Special report on rail: The regeneration railway (Ebbw valley, Wales)

Wales's first new passenger railway since the Beeching cuts of the '60s is currently under construction. As Jon Masters finds out it will play a key role in the economic renewal of the Ebbw valley.

Driving up the Ebbw valley in South Wales, it's hard not to notice the disparity in wealth. The prosperous new housing estates being built towards the southern end contrast sharply with boarded up and burnt-out buildings at the top of the valley, graphically illustrating the social problems of the area.

The opening of a new rail link may go some way to tackling them. Passenger rail services are being restored through the Ebbw valley to improve access to Newport and Cardiff, and in the opposite direction, to put a new public transport link up to Ebbw Vale.

Amey is main contractor for the scheme, which will be the first new railway to open in Wales since the Beeching cuts of the 1960s.

Regeneration has been the prime driver for the rail link. According to Richard Crook, project director for the client, unitary authority Blaneau Gwent, the scheme has been in development for a decade, but shot to the top of the funding pile because of two recent events.

Economic growth

"One was the economic growth of Cardiff," he says. "The area's topography works against road building and feasibility studies showed a passenger rail link to be more favourable in economic terms.

"And then in 2001, it was announced that the Corus steelworks was to close and that the Newport steel plant was also to reduce production by 50%. At that point, the Welsh Assembly pulled teams together with local authorities for various regeneration projects, including a contribution for reopening the Ebbw Vale line."

A funding commitment for the overall £30m projected cost came from the Welsh Assembly in January 2002 with £7m secured from Europe and a further £7m from a Corus Steelworks Regeneration fund. Further funding from the Strategic Railway Authority subsequently fell through, but this shortfall is being picked up by the Welsh Assembly.

Passenger service

When completed, Ebbw Vale will be reconnected by a passenger service to the main line at Newport, although trains will stop short of the town centre and the old steelworks terminus, ending at a new Ebbw Vale Parkway station. But according to Crook, who is also in support of the steelworks redevelopment, the intention is to eventually extend the service into the 80ha redevelopment site.

One step at a time though. The rail link project predates the steelworks site regeneration and has been procured separately by Blaneau Gwent in partnership with Caerphilly County Borough Council, the Welsh Assembly and Newport City Council. Amey started work on restoring the line in July this year.

Unusually, Amey's rail team is working for the Welsh government consortium led by Blaneau Gwent, and not Network Rail, although the latter will take ownership of the new infrastructure when it's completed in mid-2007. Amey is also managing all of the work rather than just one or two of the normal rail engineering disciplines and it is doing so through two NEC Option C target cost contracts. The first, tendered at around £9m, covers installation of 18 miles of single track with a three-mile central passing loop, plus signalling, telecoms and power.

The second £5m contract has been subcontracted to Costain for construction of six stations and car parks at Ebbw Vale, Llanhilleth, Newbridge, Crosskeys, Risca & Pontymister and Rogerstone. These will be fairly basic unmanned 'halts' with CCTV coverage for security and shelters, RTI (Real Time Information) displays and cycle lockers. Ticket purchase will be purely 'on-train' and at the mainline stations at Newport and Cardiff.

Split contract

"The project was initially procured as a single contract, but the client opted to split it into two and although the value is not great enough for a formal joint venture, we are emphasising that Costain is being treated as our partner," says Amey's contracts manager Bruno Taylor.

"It is unusual for a rail scheme to be procured as a turnkey project with two contracts interrelated. Essentially, the main project breaks down into 60% track renewal, 30% signalling and 10% telecoms and power."

The track renewal involves 2x20km of new rail being laid, and is delivered on a special train in 216m lengths, then welded together for continuous track.

"The track-work is relatively simple," says Taylor, "although we are introducing a new type of ballast-cleaner through our Amey SECO rail renewals business."

Amey's preparatory works in July this year got off to a gentle start with a relatively small gang of direct and subcontract labour moving sleepers into place on the route. There was no great sense of urgency at the time as for once, Amey is not working around restrictions of track possessions and the Ebbw Vale teams have the rare treat of daytime working hours without any trains getting in the way of progress.

At peak, early next year, there will be 40 to 50 men on site working on the permanent way, signalling and power connections. Telecoms work will be subcontracted, as will most of the labour, which will be supervised by Amey team leaders, says Taylor. "Network Rail usually manages such multi-disciplinary projects and the challenge for us is to get the team working together."

Probably the most unusual feature of the scheme is that the client is a local authority (admittedly working in partnership with Caerphilly, Newport, the Assembly and Network Rail). Blaneau Gwent has had to develop extensive knowledge of the rail industry. The council has just the one man constantly involved in the scheme, but others have had to become familiar with it - such as when the council had to purchase all of the new lengths of rail for the project before the contract was awarded and to a system of 'buy now, deliver later'. Not the usual way of doing things in local government.

"We have been bound by the usual rules of local authority procurement, but the buying and financial teams have adopted a positive attitude towards doing things differently," Crook says.

Design development

Blaneau Gwent has received considerable help from its project manager Capita Symonds. Most of the modelling, forecasting and feasibility studies were carried out by Capita and, according to project manager David McCallum, it also did "chunks" of the design development, with Mott MacDonald responsible for stations and permanent way up to outline design stage. Amey has done its own detailed design with the exception of the permanent way, which Arup is doing. "There is not a lot of room to manoeuvre on value engineering of the design because the project is dictated by quite strict standards of the railway inspectorate, local authorities and the Disability Discrimination Act," says McCallum.

"But in some cases, the nature of this scheme, with the line closed and no restriction from track possessions, has allowed the cheapest methods of construction. The station platforms, for example, will be simple concrete block wall construction with a compacted granular infill and an asphalt top."

The line is scheduled to open next summer. Amey's contracts manager Taylor says he is "very confident" of it all going to schedule. "There is a sense of ownership of this job within the company because we have a lot of local involvement and management staff that originate from South Wales and have a lot of history of working on railways in the area.

"We are fundamentally aware that the purpose of this project is to regenerate upper parts of the valley - to allow people to commute from there to Cardiff and to improve access to the Ebbw Vale redevelopment."

[Contract Journal, 6 September 2006, p 29]