Up Passengers, courtesy Volker Dornheim

Awaiting Transportation, courtesy Volker Dornheim

The First Unit Heads Off, courtesy Volker Dornheim

The Journey Begins, courtesy Volker Dornheim

Arriving at Therapia Lane

Unloading the Tram

Being Taken off the Transporter

A Helping Hand

First Prize: Seb B

Congratulations to Seb B, who takes home the result of the annual raid on both mine and Mwmbwls’ bookshelves. This year that equates to a copy of the truly excellent London’s Local Railways by Alan A. Jackson, and one of my favourite books of all time, Tiles of the Unexpected by Doug Rose.

Second Prize: Phil D & David P (combined entry)

Less glamorous perhaps, but probably more useful, Phil and David will be getting a selection of DLR and Overground items kindly donated to the cause by TfL. This includes notepads, some rather swanky DLR wallets and a number of other items that will cause those how see them to swoon with envy.

Third Prize: Chris C

A valiant attempt to retain his crown as Quiz champion, Chris C was just pipped at the post this year. Chris will be getting a rather classy (and surprisingly heavy) DLR pen and also a truly unique prize that will have his friends and relatives green with envy the moment they set foot in his kitchen – yes, I’m talking about a full set of TBM cutterhead fridge magnets, courtesy of Herrenknecht. Ladies and Gentlemen, I can assure you that you will not find those in IKEA, no matter how hard you look.

Once again, thanks to everybody who entered. We hope you enjoyed answering the questions as much as we enjoyed writing them – and start brushing up on your obscure London railways, because I already know what the next Mystery Line is going to be…

New Overground Signage at Canonbury

The Overground

As part of the track laying process (and as with elsewhere on the ELL), a granite ballast bed was laid to a depth of approx 30cm on top of the compacted earthworks and a protective membrane. This is then evened out by heavy machinery.

Laying Ballast

A Fine Lining & Sleeper Spacing (FLASS) machine then follows. This takes 14 concrete sleepers and lays them onto the ballast.

A FLASS Close Up

A FLASS Through the Arches

The same machine then lays 18m length rail sections onto the newly laid sleepers. These are fastened to the sleepers manually, and the rails joined with steel plates.

Track Laying Underway

A Rail Being Lowered into Place

Grinding Rails

This gives the track enough strength to support track-mounted machinery, allowing excavators and their accompanying wagons to follow up and place more ballast between the sleepers. A Tamper then follows, which aligns the track into its final position and vibrates the track to settle and stabalize it. Finally, the rails are welded together and the temporary steel plates removed.

Installation of the conductor rail and signalling will now be carried, and hopefully we’ll be able to post pictures of that at a later date.

Hanging in the Air Like Bricks Don’t

With landing gear down and landing lights and anti-collision lights on, they circle in the air over Battersea, Putney and Acton. In the words of Douglas Adams’ wonderful oxymoron, “Hanging in the air, like bricks don’t”. Flights from European time zones, with populations and public transport systems that rise before the United Kingdom, begin to add to the morning surge, inserting more, smaller aircraft to the mix. Finally, examples of a congestion endangered species – flights from British regional airports – appear. On top of all this, for every landing at Heathrow there is a corresponding take off later in the day.

A complex dynamic picture rapidly builds up, hinging on expert coordination from air traffic control. The Local Controller is responsible for providing separation between arriving and departing aircraft. This involves the safe sequencing of arrivals and departures by relaying Instrument Flight Rule (IFR) clearances together with taxi instructions, take-off and landing clearances and finally the provision of assistance to other flights just flying through the local area. There are clear identified guidelines for keeping aircraft at a safe separation distance from each other. IFR flights use a standard instrument approach when arriving at an airport, whilst pilots following Visual Flight Rules (VFR) follow a standard traffic pattern. The separation regulations for arriving aircraft are similar to the departure regulations with added complications. Arriving aircraft have different speeds with higher speed aircraft overtaking other slower aircraft. Some aircraft have stall speeds higher than many other aircraft top speeds. The controllers must sequence and space all arriving aircraft in a dynamic system.

A further complication is added by all aircraft producing wingtip vortices caused by the generation of lift from the wings. The vortices generated by “Heavy aircraft” (aircraft weighing 255,000 pounds or more) and Boeing 757 aircraft generate vortices with a strength equivalent to a small tornado. This turbulence can endanger another aircraft if it is following too close behind. As a result, there has to be a greater separation in distance and time when a “heavy” is in the traffic mix. Wingtip vortices can cause problems no matter the size of any of the aircraft if safe separation is not maintained. But that is not all that can go awry because, as Donald Rumsfeld, (when not trying to explain the Johari Window, a simple two by two matrix box in words that defied the graphic simplicity of the underlying concept), also once said “Stuff happens – and it’s untidy”. In the case of airports, untidiness is the weather, technical problems, security alerts and the odd, pub-quiz-tiebreak-winning-answer, Icelandic Volcano, that causes, “the best-laid plans o’ flights and men, Gang aft agley, An’ lea’e us nought but grief an’ pain, For promis’d joy!” [Good Job we have no Scottish readers - JB]

In every complex system that relies on sequential integration a further difficulty arises as the system starts to reach capacity. Congestion arises when there is a need to modify behaviour because of the presence of others in the system. All transport systems display a phase transition from flowing freely to a recurring hiccough that pulses through those following behind. This need to modify behaviour to match that of the least capable member is a race to the bottom in transport efficiency that we experience on daily basis on motorways, as evidenced by blaze of multiple brake lights followed by phantom jams caused for no apparent reason.

