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James Brokenshire MP House of Commons Westminster SW1A OM

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30 JAN 2014
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Network Rail Kings Place 90 York Way N19AG T 020 3356 9537

27 January 2014

Kent Route - Infrastructure Resilience

Dear Mr. Brokenshire, Thank you for taking the time to meet with us on 15 January. It was useful for us to have this opportunity to listen to the concerns of you and your constituents. I appreciate fully the frustration that you and your constituents must feel following what has been a very challenging time on the railway. I would like to offer my apologies to those of your constituents that experienced delayed journeys. As promised, I am here summarising some of the key measures that we have taken in recent months to improve resilience of the infrastructure on the Kent route. 1. Intelligent asset information - remote condition monitoring Historically, it was not possible to detect or diagnose faults in advance of a failure. When an asset did fail, safety systems would automatically turn signals to red, bringing trains to a halt and disrupting services in the affected area. Engineers would then need to visit the site, locate the fault based on personal expertise and knowledge, and ultimately carry out corrective action. Additionally, railway maintenance was traditionally based on a cyclical schedule of site visits whereupon assets were inspected and a number of maintenance activities carried out, whether required or not. In recent months we have introduced more intelligent processes and systems. Using remote asset monitoring, engineers now receive alarms when operating tolerances have been breached, indicating a potential fault developing. The immediate availability of an asset's condition information enables engineers to diagnose faults

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instantly, focusing maintenance teams on fixing the asset before it fails. This new technology and approach is helping us to improve the underlying resilience of the infrastructure. 2. Recruitment

We recognise that technology alone will not be able to solve all of our challenges, and we know that we must upskill our workforce to be better able to interpret the data that our asset monitoring is providing. Against this backdrop, we are in the process of recruiting 5 flight engineers. These colleagues will be able to identify assets that require attention ahead of failure and intervene. 3. Gold command training As discussed at our meeting, we know that at times of disruption the whole rail industry needs to work more effectively together to ensure that passengers are kept appropriately informed. Recognising this, we have recently provided all our senior managers on the route with Gold Command training. This was done in conjunction with the train operators and we believe this will make us more responsive in future. All of the above will help to improve our network's resilience in all weathers. Alongside these, there are a number of new technologies that we have introduced following the extremely cold weather of 2009/2010. More of the third rail network now has conductor rail heating, and we have increased our capacity to treat more of the network with anti-icing fluid and de-icing fluid. Working with operators, we are now also in a position to be able to run empty trains through the night to prevent frost or ice forming on the conductor rail. Additionally, we have developed an in-service antiicing system on selected Southeastern vehicles. All of these measures will help during any future times of severe cold weather. I hope that this letter helps to set out the issues that we discussed at our meeting. Yours sincerely,

Steve Cassidy Route Infrastructure Maintenance Director, Kent