Tag: railways and trains

4 of the longest running electrical objects

15 June 2020

Electrification

How long do your electrical devices last? We’re not talking about battery life, but the overall lifetime of the items we use every day that are powered by electricity.

It’s accepted that today’s electrical devices have short life spans, in part a symptom of rapidly evolving technology fuelling the need for constant consumer updates and in part a result of planned obsolescence (devices being manufactured to fail within a set number of years to encourage repeat purchases). Electrical devices aren’t purchased with the belief they will last a lifetime.

But it hasn’t always been this way. Before rapid technological development and the rise of fast consumerism, devices were built to last.

Over the relatively short history of electrical appliances, there are tools and equipment that have operated for decades. Some of these remain in operation today with hardly any alterations, but for a few tweaks here and there to upgrade or preserve.

Built to last, here are a few of the longest running electrical inventions.

The Oxford Electric Bell located in the Clarendon Laboratory, University of Oxford.

1840 – The Oxford Electric Bell

The Oxford Electric Bell is not your typical bell – not just in how it looks, but in the fact it has been in constant operation since the mid 19^th Century. It consists of two primitive batteries called ‘dry piles’ with bells fitted at each end and a metal ball that vibrates between them to very quietly, continuously ring.

Its original purpose is unidentified, but what is known is that the bell is the result of an experiment put on by the London instrument-manufacturing firm Watkins and Hill in 1840. Acquired by Robert Walker, a physics professor at the University of Oxford in the mid 1800s, it’s displayed at Oxford’s Clarendon Laboratory which explains why it’s also known as the Clarendon Pile.

The exact make-up of the dry piles is unknown, as no one wants to tamper with them to investigate their composition out for fear of ending the bell’s 179-year-long streak. As a result, confusion remains as to why The Oxford Electric Bell has remained in operation for so long.

Souter Lighthouse, Tyneside, England.

1871 – Souter Lighthouse in South Shields, UK

The lamp in the Souter lighthouse, situated between the rivers Tyne and Wear, was the most advanced of its day when it was first constructed. Designed to use an alternating electric current, it was the first purpose-built, electrically powered lighthouse in the world. Although no longer in operation today, it ran unchanged for nearly 50 years.

The light was generated using carbon arc lamps, and it originally produced a beam of red light that would come on once every five seconds.

Souter’s original lamp operated unchanged from 1871 to 1914, when it was replaced by more conventional oil lamps. It was altered again to run on mains electric power in 1952 and was finally deactivated in 1988.

1896 – The Isle of Man’s Manx Electric Railway

Tourism hit the Isle of Man in the 1880s and with it came the construction of hotels and boarding houses. Two businessmen saw this as an opportunity to purchase a large estate on the island and develop it into housing and a pleasure development. The Manx Parliament approved the sale in 1892 on one condition: that a road and a tramway be built to give people access.

Snaefell mountain railway station, Isle of Man.

It was decided that the tram would be electric, and work began in the spring of 1893, with the tram system up and running by September of that year. Although the track and its cars have been extended and updated over time, the first three cars remain the longest running electric tramcars in the world.

Photograph by Dick Jones (centennialbulb.org)

1902 – The Centennial Bulb

The unassuming Centennial Bulb has been working in the Livermore, California Fire Department for 117 years. The bulb was first installed in 1902 in the department’s hose cart house, but was later moved to Livermore’s Fire Station 6, where it has been illuminated for more than a million hours.

Throughout its life the Centennial Bulb has seen just two interruptions: for a week in 1937 when the Firehouse was refurbished, and in May 2013 when it was off for nine and a half hours due to a failed power supply. Made by the Shelby Electric Company, the hand-blown bulb previously shone at 60 watts but has since been dimmed to 4 watts.

While this means it isn’t able to actually illuminate much, it is a reminder that despite the disposable nature of many modern electrical devices, it’s possible to build electrical items that last.

Drax: A rail history

5 July 2018

Power generation

Railways in Great Britain today are often seen as unreliable or chaotic, yet they remain a vital part of the lives of the population and the economy of the country.

