ROC Locations, confused? you will be.

[HowardGWR]

I keep on thinking this is about the Royal Observer Corps. Shews my age i suppose.

 

[ainsworth74]

I keep on thinking this is about the Royal Observer Corps. Shews my age i suppose.

Ironically the thread title actually works perfectly for either the Network Rail ROCs or for the Royal Observer Corps. At least it's unlikely there'll be confusion with UKWMO!

 

[snowball]

I keep on thinking this is about the Royal Observer Corps. Shews my age i suppose.

May I suggest that your spelling of "shew" shows it more?

 

[Olaf]

This document from 25/06/2013 has some pertinent high-level background for:

Telecommunications: Page 38 (PDF Viewer Page 40)

Command and Control: Page 44 (PDF Viewer Page 46)

www.networkrail.co.uk/publications/technical-strategy.pdf

 

[HowardGWR]

May I suggest that your spelling of "shew" shows it more?

That was supposed to be part of the joke.
I do use it when I want to emphaise the moniker!

 

[Olaf]

This article in the Rail Engineer has some background information about the kit and systems:
http://issuu.com/railmedia/docs/tre-september-14/54

 

[LAX54]

works ok with one train fitted on trial on hertford loop, and 1 per hour or so how about 32 in 15 mins ?

 

[HarleyDavidson]

You have two hopes. Bob Hope & No Hope and as Bob Hope has been dead for a few years and will be a little mouldy, absolutely No Hope whatsoever.

 

[carriageline]

People are always so negative about changes in technology. Plus not all ROCs will have ERTMS (not for a long time)


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[HarleyDavidson]

People are always so negative about changes in technology. Plus not all ROCs will have ERTMS (not for a long time)


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Probably because through experience, its been proven that the railway has a penchant for buying cheap rubbish, expecting it to provide a gold standard service, when you know darn well you get what you pay for.

Buy cheap, get crap. Buy carefully, pay that bit more and you generally get quality.

And if you want to see what happens when you do things on the cheap look at the Basingstoke recontrol of the WoE line & Woking recontrol of Alton line, it's forever going kaput down on those lines, rarely a day goes by without some part of it ****ing up! :roll:

 

[carriageline]

Of course, I agree. What else, is when we take proven technology that works in completely different parts of the world, and wonder why it doesn't work here. Or we change it so much, that it a completely different piece of kit!


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[Railman]

I think the rush for ROCs is driven by the continuous change of NR chiefs and the likes of government reports like McNulty, who observed there were a lot of control rooms and signal boxes, and maybe not enough use of modern technology. He did not say what to do about it, or if it was worth doing, but it left the way open for a continuous stream of outside parties, to jump on the bandwagon offering their wares, and a lot of outside managers on big NR salaries with a unlimited credit card to buy them and move on.
The Technology bought today will be out of date within a year or two, and on top of initial cost there will be an open cheque book of continuous upgrades. I think ideology will push the ROCs forward, but there is every chance the idea will run out of money before its completed.

 

[Olaf]

I have no doubt that the planned implementation will proceed, I'm just surprised that the pace is not being accelerated and that there will be as many as 12 ROCs in 30 years time.

 

[Tomnick]

but there is every chance the idea will run out of money before its completed.

It's already happening - we've been told that there's no money for ours, and that it's almost certainly being put back four or more years, well into the next control period.

 

[carriageline]

I wonder now we are a public company, if we will be scrutinised more for wanting to spend money like this!


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[Tomnick]

Maybe so - I don't know! I certainly don't understand why you'd seek to reduce the number of ROCs even further - there surely won't be any great cost savings from a staffing point of view, and no real benefits.

 

[carriageline]

Well apart from building costs I agree! Ashford was already built (as an IECC) so would of been suitable, but Gillingham seems to be the future with ashford moving to Gillingham in about 5-10 years IIRC


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[Tomnick]

I've heard a rumour - only a rumour! - that the ROC in Derby, now open for business, is one of the ones to be left out of the grand plan, and the work shifted to York. There won't even be a saving on building costs if that's the case!

 

[carriageline]

I would love to say I would be shocked if that happened... plus, with schemes slowly being pushed back (infact a resignalling scheme I know of, turned into 'life extension works' when they ran into problems, and the close date changed overnight), and being delayed I do wonder what the future will be. The internal list isn't great, as I have found at least 10 boxes in my area completely missing, and some with no detail whatsoever where they are moving to.

With regards to rumours, I had a S&T lookout stroll in the box yesterday and tell me all the boxes will eventually shut (mine apparently being next year, which it isn't!), there will be no signallers and the trains will signal themselves!! Funny old things these rumour mills!


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[Bald Rick]

With regards to rumours, I had a S&T lookout stroll in the box yesterday and tell me all the boxes will eventually shut (mine apparently being next year, which it isn't!), there will be no signallers and the trains will signal themselves!! Funny old things these rumour mills!

One of the unwritten rules of the railway is to treat all news prefaced with the word 'apparently' with a large pinch of salt.

My first experience of this was stood at Brookwood station, aged 12, waiting for a train whilst some hefty engineering works was going on south (west) of the station. A track ganger told my Dad that the reason they were doing the work was so that HSTs could run on the line at 125mph. Even then, I knew he was wrong!

