Proceedings 2002/2003 - IRSE

136
YORK SECTION
The October meeting, sponsored by Corus Rail
Consultancy, was by Ivor Ellis of Pirelli Cables plc,
on “The Vale of York 400kV Underground Cable
Project”. This paper was close to the hearts of many
of the York membership as it dealt with the tricky
problem of how to strengthen the power supply to
the York area and still maintain the beauty of the
Yorkshire countryside. His talk detailed how the
underground ducts were installed and subsequently
how the oil filled cable was installed and jointed. Ivor
also explained the monitoring system that was
implemented to check for oil leaks and cable overheating.
Corus Rail Consultancy sponsored this
meeting. (17 members and 3 visitors attended)
The November meeting was kindly chaired by
Peter Stanley, the President of the Institution, when
a paper by Brian Smith on the subject of “The Kuala
Lumpur Sentral Resignalling Project” was presented.
Brian detailed how the project had been
subject to many delays and problems from its
inception in 1996 to final commissioning at the end
of 2001. The signalling contract was let in November
2000 to a Swiss Company who built the new interlockings
and tested them off line and then installed
and commissioned them using 5-hour possessions.
This involved switching between the existing interlockings,
the new interlockings and the outside
equipment. At the end of each period of testing the
interlockings would be switched back to the original.
This meeting was sponsored by the Halcrow Group
Ltd. (32 members and one visitor attended)
The December meeting was a paper by John
Boyes of the North Yorkshire Moors Railway on
“How I Resignalled a Railway”. It is traditional that
the December paper at York is always on a slightly
lighter topic than normal and John gave a very
interesting and informative paper on the rebuilding
of the railway between Pickering and Grosmont
following its closure by British Rail in 1967. John’s
paper was lavishly illustrated with slides showing the
various stages in renewing signals, rebuilding signalboxes
as well as the considerable track work that
was involved. On this occasion Jarvis Rail were our
sponsors. (30 members and 4 visitors attended)
January saw a paper by Clive Kessell on
Telecommunications for Railway Operations. Clive
took the members through the role of telecommunications
on the railway. The various telecomms
systems for railways were described together with a
vision as to how these might evolve in the future. The
inter-relationship with public networks was
considered as well as the use of telecomms to
support signalling. Finally, Clive looked at the future
of both railway signalling and telecomms as they
become more dependant on radio systems. Thales
Telecom Services sponsored this meeting.
(33 members and 13 visitors attended)
The February paper saw a change to our original
intentions but nevertheless David Crabtree gave a
very interesting and informative talk entitled “Click
Here – The IRSE Website Uncovered”. David used
an electronic presentation to look at the contents of
the IRSE website. He described how the website is
made up by looking at the “site map” to see how it
is structured. He also described how websites in
general are created and maintained with examples
on how work on the IRSE site is undertaken. Finally
he looked at how the IRSE website is developing
and posed the question, what do the members
WANT and NEED from the website. Westinghouse
Rail Systems were our sponsors for this meeting.
(21 members and 2 visitors attended)
The final paper in March saw that well known
double act Bruce MacDougall and Charles
Weightman present their paper on “Manchester
South Resignalling”. After earlier difficulties, the
Manchester South Capacity Improvement Project
was relaunched about 18 months ago. It is the first
project in Britain to use the Italian Ansaldo signalling
system based on their ACC interlocking. Charles
described the location and existing signalling of the
Manchester South area. He explained the reworking
of the scheme plan and its associated controls in the
light of emerging practices for overrun mitigation
and for the provision of collision proof signalling,
many of which were developed concurrently. Bruce
MacDougall took over to describe the Ansaldo
system and the process for its safety acceptance
based on cross-acceptance of the system as
applied at Roma Termini. The Ansaldo system
philosophy was explained and some notable
equipment and application details for Stage A of the
project were described along with their advantages
and disadvantages. The later applications of more
advanced features and some possible changes for
the future were discussed. Atkins Rail sponsored
this meeting.
(43 members and 14 visitors attended)
This gave an average attendance per meeting of
35, which is a very creditable number.
Once again we are indebted to our sponsors who
willingly support our meetings both financially and
physically. Without them we would be unable to use
the excellent facilities that the National Railway
Museum offers.
OUTDOOR VISITS
2002 brought with it a total of three visits. One
trend to note is that it is that it becomes more
difficult, year on year, to visit operational railways
and industrial sites due to the implementation of
revised health and safety requirements.
The first visit was held on Sunday 29th September
when ten members visited the Keighley and Worth
Valley Railway to view the work that is taking place
to keep this heritage railway operating as one of the
country's premiere working museums. Visits were
made to the signalboxes at Keighley, Damems and
Haworth as well as the locomotive shed at Haworth.
Transport along the line was provided by a heritage
Diesel Multiple Unit.
Wednesday 2nd October provided a visit for 22
members on the Tyne & Wear Metro system. The
Metro has operated a rapid transit system on North
and South Tyneside for over 20 years and, in 2002,
services were extended to Sunderland. This entailed
“light weight” Metro cars traversing the same tracks
as “heavy rail” passenger and freight traffic, which is