Greater Anglia's Stadler Flirt - Class 745 & 755

[50A55B]

Straight question Rail Way, are you an employee of or service provider to GA?

[russ p]

1 minute ago, Rail Way said:

The parent company clearly has faith in the management of Greater Anglia.

 

If they were that concerned then I'm sure they would make a change, but they haven't because perhaps management are actually doing a good job considering the difficult circumstances that they have found themselves in?

 

What make you say that? NS maybe giving GA management a load of grief but they certainly won't admit that in public but if GA creates a stink with NR it puts a smokescreen over it

The other way of looking at it is NS are P'd  off because the train the recommended doesn't work 

[Rail Way]

8 minutes ago, 50A55B said:

Straight question Rail Way, are you an employee of or service provider to GA?

I do not work in the rail industry and I never have, I am merely an interested observer.

 

I have no connection with any company involved in this matter so have zero conflict of interest.

 

I am simply being a big supporter of rail travel being transformed in East Anglia as the result of Greater Anglia's groundbreaking plan to replace all the legacy rolling stock with new build stock, which has never been done before by any other operator. After East Anglia being neglected by operators for many years, it is about time it was our turn. 

 

Anyway, I can take a hint that my input is not welcome here so this will be my last post.

Edited December 17, 2019 by Rail Way

[wombatofludham]

12 minutes ago, russ p said:

Older trains have never had a problem with it , when it was first done someone just had to mention the word lightning and the system would go down but that is largely sorted now

I actually remember that period just after installation.  You'd have thought someone would have checked local weather records about lightning and convectional weather in East Anglia the way we did for Midland Metro but hey ho, Railtrack wanted to shake up the industry and do things diff'nt.

As for AGA's press output, sorry, I've worked with similar press teams and I don't believe a word of it.  Look at the evidence:

1) The Sheringham resignalling was completed in 2000, and apart from the lightning issue, eventually settled down.  Since then it has been used by Class 60, Class 66, Class 150, Class 153, Class 156 and Class 170 on a regular basis, plus sundry other one offs including kettles.  The predictive speed track circuit triggers for the level crossings have worked fine for 19 years more or less, but within weeks of the new Class 755 entering service, a wrong side failure occurs.  That's suspicious.

 

2) AGA were being disingenuous when they said the signalling issue was affecting all routes worked by them.  If it was a signalling issue affecting all routes, how come EMR Class 158s were maintaining a service along the Ely-Norwich sector, and Thameslink maintaining the Ely to Cambridge sector, to which they were directing their customers?  What they should have said, but didn't, was it was a problem with their trains interfacing with track circuits which had led to a ban whilst they tried to figure out if the problem on the Cromer line was something more general, or specific to that route.  But they didn't, and preferred to infer it was all a signalling issue which ain't their problem, Guv.  The fact is it backfired on them as even the most clueless, non-rail enthusiast could see other trains were still running, just not the shiny new Anglia ones.

 

3) There is a wider issue here, not just the track circuiting interface mammaries akimbo problem.  It's the management of AGA who have blithely assumed these trains would work out of the box and allowed the leases on their older stock to be sold on to new operators (Diolch yn Fawr am y Dosbarthiau 153 a 170, oddi wrth Trafnidiaeth Cymru…) when past experience has shown time and time again trains often have problems with achieving reliability in the first months, or even years.  Whether it's the AM3 electrics in Glasgow in the 1960s with their exploding transformers, the Class 158s with their invisibility cloak track circuit disguise, or the modern day CAF units having to unplug from the OHLE when parked so as not to cause the Class 92s from having a hissy fit, or the sudden realisation that the Class 800 jumper cables were a wonderful climbing frame, or interfered with the signalling north of Doncaster, experience should have said we'll need a staged introduction and keep the old trains as a backup just in case, instead of a big bang with all the attendant problems of freeing up drivers for training and risk when a problem develops of the whole service going knickers I llawr.  That's management hubris, not Network Rail.  Plus, in any case, it's up to train suppliers to make a product fit for the unique UK circumstances, not for them to build something and find it doesn't work.

And if anyone thinks the Dutch don't mislead and cock things up, go look at the story of the Benelux Fyra trains, starring NS, SNCB and my old favourite, Ansaldo.  It's a fascinating tale, of a different scale to AGA but with similar root issues.

