Railway power supply revolution: How is digital supply changing railways? Richard Ollerenshaw and Tom Ingrey
Event details
ShockSoc Lecture
Electrification of the East Coast Mainline was completed in 1991 as a Minimum Viable Product scheme that left constraints in reliability and capacity constrained to the limited services then operating. Fast forward to 2023, and the East Coast Mainline is the fastest growing railway in the UK, soon to be joined by the electrified Transpennine Route. As the passenger disruption, cost and performance compromises of a traditional upgrade became evident, Network Rail worked with the supply chain to explore international best practice and evaluate all technologies for railway power supply. With the architecture decided, the complete railway electrification was designed as a system to optimise reliability, maintenance and train performance, leading to the world’s first integrated digital traction power supply system and the world’s most powerful Static Frequency Converter.
In collaboration with Siemens, Network Rail and the IET, this lecture explores the result of integrated design on railway performance, reliability and maintainability, and explores the opportunities created to further improve journey time, capacity and decarbonisation.
Hosted by ShockSoc - The Engineering Society at The University of York
About the speakers
Richard Ollerenshaw is currently Head of Power Systems Engineering at Siemens Mobility, responsible for the teams that have designed and delivered the power supplies from Doncaster to Edinburgh and Manchester to York. His operational perspective was developed in his years at Network Rail working in human factors, maintenance improvement, track renewals innovation, electrification asset management and leading the industry Isolation Safety Review.
Tom Ingrey is currently Lead Strategic Planner – Industry Strategy within Network Rail’s Eastern Region. The industry strategy team are responsible for maintaining and developing the region’s investment pipeline, delivering regional industry strategies including freight, stations, strategic resilience and electrification & power, and coordinating with other regional and national strategy teams including Great British Railways transition team. Before working in strategy, his major project sponsorship experience included development of Stratford regional station enhancements, Werrington grade separation, and delivering rail systems projects within the Crossrail on-network programme.
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