Hitachi trains grounded

[caradoc]

2 hours ago, fiftyfour fiftyfour said:

Can't we just agree they were built to a price, like anything else, and now they have found to be unfit for purpose-

 

I would not agree, no; As I mentioned earlier, Glasgow's entire fleet of Blue Train EMUs had to be withdrawn after they started exploding, and injuring passengers and staff - Very much unfit for purpose ! Yet the problem was resolved and they went on to give 40 years service. I have no doubt the 80x issue will be resolved too. 

 

[boxbrownie]

3 hours ago, corneliuslundie said:

Ken Mumford calls them flying cucumbers. I imagine your pet name is not so complimentary. But they must have checked that unit quite fast as it left Paddington around an hour before that and presumably the depot at least 30 minutes earlier. Smart work by someone.

Jonathan

Woke up a retired wheel tapper....

[boxbrownie]

2 hours ago, lyneux said:

Bloomin’ iPhone...

Yeah, yeah, yeah......

[Dunsignalling]

There have been a few in traffic today, I noticed 1A20 ran from Bristol and 1A60 from down west, though it started from Plymouth rather than Penzance as booked.

 

John

[MarkC]

How are the checks being done? Ultrasound would be my guess. So, are we looking at stress concentrations? Metal fatigue? Aluminium is funny stuff. So many possibilities - and so many TOCs now suffering...

 

Mark

[woodenhead]

York, just now

[Gilbert]

13 minutes ago, Dunsignalling said:

There have been a few in traffic today, I noticed 1A20 ran from Bristol and 1A60 from down west, though it started from Plymouth rather than Penzance as booked.

 

John

1A28 left Bristol but stopped at Swindon

1A90 ran via Westbury and Swindon from Plymouth - presumably to assist with passengers on GWML

I assume many plates are being spun (for those who remember such things)

[Stubby47]

Any predictions what this might mean for a 08:50 GWR train from Truro to Reading tomorrow morning?

[Bucoops]

Interesting in these days of lawyers that Hitachi are noted as apologising - https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-57036247 - I'm sure many would take that as an admission of guilt.

[Flittersnoop]

So these Hitachi trains aren't what they're cracked up to be?

 

 

Sorry

[Coryton]

1 minute ago, Flittersnoop said:

So these Hitachi trains aren't what they're cracked up to be?

 

 

Sorry

 

We need the groan button back...

[Coryton]

11 minutes ago, Bucoops said:

Interesting in these days of lawyers that Hitachi are noted as apologising - https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-57036247 - I'm sure many would take that as an admission of guilt.

 

Interesting article.

 

"The Class 800 was designed to be fully electric - but a diesel engine was introduced due to delays in electrifying England's railways"

 

Hmmm. When were Inverness and Aberdeen originally planned to be electrified?

 

And from a reporter in Paddington:

 

"It's hard to know whether the low passenger numbers are down to the restrictions on indoor gatherings - or potential passengers heeding warnings to stay away."

 

Did they not want to disturb any of the staff to ask them?

 

 

[black and decker boy]

Rail Minister now being quoted in the press

 

The railway minister warned disruption was likely for a "prolonged period". 

Chris Heaton-Harris said the issue had been found on part of the chassis - the base frame - of some trains on Saturday morning following routine inspections. 

He said trains would be returned to service as "quickly as possible", but warned that Great Western Railway services in particular were likely to face continued disruption. 

The minister added he has asked the rail industry to conduct "a rapid and comprehensive review to resolve the issue".

[jim.snowdon]

15 minutes ago, black and decker boy said:

Rail Minister now being quoted in the press

 

The railway minister warned disruption was likely for a "prolonged period". 

Chris Heaton-Harris said the issue had been found on part of the chassis - the base frame - of some trains on Saturday morning following routine inspections. 

He said trains would be returned to service as "quickly as possible", but warned that Great Western Railway services in particular were likely to face continued disruption. 

The minister added he has asked the rail industry to conduct "a rapid and comprehensive review to resolve the issue".

Or, exactly what will already be happening without his prompting. But then, ministers do have to be seen doing something.

 

[Titan]

14 minutes ago, caradoc said:

 

I would not agree, no; As I mentioned earlier, Glasgow's entire fleet of Blue Train EMUs had to be withdrawn after they started exploding, and injuring passengers and staff - Very much unfit for purpose ! Yet the problem was resolved and they went on to give 40 years service. I have no doubt the 80x issue will be resolved too. 

 

Quite an interesting comparison.  On the Blue trains the problem was a combination of the 25kV/6.25kV changeover gear, and the mercury arc rectifiers.  If there was a fault on the 25kV OLE, the voltage could drop low enough for the voltage change over to  automatically change to 6.25kV before the OLE breakers tripped.  When power was restored the primary windings of the transformers were suddenly fed with four times the voltage they were configured for, and consequently the secondary windings also had four times the voltage.  The mercury arc rectifiers "backfired", which basically means they become a direct short. So a short circuit on the secondary with four times the voltage on the primary was well beyond the worst case the transformers were specified or tested for, and they did not like it!  The transformer supplier got the blame despite the product supplied at least meeting, if not exceeding the specifications, and were made to reinforce the transformers to fix the problem...

