Decarbonisation of UK Rail Network

[Trog]

It is possible to coast for many miles, a driver I knew once coasted for twenty six miles after his loco failed to restart after crossing a neutral section.

 

[Flying Phil]

Whilst appreciating the need for maintenance, and the safety aspects of OHLE, surely the sheer costs of infrastructure and use would show that 24 hour working is justified and beneficial both environmentally and economically. The system should not need shutting down and maintaining every night???

 

[HSTEd]

If you built a modern high performance railway from scratch, then no it would not need maintaining every night. [ETCS 3/Regional so no need for plain line axle counters, slab track and overhead conductor bar]
But unfortunately that is not what we have.

 

[najaB]

If you built a modern high performance railway from scratch, then no it would not need maintaining every night.

But even with the railway we have, the same sections don't need maintenance every night.

 

[HSTEd]

But even with the railway we have, the same sections don't need maintenance every night.

Yes, but they need maintenance enough nights that opening at night would be impractical because somewhere on the line will need maintaining an awful lot of the time.

 

[furnessvale]

Yes, but they need maintenance enough nights that opening at night would be impractical because somewhere on the line will need maintaining an awful lot of the time.

When I last worked on the railway (some years ago), timetables had a white period incorporated to allow mechanised maintenance to take place.

Certainly over Shap this seems to have disappeared and trains run all night so something has changed.

 

[najaB]

Yes, but they need maintenance enough nights that opening at night would be impractical because somewhere on the line will need maintaining an awful lot of the time.

I don't think that they need as much maintenance as you are making out that they do. Picking a location on the ECML at random, the line Peterborough appears to be in use throughout the night tonight, and I'm sure that is repeated at most locations across the network.

Just tried locations on the WCML (Shap Summit), the GEML (Shenfield) and the MML (Leicester) and they all appear to be open through the night. It seems that the 24-hour railway is more fact than fiction.

 

[edwin_m]

All lines have some maintenance access programmed in, and they are recorded in the Engineering Access Statement which is on the link below.

http://archive.nr.co.uk/aspx/3741.aspx

(this may not be the latest one since the website re-organisation but will give you an idea)

Each route has some planned possession time during which trains cannot operate or can operate only under restrictions such as single line working or two lines out of four. TOCs must plan their timetables around this.

This should be sufficient for routine maintenance but for major upgrades and in emergencies extra ("disruptive") possessions may be required and that is when timetables are changed.

To take one of the examples from a previous post, the WCML over Shap is blocked overnight on Saturday and Sunday nights over most of the year, but Saturday nights only during September-December (extra postal and container trains??). The times vary between the two tracks, by time of year and along the route and can be found on page 56 of the 2017 LNW(North) document.

Other routes will have midweek overnight access or even routine planned closures during the daytime at a quiet time of year.