Roger Senior - Train Doctor: Trouble Shooting with Diesel and Electric Traction

To Christine for her patience

First published in Great Britain in 2016 by
Pen & Sword Transport
an imprint of
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Copyright Roger Senior 2016

ISBN: 978 1 47383 803 1
PDF ISBN: 978 1 47387 045 1
EPUB ISBN: 978 1 47387 044 4
PRC ISBN: 978 1 47387 043 7

The right of Roger Senior to be identified as the Author of this Work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

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Contents

Introduction

S omewhere on the East Coast Main Line (ECML) a train comes to a silent halt in the middle of the country. The driver has already been in touch with his route control to advise them that he has lost all power and advises them of his location. The reply from his Control states technical assistance is on its way on a train heading towards you and should be there in about 10 minutes. The technician is dropped off alongside the stricken train, and within a few minutes he gives the thumbs up to the driver and the train is back on the move. Once again one of the mobile technical staff employed by British Rail (BR) on the East Coast route has saved what could have been several hours delay, not only to the passengers, but to other services which would have been trapped behind and also to later services which would have incurred late starts on their next journeys.

There are hundreds of books written about the railways, from the first steam locomotives to the present day recording how the rail network grew and then declined, but nearly always about the history of how that particular line evolved, the building problems, the motive power and stock used, and the financial problems and rivalry between companies. Even after 1923, when the grouping of the railways took place, there were still differences between the five regions recorded in many books. Other publications have concentrated on individual types and classes of locomotives and vehicles, and even todays modern trains are covered by different publications.

This autobiography concentrates mainly on my sixteen years as a technical riding inspector (TRI) which involved riding and fixing trains in service, and the influence that I and the other members of the team had on the day to day running of the railway system; what affect the weather had in keeping the trains running; some of the technical problems that caused trains to fail; and also how the railway operates when things go wrong. Its about the other side of the railway system, which is rarely seen by the travelling public; but the consequences are, and this book is intended to be informative for the traveller who at some time just may have been on one of the trains that feature in this book. Rather than a technical volume full of jargon that not many people would understand, I have included only a limited amount of technical detail to highlight some of the problems.

What follows starts from British Rail in 1968 at Holbeck Diesel depot, with a short spell at Cambridge and a years break from the railway before returning to Holbeck in 1974, moving to Neville Hill with the arrival of the HSTs in 1978; then as a trial in 1988, finishing up with a team of 6, through to privatisation and the short lived Intercity East Coast to the final operator of the East Coast Main Line, Sea Containers, running under the name of Great North Eastern Railway (GNER), and finally as the Resident Engineer in 2004 for the overhaul of the MkIV fleet before taking early retirement in October 2005. I will detail failures, journeys and extracts from my daily logs as well as some of the more strange faults that occurred in my sixteen years as a technical riding inspector covering both the East Coast Main Line from Kings Cross (KX) to Leeds, Newcastle, Edinburgh, Glasgow and the Midland Main Line (MML) from Sheffield to St Pancras until privatisation.

Attached in the appendix is a chart for each year showing how many times each loco was ridden and how many defects were reported, if any, as eventually failures and delays became less and less. Faults with the MkIV air conditioning (air con) system, which was proving very unreliable in hot weather in the early years, are also listed; it shows how the number of air conditioning faults rise in the early years of operation before the problem is resolved. Listed as well is the number of vehicles reported with other defects which would affect the running of the service. The initial teething problems with the new electric locomotives show how more and more defects were being recorded before their problems were also resolved.

Below is the senior managements view of the reasoning behind the decision for the introduction of technical riding inspectors, based on the poor performance of the HSTs.

Riding Inspectors on the ECML: a Strategic Overview

Why were Riding Inspectors needed?

We have become used in the last ten years to new fleets that produced excellent reliability straight out of the box or at least over a very short timescale. Examples are Bombardiers 700 vehicle Class 377 fleet operating on Southern, now achieving 45,000 miles between technical failure, and several Siemens fleets with even better figures. Most notably, Bombardiers 125 mph Class 220 Voyager diesel trains achieve 44,000 miles between failures whilst operating on Cross Country services.

The result is that, even if it were possible to fix an electrical multiple unit whilst riding in the train (which basically it isnt), none of the train companies operating these units could even remotely justify employing riding inspectors. Southerns Cl377 fleet run just over one million unit miles each month, and experiences less than one delay caused by a technical incident per day; a genuinely outstanding performance.

In contrast, the HST trainsets operating on the East Coast Main Line (ECML) and on Great Western, Cross Country, and the Midland Main Line experienced, during the period covered in this book, a delay from a technical cause every 5,000 miles. This equates on the ECML to seven delays from a technical cause each day (since the fleet covered a million miles per month). With incidents at this level, introduction of riding inspectors becomes justifiable.

For many years BRs Commercial managers had produced a Passenger Demand Forecasting Handbook (PDFH) which calculated the changes in revenue produced by increases in service frequency, reduced journey times, etc. More relevant to fleet engineers was the effect on long term revenue of train delays. Once a cost per minute of delay was available it was only necessary to calculate how many minutes a riding inspector could save and balance this against the total employment cost. Their value was however dependent not only on the ability of the inspector, of which I never had any doubt, but also on the willingness of operations staff to allow trains to be delayed, to enable repairs to be completed.