When rail transport first arrived in earnest in the 19^th century, it suddenly allowed goods from around the world, as well as people, to quickly cross the country. It reshaped perceptions of the country’s geography, unlocked the population and accelerated industries.

Over time, however, the role of the railways has diminished, owing largely to the massive rise in car ownership and the shifting of freight onto the road. But that is not to say it has completely lost its importance.

With 6,000 trains passing through Drax Power Station every year, rail is still integral to Drax and the region around it. In fact, since the very first introduction of the railways to the region it has played a major part in shaping the landscape.

A village with two stations

Before the construction of the power station or nationalisation of the railways, Drax village was well-connected, with two different railway lines running through it: the North Eastern Railway (NER) Selby to Goole line, and the Hull and Barnsley Railway’s Doncaster to Hull line.

Each of these lines ran through a different station with NER calling at Drax Hales Station while Hull and Barnsley called at Drax Abbey Station. But, following nationalisation and British Rail’s modernisation plans, Drax Abbey Station, which had closed to passengers in 1931, closed to goods traffic in 1959. Drax Hales Station followed suit in 1964 when it was closed as part of what became known as the Beeching Axe.

“British Rail chairman Richard Beeching famously carried out a review of Britain’s railways in the 60s and as a result closed vast quantities of – what he considered – uneconomical lines,” explains Andrew Christian, FGD & By-products Section Head at Drax Power Station and expert on the area’s history. “At that time oil was cheap, people were increasingly using cars and motorways were being constructed. Nobody really foresaw the rail demand that would be needed in the future to serve the power station.”

Daleks on a merry-go-round

In the 1960s and 70s, with the planning and construction of Drax Power Station underway, there was a new need for railways in bringing coal from the new Selby coalfield. This resulted in the reopening of a closed part of the Hull and Barnsley line for four miles from a reinstated junction at Hensall. Known as Hensall Junction it was renamed Drax Power Station Branch Junction and later shorted to Drax Branch Junction.

A rail system known as a ‘MGR loop’ was installed on the power station grounds, which allows trains to loop around the station and deposit coal – today also wood pellets – without stopping.

The ‘merry-go-round’ trains as they are known, were originally made up of 40, four-wheeled merry-go-round (MGR) hopper wagons. These were much smaller than the wagons that carry biomass from ports to power stations today, and more than 11,000 MGRs where built to serve coal power stations around Great Britain.

Photo by Andrew Brade, Railway Engineer at Drax Power Station

The open-topped wagons were each capable of carrying 33 tonnes of pulverised coal, which was automatically released thanks to a piece of machinery alongside the track colloquially known as ‘Daleks’ thanks to their resemblance to the Dr Who villain.

But as the power station began to change and evolved to fit the modern world, so too did the railway serving it.

Rail at Drax beyond coal

The original Drax rail loop was a single track, with three coal unloading points. By 1993 there was 14.5 km of track with 27 sets of points and crossings allowing trains to switch rails, thanks to the double tracked loop and extra tracks laid to serve traffic taking limestone in and gypsum out from the power station. This was further expanded with the introduction of biomass and a new double track and unloading facility in 2013.

The biomass trains are specially designed to keep compressed wood pellets dry and they are much longer than their MGR predecessors. At 18.2 meters long, their capacity is 30% greater than a coal wagon. It means the 23-wagon trains bringing biomass to the power stations from Tyne, Hull, Immingham and Liverpool’s ports are a quarter of a mile long.

It might be a far cry from the heyday in which the railways crisscrossed the region, but they remain a vital part of the area. And while the area’s original lines are now 50 years dormant, their remnants are still visible in the lasting impact they’ve left on the surrounding landscape.

Many of the embankments and bridges found in and around Drax stem from those first railway lines, while much of the A645 road that was constructed in the early 1990s runs along the track bed of NER’s route to Goole.

Photos by Andrew Brade, Railway Engineer at Drax Power Station

The trains might not stop in Drax Village anymore, but they remain a vital part of the landscape, and how it’s powered.

Northern Powerhouse Minister Jake Berry was in Yorkshire on 5 July 2018 to unveil the first Drax freight wagons with ‘Northern Powerhouse’ branding to deliver biomass to the power station. Read more.

