Hitachi trains grounded

[Hobby]

But they do have to deal with being flung over kerbs and rumble strips at 200mph!

[cheesysmith]

21 minutes ago, APOLLO said:

Glued together ? - Tony Wright would solder them up and add tons of lead, without any problems !!!!!!!

 

What about Pendolinos ?  lots pass my house every day, mostly empty since covid. Can a few be used at least on the ECML ? - Or has the WCML passenger loads increased up to Glasgow & Edinburgh (passengers re routed) ?  Just a thought

 

There are / were some spare Pacers at the new Springs Branch Wigan depot (not been for a while) - Free to a good owner !!!!

 

Brit15

 

You cannot send pacers down as replacements for the 800s, someone at the DaFT will complain about the better seats (well, the original bus seats anyway) and the fact you have a view out of the windows and a nice airy feeling interior. 

[Reorte]

2 minutes ago, cheesysmith said:

 

You cannot send pacers down as replacements for the 800s, someone at the DaFT will complain about the better seats (well, the original bus seats anyway) and the fact you have a view out of the windows and a nice airy feeling interior. 

The view out of the windows is only any good when stationary though, the rest of the time it's too blurred with the shaking to see.

[cheesysmith]

I will have you know the HSFV underframes under the pacers are good riders on CWR at 100mph+ (don't actually know how fast as the speedo was off the clock lol).

 

On jointed track best described as fun.

[Reorte]

5 minutes ago, cheesysmith said:

I will have you know the HSFV underframes under the pacers are good riders on CWR at 100mph+ (don't actually know how fast as the speedo was off the clock lol).

 

On jointed track best described as fun.

Fair enough! It's easy to take the mick out of Pacers and they are what they are - cheap and nasty is probably not an unfair description, but at the time it was cheap or closure, so (with hindsight, and not having to travel on them any more) we should probably be grateful for them. I think railway history will show them in a more positive light than they get nowadays.

[boxbrownie]

14 hours ago, Flittersnoop said:

Photo of detached bracket was of a different class of train, wasn't it? Not sure about the 28cm cracks, either. I just wondered how the risk of failure was affected by train speed - the stresses experienced at 125mph must be many times greater than at 70mph. The only train that can be 100% guaranteed not to shed bits as it goes along is one that is in a museum.

I don’t believe there has actually been a photo published in this thread yet of the actual issue with the 800 class, would be very interesting to see rather than guessing.

[Ian Hargrave]

10 minutes ago, boxbrownie said:

I don’t believe there has actually been a photo published in this thread yet of the actual issue with the 800 class, would be very interesting to see rather than guessing.

 
Indeed it would but probably too sensitive an issue for publication 

[MarshLane]

2 hours ago, Bernard Lamb said:

I would have thought that the penalty clause can only be enforced if Hitachi are found to be at fault.

As you say that you do not want a debate on the subject am I correct in thinking that you have a horse in this race?

As an outsider, but a person with direct hands on experience of very large engineering contracts, I find it interesting and would like those who can contribute first hand information to continue to do so.

It seems odd to me that you claim not to want a debate but then you state the case for one party.

Bernard

 

Hi Bernard,

Apologies if it came over that way, I was not trying to state the case for either party - just purely pointing out the different way in which the railway is operating now, from two years ago, and the issue over payments which is public domain information.  

 

My understanding of "the penalty cause", as you term it, is quite straight forward, regardless of why, in very straight forward language, Hitachi are required to present a specific number of Class 800 (GWR) and Class 800/801 (LNER) trains for each day, if they dont do that for whatever reason, there is a cost involved.  Its all about passing maintenance from the train operator to the manufacturer.

 

The only reason I suggested it shouldn't be debated is a) it is a public forum and issues around costs get very involved and messy, and b) few if any of us know the full in and out of the situation, the contract, the clauses etc.  It would be debating on a topic with little accurate information. 