 

The problem of course completely went away when the 6.25kV was converted to 25kV and the mercury arc rectifiers replaced by solid state.

[Andrew Young]

7 hours ago, Ian Hargrave said:

A week ago,passsing Neville Hill on a northbound XC 220,I espied a job lot of MkIV and Class91 in storage...and wondered why they hadn’t yet met the cutter’s torch. Maybe it was a premonition  ? My thoughts go out to TOC personnel and poor suffering travelling public alike.We’ve all had a lot to endure lately. 
 

In the 1950’s,when Mr.Bulleid’s MN’s suffered an enforced temporary withdrawal,their place was quickly taken up by motive power supplied by other BR regions. No such quick fix is currently available and it looks as if XC ....somewhat overcrowded ( if social distancing will permit ).....will have the ECML....mainly to themselves 

 

 

 

 

 

The WCML west from Bristol as well as the ECML north of York!

[Ian Hargrave]

3 minutes ago, jim.snowdon said:

Or, exactly what will already be happening without his prompting. But then, ministers do have to be seen doing something.

 

So the GWR units,being as it were first on stream,are the ones worst blighted .Well it will give the newly elected WAG something to bite on for sure. Regarding the LNER & TPE 800,series one wonders to what degree these are affected &what systems Hitachi has in place to detect the potential for future structural failure as the unspoken message from this is that it’s age related......as indeed with most of us 

[ColinK]

Given that Northern’s CAF units, 195 and 331s are also having a similar problem, perhaps the trains were build to the required specification, but that specification wasn’t right?

[Ian Hargrave]

9 minutes ago, Andrew Young said:

The WCML west from Bristol as well as the ECML north of York!

 
Indeed.Apologies for the omission. XC crew do an amazing job under trying conditions.Let’s hope the Divine Azuma lends his powers to all Hitachi staff over the coming hours to sort this out.

[Afroal05]

The last update I heard for the GWR units the problem was across both the 800 and 802 fleets and a really high percentage of units checked had issues. There were still over a dozen units still to be inspected.

I'm not sure what time overnight the wider problem became apparent, certainly at 1900 there were no reports of the latest cracks and the fleet position was looking fairly settled for tomorrow with half a dozen sets stopped awaiting yaw damper reps.

 

To get through today any 800s that have come good have been deployed to Swansea's, 802s to the West of England with some diverting via the likes of Swindon to provide some kind of a service and the odd service on the Pad/Bristol corridor thrown in too. Clearly there is going to be an impact well into next week as there are going to be a lot of sets to fix.

 

There have been extra 387s out to cover as far as Didcot, turbos for the North Cots and a 158 doing Swindon - Cheltenham shuttles. XC have chipped in with an additional HST that ran/is running Plymouth to Bristol Parkway and back.

Avanti have apparently been stuffed to the gunnels out of Euston but they're not running beyond Carlisle because of engineering work!

 

As previously mentioned there seem to have been very few passengers around today which, compared to the reservation figures, suggests some people have (wisely) heeded the advice not to travel.

[DK123GWR]

51 minutes ago, Coryton said:

Interesting article.

 

"The Class 800 was designed to be fully electric - but a diesel engine was introduced due to delays in electrifying England's railways"

 

Hmmm. When were Inverness and Aberdeen originally planned to be electrified?

I think its a partial misunderstanding. I believe that GWR originally placed an order for some 801s, which were later converted to 800/3s when electrification was left incomplete. Of course, the original 800 orders and the 802s were always planned to be bimode.

[great central]

14 minutes ago, ColinK said:

Given that Northern’s CAF units, 195 and 331s are also having a similar problem, perhaps the trains were build to the required specification, but that specification wasn’t right?

 

Without trawling around, wasn't a contributory cause of the azuma derailment at Neville Hill to do with the specific requirements for the inter vehicle couplings not including low speed collision performance? 

Maybe, and I'm only speculating, there is something in this regarding the original specification?

On another note, the fleet wide inspection on LNER was actioned at 04.00 this morning.

[Kris]

1 hour ago, Stubby47 said:

Any predictions what this might mean for a 08:50 GWR train from Truro to Reading tomorrow morning?

I would not hold your breath on it running unfortunately. 

[TomScrut]

As far as TPE is concerned it's a shame they haven't got 68/mk5s crewed and cleared to Edinburgh, they'd not be able to match the timing perhaps (100mph) but there are only about 4 of the 13 sets doing anything productive at the moment.

 

I presume 185s won't be able to do the Newcastle runs anymore either as it's over a year since the 802s arrived?

[PhilJ W]

I've just been reading the current edition (May) of Railway Magazine. There is a paragraph in there (page 8) saying that cracks appearing on GWR class 800's are being investigated. The news was released just as RM went to press (about 3 weeks ago)