Class 442 - Finally back in service on the LSWR.

[John M Upton]

Strong rumours from multiple sources today, the 442's will not be returning when things get back to normal.

 

I personally think this is nonsense as they have spent I dread to think how many millions on repainting, refurbishment, crew training and reengineering.

 

To now send them probably to the scrappy is ludicrous. 

[KeithHC]

2 hours ago, John M Upton said:

Strong rumours from multiple sources today, the 442's will not be returning when things get back to normal.

 

I personally think this is nonsense as they have spent I dread to think how many millions on repainting, refurbishment, crew training and reengineering.

 

To now send them probably to the scrappy is ludicrous. 

Article in Railway Gazette the whole fleet is being returned to Portabrook this must mean the end for the 442. Reason being the effects of COVID-19.

 

Keith

[Wild Boar Fell]

42 minutes ago, KeithHC said:

Article in Railway Gazette the whole fleet is being returned to Portabrook this must mean the end for the 442. Reason being the effects of COVID-19.

 

Keith

Unlikely they will be returning to Porterbrook, being owned by Angel...

Edited March 31, 2021 by Wild Boar Fell

[crompton 33]

They will be sent to sims for scrap. The plan now is they keep the class 458's , They will be based at BM after they have a refresh. It's been said today by SWR they will be go'ing back to 4 car units.

[John M Upton]

This is just extraordinary.  The amount of money wasted is just astonishing, they are still fitting the new electrical gubbins to them and then they will be towed straight to the scrappy? 

 

Presumably the expensively converted ex GatEx fifth cars of the 458's also face the chop?

 

This is financial lunacy.....

[fiftyfour fiftyfour]

4 hours ago, John M Upton said:

Strong rumours from multiple sources today, the 442's will not be returning when things get back to normal.

 

I personally think this is nonsense as they have spent I dread to think how many millions on repainting, refurbishment, crew training and reengineering.

 

To now send them probably to the scrappy is ludicrous. 

Not really, it was ludicrous to waste all that money on them to begin with given they are very non-standard, and that (pre plague) London North Western were off-leasing some 350's when their Bombardier junk shows up and they could have easily swapped around to make the dual voltage 350/1's into additional units for SWR giving them total compatibility with existing 444 and 450 if they had wanted extra trains. Doing anything else to the piggies now would be throwing good money after bad, and as now they are no longer needed they are the obvious trains to bin off.

[fiftyfour fiftyfour]

2 minutes ago, John M Upton said:

This is just extraordinary.  The amount of money wasted is just astonishing, they are still fitting the new electrical gubbins to them and then they will be towed straight to the scrappy? 

 

Presumably the expensively converted ex GatEx fifth cars of the 458's also face the chop?

 

This is financial lunacy.....

Legacy of the First Group mission to get rid of guards at any cost; the 458's are not able to work DOO so they get binned along with the 707s to give a standard fleet on the Windsor and suburban lines. The 458s are, however, very reliable modern trains- you'd like to think it would be easier to keep them as 5 cars given the 444's on the same lines are already five cars but you never know...

[black and decker boy]

40 minutes ago, fiftyfour fiftyfour said:

Legacy of the First Group mission to get rid of guards at any cost; the 458's are not able to work DOO so they get binned along with the 707s to give a standard fleet on the Windsor and suburban lines. The 458s are, however, very reliable modern trains- you'd like to think it would be easier to keep them as 5 cars given the 444's on the same lines are already five cars but you never know...

444s are 23m vehicles though so 230m long as 10 car set.

 

458s are 20m vehicles so only 200m long as 10 car set.

 

the mainline is configured around 4/8/12 for 20m vehicles with 240m for full length. Running as 10 cars would therefore waste 40m of capacity.

 

whilst binning the 442s does seem a wasteful decision, the reality of COVID, reduced peak hour commuting, especially from the leafy suburbs / shires into London mean it’s probably the least worst option.

 

the info put out by SWR suggests component recovery & disposal beckons so even DfT must have woken up to the changes facing the railways and that random cascades of worn out, bespoke units such as 442s are a luxury we can no longer afford

 

[DY444]

What a colossal waste of the money spent on the 442s, and indeed to an extent the money spent on the 458 reconfiguration not that long ago.  Good job SWR has been such an outstanding financial success and that the railways are awash with money they don't know what to do with or else tax payers might have some serious questions.

