Driving up performance and reliability: Virgin Trains new chief executive, Tony Collins, talks frankly to IRJ's senior editorial consultant, Mike Knutton, about what the future holds for the ambitious yet trouble-hit operator

International Railway Journal, Nov, 2004 by Mike Knutton

That is why the industry is where it is in the reliability stakes and why Virgin found that its new trains have performed "pretty well" but will take some time to drive up the reliability curve.

The Voyagers, for example, quickly overhauled the stock they were replacing, which was good but started from a relatively low level. The old stock was covering about 13,000km between (three-minute) failures while Voyagers now manage about 32,000km. Catastrophic failures are rare as the trains have so much built-in redundancy, so a three-minute failure is not the end of the world. Collins says that from a service point of view, choosing multiple engines was the right answer because of the flexibility they offer.

The interface between the engines and the traction drives still needs to be improved to boost reliability, and while toilet problems have been largely overcome, there are still issues concerning the usual suspects such as doors and air-conditioning, while a problem with the Automatic Warning System (AWS) is being tackled by changing the position of some of the equipment.

All customer surveys so far have rated Voyager interiors, cleanliness, facilities, and ride quality well over 90%. "We have climbed up on to the pedestal, and now we have to stay there. The maintenance contract with Bombardier will be very helpful because they are incentivised to keep the trains in good shape," said Collins.

Collins rates Pendolinos as "technically very good" with full marks for the multiple unit concept and the high level of installed power for acceleration and braking performance. Reliability is high, especially so far as the traction drives are concerned, though the overall reliability level dipped slightly after all the tilting systems had been switched on. There have been problems with transformers overheating, doors (particularly because they incorporate a step), toilets, and air-conditioning.

"If we could test these things we could identify problems early on. It is back to the issue of repeatedly having to reinvent the wheel. We are taking systems that work well on one type of rolling stock and trying to integrate them into a completely different kind of body shape and underfloor configuration. And, surprise, surprise, they do not always transfer.

"There are so many control systems on air-conditioning and doors that we get glitches. A lot of it is software-based. But once we drive out the bugs I am confident that both sets of trains will prove very reliable," said Collins.

Safety Case

Getting through the safety case process was a real problem in terms of time, complexity, and cost. Others had tried and failed to change the system so Alstom, Bombardier, and Virgin took the view that they would have to work within the bounds of the process as it was even though they did not believe it was a very efficient process.

"We were often the ones setting the rules with Pendolino," Collins recalled. "We were the first to do an absolute gauging strategy rather than a relative one, which was a problem because Railtrack did not know exactly what inkastructure it had!"