Battery trains fool’s gold

A piece by the railway news video Green Signals recently reported the fast charging trials for battery operated electric trains on the West Ealing to Greenford branch, in west London. In a comment under the video, I described the project as technological overkill, bearing in mind that before dieselisation in the 1960s it was worked by the tiny steam locomotives of the Great Western 1400 class, a 1932 design based on an 1870s design. The money that has been spent on the experiment would have paid for a small fleet of the old things. Elsewhere in the comments, I was critical of the 800 series trains. This produced a response from the makers of the video, as follows.

“I may be grasping at straws here but I am guessing you don't like 8xx series trains all that much and rather wish we still had Kings, Castles and (for the branches) 14xx's. Fair?”

My reply was as follows...

Yes you are grasping at straws. The model for long distance stock is the class 180, which is a 23 metre vehicle with a bay dimension of the golden figure, 1.9 metres, which gives a proper alignment of seats and windows, and luggage space between seat backs, where it will not get stolen. This appears to have been based on the 1986 BREL International, and was, I understand produced by a member of the same design team then at the Derby Technical Centre. The best of the bogie designs remain the B4, BT10 and T3-7 (the one under the class 442).

We need a new design of electric locomotive to power them. Obvious choices would be the Traxx or Vectron for the UK gauge. 

The 26 metre vehicles of the 800 series with small wheeled bogies at 17 metre centres are a flawed concept. I understand that they are track bashers. The poor ride quality would suggest this. The wide spacing between the vehicles and the rooftop clutter makes for poor aerodynamics, the seats are dreadful and getting off these trains can be perilous due to the step gap and poorly placed handrails.  Short fixed formation trains are a dumb idea, especially when they do not have through gangway connections. So is the use of wide extruded aluminium planks for bodyshells, and that is for a long list of reasons, and yes I am well aware that it is done for the convenience of the manufacturers.

With 120 oiling points, and “fancy boilers” the GW four cylinder designs would not be my preferred choice of steam locomotive for present day use. I would be looking for something cheap and cheerful, perhaps similar to the LNER B1, or Southern S15, of course with light oil firing, high superheat, modern exhaust system and comfortable, German style fully enclosed cab.

For routes which are not worth electrifying, the gradual introduction of this traction would hugely improve the economics of the railways, which are currently burdened with the capital costs of absurdly expensive modern rolling stock. Remember that most trains spend a significant proportion of their service life doing nothing at all, including being laid up in store for long periods, as your own series has reported. The capital and interest charges still have to be met when the trains are parked out of use.

As regards lightly used routes, if something like a 1400 class will do the job (that design is based on an 1870s type), why spend fortunes on technological overkill? As far as zero carbon is concerned; the industry should refuse to play the expensive game. They account for 0.7% of UK carbon emissions.

Link to video

 

The Fiscal Black Hole

Richard Murphy, the accountant and policy analyst, has just produced a video on the fallacy of the £20 billion black hole in government finances. It is worth watching, but can you spot the hole in his argument?

Murphy is partly correct, but also dangerously misleading. He has forgotten that there is a fixed supply of some things, such as land, which all buildings require—homes, factories, shops and offices. Creating money too freely leads to a land price boom. This was the main long-term effect of Quantitative Easing. It sent house prices sky high. 

The notion that unemployment is due to shortage of aggregate demand is the great Keynesian fallacy. If Murphy understood the idea of the NAIRU (the Non Inflationary Rate of Unemployment), which has been around since 1959, he would know that pushing money into the economy cannot get rid of unemployment without causing accelerating inflation. Money has lost 98% of its value since 1945. It is one of the reasons why Britain's industry has all but disappeared.

Governments can indeed create unlimited money but it then needs to be withdrawn from circulation through the tax system. When the tax system punishes honest work and wealth creation, it is not fit for purpose, but that is what we have had for the past 80 years.

The link to the video is here.

The case for locomotive hauled trains and refurbishing old rolling stock

 This discussion arose from a YouTube comment.

“Keep operating super old locomotives is not exactly environment-friendly or even cost-efficient.”

This is true as a broad generalisation. However, the energy consumption of rolling stock and infrastructure has to be calculated over its entire life cycle, from mine to scrapyard. I cannot lay my hands on the figures, but I understand that at least a third of the energy consumed by a train occurs in mining and refining the raw materials and construction of the vehicles. Large amounts of energy are used to just to dig out and transport the minerals and convert the ore to aluminium metal, while aluminium welding is also an energy-intensive process. Aluminium mining is not environmentally friendly. Similar considerations apply to electrification infrastructure and battery technologies.

As regards cost, around a third of the total is for the capital costs of the rolling stock. This is usually reckoned to be fully amortised after 20 years, after which the costs are reduced to just the marginal costs of maintenance, overhaul and refurbishment. Since rolling stock has to be robust enough to withstand the arduous railway environment, it will last for 60 years with a mid life refurbishment. This is why we still see elderly trains in service, for example, locomotive types such as the British classes 20, 37 and 73, German class 232, the Swedish type RC, and various trains on London Underground. It cannot be economic to scrap serviceable rolling stock when replacement of some of the components is all that is needed.

“Newer engines can dramatically decrease energy consumption.”