 

Presumably SWR believes the influential and well healed from Haslemere are all going to be working from home from now on and so replacing the despised Portsmouth Line outer suburban 450s with re-geared outer suburban 458s won't be a problem.

Edited April 1, 2021 by DY444

[Ron Ron Ron]

At the time it was announced that SWR were going to bring the the Wessex back from storage, at great cost, I thought that was a colossal mistake.

A complete waste of money that was inevitably going to see cost overruns and technical problems, when a new fleet order would have been a wiser investment.

Any outrage should be directed at the decision to attempt this programme in the first place and not at the decision to scrap them now.

They should have gone for scrap when Southern / GATX had finished with them.

 

 

.

Edited April 1, 2021 by Ron Ron Ron

[Fenman]

The 442s were designed for one specific route -- the ex-LSW greyhound-racing track Weymouth-Southampton-Waterloo -- and BR made fantastically efficient use of cascaded electrical equipment from the EMUs they replaced, making them very cheap. They were a step-change up in comfort from the REP/TCs they replaced, the shocking silence inside the coaches being just one of the obvious improvements. ISTR they held the world speed record for 3rd rail stock for many, many years.

 

But being designed for one specific route they later struggled when put onto others, each also requiring expensive refurbishment work. Each time they were moved it felt like an emotionally-driven attempt to hang onto them even though they weren't really suitable. I loved them, but even I was mystified by the most recent decision to refurb and reallocate.

 

For me, it's a sad day that they are now going to the scrappies. But they've had more than one unexpected reprieve in the past so they've done bloody well. And let's not forget they are now well into their 4th decade, so it's not as if they've had stupidly short lives. Wessex Electrics: RIP.

 

Paul

[Nearholmer]

Very true.

 

Until recently, they were still on the resistance-controlled, d.c. traction package that they inherited from the REPs, and that truly is only good (bordering on ideal in fact) for a route where the train spends the vast majority of its time in full parallel, or better still weak-field; by modern standards it becomes inefficient, and high-maintenance, on routes with fairly short and/or congested inter-station runs.

 

What is the standard of comfort/ambience offered on a fast Bournemouth and Weymouth train these days? I haven't been that way for an absolute age, and have a lingering fear that the trains might be rather "suburban".

[PenrithBeacon]

From a personal point of view as a passenger, these units were by far the best of all BR third rail emus. I'm not convinced that their successors are better. 

[fiftyfour fiftyfour]

Standard fayre on Bournemouth/Weymouth trains now is 444's which are 2+2 seated, mostly at airlines with doorways in vestibules at the coach ends, they are not bad when compared to a lot of stuff out there but they are a step down from the piggies. They do sometimes use 450's which are 2+3 outer-urbans with doors at 1/3rd and 2/3rd of coach length, and they really are a step down...

[frobisher]

In light of the work done on them, might they now be suitable for reuse as hauled stock (with removal of the motor vehicle obviously)?  As I understand it, they were always intended to be usable that way.

Were they ever tested in push-pull mode with the 33/1s, because you'd then have most of the safety case for repurposing (after changes to the  control equipment) for push pull operation with, say, AAR equipped 68s etc. ?

[black and decker boy]

3 hours ago, DY444 said:

What a colossal waste of the money spent on the 442s, and indeed to an extent the money spent on the 458 reconfiguration not that long ago.  Good job SWR has been such an outstanding financial success and that the railways are awash with money they don't know what to do with or else tax payers might have some serious questions.

 

Presumably SWR believes the influential and well healed from Haslemere are all going to be working from home from now on and so replacing the despised Portsmouth Line outer suburban 450s with re-geared outer suburban 458s won't be a problem.

The 458 programme was by Stagecoach SWT based on the need for a 10 car suburban railway.

 

DfT then relet the franchise in a way that made suburban fleet renewal a winning offer - better capacity, shorter dwell, common fleet characteristics etc - enter the 701s, goodbye to the retractioned 455s, 456s, rebuilt 458s and brand new 707s

 

Now COVID has destroyed the franchising system and the rule book. London commuting is unlikely to be anything like it was, DfT & HM Treasury now firmly in control (there are no true private sector franchises now) and seeking dramatic reductions in cost.