[beast66606]

15 minutes ago, Rail Way said:

"The information that came back showed the signalling system wasn't picking up both old and new trains as strongly as Network Rail would like."

 

Here's an example of how to say something and nothing.

 

Let's say Wayward Rail signalling systems pick up trains with a voltage drop of between 65 and 75 (these are contrived figures and used to demonstrate the point) and Beasts Railways (BR) are trialling new trains alongside the old ones but are seeing some issues and BR want to acknowledge problems but deflect flak.

 

The old trains drop 66 - not as strong as NR would like but within range, just.

The new trains drop 64 - definitely not as strong as NR would like as it's out of range.

 

My statement as a result of this :

"The information that came back showed the signalling system wasn't picking up both old and new trains as strongly as WR would like."

 

There we go - an example of how a statement can say something but nothing at the same time, probably not the best example but not much time to contrive a better one - however it demonstrates my point that words can be manipulated easily enough, my statement is not false, it's not a lie but it also doesn't tell the whole story.

[ruggedpeak]

3 minutes ago, Rail Way said:

I do not work in the rail industry and I never have, I am merely an interested observer.

 

I have no connection with any company involved in this matter so have zero conflict of interest.

 

I am simply being a big supporter of rail travel being transformed in East Anglia as the result of Greater Anglia's groundbreaking plan to replace all the legacy rolling stock with new build stock, which has never been done before by any other operator. After East Anglia being neglected by operators for many years, it is about time it was our turn. 

You are not an interested observer, no sign of observing, just naive regurgitation of GA press releases. You've come onto a modelling forum and posted only on this non-modelling topic. I wonder how many other sites you have suddenly appeared on.

 

Quite why perfectly good units like the 360's are being replaced at huge cost remains unclear. A waste of time and money, and hardly good for the environment.

[Bucoops]

GA are perfectly correct in saying there are signalling issues. It looks very much like the signalling issues are caused by the new trains. It doesn't matter whatsoever if one line as some obscure method - that was there before the new trains, it wasn't a secret, so compatibility with the obscure method should have been included in the spec.

 

No doubt NR will have to fix it. Their role is to keep trains running safely. GA wants to make a profit so won't be remotely interested in paying to fix the issue with the new trains.

[Classsix T]

7 minutes ago, Rail Way said:

The parent company clearly has faith in the management of Greater Anglia.

 

If they were that concerned then I'm sure they would make a change, but they haven't because perhaps management are actually doing a good job considering the difficult circumstances that they have found themselves in?

What are you on about son? Honestly, with yer 13 point rating?

I know people within AGA and unless you're being paid a wage for contrary opinion internet trolling, they ain't paying you enough. 

 

beast is a highly respected Anglia enthusiast, others on here are at the coalface in terms of trying to make the railway work, I and others begrudgingly take our chances on our train running, I hope in my case, without going all postal and blaming all and sundry.

You come along playing the world's smallest violin on behalf of Abellio.

 

Nah, C6T. 

[Classsix T]

Balls! Bring back Rail Way, I'd only just got my wit sharpened! 

 

C6T. 

[beast66606]

34 minutes ago, Rail Way said:

I do not work in the rail industry and I never have, I am merely an interested observer.

 

I have no connection with any company involved in this matter so have zero conflict of interest.

 

I did wonder if these statements were as accurate as "signalling fault" causing a shortage of trains (but only on 1 line).

[Christopher125]

49 minutes ago, beast66606 said:

 

Your attitude stinks and smells of troll.

 

Absolutely, 100%... but that doesn't mean he hasn't got a point, however badly he puts it across.

 

I do feel there's been an assumption by most enthusiasts that the train *must* be to blame, but it seems entirely possible that the Stadler design merely exposes some kind of fault or design issue with the signalling that shouldn't exist.

 

 

Edited December 17, 2019 by Christopher125

[wombatofludham]

7 minutes ago, Christopher125 said:

 

Absolutely, 100%... but that doesn't mean he hasn't got a point, however badly he puts it across.

 

I do feel there's been an assumption by most enthusiasts that the train *must* be to blame, but it seems entirely possible that the Stadler design merely exposes some kind of fault or design issue with the signalling that shouldn't exist.