Indeed. Trains such as the British IC 125 stock, the class 56 diesel electric locomotives and the class 73 electro-diesels have been fitted with new engines from EMD and MTU, which not only cleans up the emissions but also makes them more powerful.

“Besides if the train is too short, then using a heavy locomotive to haul it would cost a lot of extra overheads.”

It might, but a locomotive capable of hauling 3 carriages should not weigh more than about 70 tons, and the carriages themselves will be lighter as they will not have the heavy traction equipment built in. A slightly larger and heavier locomotive – say 80 tons, will be able to manage 6 coaches, of which some can be taken out of service when they are not required, and this is a useful opportunity to carry out tasks such as cleaning and maintenance. There is a further issue – the spread of on-train signal systems such as ERTMS. This is extremely expensive and has to be installed on every train capable of running independently. It makes economic sense to fit it all into a single vehicle – a locomotive.

“You can of course only hook for example 3 carriages to a loc, but that won't really decrease carbon footprints. A 3-car MU would draw much less power and use weaker but adequate engines.”

Railway operation accounts for 0.7% of total UK carbon emission. It isn’t even worth the effort thinking about it. However, if decarbonisation of the railways adds to costs or makes rail less attractive in other ways, then the result will be increased emissions.

SNCF shutdown should be a wake-up call

The recent large scale shutdowns on French railways have been variously attributed to hostile action, terrorists, leftist agitators and Russians, but similar incidents have occurred by accident. A few years ago a small fire in an equipment cupboard shut down train services over a wide area around Gothenburg, and it took a fortnight to get things back to normal.

A couple of weeks ago there was the worldwide dislocation caused by an upgrade of Windows computer systems which went wrong. Similar large scale disruption to electronic systems can also be due to natural events such as solar storms. Total shutdown of tills in shops throughout Sweden are common, apparently because of a failures of the VAT central computer system.

Critical infrastructure such as transport, water supply, mains drainage, electricity and gas are all vulnerable. 

Until a few decades ago, the signals and points at Brighton were controlled from a signal box at the end of the platforms. If anything went wrong, the staff in charge could seen out of the window and fix it on the spot Then the signal box was closed and the control was moved to a signalling centre at Three Bridges, 25 miles away. When communication is lost, there is little that can be done by those on the ground.

This ought to be taken a as a wake-up call, but it won't be.

A thought about money

I noticed that there has been a flurry of discussion recently about what is known as Modern Monetary Theory (MMT)). It strikes me as a bit half-baked but the proponents of MMT may have a point.

The usual view is that governments collect tax and spend it to pay for their activities. I believe this is exactly the wrong way round. As I understand it, official money is created when government spends it into circulation to cover its expenses. The money must then be withdrawn from circulation through the tax system, so as to complete the cycle and prevent the undue increase in the quantity of money which leads to a general increase in prices as the value of money falls.

Now, it is essential to remember that one of the core functions of governments is to protect land rights and provide what is needed to make land habitable and productive, thereby creating sustaining its value. The government‛s primary duties are to defend the realm, protect land titles, make justice available to the people and provide the infrastructure which enables production. Without these, land would be of little value. In addition, service provided such as education and healthcare also enhance land value; one need only compare house prices in the vicinity of good schools to observe this effect.

It follows from this that the principal form of taxation should be on land, as measured by its market rental value.

Overdue policies that will probably not happen

A handful of overdue policy reforms would alleviate many of the long standing problems that afflict the British economy. This are

Rationalisation of property taxation including

• Reform of the Council Tax
• Abolition of Stamp Duty
• Abolition of Capital Gains
• Business Rates to annual assessments and will with fixed equipment, buildings and plant being ignored in the valuation. 

Phasing out of VAT

Significant raising of thresholds for income tax and NI contributions.

Scrapping of VAT over a couple of years; it is damaging, inefficient and a solid obstacle to growth. 

Even if these changes were revenue-neutral, great benefits would follow. Of course, even though Labour has a huge majority in parliament, little or none of this will happen.

When the wind blows, the trains stop

For the second time this week, trains on many routes in the west of Sweden have been cancelled due to high winds: this happened on Sunday morning (7 July) and again this afternoon (10 July).

Apparently there is a risk of trees falling on the overhead electrification cables, and of the cables themselves getting blown down. The cables come down regularly; a couple of times a week, it is said. I have personally been caught up in two incidents. In the first, the train was stuck in a forest for four hours when the wires came down. This was on a lovely afternoon in July and passengers could enjoy the sun and opportunity to walk their dogs. The stay in the forest was so long because it took two hours to couple a rescue locomotive to the train. A month ago the passengers were ordered off a Copenhagen to Gothenburg train because the wires had been stolen, and that journey ended up with an overnight stay in a hotel.

Which raises two questions. Why are trees allowed to grow where they are an obvious hazard? In steam days the trackside had to be kept clear because of the risk of fires. On electrified lines, the risk of disruption due to trees falling on the track is even greater.

The second is why are the lines electrified at all? Now that electricity is priced on the Europool market, it is not cheap, and there are many lines where there is not enough traffic to justify the cost of putting up the wires and keeping them in order, which is an onerous task in itself.

Perhaps some of this electrification infrastructure should be removed when it is life expired?