Dubious tunnel project under the Gulf of Finland

Ideas for grandiose infrastructure projects have a habit of refusing to die. One such is for a 50 kilometre tunnel under the Gulf of Finland between Helsinki in Finland and Tallinn in Estonia, priced at £15 billion, including substantial EU funding. It would give a 20 minute crossing time between the two cities, compared to the present ferry crossing times of two to three hours. Also, in the longer term, the idea is to provide Finland with a direct rail connection to the rest of Europe via the proposed Rail Baltica. For this reason, the EU is insisting that the railway is built to standard gauge (1435 mm) despite the fact that both the Finnish and Estonian railways are built to the wider Russian gauge (1520 mm).

Rail Baltica itself is a €6 billion scheme for a conventional speed standard gauge passenger and freight railway from Warsaw to Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia, connecting the three capital cities of Vilnius, Riga and Tallinn. The problem with the route is that the three Baltic countries and Finland are sparsely populated, with a total population of about 12 million in the four countries, with the traffic potential limited accordingly. The same applies to the traffic potential on the route between Tallinn (population approximately half a million, and Helsinki (population about 1.5 million). It is difficult to see how so few people can generate enough travel demand to make it worth building a tunnel between the two cities.

The problem for this part of Europe is that its natural trade hinterland is to the east, outside the EU, but the EU Single Market is constructed so as to discourage such trade.

Back again

I have not added to this website for a year and a half, but there seems to be an epidemic of new vanity projects at the moment, and some of long-running major infrastructure projects have come up against major difficulties resulting in delays and added costs.

In Britain, CROSSRAIL, due to have opened at the end of 2018, is now not expected to start running until the end of 2021; difficulties with completion of some of the stations, and of running trains over a route where three different signalling systems, have been well documented. Estimated costs for HS2, the high speed line to the north, are now several times the original figure which was given as the basis for allowing the scheme to proceed.

In Sweden, the Västlänk tunnel in Gothenburg is now far behind schedule, with an estimated opening in 2030, four years after the 2026 date advertised on the hoardings around the construction sites; construction costs will rise accordingly. This promises to be a repeat performance of the Hallandsås tunnel which took 23 years to build. When complete, it will result in a worse service than is currently provided – a remarkable achievement.

However, looking through back numbers of Modern Railways, I came across an even more dubious project in the May 2019 issue: a 50 kilometre underwater tunnel across the Gulf of Finland between Tallinn and Helsinki.

Västlänken - the chaos begins

Next week come the first major disruptions due to Västlänken. Major alterations to Gothenburg’s tram services are always a feature of the summer as the holiday season is set aside for renewal of track. That is a story in itself, because the fleet of Italian trams that came into service in 2010 are inflexible and cause additional wear on curves. However, on top of this, there are closures in preparation for Västlänken, and to crown it all, the road tunnel along the Göta Älv will be closed for six months in one direction for the same reason. That will cause horrendous and widespread delays and congestion.

It is already proving to be a project too far, and that is just a month into the construction period.

In addition, trenches are appearing all over the place, blocking the entrances to shops and restaurants, which cannot be doing their business any good at all. I wonder how many bankruptcies there will be before the wretched scheme is complete?

Microsoft’s underwater data centre

Microsoft’s underwater data centre idea plumbs the depths in several ways. The idea is to use cold surrounding seawater to dissipate the heat generated. This is of course low-grade heat, but it is perfectly suitable for the heating of buildings, hot water systems, etc, which adds up to a huge amount of energy use worldwide, especially in the colder parts of the world.

A data centre in Helsinki uses the waste heat in this way, heating a group of adjacent buildings. I would be happy to have a data centre in our basement if it meant no more heating bills. There is a fibre optic cable in the street outside, so there is no need for an underwater cable.

What are Microsoft engineers thinking of?

Minding the gap

Gaps between platforms and trains are another problem caused when there is a mis-match between the infrastructure and the trains. When the system was built in the early days of Queen Victoria, passenger carriages were short four-wheeled vehicles, typically less than 10 metres long. Over the next century, the standard length of a British passenger vehicle had risen to 20 metres. With bogies close to the ends, and about 14 metres apart, there would be a large gap on sharply curved concave platforms. This was not usually a problem with slam-door trains as passengers would lower the window inside the door and use the top of the window frame for support when getting on and off. The trains were also fitted with external handrails. This was not an ideal arrangement but it worked.

