Eng Johan Meyns, Director-General, TUC Rail

ON DECEMBER 15 another piece will be fitted into the jigsaw of Europe's international high speed rail network. Belgium's Leuven - Liège line is not seen as a stand-alone line, but as an essential part of the developing network of high speed routes connecting Paris, Brussels, Köln, Amsterdam and London.

Part of the main rail corridor between Brussels and Germany, the €600m Leuven - Liège route is the second branch of a three-line national high speed network centred on the Belgian capital. The western arm from Brussels to the French border came into service in 1997, and a line north to Antwerpen and the Netherlands will be completed in mid-2005.

The line comprises 60 km of new infrastructure for 300 km/h running, and 10 km of partly upgraded line. It forms part of a major upgrade of the Brussels - Köln corridor. When this is completed in December 2006, direct trains will link Brussels with Frankfurt in less than 3h.

Proven design

Apart from the signalling, the new line is built using the same techniques and designs that have proved successful on the western route from Brussels to the French border. Despite this, the need to comply with European interoperability regulations has made the certification procedures more complex.

Rather than follow the existing railway corridor, the Leuven - Liège line parallels the E40 motorway for around 60 km. The final 10 km uses the partly upgraded existing line into Liège, where a new station will open in 2005 adjacent to the current Guillemins station.

The proximity of the motorway makes it necessary to protect the railway against possible intrusion by road vehicles. Earth banks have been built to separate road and rail, but where this was not possible a 3m high green wall has been built. This is formed from prefabricated sections stapled to form huge boxes. These are filled with earth, and natural vegetation appears very soon afterwards, forming a noise barrier that integrates harmoniously with the landscape. Aluminium noise barriers have been installed in some locations.

As the local landscape has only shallow slopes there was no need for spectacular infrastructure works, though the proximity of the motorway necessitated some important road works. Construction of a 750m cut-and-cover tunnel at Bierbeek, required a temporary deviation of the motorway. Several slip roads had to be redesigned, and a service station modified. When the motorway was built in the 1960s, it suffered from severe subsidence, and it was important that construction of the railway would not lead to further settling.

At Waremme there is a 2·2 km ground-level viaduct supported on 20m deep piles down to the underlying limestone rock. Underground cavities have been detected in the Berloz region, where phosphate veins were mined in the late 19th century. Unfortunately most of these galleries are uncharted, and attempts to locate voids under the railway alignment through microgravity measurements did not give the required degree of accuracy. To avoid future problems, the track in this area has been laid on ballasted concrete slabs.

The quality of the track on the first Belgian high speed line has proved satisfactory, and the same designs are used on the eastern route. Quality surveillance by both the contractor and the project manager is essential for good final results.

Infrastructure standards

The formation is 14·5m wide at ground level, with a 0·5m foundation layer underneath. The strongly compacted subgrade is 200mm thick, with a minimum ballast height of 350mm under the monobloc concrete sleepers. UIC60 rail is used throughout.

To avoid interface problems with the trackbed, especially the drainage pipes, and to limit pollution of the ballast, the foundations for the catenary masts were installed by the civil works contractors.

The line uses 25-0-25 kV electrification, with open-air substations and autotransformers. The substations were powered up on July 29, and the overhead line went live on August 1. Testing of the line with 220 km/h conventional trains began on August 19, and on September 16 a Thalys set began testing the new route at 330 km/h, 10% above the maximum service speed.

The copper-magnesium alloy contact wire is supported at a high mechanical tension of 20daN/mm2 by corrosion-free suspension frames. Conductive droppers are used to avoid the placement of equipotential connections between messenger and contact wires.

The major problem in the electrification field was beyond the control of the railway company, but no less critical to the project. The regional authorities refused to allow new overhead distribution lines to be built, and so plans to connect the traction substation at Hannut to a high capacity 380 kV line could not go ahead. An alternative connection to underground 150 kV cables was accepted, but even this brought complaints from the regional and local authorities as well as individuals, and the electricity supplier spent a great deal of time obtaining the necessary cable laying licences.

The traction substation will ultimately have three connections to the 150 kV distribution network, but when the line first opens there will be only one connection, making the supply vulnerable to disruption if an incident occurs.

Signalling

The signalling for the western line from the French frontier was designed as a continuation of the equipment installed on SNCF's TGV Nord routes, to avoid any interface problems at the border. However, there was no reason to install the same signalling on the eastern branch.