Rich

[TheSignalEngineer]

9 hours ago, MarshLane said:

The fact is Hitachi will be quickly racking up a large bill for over 100 sets short every day. Now there may be other clauses that kick in in times like this, who knows?

It depends on how tight the contract is and how good their negotiators and lawyers were in the first place. There may be capping or shared risk clauses. Then of course how are Agility Trains tied in with the contract? 

Is it a specification, manufacture, maintenance or operational environment driven issue?

 

A lot will also depend on how much egg-on-face that DafT are willing to take as I'm sure Hitachi could rake up lots of muck about how the contract was handled, the quality of specification, constant shifting of the ground regarding scale of electrification and the quality of Network Rail's track.

 

[number6]

23 hours ago, Ian Hargrave said:

 
It would be interesting ( to say the very least ) if some of the more astute sections of the media got their investigative teeth into this saga. Maybe a Panorama special and C4 News ?

Has that earlier GWR manager WNXX quote ended up at The Guardian or any other mainstream news outlet yet? It entirely fits the current exposure of lots of snouts in troughs. Is there a direct link to the original article somewhere? 

@Mike_Walker

[boxbrownie]

13 hours ago, Gibbo675 said:

The above photographs shew just why the premium apprenticeship system worked, all modern stuff is now scoped, specified. and designed by people that, through no fault of their own, think that sitting in an office and doing sums using a box of magic switches is engineering.

We had engineering graduates arrive and on a tour of the workshop that couldn’t name half of the tools laying around, I am sure it’s not the case but it seemed most of them had never owned a toolbox of their own before going off to Uni.

They got very short shrift from the old lags at the benches when they tried to direct a particular piece of work.

 

Got called some very interesting names 

 

Almost all of the managers and senior engineers at our place went through the company’s apprentice training scheme straight from school, then LATER in their career when it was recognised it was required they attended Uni to get degrees and top up the wealth of experience (and learn how to design on a screen!).

I swear the Graduates thought you were being racist when mentioning an English Wheel.

 

Edited May 12, 2021 by boxbrownie

[Ron Ron Ron]

28 minutes ago, TheSignalEngineer said:

.....Then of course how are Agility Trains tied in with the contract?  ......

 

The contract to supply trains under the IEP, is with Agility, not Hitachi, even though Hitachi are the largest shareholder in Agility. 

 

Hitachi are involved in three ways.

They are the major partner in Agility, the company who has been contracted to supply the train fleet.

They are the manufacturer, having supplied the trains to Agility.

They have the operational maintenance role, on behalf of Agility.

 

That could make the contractual issues about liability rather complex.

Is it a design or manufacturing fault, or maintenance problem, or both?

 

Note:  The trains are owned by Agility, but were financed (paid for) by an international consortium of banks and financial institutions.

Agility have nothing to do with the non-IEP procured trains ( GWR 802’s, TPX, HT and the other fleets ordered for the MML, WCML and EC open access).

Those contracts are with Hitachi and ROSCOs

 

 

.

Edited May 12, 2021 by Ron Ron Ron

[boxbrownie]

12 hours ago, D1072 said:

The source of the 285mm crack reference is post 1394 on the railforums "Entire 800 fleet stood down" thread from someone inside the industry; it states that is the longest crack found so far in the lifting pocket area.    What we don't know is if the cracks propagate in a direction which would mean material could fall off or not from here.  That message also said that the yaw damper bracket cracks were considered less serious.    I think the detached yaw bracket photo under a green train  has been identified as Irish stock, not GW, but any chance of material detaching will need to be assessed.

Purely guessing but from some pictures it appears the lifting/jacking platform area also performs the task of having the yaw damper bracket attached, if that’s the case then it could be entirely reasonable to assume it’s nothing to do with the lifting forces as such when serviced but the turning force from the yaw damper bracket, it could start a crack at the furthest point from the bracket but still be the cause.