The first large scale use of sliding door trains on the national system adopted the 1/3:2/3 configuration, as in these class 313 trains seen here at Brighton. The size of the gap is obvious. From the mid-1980s, this 1:3:2/3 configuration became standard for all trains in Britain apart from the inter-city fleet, where end doors became the standard. The final BR designs, however, adopted a 1/4:3/4 configuration, with two seating bays between the vehicle ends and the doorway vestibule.  This was a feature of the Networker and derivatives of the design including the 20 metre Electrostar classes. This reduced the size of the gap because the doorway was only just inside the bogie wheelbase. The 23 metre Turbostars were similar, but with five bays instead of four between the doorways.

The new CAF Civity trains for Northern seem to have reintroduced the problem, as these are 23 metre vehicles with the doorways three bays in from the ends, and four bays between the doorways. As the photograph shows, the doorways are well inside the bogie wheelbase, which could give rise to large gaps at concave platform faces. We shall see.

The problem could of course be solved entirely if the trains were fitted with retractable steps, but that is a step too far, it appears.

The UK loading gauge question

One would have thought that a priority for rolling stock designers would have been to make the best use of the limited UK loading gauge. Seemingly not. The illustration of the interior of the new locomotive-hauled Nova 3 coaches for Transpennine Express is taken from an article in International Railway Journal; I hope this is acceptable under the fair use of copyright rules.

Take a look at the skirting area. This shows the problem caused by the very sharp lower bodyside curvature apparent in exterior views of the stock. This example is almost the rule. The same thing affects much of the rolling stock built since 1990, including the BR-designed Networkers and the BREL Electrostars and Turbostars. The bodyside profile makes no sense within the parameters of the UK loading gauge.

As is well known, the British loading gauge is little bigger than that permitted for narrow gauge railways such as those of Japan and South Africa. This is mostly due to the closeness of adjacent tracks and the low bridges and tunnels, but the problem is aggravated by the British practice of having high platforms, approximately 90 cm high. The issue was carefully examined when British Railways was formed in 1948, and the result was the C1 loading gauge (diagram above), which applied to passenger vehicles of a nominal width of 20 metres with bogie centres 14.17 metres apart - as close as practical to the vehicle ends. The mark 1 stock was built to comply with this standard, and more recent stock such as the Bombardier class 377 Electrostars are constructed to the same main dimensions.

Eventually, longer vehicles came into use. These were made narrower, in accordance with a geometrical formula to take account of overthrow on curves. Another important change was the use of air springing which is softer, which meant that carriages had to be narrower at the cantrail, where the sides meet the roof.

As far as the passenger space is concerned, the salient point is that the maximum width of the loading gauge is available from 1.225 metres above rail level and upwards for about 1.2 metres, when the vehicle body has to become narrower. The C1 loading gauge for 20 metre vehicles allows a full 2.82 metres, tapering to 2.62 metres at the cantrail. Logically, it generates a profile similar to that in these vehicles below.

The important factor here is the floor height. The standard height used to be 1.3 metres, which resulted in no loss in width, leaving space for skirting level ducts without cutting into legroom; this is a feature of, for instance, all the BR mark 1 stock. The Hitachi 800 series are also unaffected due to the high floor level enforced due to the size of the underfloor engines. Suburban stock, on the other hand, with a lower standard floor height, can suffer badly from reduced floor width, although it does not affect the Siemens Desiro class 450 and similar types. That said, one wonders why lower bodyside curvature is needed on suburban stock at all as the footsteps project beyond the bodysides.

The problem can be seen clearly in the top photograph; passengers sitting next to the windows will only be able to put one foot on the floor unless they twist themselves at an angle. Why, then, do these vehicles have such pronounced lower bodyside curvature, since there is no necessity for it through loading gauge constraints?