 

 

Only problem with that is the fact for the past 17-18 autumns and winters the previous traction has, apparently, coped with the weird American track circuits without triggering a wrong side failure (as I'm sure we would have heard about it by now).  The first autumn with new trains and one of them fails to trigger the circuits and suddenly there's a design flaw?  Whilst it is possible that the system might have degraded, or previously the operation of the circuits was just on the limit and the new trains don't do such a good job, as Beast explained, the implications of the latest spin from Anglia Towers is that for the past 19 or so years the track circuits on the Sheringham line were so marginal that they could have put lives at risk, and it's only the fabulous gee-whiz new trains that have finally exposed this potentially lethal hidden flaw.

I know I'm a card carrying cynic but that really does sound like AGA have a Department of Straw Clutching in charge of their press output.

[beast66606]

12 minutes ago, Christopher125 said:

 

Absolutely, 100%... but that doesn't mean he hasn't got a point, however badly he puts it across.

 

I do feel there's been an assumption by most enthusiasts that the train *must* be to blame, but it seems entirely possible that the Stadler design merely exposes some kind of fault or design issue with the signalling that shouldn't exist.

 

 

 

Unlikely, the resignalling to Cromer was carried out around 2000 - so for nearly 20 years has worked without issue (aside from the very early days as mentioned above ^ ^) until the new units came along. It *may* be that design criteria need to be tweaked to take into account different behaviour of the new units but that doesn't make the system faulty.

The other thing which bemuses me is how the signalling fault causes stock shortages but only on one line ... (as I've mentioned above, the Cromer line is under investigation / restriction due to the wrong side failure so is outwith "the norm" at the moment) - Ipswich / Peterborough is affected but Norwich / Stansted isn't, nor is Ipswich / Felixstowe, nor Ipswich / Cambridge.

[Classsix T]

9 minutes ago, Christopher125 said:

 

Absolutely, 100%... but that doesn't mean he hasn't got a point, however badly he puts it across.

 

I do feel there's been an assumption by most enthusiasts that the train *must* be to blame, but it seems entirely possible that the Stadler design merely exposes some kind of fault or design issue with the signalling that shouldn't exist.

 

 

Doubtless Chris, but that also assumes Stadler's design somehow DID NOT make the railway fail safe. Apologies for uppercase. I'm not shouting but at the very minimum, a train runs safe or not at all in my book. As part of my preservation career I was more interested in can we stop her rather than can we make her go.

 

C6T. 

[black and decker boy]

57 minutes ago, Rail Way said:

 

I am simply being a big supporter of rail travel being transformed in East Anglia as the result of Greater Anglia's groundbreaking plan to replace all the legacy rolling stock with new build stock, which has never been done before by any other operator. After East Anglia being neglected by operators for many years, it is about time it was our turn. 

 

Anyway, I can take a hint that my input is not welcome here so this will be my last post.

Never been done?? 

 

What legacy fleet was retained by Virgin West Coast when they introduced the 221s & 390s?

 

what legacy fleets were retained by TPE when they introduced the 185s and in iteration 2, as they introduce the Nova 1/2&3 fleets?

 

what legacy fleets were retained on C2C?

[black and decker boy]

If GA management are so faultless, why did they plan a depot in an unsuitable place which is now dropped?

 

why have they bought a new universal BEMU fleet that is too long for some of the rural branchlines?

 

why have they bought a fleet with teeny tiny fuel tanks which means every unit needs fuel every day but haven’t got the depot capacity to actually put fuel in that many units every day?

[Classsix T]

Also, given the gen on amount of gogo juice carried, I wonder if the absence of the Ipswich - Posh service has more to do with lack of range on diesel only?

 

C6T. 

[swills]

1 hour ago, wombatofludham said:

I actually remember that period just after installation.  You'd have thought someone would have checked local weather records about lightning and convectional weather in East Anglia the way we did for Midland Metro but hey ho, Railtrack wanted to shake up the industry and do things diff'nt.

As for AGA's press output, sorry, I've worked with similar press teams and I don't believe a word of it.  Look at the evidence:

1) The Sheringham resignalling was completed in 2000, and apart from the lightning issue, eventually settled down.  Since then it has been used by Class 60, Class 66, Class 150, Class 153, Class 156 and Class 170 on a regular basis, plus sundry other one offs including kettles.  The predictive speed track circuit triggers for the level crossings have worked fine for 19 years more or less, but within weeks of the new Class 755 entering service, a wrong side failure occurs.  That's suspicious.

