31st January 2011 - A Year in the Life of a Fleet Manager

Chris Nesbitt - report by Alistair Barham

It was almost a full house for the January meeting to hear Chris Nesbitt, Fleet Technical Manager for National Express East Anglia at Norwich Crown Point Depot, give a presentation entitled “A Year in the Life of a Fleet Manager.” Chris began with some background information about himself. His career on the railway started in 1998 at the Railway Technical Centre, Derby, moving to Trans Pennine in 2004 before joining National Express East Anglia in 2007. The Crown Point based fleet consists of five Class 153, nine Class 156, eight three-car and four two-car Class 170 units along with 15 Class 90 Electric Locomotives, 15 Driving Van Trailers (DVTs) and 119 Mark III Coaches.

The Diesel Units operate rural services radiating from Norwich and Ipswich to Felixstowe, Saxmundham, Lowestoft, Yarmouth, Sheringham, Cambridge and Peterborough, while the locomotives and coaches are formed into eight 10 vehicle and three 9 vehicle sets used for the London to Norwich main line train services. In addition Class 153 or Class 156 Units are provided for the Marks Tey – Sudbury route.

Chris is ultimately responsible for ensuring that these vehicles are maintained and overhauled in accordance with the laid down Industry Standards and that they are fit and safe to be in day to day service. This can present numerous headaches in ensuring that sufficient vehicles are available to provide the advertised service while ensuring that maintenance requirements are not compromised. In the normal course of events the stock diagrams are designed to allow for these competing requirements, however, when vehicles are stopped out of course then he can be faced with some very tough decisions.

Chris went on to recount a number of significant events during 2010 and their impact on NXEA Services. At the beginning of the year, a number of diesel units were out of traffic for both planned and unplanned repairs when a Class 170 struck a person on a level crossing south of Norwich and sustained damage which required repairs at Wolverton Works. This left insufficient units to cover local diagrams and Chris was instrumental in the decision to use top ‘n’ tail diesel locomotives on a short set of coaches in order to maintain the service until sufficient units were available. The top ‘n’ tail set was used on a diagram from Norwich to Lowestoft and Norwich to Great Yarmouth and associated returns.

In August, as I am sure you all remember, there was a collision between a road Sewage Tanker and 156417 at Cornard on the Sudbury Branch. Chris was on-call that night and was involved right from the start of the incident. Initially the crash site was treated as a crime scene so he was unable to gain access to the vehicles until Police and the Rail Accident Investigation Branch had obtained their evidence. He was then faced with recovery of a derailed and severely damaged unit. This was hampered by the remote location of the incident the only access to which was along country lanes. Soft ground surrounded the vehicles and the presence of both electrical power lines passing over, and a water course passing beneath the derailed unit made recovery even more difficult. Showing pictures of the scene, Chris recounted how a suitable surface had to be provided to allow access for the very large crane required to lift the damaged unit onto road vehicles so that it could be taken to Wolverton Works for repair assessment while also arranging for EDF Energy to disconnect the power lines and provide stand-by generators as these lines powered the sewage works for the Sudbury area. Pictures were shown highlighting the damage to the Unit describing that for the most part it was confined to bodywork and fittings with the structure of the vehicles remaining reasonably intact and sound. Thus we should be able to look forward to seeing a repaired 156417 back in traffic in hopefully the not too distant future.

With 156417 out of service for an extended period, arrangements were made to hire two additional Class 153 units from London Midland (153354/364) to cover the shortage arising from the loss. These Units have proved their worth after failure of the Cummins NT855 engines fitted to two other Class 156 units caused them to be out of service while the cause of the failure was investigated and replacement engines sourced and fitted. Pictures of these engines give an insight to the difficulties caused to an already stretched fleet of Units.

Further problems for Chris to attend to arose during the year. After two failures of recently overhauled Class 90’s revealed a major problem with the traction motor gearboxes, an urgent fleet check showed that a number of other examples in the fleet were fitted with motors and gearboxes from the same source and thus were susceptible to failing in a similar way. This resulted in the continued hire of two additional Class 90 locos from DB Schenker (formerly EWS) to cover while some of the home fleet went back to main works for rectification. Again Chris was able to show fascinating images of these gearboxes showing just how serious the problem was.

In the latter part of the year, the final Class 90’s were receiving their replacement motors and gearboxes and the intention was to scale down and dispense with the hired in power, however mother nature chose this time period to drop a large quantity of snow across NXEA’s operating area and accompany that with some very low temperatures. These weather conditions conspired to cause damage to both locomotives and coaches mainly through wheel slip/slides resulting in numerous vehicles having to be taken out of service for unplanned tyre turning or wheelset changes. This resulted in a number of shorter train formations during January 2011 and the hire of the DB Schenker Class 90’s continuing into the New Year.

Notwithstanding this, Chris was pleased that overall reliability of the Class 90/DVT sets was at an all time high and thus his ultimate aim was to be able to consider dispensing with the hire from Direct Rail Services of a Class 47 “Thunderbird” locomotive. This locomotive is based at Colchester Monday - Friday and crewed by NXEA Norwich based Drivers. Its exploits are regularly recorded in Ipswich Transport Society Journal and members will no doubt be aware that use has tailed off recently bearing out Chris’s comments about the reliability of train sets provided by the Staff at Crown Point.

Other things which cross Chris’s desk include provision of rolling stock to cover such things as Lowestoft Air Show specials and for the Summer Saturday locomotive hauled workings to/from Yarmouth all of which have to be allowed for in the maintenance planning programme.

Chris finished by saying that at long last Crown Point was to get its own wheel lathe for tyre-turning to reduce the number of vehicles having to be sent to other locations, mainly Ilford, for this work to be carried out. The lathe at Crown Point will be a portable machine with vehicles being lifted on jacks to allow access to the wheelsets and thus for the time being will only be used for coaching stock with locomotives and diesel units continuing to go to Ilford as at present.

After a question and answer session with the audience, appreciation was shown in the usual way for such an in depth and fascinating insight into the trials and tribulations of running a rail service in the modern privatised era.