Britain’s new inter city trains

I am planning to discuss the new Hitachi inter-city trains in several pieces on this blog. I put it under the heading of  “vanity schemes” because they were clearly not the best value-for-money replacement for the HST fleet and came about due to the political influence of the civil servants within the Department for Transport who developed the project and then protected it at all costs.

These trains have many good points, in particular the quality of the finish and detailing inside and out, the smooth ride and surprisingly low noise levels when on diesel power. However, they also have many shortcomings, which are due to the specification produced as a result of the work of the DfT.  Hitachi has made the best of a concept that could have been better conceived.

There is a lot of poorly utilised space due to the length of the vehicles.This is noticeable in the uncomfortable seats misaligned with windows, inadequate space for luggage in a location where passengers can keep it supervised, and the need to “mind the gap”, which should not be necessary given that various forms of retractable step have been around on continental railways for about 20 years.

The Great Western 2 x 5-car formations are inefficient in terms of space, cost and staffing requirements. There is an unusually large gap between vehicles, which means the gangways are long and again, space is wasted. Acceleration is sluggish when starting on diesel power.

If the trains had been built as 23 metre, 72 seat loco-powered push-pull sets, close-coupled like mark 3 stock, the passenger experience would have been very much better and the cost very much less. Of course that means the electrification would have had to be completed as planned for the trains to run.

Phasing out diesel

British politicians are now saying that the future for the railways is hydrogen or battery power and that diesel traction should be phased out by 2040.

Batteries have made vast improvements over the past couple of decades. Lithium supply is a problem but several of the elements on the top left hand side of the Periodic Table are candidates and we can expect substitutes to be adopted. However, the underlying problem of energy density is unlikely to be solved since there is no Moore’s Law in operation. The likely use of battery power will be for use on routes which are electrified for most of their length; one could envisage a train running from Paddington to Maidenhead on electric power and continuing to Bourne End and Marlow under battery power, where it could receive a top-up before returning; similar trains could also provide the all-day shuttle service on the branch. Apart from the provision of batteries, they would be similar in almost all respects to the regular fleet of electric trains running only on electrified routes.

Hydrogen power dead end?
Hydrogen powered trains, on the other hand, look like a specialised niche. The hydrogen has to be made somehow, probably by electrolysis of water. This energy is recovered in a fuel cell where it is converted into electricity. Both processes result in losses, on top of the usual losses associated with the drive train and control systems. That is not the end of the energy losses. There are also losses associated with the transport of the hydrogen, which is not a portable fuel. Hydrogen will liquify only at extremely low temperatures, below 33°K. That is cold. At ambient temperatures is has to be compressed and put in tanks capable of withstanding extreme high pressures, which means they are heavy, and both compression and liquefaction consume large amounts of energy. A German experiment aims to use otherwise unusable electricity from wind generation to produce the hydrogen but this seems an inefficient and expensive way of making use of it.

What is the overall thermal efficiency when all of this is taken into account? There is a discussion of the subject here, in relation to automotive applications of hydrogen fuel cells. Then there is platinum to consider. Fuel cells require platinum catalysts. Alternatives are not even on the horizon. It is one of the rarest of elements. Platinum mines are not environmentally friendly. Taking one thing with another, this technology is nothing like as clean as it seems, and not particularly cost effective.

Battery power might have specialised applications such as the branch line off an electrified main line, referred to above. Hydrogen power looks like a dead end. Neither is a candidate for the hoped-for replacement of diesel power. Politicians should get to grips with basic chemistry and physics before going public about their aspirations.

GWML electrification disgrace to British engineering

The Great Western Main Line electrification makes slow progress. Between Swindon and Bristol Temple Meads the project has been abandoned due to the cost, which is a mercy as it avoids disfiguring the Cotswold landscape. The work to Cardiff proceeds, much delayed, as here at Bristol Parkway. The overhead structures look as if they were designed to carry the weight of the trains, not the thin contact wires and supporting catenary.

Super Express - how super?

The new Hitachi bi-mode trains are now coming into service; after the embarrassing maiden trip, it is possible to make a more balanced judgement. It will be a while before I get an opportunity to travel in them, but the verdict seems to be that the underfloor engines are not too bothersome and the main complaints are about the hardness of the  seats. The air conditioning problem on the inaugural run was due to the failure of the pump which removes the condensed water, but one wonders why the system was designed to need one, when previous air conditioning systems relied on gravity to drain away the condensate. What became of the principle of keeping things simple?