The electric transport revolution

16 April 2018

Electrification

With rapid technological improvements and falls in battery prices, improving performance and reducing the cost, experts predict that by 2050, 90% of new-build cars will be powered by electricity.

However, it’s not only roads where transport is decarbonising; electricity may soon power more of the world’s trains, plus its planes and boats.

Taking trains forward

The electrification of the rail industry has arguably been in the making for a lot longer than EVs but there’s still progress to be made. Trains are already one of the most-efficient modes of long-distance transport, and Network Rail claims electric models’ carbon emissions are 20% to 35% lower than diesel trains. Electric trains also accelerate and brake faster than diesel-powered models, and cause less wear to tracks.

Electrified trains are already commonplace in many parts of the world – Japan’s famously fast and reliable Shinkansen railways are electric. Meanwhile in the UK, less than 50% of the rail network is electrified, with Transport Secretary Chris Grayling’s recent ‘pause’ on development casting doubts on previous ambitious plans to electrify 850-miles of track.

Nevertheless, advancements are still being made to enable the sector to utilise solar energy as an alternative to the national power grid. The concept would prove cost effective and reduce the carbon footprint of trains even further.

According to a report by climate change charity 10:10 and researchers at Imperial College’s Energy Futures Lab, rail companies could cut their annual running costs by millions of pounds through installing their own trackside solar panels to power electric trains directly. With companies spending around £500 million a year on power, the savings on self-generation would enable them to cut fares for passengers, as well as emissions.

Take off for electric planes

Of all transport modes, air travel has made the least progress in electrification but there’s hope yet. Airbus, Rolls-Royce and Siemens recently teamed up to develop the technology needed to create electrically-powered aircraft. The companies plan to fly a demonstrator aircraft with one of its existing jet engines replaced by an electric unit in 2020.

Paul Stein, chief technology officer at Rolls-Royce, said: “Aviation is the last frontier of the electrification of transport. It could lead to a step change in the way we fly with greater efficiency and less noise.”

These proposed hybrid-electric aircraft are not powered by on-board batteries like EVs but with a gas turbine that generates electricity to drive the propellers. This could reduce fuel consumption by up to 10%, predicted Mark Cousin, head of flight demonstration at Airbus.

Moving to electric aircraft would also help the aviation industry meet EU targets of a 60% reduction in emissions of carbon dioxide (CO₂) by 2020, as well as 90% less nitrogen oxides and a noise reduction of around 75%.

UK-based airline EasyJet also announced it could be flying electric planes within a decade and is teaming up with US firm Wright Electric to build battery-powered aircraft.

According to EasyJet, the move would enable battery-powered aeroplanes to travel short-haul routes such as London to Paris and Amsterdam, and Edinburgh to Bristol. Wright Electric is aiming for an aircraft range of 335 miles, which would cover the journeys of about a fifth of EasyJet passengers. The challenge comes in making lithium-ion batteries light and safe enough for the air.

The airline said this was the next step in making air travel less harmful for the environment, after cutting carbon emissions per passenger kilometre by 31% between 2000 and 2016. Wright Electric claims that electric planes will save up to 15% in fuel burn and CO₂ emissions, be 50% quieter and 10% cheaper for airlines to buy and operate, with the cost saving potentially passed on to passengers.

Testing new waters

There’s a lot of buzz coming out of the maritime industry too. Every year marine transport emits 1,000 million tonnes of CO₂, which is why the International Maritime Organization (IMO) has agreed that a reduction of 50% should come by 2050 compared with 2008 levels. Although the deal fell short of more ambitious targets preferred by those ranging from the European Union to environmental NGOs, the IMO did also commit to pursue efforts toward phasing out CO₂ emissions entirely.

As Paris Agreement goals to cut carbon dioxide emissions loom, businesses around the world are innovating.

Small fleets of battery-powered boats designed for fjords and inland waterways in Norway, Belgium and the Netherlands are preparing to set sail, including some able to run autonomously without a crew.

