North West Area Members and students were given the opportunity to enjoy a tour of the new Parkway station which replaced the former Allerton and Garston stations. The interchange links the WCML Liverpool branch and Liverpool – Warrington – Manchester route with the Merseyrail ‘Northern’ line, together with local bus services and a dedicated shuttle service to John Lennon Airport. The current train service offers 9 departures per hour to Central liverpool (5 from the High level and 4 via the Merseyrail network) half hourly services to Crewe and Birmingham and 3 trains per hour to Warrington and Manchester with one of these running through to Sheffield, Nottingham and the east of england.
The design and build of the station use the most cutting edge environmentally friendly technology including recycling of rainwater, capture of thermal heating using deep bores into the earth below the station and solar panels. Members commented on the high standard of upkeep and cleaning as well as a variety of development at the station following the initial opening. These include a new passenger lounge, shop/café, additional car parking, automatic ticket barriers and an open plan travel centre.
Further developments in the future include increasing the connectivity of the station with the addition of further train service destinations, including possible calls by TPE services in future. Members thank the staff, contractors and management team at Merseyrail for hosting us and enabling students to experience a number of issues regarding station operations required for modules of the education programme.
Members then caught a Merseyrail service to Sandhills for a tour of the IECC control centre, covering the Merseyrail and Nework Rail joint control, the Merseyrail area signalling control and electrical control office. Members were privileged to spend time with panel signallers, crossing keepers and the electrical control despite them managing a very rare failure of 3rd rail equipment on the Wirral. Members were then able to try out the Signalling simulator with the assistance of the Shift Manager. IRO NW Council thanks Christian Wyatt of Network Rail and his operations team for their warm welcome and insight into the operation of this high performing network.
‘How Operators and Engineers work together to deliver a ‘world class’ railway’ a presentation by Simon Whithorn Area General Manager, Network Rail and Tony O’Brien, Infrastructure Maintenance Engineer, Network Rail, Square One offices, Manchester 17 November 2009
A large audience of NW area members convened in the Gold Command room at the Network Rail control in Square One, Manchester on Tuesday 17 November to hear from Simon Whitehorn on behalf of Network Rail Operations and Tony O’Brien from Network Rail maintenance about how the two functions/disciplines work together to deliver a ‘world class’ railway. The presentation and discussion covered a number of topics that were of interest to members and a lively debate was created.
Key areas of recent success were
• the ability for each function to effectively communicate its priorities,
• the reliability of planning and estimatation of access requirements by maintenance
• the role of NR operations and customer services in agreeing reasonable access with operators and provision of staff for degraded working around possessions
• change in working practices and staff conditions to facilitate ‘7 day railway’
• Identification of key assets and setting realistic maintenance strategies for these assets
• Zero tolerance of TSRs and possession work left incomplete
• Joint delivery unit / operations performance meetings.
IRO North West area council thank Simon and Tony for presenting and engaging in a lively discussion and Carl Phillips for providing the venue with the kind permission of Network Rail.