Ian Walmsley, writing in Modern Railways, said that the Great Western ones so far running are all right as commuter trains, but not much better than that. The big question mark concerns performance. The engines were supposed to have been de-rated to improve reliability, but this will have a detrimental effect on timekeeping, especially now that so much of the electrification is uncompleted and likely to remain so for a long time to come. There are also unsolved issues such as the bridge over the main line at Steventon; until it is resolved, there will be a break in the electrification. Given the problems with changeover from diesel to electric on the first journey, having to carry out the operation is going to create a long-term risk to reliability. This saga is going to run for a few years yet.

In 1985 I was the co-author of an article that was published in the Railway Magazine, written slightly tongue-in-cheek, suggesting that the Great Western Main Line should be electrified on the third rail system. Perhaps the idea was not so daft.

Tunnel of steel not needed after all

It now turns out that the Great Western Main Line's "Tunnel of Steel" was not necessary after all. It seems, as Roger Ford explains in "Informed Sources", that there were design errors which went unnoticed.

There have indeed been problems with overhead electrification on the East Coast Main line, which was carried out to super-economical standards, but the West Coast route, electrified in the 1970s, has performed reliably even though it passes through some of the most exposed uplands in the country; in comparison, it looks like gossamer.

IEP problems - give them a break

The very public failures of the Hitachi IEP on its first run in public service have been the subject of much criticism in the press. I am no fan of this project but the criticism is unfair at this stage. It takes at least a couple of years in public service to get a new design of train working reliably.

British Railways Mark 1 stock is often held up as an example of robust simplicity, but its introduction was plagued with problems. The ride quality of the trains deteriorated rapidly due to the design of the BR1 type double bolster bogie. This led to the setting up of a research programme which eventually resulted in the B4 bogie, but that took almost a decade. In the meantime, the Commonwealth bogie with cast steel frame was adopted as an interim replacement; the ride quality was much improved but it was a heavy piece of equipment.

Ride quality became even more of an issue when the mark 1 stock was adapted as an electric multiple unit design for service on the newly electrified Kent Coast lines in 1959. The standard BR bogie was modified due to the reduced clearances on the route. So bad was the ride quality that the trains became known as the "Rock and Roll Trains". The ride over the motor bogies was even worse.

That was not all. The double glazing seals did not work and the spaces between the panes filled up with water, so the inner panes were removed, with double glazing not being reinstated until the trains were given a mid-life refurbishment in 1981.

Mark 1 stock also suffered badly from corrosion from the inside out, especially around the windows. The window problem was eventually resolved by placing the windows in aluminium frames, but corrosion remains an issue for the preservation movement which relies on these vehicles.

Similar reliability issues affected the locomotives. The flagship express steam locomotive Duke of Gloucester was a notoriously poor performer and was quickly dispatched to the scrapyard. Years later, it was rescued and the original design team brought together with a view to discovering the cause of the problems. These turned out to be a combination of inaccurate construction and bad design decisions arising from office politics. Once most of the faults had been corrected, the performance of the machine was transformed, making it possibly the best of the British express designs. Before that there had been the issues with the Bulleid Pacfics, which were troublesome until they received their major rebuild in the mid-1950s, following a serious accident.

The issues continued with subsequent generations of stock.  Rust affected the earlier Mark 2 stock and the suburban versions of Mark 3; the class 455 stock need a major repairs as the floors dissolved into flakes of rust. Air conditioning was unreliable until about ten years ago. Electrostars were another class which did not settle down for almost five years after they first came into service.

It is possible to build new trains which will run reliably, but they have to be technically conservative. The new locomotive hauled fleet for Northern should go into service without problems, since they will be pulled by locomotives which have been in use for several years and hauled carriages are a simpler affair altogether. But given the complexity of the IEP, and based on historical experience, it is too soon to start criticising. The design is indeed complicated, unnecessarily so, and costs about double what it ought to have done. But those decisions were made by the civil servants and the Department for Transport. Hitachi and its engineers should not be made to take the blame.