 

I’d still like to see some decent pics of this area though, but then that’s 35 years of destructive test recording coming out in me 

[boxbrownie]

1 hour ago, cheesysmith said:

Outside the box thinking

 

I wonder if anybody has thought of asking Lotus or someone at Boing/Airbus about bonding? Might be easier if a replacement section was just glued into place. Planes have been glued together since WW1, some still flying now.

Possibly but the solution would still have to go through a completely new testing and sign off, it could take months of rig testing to pass safe.

[DY444]

14 hours ago, Afroal05 said:

 

The last advice was 4 days per unit and up to 12 months to return the full fleet.

 

With 387s and turbos currently providing the only GWR traction between Paddington and Reading there isn't currently a 125mph timetable that can be run.

 

With 3 TPE 802s now anticipated to arrive this week they won't be going beyond Reading until there is some official ruling or guidance that supersedes the current rules that I have to adhere to!

 

Which is just another way of saying what I've said twice; ie the policies in force now might be revised downstream once the likely duration and scale of the fleet stoppage becomes more definitive.

Edited May 12, 2021 by DY444

[boxbrownie]

54 minutes ago, Ian Hargrave said:

 
Indeed it would but probably too sensitive an issue for publication 

In this day and age that is totally true......c’mon someone must have sneaky piccy they can slip on the net? 

[Ian Hargrave]

5 minutes ago, boxbrownie said:

In this day and age that is totally true......c’mon someone must have sneaky piccy they can slip on the net? 

With the distinct possibility of a job loss  ?

[cheesysmith]

17 minutes ago, boxbrownie said:

Possibly but the solution would still have to go through a completely new testing and sign off, it could take months of rig testing to pass safe.

 

Just the thought that bonding would not require the electrical components to be removed, unlike welding it would not have any effect on the metal, and the bond could be spread across a large area, not just the seam.

 

And if it does work, it would simplify things if such a thing happened again.

[Ian Hargrave]

48 minutes ago, number6 said:

Has that earlier GWR manager WNXX quote ended up at The Guardian or any other mainstream news outlet yet? It entirely fits the current exposure of lots of snouts in troughs. Is there a direct link to the original article somewhere? 

@Mike_Walker

The mainstream press doesn’t seem particularly interested in it atm. Wait a while for things to fester and things might change. Caution with it though because the article contains some potentially libellous text which it is unwise to repeat however strongly feelings are running and however much one is in tune with it.

[Supaned]

2 hours ago, Titan said:

I expect a lot of drivers are being paid to twiddle their thumbs right now, so training them up would not be as expensive as it would ordinarily as no extra cover would be required to operate services whilst the driver is being trained

 

Nope. 

 

Whilst I can't speak for the situation at GWR, if it's anything like the TOC I am familiar with , there are still not enough drivers to run the full timetable , a combination of lapsing route knowledge due to services being curtailed as a result of the pandemic , drivers lapsed on competency due to being required to shield for the past 12 plus months on medical grounds and various other issues.

 

Added to which , most TOCs have only limited agreements for in-cab training due to the continued COVID situation. In reality this means training on a one to one basis rather than the usual one Instructor to two trainees, and a strict testing and monitoring regime. Whilst there may be drivers available to train, they all have to be done individually and there are also only a finite amount of Instructors to go around, so any training period is greatly extended in terms of time and cost. Until it's determined how long the IET situation is likely to continue for and thus what sort of resources are going to be needed to provide a replacement service and for how long, there is unlikely to be much in the way of extra staff training beyond that absolutely necessary, even more so when the DfT are clutching the purse strings.

[37114]

47 minutes ago, Ron Ron Ron said:

The contract to supply trains under the IEP, is with Agility, not Hitachi, even though Hitachi are the largest shareholder in Agility. 

 

Hitachi are involved in three ways.

They are the major partner in Agility, the company who has been contracted to supply the train fleet.

They are the manufacturer, having supplied the trains to Agility.