Dutch company Port-Liner is also gearing up to launch the first fully-electric, emission-free barges in Europe. Dubbed ‘Tesla’ ships, Port-Liner Chief Executive Officer Ton van Meegen claims these barges would be the first in the world to sail on carbon-neutral batteries. The first six barges alone are expected to remove 23,000 trucks from the roads annually in the Netherlands, replacing them with zero-emission methods of transport.

China also recently launched an electric cargo ship to haul coal which, whilst not doing much for its ambitions to cut pollution, will at least eliminate shipping emissions from diesel engines. Electric ships may not yet be the norm globally but progress is underway to cut the 2.5% of global greenhouse emissions that result from the maritime transport industry.

Once a far-flung fantasy in some areas, electrified transport is fast becoming a reality. EVs and rail are leading the way, but it’s clear the electric transport revolution has a long way to travel.

The Northern Powerhouse’s missing link

23 March 2018

Sustainable business

On 1 February 1970, a train pulled out of Skipton station and began a journey through the Pennines to the Lancashire town of Colne. Having run since October 1848 through the towns and villages of Elslack, Thornton, Earby and Foulridge, this railway line had been in operation through both World Wars as well as the transition from steam to diesel.

But this journey was to be its last. As part of a cost cutting drive within the British Railways network, the Skipton-Colne link was shutting down.

Today, however, the North’s need for freight capacity is growing and this short 12-mile stretch of railway that meanders through the Pennines could soon be reopened.

The disused Skipton-Colne line

Campaigns such as the Skipton and East Lancashire Rail Action Partnership (SELRAP), with the support of businesses like Drax, are calling for the return of the line. Not only because of the history of the railway, but because it could play a crucial part in the future of transport in the North.

Reshaping British railways

In the 122 years between the Skipton-Colne line’s opening and its closure, the UK saw serious change. The rise of cars after the end of post-war petrol rationing made roads more important than railways and by 1961 British Railways was in a poor condition, losing money at a rate of £300,000 a day. Something needed to change.

The government looked to Richard Beeching, chairman of BR, who published a controversial 1963 report, ‘The Reshaping of British Railways’, which recommended closing 6,000 miles of the country’s 18,000 miles of railway lines – mostly in rural and industrial areas.

A train at Earby station on 1 February 1970, the last day of service on the Skipton-Colne line.

The Skipton-Colne line managed to avoid this first wave of closures, but with annual losses reported to be as high as £110,000 in 1968, its end was inevitable. On that February morning in 1970, photographers and onlookers gathered at the station to watch as the packed final train pulled out of the station on its last ever journey.

Now, almost 50 years after closing, the country has gone through further changes and it’s time once again to re-evaluate its transport network.

Investment in the Northern Powerhouse

The opportunity to reopen the rail line follows the government’s plan to invest £70 billion into road and rail infrastructure in the North over the next 30 years with the aim of boosting the economy by £100 billion and creating 850,000 jobs.

A key goal of this investment would be shifting freight services from roads to rail. According to Transport for the North, freight growth on the railway in the north is predicted to increase by 2-3 million tonnes by 2050. Road freight, on the other hand, is set to grow by 20-30 million tonnes on the M62 alone.

Graham Backhouse, Drax’s head of supply chain and logistics, highlights the urgency of the need for greater rail freight capacity:

“That growth means another truck joining the M62 every second, 24-hours a day, seven days a week. That is not sustainable.”

Thanks to its location, the Skipton-Colne line is strategically placed to play a major role in transforming the North’s transport by alleviating some of this pressure from the roads.

It could also help better connect cities like Blackburn and Burnley to hubs such as Leeds and Manchester, increasing access to jobs and higher education institutions. Consultancy firm JMP suggest that over 60 years the line’s opening could return £48-£138m of employment benefits to the region.

How 12 miles can save eight hours

Drax’s supply chain offers a further example of how transformative the Skipton-Colne line could be for businesses in the region.

Today, renewable wood pellets imported from the Southern US and Canada arrive at the port of Liverpool and are transported to Drax Power Station in Selby via an 11-hour rail journey. With access to the Skipton-Colne line, this journey could be as short as three hours.