New Thameslink nasties

The new class 700 Siemens trains are even worse than the class 319 stock which it replaces.

• There is nowhere to put a cup of coffee apart from balanced on one's lap. Had the designers never heard of "food to go"? Do they even travel in trains?
• The uncomfortable seats have no spacers in between the pairs so if there is one large person in the window seat, his or her neighbour will be half-way off the seat by the gangway.
• The skirting level duct cuts into the space to put one's feet so that one is forced to sit twisted round.
•  The lighting is dim - there is only a strip in the centre of the ceiling.
• What is the reason for the curved shape of the windows?

Horrible trains, and you can be sitting or standing in them for well over an hour as they are used on the line between Brighton and Bedford.

UK electrification schemes cancelled #2

The new GW electrification is noteworthy for the chunkiness of the overhead structures, which are heavier than the notably solid gantries installed for the 1500kV Great Eastern electrification which was installed in 1949. One of the reasons for the adoption of 25kV electrification was that the smaller current flows made it possible to use thinner and lighter contact wires, and consequently lighter and cheaper structures. The Great Western's tunnel of steel must come at a commensurately heavy price, which has helped to push further electrification schemes into the realm of the unaffordable.

The overhead structures for the 15kV system used in Switzerland, Germany and Sweden are like gossamer in comparison. What has happened to let loose this orgy of over engineering?

UK electrification schemes cancelled #1

I have tried without success to discover the underlying reason why major UK electrification schemes have been cancelled.

As I understand it, electrification costs have increased due to new regulations which require more generous clearances in relation to 25kV overhead wires and on-train equipment. What I have not been able to find out is where these new regulations have come from. As far as I can mak out, their immediate source is  the Office of Rail Regulation (ORR), which has adopted Electricity at Work Regulations. But when and where have these come from? Has there been an input from the EU's regulatory bodies?

If they are an EU requirement, was there an application for derogation having regard to the special circumstances in the UK? If not, why not?

To whom, if anyone, is the ORR answerable?

Support pulled from D-train

The D-train is a project to recycle the London Underground's District Line D78 stock, introduced in 1978. It was heavily refurbished between 2000 and 2003 with new bogies and other equipment. It is basically in sound condition and good until at least 2025, but it was decided to replace it with the S-stock to provide London Underground surface lines with, for the first time, a uniform fleet.

This will in due course almost certainly prove to have been a bad strategy for London. Railway rolling stock tends to suffer from some weaknesses which show up almost immediately, and others which show up after a decade or two, in both cases affecting the entire fleet. The thirty Bulleid-designed Merchant Navy class all had to be taken out of service and eventually rebuilt, following an incident in 1953 which revealed a fundamental failure with the design. A similar thing happened with the thirty GWR King class locomotives after it had been in service for almost thirty years. It would be good luck if the entire fleet of S-stock is not eventually affected by some defect which means that it will all have to be taken out of service for remedial action.

But to return to the D78 stock. Adrian Shooter saw the opportunity to recycle this stock for secondary services on the national system. In principle that was a shrewd move, though easier said than done, because the trains are electrically powered and the intention is to operate them on lines which are not electrified. The chosen approach was to install underfloor engines to power generators to drive the trains' existing electric motors.

This might have sounded like an economical solution, but fitting generators under the floor of a train can be tricky; the weight of the equipment is one difficulty and the lack of space another.

And so it has proved. The initial use of the trains, now designated class 230, was intended to be between Nuneaton and Coventry. However, an engine caught fire on the trial run and the backers have pulled out of the project. That seems like a precipitate decision, but the project, it is claimed, has now been delayed to the point that it could not meet the timetable set for development.

One has to wonder about the thinking that lay behind the notion. Putting the generator in a separate and reasonably spacious compartment would have been easier and less likely to run into trouble. Using the carriages as locomotive-powered push-pull sets would have been even less risky, and more flexible too, especially if the locomotives used in the trial had been of a well-established type such as the class 20 or 37, of which a number are still serviceable.