 

2) AGA were being disingenuous when they said the signalling issue was affecting all routes worked by them.  If it was a signalling issue affecting all routes, how come EMR Class 158s were maintaining a service along the Ely-Norwich sector, and Thameslink maintaining the Ely to Cambridge sector, to which they were directing their customers?  What they should have said, but didn't, was it was a problem with their trains interfacing with track circuits which had led to a ban whilst they tried to figure out if the problem on the Cromer line was something more general, or specific to that route.  But they didn't, and preferred to infer it was all a signalling issue which ain't their problem, Guv.  The fact is it backfired on them as even the most clueless, non-rail enthusiast could see other trains were still running, just not the shiny new Anglia ones.

 

3) There is a wider issue here, not just the track circuiting interface mammaries akimbo problem.  It's the management of AGA who have blithely assumed these trains would work out of the box and allowed the leases on their older stock to be sold on to new operators (Diolch yn Fawr am y Dosbarthiau 153 a 170, oddi wrth Trafnidiaeth Cymru…) when past experience has shown time and time again trains often have problems with achieving reliability in the first months, or even years.  Whether it's the AM3 electrics in Glasgow in the 1960s with their exploding transformers, the Class 158s with their invisibility cloak track circuit disguise, or the modern day CAF units having to unplug from the OHLE when parked so as not to cause the Class 92s from having a hissy fit, or the sudden realisation that the Class 800 jumper cables were a wonderful climbing frame, or interfered with the signalling north of Doncaster, experience should have said we'll need a staged introduction and keep the old trains as a backup just in case, instead of a big bang with all the attendant problems of freeing up drivers for training and risk when a problem develops of the whole service going knickers I llawr.  That's management hubris, not Network Rail.  Plus, in any case, it's up to train suppliers to make a product fit for the unique UK circumstances, not for them to build something and find it doesn't work.

And if anyone thinks the Dutch don't mislead and cock things up, go look at the story of the Benelux Fyra trains, starring NS, SNCB and my old favourite, Ansaldo.  It's a fascinating tale, of a different scale to AGA but with similar root issues.

 

 

So, the $64,000 question is... Did the 'predictor' system go in with the resig by Vaughn Harmon in 2000, or put in place in the last 12 months ?

[Zomboid]

20 minutes ago, beast66606 said:

Unlikely, the resignalling to Cromer was carried out around 2000 - so for nearly 20 years has worked without issue (aside from the very early days as mentioned above ^ ^) until the new units came along. It *may* be that design criteria need to be tweaked to take into account different behaviour of the new units but that doesn't make the system faulty.

Just because the fault hasn't come to light until now doesn't mean it hasn't been there all along. It's entirely possible to get away with a non compliant system for a long time until something comes along which is itself compliant but is still able to expose a non compliance in a way which nothing previously has.

 

I'm not saying that that is what's happened, just that something appearing to work doesn't mean that it meets the standards required of it.

[Rail Way]

1 hour ago, ruggedpeak said:

You are not an interested observer, no sign of observing, just naive regurgitation of GA press releases. You've come onto a modelling forum and posted only on this non-modelling topic. I wonder how many other sites you have suddenly appeared on.

 

Quite why perfectly good units like the 360's are being replaced at huge cost remains unclear. A waste of time and money, and hardly good for the environment.

I am an interested observer, I do not have any vested interests. I just am not a fan of conspiracy theories, that's all. 

 

In relation to the 360s the Aventra units will be newer and have more comfortable seating, USB power sockets and Wifi and will benefit from faster acceleration, walk through gangways, better passenger information systems and are longer than the 360s which have the drawback of being well worn and with no corridor connections. I'm not sure what you think, but I happen to think that's a significant upgrade whilst at the same time supporting British jobs, which is very important. 

[Rail Way]

1 hour ago, Bucoops said:

GA are perfectly correct in saying there are signalling issues. It looks very much like the signalling issues are caused by the new trains. It doesn't matter whatsoever if one line as some obscure method - that was there before the new trains, it wasn't a secret, so compatibility with the obscure method should have been included in the spec.