For engineers, TRIZ, the Inventive Problem Solution theory, suggests congestion is a simple physical contradiction of time and space. For economists, forcing the consequences of your decisions on to others is called “enforced externalities” and is part of their “Tragedy of the Commons” theory. In its simplest terms, it can be described like this:

In terms of trains, on a single line there can only be one train at any one time, on dual tracks two trains, and quadruple track four trains. The corollary is that at different times there can be more than one train on one track on single track, more than two trains on a double track and more than four, etc. For trains, substitute aircraft and for tracks substitute flight paths, taxi and holding points and loading gates.

So it all comes down to finding more space and more time. And for this, there are thus three choices – finding more space at the same time, finding more time using the same space, or a combination of both. The choices then continue:- whether to expand through a sustaining investment at an existing airport or a “disruptive” investment at a new airport.

“Disruptive” will be read differently, depending on where you stand – economists will use it synonymously with the term “game changing” whilst others, ranging from those who see such developments as a threat to the environment in general to those whose personal life style and life equity investments will be impaired, will read the term “disruptive” as “damaging or life changing”.

“Real Politik” greet “Vorsprung durch Technik”! – Why joined-up systems need joined-up thinking

“A commander in chief cannot take as an excuse for his mistakes in warfare an order given by his minister or his sovereign, when the person giving the order is absent from the field of operations and is imperfectly aware or wholly unaware of the latest state of affairs. It follows that any commander in chief who undertakes to carry out a plan that he considers defective is at fault; he must put forward his reasons, insist on the plan being changed and finally tender his resignation rather than be the instrument of his army’s downfall.”

“Military Maxims and Thoughts”, Napoleon Bonaparte as annotated by Robert C. Townsend in his 1974 book “Up the Organisation”

Runway operation is the fundamental system underlying all modern airports but in itself it is part of a hierarchy of mutually dependent iterative systems that are needed to keep the process going.

Passenger processing, aircraft sustainment (fuel, maintenance etc.), surface access/egress and security are all blended. This integration has been refined over the years so that systems have become more and more closely coupled. It is now difficult to separate the strands as evidenced by the recent spat between the Home Secretary and Brodie Clark, the senior manager at the Border Agency over the suspension (or unauthorised degradation) of entry formalities during terms of peak loading at the airport.

Much was made of the need for passengers to wait to pass immigration checks, however, the killing factor as far as the Airport and the Airlines were concerned was the fact that the entire system can only operate on the assumption that passengers will clear immigration in a reasonable period of time – ideally the same amount of time it takes to get their baggage off the plane and on to the baggage hall conveyers. If this does not happen and passengers are thus not standing ready to grab their bags in the hall, then the bags from later flights cannot be unloaded and the trolley system that ferries bags from flights cannot function in its corollary role in loading out-bound baggage.

Rapidly, a whole series of knock on effects takes place. Check-in times become protracted, resulting in the appearance of temporary marquees at Heathrow with the scant consolation of complementary water and crisps for passengers. Aircraft have to be kept on stands longer than expected, denying that ground space to incoming flights. Close-coupled airports function at the processing speed of their slowest system and as they approach capacity in any of those systems the potential for congestion to degrade that system and the overall super system increases. Synergy, the emergent properties that makes the whole greater than the sum of the parts, flicks as part of the phase transition from being a positive to be a negative effect.

The political bush fire that raged over this issue is in danger of confusing the smoke for the trees. One of the problems every Home Secretary faces is that nobody remembers when things go right, but everybody remembers when things go wrong.

Shelagh Mackinley, writing in the Guardian, highlights another problem arising from Government choices to operate through agencies that have wrought subtle and possibly unforeseen and unappreciated changes to traditional command and control structures.

The Home Secretary was rightly concerned about national security and this conditioned her perspective, but that is not the only perspective that needs to be considered and her colleagues in the Department of Transport should not be backward in coming forward in pointing out the knock-on implications of her position regarding the operation of the UKBA. They must reiterate the need for a holistic approach based on a sound understanding of systems engineering. It is also a question of tackling causes not treating symptoms. This is all about being tough on congestion and tough on the causes of congestion.

In part two we shall move on to an examination of the range of solutions available for London when it comes to addressing the Airport capacity problem, and just how tough they might be.