Then there is this, specifically designed for secondary routes, within the constraints of the contemporary railway environment. It is nearly eight years since the developer, DLM-AG of Winterthur, came up with the proposal. The firm has so far failed to find sufficient interest for the minimum build of twenty units, costing around £30 million in total, which would be necessary to achieve a favourable price, around 30% of that of a comparable diesel locomotive.

Navy's new destroyers will fail in the Gulf

It seems that it is not just transport projects that get messed up by civil servants. Defence procurement is another field of failure. Defence chiefs have told a House of Commons committee that the new £1bn class 45 destroyers are likely to suffer engine failure in warm waters.

Crossrail 2

Crossrail2 is a project for a new cross-London railway running roughly from the south-west to the north-east. It is not a vanity scheme in itself - on the contrary, it is a long-overdue construction of a project first put forward in 1904 and from time to time ever since. It links together existing routes which at present running to Waterloo, by diverting them into an underground route northwards to Seven Sisters and Tottenham. Amongst other benefits, this will reduce pressure on congested Waterloo.

There are questions, nevertheless. From the south-west, four separate routes converge into one, which is always a potential source of operating difficulties. At the northern end, the line splits into two, which means that some of the trains arriving from the south will have to turn back before they get to the end of the route, probably at Tottenham or Seven Sisters.

More seriously, should it be built as a full-scale railway with overhead electrification, or as a tube? The former, with 6 metre diameter tunnels, involves excavating three times as much material as a 3.5 metre diameter tube.

A related issue is the choice of electrification. The routes from the south-west are already electrified with a 750V DC conductor rail supply. If this were continued throughout the length of the tunnels, the latter could be constructed to a 5 metre diameter instead of 6 metres, ie only 70% of the excavation volume. A conductor rail DC system would also avoid having to fit the trains with heavy transformers, as well as providing greater reliability and reduced maintenance costs, since conductor rail electrification is almost a fit-and-forget arrangement.

The argument usually given for 25KV electrification is that it is more energy-efficient, which is true over long distances where transmission loss becomes an issue at low voltages due to the much higher currents. However, Crossrail 2 is a short-distance railway and transmission losses are not going to be so significant.

Corbyn calls for "Ladies Only" carriages

A curious side issue in the Labour Party's leadership campaign is his call for carriages for women only. "Ladies Only" compartments were usual on trains in Britain at least until the late 1950.

But why the fresh call for them? Could the real problem be that too many seats are being crammed into too small a space? And could that be due to the fact that a railway carriage in 1955 cost around £6000, compared to £2.6 million today - a real increase by a factor of nine, so every square inch of floor space costs that amount more?

Now there is a question that really does call for an answer, because the 1955 carriage wins hands down in terms of spaciousness, comfort and general ambience.

Gothenburgs "first" electric bus

It might be unfair to call this a vanity project, but the new route 55 which started last week is being promoted as Gothenburg's first electric bus. It is not, because there were a few trolleybus routes running until the early 1960s. It is a hybrid, with charging points at each end of the route, using an overhead supply and a pantograph on the roof of the bus. Charging takes about five minutes. It runs on electricity on the flat sections of the route in the centre of the city, which makes it quiet and emission-free when running on its batteries, but the engine starts up as soon as it hits a slope.

This probably takes battery power as far is it will go. The underlying problem with batteries is the poor energy density, both in terms of mass and volume - they are bulky and heavy and can not store enough energy. They are also expensive due to the use of materials which are relatively scarce. The technology will ultimately be seen as a dead-end.

Road transport fuels must have a high energy density. Hydrogen fails because it does not liquify at ambient temperatures and can only be stored under great pressure. The same applies to methane. Hydrogen also needs to be used in fuel cells which require costly platinum as a catalyst. This is why short-chain hydrocarbon fuels such as petrol and diesel have persisted.

One possibility which has been proposed is ammonia. It has a good energy density, though not as good as a hydrocarbon. Its great advantages are that it can be liquified no great pressure - less than 10 atmospheres, if I recall, at ambient temperatures and that  the waste products are harmless nitrogen and water. It can be used in fuel cells, and has been experimentally, but for some reason the technology seems to have been neglected.