 

[Parham Wood]

It is quite natural to be concerned about the effects of a centre failure, mainly because of the area covered and the knock on effects of the failure for hours afterwards. They will happen but I hope the overall design has reduced the risk to under 0.001%.

As one who has been involved in disaster planning for large organisations and with involvement in data networking I know there are many things to consider (risk analyse) when designing such a scheme. Ideally for critical operations as here you would want three independent systems as in aeroplanes. Two are not sufficient as if one fails, sods law will mean the second system could also fail (not necessarily the same fault). Ok all three could fail but the risk is reduced. It would be interesting to know how far the principle has been applied here.

Three power supplies sound fine (and probably all that are required) but are they all routed independently the whole way to separate parts of the grid that are independent enough to be able to supply power if one part fails? I assume a local generator is part of the resilience but have arrangements been made to restock with fuel when running or with the Government in case of national fuel shortage? Hopefully all equipment is dual powered at least so that if one electricity supply or distribution panel fails the system still has power. No point in separate power supplies if they all go via the same internal distribution.

Who is supplying the data network infrastructure? If they are third parties what control is there over their performance? How frequently are checks made on the third party independent routing of connections? It is so easy when the third party has a fault or needs to divert for maintenance purposes the independent circuit routing gets compromised and is never picked up. Third party has a failure and hey presto both independent connections go down because they now route through the same node somewhere.

The above is only to illustrate that the resilience of any system relies on the depth of detail that is considered and monitored. Hopefully the planners will have considered all this and many more things, but it is easy to miss something that appears inconsequential but if a certain chain of events happen it can have a disasterous effect. The Government (any party) and its civil servants do not have a good track record with regard to IT projects. Therefore I wonder how much they are able to oversee effectively this project as it is in all essence of strategic national importance, or will they just leave the detail to NR and not check it?

Personally I cannot but feel there will be more failures affecting service than there should be and there will not be sufficient staff available quickly to provide emergency cover, mainly because we will do it the British way and cost save somewhere along the line. How will other centres cope say if they have to take over the Waterloo area? The intensity of service must take some time to learn. How are staff at the backup centre going to become familiar with the service or do staff work at more than one centre?

I wish the project good luck because it should save money but I do not think it will greatly improve much else in the way of train regulation or decision making in emergency situations (eg o/hs down).

 

[Tomnick]

I would love to say I would be shocked if that happened... plus, with schemes slowly being pushed back (infact a resignalling scheme I know of, turned into 'life extension works' when they ran into problems, and the close date changed overnight), and being delayed I do wonder what the future will be. The internal list isn't great, as I have found at least 10 boxes in my area completely missing, and some with no detail whatsoever where they are moving to.

The internal list is a work of fiction, as far as we're concerned (and we've been told as much too). I certainly treat the rumour mill with a very large pinch of salt, but it would be rather nice to know what the future holds in store for us! We are, after all, real people with real lives - more than just a number!

 

[swt_passenger]

Ashford was already built (as an IECC) so would of been suitable...

Built only to contain what was needed, not the whole of Kent though. I'd be surprised if it was physically big enough? The new purpose built ROCs seem about ten times the size...

 

[carriageline]

I agree. But you can say the same about Gillingham, as that was built to be an IECC (if I remember rightly!), which is now going to be a ROC, and house all of ashford at some in the future!


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[moggie]

I agree. But you can say the same about Gillingham, as that was built to be an IECC (if I remember rightly!), which is now going to be a ROC, and house all of ashford at some in the future

You could, but the existing workstations fill about the equivalent of the centre circle of a football pitch. With three more to go in to provide company that'll fill up most of one half. Still leave plenty of room for a few more.

Might be fun getting all the additional comms kit in below mind. I'm sure they'll find a way.

 

[HarleyDavidson]

 

[Olaf]

It is all up in the air.

LNW (S) NR Control staff were told in the last couple of months that the control was being split with the Midland and Western lines going to Saltley in October. West Coast to Rugby next year. At some point in the future Saltley going to Rugby.
This now seems to be on hold.

I do not think that plan is on hold; it has just been going through the usual planning processes. The proposals are for consolidation on Saltley initially, and then for a re-control of Saltley at Rugby pending teh development of the business case:
http://www.railforums.co.uk/showthread.php?p=1936761#post1936761
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The GN/GE Joint and Ely to Norwich are both rubbish with constant level crossing, axle counter and points failures. Bring back the Victorian sheds and bits of cast iron and wire please.

Apparently NR have a program in place that will address those issues in the near future.

 

[LowLevel]

I do hope you're right - the current situation isn't at all fair on the passengers. Hopefully they'll sort out the issues of barriers dropping a long time before trains (particularly in areas where they're the platform access) as well.

 

[Olaf]

Haha. I would to love to see them get the amount of signallers and workstations for them to that! And then there is having signallers that are passed out on the workstations


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I don't expect it will be an issue in the medium to long term.
--- old post above --- --- new post below ---

Maybe so - I don't know! I certainly don't understand why you'd seek to reduce the number of ROCs even further - there surely won't be any great cost savings from a staffing point of view, and no real benefits.

I'm thinking from the standpoint of overall simplicity of the system and the options for a greater degree of automation which will come further down the line. At the moment there is a lot of 'hands-on' involved, but I can see now that it will change in the medium term.