They have the operational maintenance role, on behalf of Agility.

 

That could make the contractual issues about liability rather complex.

Is it a design or manufacturing fault, or maintenance problem, or both?

 

Note:  The trains are owned by Agility, but were financed (paid for) by an international consortium of banks and financial institutions.

Agility have nothing to do with the non-IEP procured trains ( GWR 802’s, TPX, HT and the other fleets ordered for the MML, WCML and EC open access).

Those contracts are with Hitachi and ROSCOs

 

 

.

I would be amazed if the other partners of agility have not put some sort of back to back clause into the contract that means any loss of revenue/compensation claim that is 100% down to the manufacture/design of the train is not passed back to Hitachi. Either way unless Hitachi can prove the flaws are due to a design they had to accept at the customer's expressed instruction or it has been subcontracted to someone else (who they should also have a back to back liability clause in place) then Hitachi are likely to be liable..... Either way to only winner from this will be Lawyers....

[boxbrownie]

23 minutes ago, Ian Hargrave said:

With the distinct possibility of a job loss  ?

Depends how sneaky they can be.....

[87023Velocity]

I will be interested to see what decision is made regards the cracks in the lifting pockets. Not only are they used for full train lifts at depot, or individual car on bogie drops etc, they are also required in worse case scenarios, recovery on the mainline - fitting of wheel skates (seized axles, severe wheel flats), derailment recovery etc. 

[fiftyfour fiftyfour]

3 hours ago, ColinK said:

It is wrong to be discussing compensation at this stage as the cause of the problem is not known, it could be Hitatchi,  or the specification being wrong or the track. 

No it's not, it's highly pertinent. The industry has just come through a very costly pandemic under a government who wanted to trim rail spending BEFORE the arrival of covid and now want to slash it.  Who pays for this fiasco is central to a lot of supplier/customer relationships right across the industry.

[RJS1977]

12 hours ago, phil-b259 said:

 

Question is who is going to pay for all that work? Certainly the leasing companies who currently own the Mk3s / Mk4s etc are not going to shell out cash on something that will only be needed for 6-9 months.

 

Train operators meanwhile are being run as management contracts and would require DfT authorisation / finance to instruct leasing companies to do the work.

 

That means the Government will have top cough up - and although inconvenient having the 800s out of action is no Pandemic and in any case Government policy is to cut what they spend on rail not increase it!  Rail use may have increased significantly over the past 20 years but 80% of journeys are still made by road not rail (hence the Government stance that its passengers who should stump up most of the revenue and not the Treasury). Its also worth remembering that the Government would need to give an exemption to said Mk3 stock as it doesn't meet disability rights legislation so is illegal to use on scheduled train services at present.

 

Yes some money might be forthcoming from Hitachi - but only after Laywers have slugged it out in court and that is going to take months if not years to be settled.

However the current situation of no trains is not without its costs either, financial, economic, and political.

 

The TOCs will still have to pay for drivers, whether they use them or not (unless they lay them off, which would scupper any chances of a return to service when the trains are ready), and possibly access charges as well (unless they're not paying for the paths they're no longer using in which case NR/taxpayer will take the hit).

 

Economically, no trains through Dawlish for a few weeks knocked a large amount of money off the Devon and Cornwall economy. The impact of the current issue is likely to be much larger, particularly in the current staycation boom.

 

Politically, the routes most affected are those going to Wales, the 'Red Wall', and Scotland.

 

It won't take long for the cost of doing nothing to outweigh the cost of doing something.

 

I don't think getting a derogation should be an issue. Shapps has ordered the TOCs and Hitachi to come up with a plan to restore service as soon as possible. If that plan involves getting a derogation then I can't see him saying "No, sorry, come up with another plan."

 

And I can't help thinking that restoring travel within the UK should be a far higher priority for DfT than adding more countries to the 'green list'.

 

Not saying there aren't practicalities to overcome, but 12 months of greatly reduced service isn't really an option.