 

service frequency reductions are being widely predicted ‘to improve network resilience’

 

 

[Nearholmer]

Refit the interiors in luxury style, paint them brown and cream, and re-designate as 5-BEL-MkII, then run them at premium fares for people who value komfort and kippers.

 

(Actually, that might not be such a daft idea - I'm thinking Saturday and Sunday excursions from London to the coast, especially this year if there are to be no foreign holidays. Whitstable, Rye (blast - no juice for the last bit!), Eastbourne, Brighton, Bournemouth, Weymouth, those sorts of destinations)

 

 

Edited April 1, 2021 by Nearholmer

[black and decker boy]

10 minutes ago, frobisher said:

In light of the work done on them, might they now be suitable for reuse as hauled stock (with removal of the motor vehicle obviously)?  As I understand it, they were always intended to be usable that way.

Were they ever tested in push-pull mode with the 33/1s, because you'd then have most of the safety case for repurposing (after changes to the  control equipment) for push pull operation with, say, AAR equipped 68s etc. ?

On which services, at what costs and with what traction?

 

HSTs, MK4s etc are all quickly going for scrap as no future use for them. U.K. Rail is firmly a multiple unit railway. There is a surplus of EMUs and soon of DMUs as well as TfW start their whole fleet replacement programme.

[4630]

20 minutes ago, frobisher said:

As I understand it, they were always intended to be usable that way.

Were they ever tested in push-pull mode with the 33/1s,... 

 

Tested and used in service during diversions due to engineering works.

 

There's a picture of such a working on page 177 in The Class 33s A Sixty-Year History by Simon Lilley, published by Crécy Publishing.

[DY444]

3 hours ago, black and decker boy said:

The 458 programme was by Stagecoach SWT based on the need for a 10 car suburban railway.

 

DfT then relet the franchise in a way that made suburban fleet renewal a winning offer - better capacity, shorter dwell, common fleet characteristics etc - enter the 701s, goodbye to the retractioned 455s, 456s, rebuilt 458s and brand new 707s

 

Now COVID has destroyed the franchising system and the rule book. London commuting is unlikely to be anything like it was, DfT & HM Treasury now firmly in control (there are no true private sector franchises now) and seeking dramatic reductions in cost.

 

service frequency reductions are being widely predicted ‘to improve network resilience’

 

 

 

Indeed.  However no-one actually knows what commuting will look like going forward and the almost universal corporate clarion call on home working being the future is being wound back a bit most notably in parts of the financial sector in the City. 

 

What irks me is that this decision is being made after a substantial sum of money has been spent on the 442s and, covid aside, the issues cited now for their unsuitability existed before any money had been spent on the fleet.  The Portsmouth Line topology, pre and post re-tractioning performance over that topology, narrow doors and PRM scenarios are no different now than they were at the start.  Plus the option of rejigging the 458s again was also available before any money had been spent on the 442s as SWR knew the 701s were coming.  

 

I'm not flying a rose tinted, misty eyed flag for the 442s but I just consider it highly irresponsible in the economic climate the railway finds itself in to refurbish a fleet and then scrap it before it has barely turned a wheel in revenue earning service.  And it's not as though SWR wasn't struggling for money pre-Covid either.  And yes the DfT and Treasury are calling the shots and so to compensate for the money wasted here there will no doubt be some other project which is scrapped or de-scoped due to budget constraints.  And would anyone put any money on the 458 rejig being done on time and to budget given the experience of last time, and the need to modify a generation old traction equipment and obsolete TMS again?  I certainly wouldn't.

Edited April 1, 2021 by DY444

[frobisher]

1 hour ago, black and decker boy said:

On which services, at what costs and with what traction?

 

Dunno, but the thought was you'd have a bunch of carriages that were already compliant with the current regs so might present a cost effective opportunity for an open access operator.  I couldn't see it as an future existence for more than 4 or so sets in any case.

 

1 hour ago, black and decker boy said:

HSTs, MK4s etc are all quickly going for scrap as no future use for them.