This is because trains currently make a steep uphill climb between Manchester and Huddersfield, which – when carrying more than 1,600 tonnes of biomass – limits their speed to an average of 14 mph, well below the 60 mph they’re designed to run at when fully loaded.

With the Skipton-Colne line open to both freight and passenger trains, biomass wagons would be able to make this journey while avoiding inclines and run at full speed, something which, in the long run, will save more than just time.

“If we make our supply chain more efficient, of which reducing the cost of running a train across the country is one part, we can move towards a position where we can operate without government subsidies,” says Backhouse.

But there is a lot of work that needs to happen before this becomes reality. SELRAP forecasts the new line could be up and running along the old route by the mid 2020s, with five years of engineering preparation, public consultations and statutory approvals, followed by two years of construction work. The Department of Transport has recently started a project looking at the feasibility of the line, which should be completed by the end of 2018.

The total costs of the project would come in at over £100 million and while these short-term costs are not insignificant, the long-term effect on the businesses, industries and people of the area could be far greater.

How sustainable biomass crosses the Atlantic to power the nation

21 June 2017

Sustainable bioenergy

In the UK, we’re so accustomed to using electricity we rarely think of the journey it takes from power station to plug.

In fact, electricity must travel across a network of cables, wires and substations before it makes it from the power stations generating it to the homes and businesses using it. At Drax Power Station, which supplies 16% of Great Britain’s renewable power, there’s another journey that takes place even before the electricity leaves the power station.

This journey – the journey of more than half of the compressed wood pellet fuel Drax uses to generate electricity – has its origins in the expanse of forestland in the southern USA.

From forest to fuel

The journey starts in the huge, working forests of the southern states of the USA where low value wood – such as the thinnings cleared as part of a forests’ growing cycle – is collected in a responsible and sustainable way to make high density wood pellets, which Drax Power Station uses to produce more than 60% of its electricity.

Drax Group’s own pellet manufacturer, Drax Biomass, produces around 15% of the power station’s renewable fuel. After pelletisation locally at its Amite and Morehouse facilities, located in Louisiana and Mississippi respectively, the biomass is transported to Drax Transit at the Port of Greater Baton Rouge, on the Mississippi River. From Morehouse, trains made up of closed-top grain cars, each capable of carrying 120 tonnes, transport the pellets 221 miles to Baton Rouge. At Amite, just 60 miles from Baton Rouge, fuel-efficient trucks carry 25-tonne loads between plant and port.

Once at the port, the truck and train cargoes are unloaded into one of two biomass storage domes – each holding 40,000 tonnes of biomass – before being loaded into the ships for their transatlantic journey.

From port to port

Drax uses a range of ships to carry the pellets on their 8,000-mile journey to the UK, ranging from big ‘Coastal’ ships, capable of hauling 20,000 tonnes, to truly massive Panamax ships, more than a quarter of a kilometre in length and capable of carrying up to 80,000 tonnes.

The ships leave the port and spend 24 hours travelling the 200 miles down the Mississippi River into the Gulf of Mexico, around Florida, and into the Atlantic. From here, it’s a 19-day voyage to reach ports in the UK. To put that into perspective, it took Columbus more than two months to make his first trip across the Atlantic.

The ships pull into ports in Tyne, Hull, Immingham and Liverpool, where they are unloaded. At the bespoke biomass port facility at Peel Ports in Liverpool an Archimedean screw removes the pellets from the ship’s holds and transports them onto a conveyer belt, which loads them onto trains. These four ports can process up to 12 million tonnes of biomass every year, combined.

From port to power station

Like the stateside journey, Drax uses trains to carry its cargo from port to power plant. The difference on the UK side, however, is that the UK trains were designed specifically to carry biomass wood pellets. Clever design and engineering was used to maximise the space inside each carriage and ensure the trains carry large loads despite UK rail restrictions.

These trains carry the pellets across the country (and even over the Pennines for trains coming from Liverpool) to Drax Power Station in Selby, North Yorkshire. Roughly 14 trains arrive at the plant every day and collectively unload about 20,000 tonnes of pellets every day, from Monday to Saturday. A system of conveyor belts carry these pellets to one of Drax’s four giant biomass storage domes, each capable of housing about 80,000 tonnes of pellets.