This is merely speculation, the kind that the MD quite rightly called out recently.

 

How do you know that Stadler didn't do there part and the system was compatible with this so called obscure method and instead the problem is actually with the equipment specified by Network Rail that is not performing as expected?

 

Once again, I doubt you will show me any proof that Stadler had a design flaw, more spoofing basically. 

[Rail Way]

51 minutes ago, Christopher125 said:

Absolutely, 100%... but that doesn't mean he hasn't got a point, however badly he puts it across.

 

I do feel there's been an assumption by most enthusiasts that the train *must* be to blame, but it seems entirely possible that the Stadler design merely exposes some kind of fault or design issue with the signalling that shouldn't exist.

It is good that there is at least one wise man around here.

 

People are doing exactly as you say, making assumptions that the train is the problem when in reality the trains, both old and new, are not being picked up by the signalling system which points to a flaw with the system which has now come to the fore, perhaps through general wear and tear and heavy usage. Since there have been many test trains run to roll out the new fleet as well as the normal scheduled journeys, this would have subjected the infrastructure to increased usage compared to previous years, which may be a factor in why these problems did not happen in previous years. 

[beast66606]

1 minute ago, Rail Way said:

I am an interested observer, I do not have any vested interests. I just am not a fan of conspiracy theories, that's all. 

 

 

 

Your comments are based on one source which has a vested interest - our knowledge is based on insider information from both GA and NR. You are entitled to your view, but if you are going to disgree, don't just regurgitate the same stuff as it doesn't wash.

 

1 minute ago, Rail Way said:

This is merely speculation, the kind that the MD quite rightly called out recently.

 

How do you know that Stadler didn't do there part and the system was compatible with this so called obscure method and instead the problem is actually with the equipment specified by Network Rail that is not performing as expected?

 

Once again, I doubt you will show me any proof that Stadler had a design flaw, more spoofing basically. 

 

Once again you come across as a rude troll - can you not just do as you said and leave this thread alone.

 

You make a spoof statement and then claim ruggedpeak is spoofing, your hypocrisy holds no bounds.

[beast66606]

14 minutes ago, Zomboid said:

Just because the fault hasn't come to light until now doesn't mean it hasn't been there all along. It's entirely possible to get away with a non compliant system for a long time until something comes along which is itself compliant but is still able to expose a non compliance in a way which nothing previously has.

 

I'm not saying that that is what's happened, just that something appearing to work doesn't mean that it meets the standards required of it.

 

Anything is possible, not so much is probable.

[Rail Way]

33 minutes ago, black and decker boy said:

If GA management are so faultless, why did they plan a depot in an unsuitable place which is now dropped?

 

why have they bought a new universal BEMU fleet that is too long for some of the rural branchlines?

 

why have they bought a fleet with teeny tiny fuel tanks which means every unit needs fuel every day but haven’t got the depot capacity to actually put fuel in that many units every day?

As you may be aware, unfortunately Greater Anglia, like any company applying for planning permission, does not have control of the planning system and in this country people are able to make objections to planning permission for very obscure and self serving reasons and you also have plenty of Nimbys about who would object to anything. Unfortunately companies can never be sure that planning permission will be granted as people have become more and more clever in order to create sophisticated arguments in order to get planning permission blocked for a project they don't want to go ahead. I hardly think you can blame Greater anglia for that.

 

In relation to the rural branchlines having too long trains, I do not believe this is true and there is nothing that states that it is. It was clearly a deliberate ploy to order a mixture of 3 car and 4 car units as this gives operational flexibility and whilst there are some places that the four car units cannot fit, the three car units will do. Door positioning on the 755s also has taken into account platform lengths and of course there is also cutting edge technology on board these new state of the art trains that ensures that if a train does hang off a platform, only doors fully within the platform are able to open. 

 

In relation to fuel, what is often misunderstood is the 755 services are bi-mode units and can run on electricity as well as conventional diesel. Some of the lines that the new fleet run on are partly electrified, so will only be using fuel for the sections where there are no wires, unlike the legacy much higher polluting fleet that required running under diesel even on sections of the route where there were wired provided. This will help the environment as well as use less fuel than the aging, heavier polluting trains they are replacing.