Dancing Kettles and Fairy Lights - Farewell Virgin Trains

On the final day of Virgin Trains operation on the West Coast route I thought I would share a few of my own memories of what made working with Virgin that little bit special.

Having lead the Alstom team that was responsible for the Pendolino Traction system from the outset of the project in 1998 I was particularly proud of the energy efficiency of the trains. The regenerative braking strategy complemented the defensive driving techniques employed by the drivers and as a result measurements showed that we were recovering up to 17% of the energy consumed . This was far higher than had been anticipated from our design simulations and the claims were initially treated with some scepticism in the industry.

During 2007 Alstom and Virgin were invited by ATOC to participate in a study to assess the energy consumption of high speed electric trains. This proved a very succesful collaboration and the results validated the earlier measurements and also served to inform the industry of the capabilities of modern electric rolling stock.

Around the same time I received a rather unusual enquiry from my colleagues at Virgin. I was asked "How many cups of tea can be made from the energy regenerated by the Pendolino fleet each year?". Now despite the exhaustive simulations and calculations performed during the design of the trains we had not considered this particular scenario.

Having trained as a physicist it was clear that some empirical science needed to be undertaken to respond to this query. So I took myself away to the kitchen at Longsight and with the assistance of a kettle, numerous cups and a stop-watch I was able to calibrate this new unit of energy. I kept a copy of my workings just in case they were challenged at a future date.

"Tea Making Capacity

• An average kettle consumes 3kW and heats up 1.5 litres of water in 2 minutes. 1.5 litres will make 9 dainty cups of tea.
• If the kettle is left on for one hour it will consume 3kWh and make 9x(60/2) = 270 cups of tea.
• 1kWh = 90 cups of tea.
• The annual regen energy is 55 million kWh = 4950 million cups of tea."

Job done I sent my response to Virgin, rounding up to 5 billion (dainty) cups of tea (with milk) per year.

I then forgot all about it until several weeks later when suddenly, during the peak-time advert break on Coronation Street (other Northern domestic dramas are also available), a new Virgin Trains advert hit the airwaves. It featured dancing kettles and espoused the tea making capacity of the energy regenerated by the Pendolino trains. I nearly dropped my dainty tea cup! It clearly made an impression on people as I have managed to find a copy still available on YouTube.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rQORly9Abi8

In a long and varied engineering career it is the only time that my work has been preceded by Bet Lynch and followed by Ken Barlow.

Shortly afterwards I received my next challenge, "How many sets of christmas lights?". I had to venture further than the kitchen to solve this one and spent some time in B&Q looking at all the lights in stock, but only to check how many Watts they consumed. I then had to decide how many hours per day and days per year they would be energised (I settled for 31 days and 24 hours per day) and thought it only fair to only consider the energy regenerated by the trains during this period. Even so I still concluded that the Pendolino fleet could power the light on 820,000 christmas trees for the entire month of December.

I bored people for the whole of the christmas season with this statistic (and many students on the Traction module of the University of Birmingham Railway Systems Engineering course since then). I didn't miss an episode of Coronation Street for the next 3 months but sadly no TV advert appeared this time, just posters on stations.

Looking back now 12 years later there must have been over 60 billion cups of tea brewed using that Pendolino energy, no wonder the toilet tanks fill up so quickly.

It has been great fun working with Virgin over the years, they brought something different to the UK rail industry and the pride and professionalism of their staff has always been exemplary. It will be sad to see them go but we shared a lot of fun times and we really did make a difference. So farewell Virgin, thanks for the memories .... and AVANTI!