Then, when needed, the conveyor system takes the pellets on their final journey: into the furnace. The pellets are combusted, which boils water to create steam, which turns a turbine connected to a generator, which then feeds electricity to the national grid. The electricity travels across miles of cables, and wires, through substations and transformers, and finally into your power socket.

Long journey, low emissions

Despite the number of miles travelled, the journey of biomass is tracked and managed to ensure the Drax Power Station supply chain is as low-carbon as possible. The result is that, even with all supply chain emissions considered, the power generated has a carbon emissions profile that is more than 80% lower than coal.

It might be one of the most impressive supply chains involved in powering this island – but it’s not the only one to travel thousands of miles. The journey of biomass to England joins liquefied natural gas (LNG) shipped from the Middle East, coal from Colombia and solar panels manufactured in China – imports that ensure we have readily available access to power on our shores.

This train isn’t like any other in the UK

25 November 2016

Sustainable bioenergy

For decades the sight was the same. Day after day, trains pulling open-top wagons filled with coal would arrive at Drax Power Station. Coal was the fuel on which the station ran, but as that changes and the world moves from the dirtiest of fossil fuels to renewables and other lower carbon technologies, so too do the make-up of Drax’s daily deliveries.

Now, more than half of Drax’s power is generated from compressed wood pellets instead of coal. The trains still arrive daily, but in addition to coal carriages, more are pulling state-of-the-art biomass wagons. They’re not only the first of a kind, they’re bigger than any others on UK railways.

Moving a modern fuel

Coal and biomass are fundamentally different. Whereas coal is a durable fuel that can be left open to the elements without concern, if compressed wood pellets are left in the rain they become unusable.

In short, traditional hoppers, the large open-top train wagons used to transport coal, aren’t big enough, nor do they provide enough protection, for transporting biomass.

To deliver roughly 20,000 tonnes of wood pellets to the power station every day it would need an entirely new railway wagon. For this Drax turned to Lloyd’s Register Rail (now Ricardo Rail) and WH Davis.

Putting a lid on it

One of the first things to solve was the open top. The team designed a pneumatically operated roof for each wagon that could open and close on demand – providing easy access for loading, but suitable protection for the pellets when in transit.

A similar system on each wagon’s base was introduced to make unloading just as simple. A typical hopper design includes a wide roof that narrows into a shoot at its base for releasing fuel. The Drax wagons are different.

When they arrive at the power station, automated flaps on their underside open in stages as they pass through the biomass unloading area. This releases pellets into a sorter that delivers them into storage, ready to be used for generation. With this system in place, each train can unload in under 40 minutes.

The big problem: space

A more significant hurdle to overcome was the question of space. The obvious answer was to make the wagons bigger, but UK railways have some of the most restrictive dimensions in the world thanks to its bridges and tunnels – some of which were constructed in Victorian times.

So to get a similar efficiency out of the compressed wood pellet loads as previously obtained with coal, the wagons needed to be bigger – not in physical size, but in volume.

The team looked to the normally unused space at the ends of traditional wagons to house the braking and control equipment cubicle, while the pipework was designed to run inside the wagon’s siding, creating more inside storage space.

The result is a wagon with 116m³capacity, almost a 30% increase in volume compared to the coal wagons. They are not only the first ever bespoke biomass wagons, they’re also the largest on UK railways.

Bigger wagons, better economy

The impact of these wagons is felt beyond just the railway lines. WH Davis is the UK’s last independent freight wagon manufacturer and relationships like this are not only good for Drax, but positively impact the wider UK economy.

A joint study by Oxford Economics for Drax calculated that in the East Midlands, where WH Davis is headquartered, Drax supports 1,100 jobs through its supply chain and the resulting economic activity. In total, the report found Drax had added £60.3 million to the local economy through indirect and induced means. Nationwide, in 2015 that impact extended to a total of £1.24 billion in contribution to the UK GDP and more than 14,000 jobs.