As well as 300 km/h international services the line will be used by domestic trains equipped with SNCB's standard automatic train protection equipment, Transmission Beacon - Locomotive. TBL was designed as a complement to lineside colourlight signalling, but has been modified for use in high speed applications. It is a discontinuous system based on 1500m block sections, using audio-frequency track circuits with electrical joints and linked to the computer-based interlocking and the signalling control centre in Brussels. The line capacity is based on a 3min headway at 300 km/h.

This modified TBL will not be installed elsewhere, as future high speed lines will be fitted with Level 2 <acronym title="European Rail Traffic Management System">ERTMS</acronym>/<acronym title="European Train Control System">ETCS</acronym>.

Mixed operation

With staff training due to begin on October 1, everything is set for the launch of commercial services over the Leuven - Liège line with the European timetable change on December 15. The new line will cut journey times from Brussels by 11 min. Brussels - Frankfurt journeys will be reduced by 1h 15min, though passengers will still have to change from Thalys to ICE trains in Köln to make use of German Railway's Köln - Frankfurt high-speed line which was inaugurated in July (RG 9.02 p515).

International trains will be operated by the Thalys sets, used on Paris - Brussels - Aachen - Köln - Düsseldorf services since December 1997. Most will run in pairs between Paris and Brussels, where they will split to serve Amsterdam and Köln.

German Railway ICE3 sets will provide through Brussels - Frankfurt services, once they have been certified to operate in Belgium. It was hoped that Paris - Frankfurt through services could be run, but the operators have found this is not possible.

SNCB's domestic inter-city services between Oostende and Eupen will also use the new line, at a maximum speed of 200 km/h. These will be worked by Class 13 locos and type I-11 push-pull coaches. This is SNCB's most modern domestic stock, offering passengers a comfortable environment, with air-conditioning, passenger information displays and computer power sockets.

Finance and management

The total investment in the line stands at €600m, excluding the new station in Liège. The average cost per km is €9m for the new line, and €14m for the upgraded section. This breaks down into contracted works and materials (80%), engineering and project management (13%), and miscellaneous works including aerial topography, insurance, geotechnical and environmental studies (7%).

SNCB owns the line, but the process for funding the high speed network is complex. The basic principle is that the federal government finances infrastructure needed for domestic services, but does not provide anything towards the cost of infrastructure for international traffic.

The high speed project would not be profitable if SNCB had to finance full construction costs, as the high speed trains are almost exclusively used by international passengers.

For each section of the network studies were carried out to calculate the expected numbers of domestic and international trains. This proportion of domestic versus international traffic is used to calculate the split of funding between the state and SNCB. Thus on the Leuven - Liège line, where about 50% of the trains will be international and 50% domestic, the state is providing half of the infrastructure costs.

Overall, the government is only financing about 25% of the infrastructure cost of the whole Belgian high speed network. The railway was expected to finance the remainder, but this would lead to an unacceptable level of debt. So the Belgian government has looked for alternative financing resources, including government holdings and private funding. This has resulted in the formation of a special subsidiary to assemble the necessary funds.

The project management of the high-speed rail infrastructure needed a specific structure to ensure flexibility in the organisation. With private partners, SNCB and Transurb Consult set up TUC Rail in 1992 as a dedicated engineering company to procure the high speed network. TUC Rail carried out all technical studies, from the preliminary concept to commissioning, as well as site and project management.

With the exception of some specific works such as underground structures, tracklaying and signalling, most works were put out to competitive public tender, with the detailed study accompanying the tender documents. This traditional way of tendering has proven to be cost-effective and has speeded the award of contracts.

Belgium considers its railway infrastructure to be an important element of public interest, so property expropriations are regulated by a royal decree, avoiding unreasonable delays in land acquisition. The high speed network also benefits from being an international project, sanctioned by a treaty between Belgium, France, Germany and the Netherlands.

What next?

Final completion of the Belgian high speed network is still some years away. The western branch was put into service in two stages, the initial part in June 1996, and the remainder in December the following year.

On the eastern branch the Brussels - Leuven section is being expanded from two to four tracks and line speed will be raised to 200 km/h by December 2005. Beyond Liège, the 6·2 km long tunnel at Soumagne will come into service by December 2006, and another section of new line will be built to a point just 3 km short of the German border, where it will join the existing tracks that have already been modernised for 160 km/h. Within Germany, work is in progress to increase speeds on the Aachen - Köln section to 220 km/h.

The new high speed line to the Netherlands follows the E19 motorway alignment. Work is scheduled to be finished in mid-2005. The most significant project on this northern branch is the bored twin tunnel under Antwerpen, together with the enlargement of Antwerpen Centraal station.

The redevelopment of Brussels Midi station is continuing steadily, and should be finished in 2005. The new station in Liège will also be inaugurated during 2005.