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Thursday 31 Mar 2016

Storm Katie threatened our project, but we delivered for Kent

Region & Route:

| Southern

Over all four days of the Easter weekend, the East Kent re-signalling team took over the railway between Longfield, Sittingbourne, and the Isle of Sheppey, to commission a brand-new system to control trains.

The old 1959 system, which was itself commissioned in the days of steam, had worked well but was showing its age.

Project Director Huw Edwards and his teams, from Network Rail and suppliers Atkins, Balfour Beatty & Spencer, not only had to completely replace the old with the new in time for Tuesday morning’s rush hour, but they also had to battle the elements.

Huw, when you look back at this weekend, what was the biggest challenge you faced?

Our biggest challenge was Storm Katie. The weather was worse than forecast and we had trees and debris, including a telegraph pole, down along the route of our 30-mile possession. It got so bad that on Sunday night / Monday morning  we instructed the teams to stop work on recovering our old, redundant assets, and stand down our vehicles at 2am to keep people safe. Then, when the weather calmed down later on Monday we went back out and completed the recoveries. Having said that, had we not reached such a good state at the end of Saturday, then we may have had to leave some of the assets in place, and recover them later in the year.  Our testers, meanwhile, who do not need to work with heavy machinery, carried on working through the wind and the rain overnight and pulled through.

How much do you think about the impact on passengers when you are delivering this type of technical work?

100 per cent. We are only doing this work to improve the railway for the people who use it and we have a hard-wired link to what we are doing for passengers.  We have provided a new station in Rochester, a more reliable train control system, new train paths (allowing for more trains to run) and a brand new platform at Rainham station.  But it’s not just that – I’ve spent 26 years in the railway industry and nearly every project I’ve worked on has involved regeneration.  I worked on the creation of the London Overground network, Crossrail, the Channel Tunnel Rail Link, the Jubilee Line Extension and the Docklands Light Railway and Rochester’s new station is a continuation of that theme, helping to regenerate a significant part of the riverside area in Medway.

What pleased you the most about Easter?

Everybody in the team shone and stepped up to make it a success. As an example, all our team organisers, who normally work Monday-Friday at our HQ office, deployed to site over the weekend and gave us 24/7 support throughout. There was also a calmness about the way the work was delivered, even when we were under pressure from the weather and missing interim milestones. For me, it raised the bar, and set a new benchmark..

What was the key to the success of the project?

We stuck to our plan. This was the culmination of many months – in fact years – of planning and a plan that was refined and refined right up until we delivered it over a very intense four days. We then resisted the temptation to deviate from the plan, even when it would seem tempting to do so and fought against any changes unless we were forced into it by the weather. We don’t often get a four-day window to do work on the railway and there is always the temptation to answer “can you just…” with a Yes. I’m delighted with how it went and we now need to move on to finish the scheme by demolishing Rochester signal box so we can open the final new platform there, by the end of the year.

NOTES on East Kent Resignalling 2:

The East Kent Re-signalling 2 project this Easter saw the commissioning of 30 miles of new signalling, from Longfield to Sittingbourne and out onto the Isle of Sheppey. It is a sequel to the first project, the successful East Kent Re-signalling 1, which replaced signalling from Ramsgate through to Faversham and to Dover via Canterbury East, in 2011/12.

As a result of the work this Easter, the signal boxes at Rochester, Gillingham, Rainham and Sittingbourne are no longer in use and staff control more than 30 miles of railway from the East Kent Signalling Centre in Gillingham. Rochester signal box will be demolished, with work starting there in the next few days. A decision on the future of the other boxes will be made shortly. 

The new signalling equipment will be more reliable (the equipment we replaced dates from 1959, when steam trains were still running in Kent) and also increases the number of trains we can run through Medway. Not all of that extra capacity (what we call “train paths”) will be filled with trains, as the key to operating a reliable service is to leave space in the timetable.

Rainham’s Platform 0 is now in use and once the signalbox at Rochester is demolished, the new Platform 3 there, can be brought into use.