Rail Engineer – July 2019

Rail Electrification:

REBUILDING CONFIDENCE

PETER

STANTON

T

he Institution of Mechanical Engineers recently held the latest in a series

of roughly biennial seminars highlighting railway electrification, with the

emphasis being mainly on the United Kingdom although it did also look

at other countries.

The current state of electrification

design and construction in the country

is in rather a contrast to the optimism

of the first seminars. At that time,

electrification was very much in active

progression, although, following

mobilisation, there had been some

hesitations along the way. These

hesitations were followed by a pause

and then the current English and Welsh

limited stop. However; as will be seen,

Transport Scotland has taken a different

path, with electrification delivery

proceeding apace, to the extent that

there are now five electrified routes

between the two principal Scottish cities

of Glasgow and Edinburgh.

With the institution sharing concerns

with the industry, and in partnership

with the Railway Industry Association,

the latest seminar was organised in

the light of the need to demonstrate

the ability of the industry to achieve

commercially acceptable progress and

show that electrification will form the

core preference for the decarbonisation

of rail transport, as guided by national

government targets.

There has recently been considerable

study of possible alternatives to

conventional electrification and the

Institution’s conference and seminars

organising committee felt strongly

that there should be an analysis and

discussion of some of these alternatives,

as well as of the issues that have driven

electrification costs upwards and caused

timescales to be extended.

Scottish success

A broad cross-section of industry and

associated professionals were invited to

present and help to achieve a method

of demonstrating to the country that

electrification was the solution to

traction power for most of the core

railway system.

Ian Flynn, as chairman of the organising

panel, opened the seminar on behalf

of the IMechE and the RIA, stating that

the industry was ready to prove it could

deliver electrification projects at an

optimum rate and economic cost.

Setting the scene on a positive note,

the keynote address was by Bill Reeve,

commercial director of Transport

Scotland, with his subject “Success

in Scotland - A rolling Programme of

Electrification”. Delegates were treated

to a brief history of recent construction

in Scotland with the emphasis all the way

through on keeping a rolling programme

with a continuity of workload.

The central belt of the country has a

significant concentration of the country’s

population and has a well-used rail

network. Some parts of the network

had been closed during the ‘Beeching’

7878 FE ATURE