 

I know most of the HST MK3's don't have CET (do the MK4's?) or door modifications done on them, which is work the 442's wouldn't need if repurposed and they are neatly in sets already - IF there was work for them of course... 

Edited April 1, 2021 by frobisher

[fiftyfour fiftyfour]

41 minutes ago, frobisher said:

 

Dunno, but the thought was you'd have a bunch of carriages that were already compliant with the current regs so might present a cost effective opportunity for an open access operator.  I couldn't see it as an future existence for more than 4 or so sets in any case.

 

 

I know most of the HST MK3's don't have CET (do the MK4's?) or door modifications done on them, which is work the 442's wouldn't need if repurposed and they are neatly in sets already - IF there was work for them of course... 

The 442's probably had some PRM exemption because of the unshiftable narrow door layout, which may not have transferred along with the units to another role. As others have said, Mk4's are the same length, good for TDM and good for 125mph and only about 12 of them now have future homes, so what chance for the piggies with the middle coach knocked out?

 

[WessexEclectic]

On 01/04/2021 at 10:20, Fenman said:

ISTR they held the world speed record for 3rd rail stock for many, many years.

 

The Official WSR, yes. Have heard stories of testing shoe-gear/3rd rail interaction (before the introduction of Eurostar to Waterloo services) with 4-VEPs(?) giving Mallard a run for her money on the Headcorn straight...

[bécasse]

13 minutes ago, WessexEclectic said:

 

The Official WSR, yes. Have heard stories of testing shoe-gear/3rd rail interaction (before the introduction of Eurostar to Waterloo services) with 4-VEPs(?) giving Mallard a run for her money on the Headcorn straight...

The actual speed record was almost certainly held by the single 4-REP unit that was used specifically for speed trials before the service started and which, apart from specific safety-related limits (like slowing at Micheldelver to make sure that the unit went round the island platform and not over it), was permitted to go as fast as it could. The arrangements for that included a man in the cab with binoculars and another with a walkie-talkie which was used to talk to men stationed by every droplight back through the unit, the droplights being lowered to add to any required braking effort! I was told most of the details by a very reliable RTC (and ex-Eastleigh drawing office) man who was on the train, he wasn't allowed to divulge the top speed reached south of Micheldelver but he did say that Mallard would have been left well behind. Apparently the thing that surprised him most, as it was his specialist area, was how well the unit rode at very high speed.

 

One of the most obvious results of the tests was that 4-REP units running "light" were restricted to a top speed of 60mph to stop drivers trying to see how fast they would go, apparently it had been assumed beforehand that they would "balance out" at about 110mph but the tests showed that, at least with a favourable grade, that wasn't the case.

[1E BoY]

Some notes on the famous record run between Waterloo and Weymouth (non stop) that I recorded at the time ( I was at Weymouth for the event).  Information correct at the time of the event.

 

The record attempt was set for Thursday 14 April 1988 with a target to complete the run in less than two hours. The train was full of invited guests and the press with official timekeepers on board. 

 

At the Weymouth End there was a large digital clock identical to those used on athletic tracks for the Olympics and other major events. This was linked to one at Waterloo which was activated the moment the train started to roll.

 

To complete the 142 miles between Waterloo and Weymouth within the time proved a challenge which involved virtually every department on the then Southern Region. Nothing was left to chance - this was a one-off opportunity to make a statement that the Wessex Electrics were indeed coming.

 

Every signal box had a manager in position, every level crossing had a member of the operating department present and trains were diagrammed to be looped or shunted out of the way. The Class 442 needed a clear run. Even an emergency speed restriction installed just minutes before the train was due to pass (near Woking) only slowed progress down to walking pace until the offending rail section was cleared.

 

Meanwhile at Weymouth where I was located, preparations were made for the arrival of the train. As the time ticked past 1 hour 50 minutes a runner was positioned at the far end of the platform ready to get the first glimpse of the approaching train and then run the length of the platform to alert the reception party to get ready to stop the clock the second the driver completed the brake application. As the Driver did so, the clock was stopped at 1 hour 59 minutes and 24 seconds but it had been a remarkably close run thing. Unit Nos 2401 and 2403 formed the train and a maximum of 109 mph was recorded during the trip - the world’s fastest for 750v DC 3rd rail traction!

Edited April 27, 2021 by 1E BoY