■ Specifications still in ‘NR credit card’ mode
■ ORR competition addiction out of touch with reality
■ ‘ETCS-ready’ trains face obsolescence
Readers may recall that back in the April Modern Railways I reported that an article on the Marches line in the February issue had me reaching for my calculator. To recap, according to Network Rail, resignalling the 51.5-mile Marches line, with its 15 manual signal boxes between Little Mill Junction and Severn Bridge Junction at Shrewsbury, would cost £116 million.
This was deemed unaffordable. As a result, resignalling would have to wait its turn in the national rollout of the European Train Control System (ETCS) until 2036.
EXPENSIVE
This seemed a lot of money when compared with the North Wales Coast (NWC) upgrade back in 2018, where the resignalling came in at a reported £25 million. Of course, such costs are meaningless unless you know what the money is buying. And in signalling you are buying SEU.
A Signalling Equivalent Unit (SEU) is a point-end or signal post: cost per SEU is the standard metric. Of course, the contractor’s signalling hardware is only part of the overall cost.
On NWC the signalling installation cost £150,000 per SEU and the contractor’s associ…
