Eurotunnel pricing themselves out of the market

[icn]

On 25/09/2023 at 14:23, Ben B said:

 

That thought occurred to me when we used the tunnel in the summer, all the trains were looking bit worn around the edges. Given the age of the locomotives, I wonder if anyone is giving thought to their replacements? Massive tri-bo heavyhaulers. Even little things like all those opening and closing doors in the vehicle carriages, all those motors working away... it's a very intensive service with what is now quite old stock.

Not quite the main topic - but when these need replacement I expect it'll just be some Vectrons or Traxx's with at most a few tweaks. Vectron's are already built at 6.4MW (vs 5.6 or mostly 7MW for the existing locos) and have been tested in the tunnel, they're not far off what's needed. Only question is how many tweaks will be needed to satisfy whatever regulations apply at the time.

[jjb1970]

On 05/01/2024 at 18:38, 34theletterbetweenB&D said:

I'd love to meet someone that believes they maintain, operate etc. the atmosphere.

 

The traffic control system for aviation, yes that's costly, analogous to the signalling of a railway. But the huge 'missing' expense in aviation compared to terrestrial transport is no physical infrastructure to maintain for the vehicles to mechanically operate in while in flight between airports.

 

Airliners are very expensive assets, as are the engines (often competition and costs for the engines are more of an issue than the airframes) and maintenance costs are very high. Then there's fuel, they use an awful lot of it and it's not cheap. And passenger capacity is quite modest compared to railways. A big twin in high density configuration (all or almost all economy) will be something like 500, with no standing or overloading, that's not that high (and smaller aircraft like the 737 and A320 will be less than half that) in rail terms, especially when trains can be crush loaded. And although physical infrastructure may look a lot less, airports aren't cheap.

[phil-b259]

48 minutes ago, icn said:

Not quite the main topic - but when these need replacement I expect it'll just be some Vectrons or Traxx's with at most a few tweaks. Vectron's are already built at 6.4MW (vs 5.6 or mostly 7MW for the existing locos) and have been tested in the tunnel, they're not far off what's needed. Only question is how many tweaks will be needed to satisfy whatever regulations apply at the time.

Two things to consider, firstly it’s all very well having lots of power but if that power is only being delivered through 4 axles and not 6 then the propensity for wheelslip is going to be grater. IIRC that’s why Eurotunnel went for a Bo-Bo- Bo configuration - in an ideal world they wanted a Co-Co design but the sharp curve which makes up the return loop at Cheriton precluded this option.

 

Secondly, the Channel tunnel safety regs require pretty much every single piece of equipment to be duplicated on the locos - this is to avoid a failure leaving the train stranded in the tunnel (there is no way a single loco has enough oomph to get a fully loaded shuttle out of the tunnel on its own) and as such that’s going to require some serious re-work on the insides if an ‘off the shelf’ design is selected.

[jjb1970]

Speaking strictly as an enthusiast I find the prevalence of standard platform trains around Europe to have made railways in the region much less interesting. Before it's pointed out, I'm aware of the reasons and don't question the commercial and technical logic but European railways were much more interesting when each one had it's own rolling stock identity and machines like the Br103, CC6500, E444, Ae6/6 etc dominated. 

[icn]

14 minutes ago, phil-b259 said:

Two things to consider, firstly it’s all very well having lots of power but if that power is only being delivered through 4 axles and not 6 then the propensity for wheelslip is going to be grater. IIRC that’s why Eurotunnel went for a Bo-Bo- Bo configuration - in an ideal world they wanted a Co-Co design but the sharp curve which makes up the return loop at Cheriton precluded this option.

 

Secondly, the Channel tunnel safety regs require pretty much every single piece of equipment to be duplicated on the locos - this is to avoid a failure leaving the train stranded in the tunnel (there is no way a single loco has enough oomph to get a fully loaded shuttle out of the tunnel on its own) and as such that’s going to require some serious re-work on the insides if an ‘off the shelf’ design is selected.

Regarding the first one: perhaps, but anti-slip technology has moved on in the meantime which is how you see plenty of Bo-Bos on previously Co-Co jobs, such as BR 151 to BR 189 in Germany or Bo-Bos over the Gotthard. See also the XLoad option for the Vectron: https://press.siemens.com/global/en/pressrelease/sudleasing-orders-20-vectron-locomotives-xload-behalf-sbb-cargo-international . This doesn't seem like a huge issue.

 

The second part is going the be the more interesting one: Eurotunnel already ran tests with the Vectron back in 2012, the idea being (so they pretty much said) to evaluate commodity locomotives through the tunnel. According to this document, TSIs apply since 2012 allowing for the use of standardised locos: https://www.getlinkgroup.com/content/uploads/2023/08/ra2012-uk-eurotunnel-group.pdf  . The question is whether this is or will also be acceptable for passenger traffic. The rules can be change in any case, the question is what the updated rules would be.

 

Of course you could just double-head, i.e. have 4 locos per train. It could possibly still end up being cheaper than developing new custom locomotives which rarely happens nowadays.

[adb968008]

On 01/01/2024 at 09:39, Ron Ron Ron said:

 

 

Of course, all that could be dealt with, but it would need a contingency plan that would require Ebbsfleet and Ashford to be maintained in a state of constant readiness and staff taken there for periodic training, for what?  A once in 20 year occurrence?

 

The whole notion is plain silly.

 

 

This aged well..

 

You wait 20 years and two closures come in one week.

 

https://www.nationalrail.co.uk/service-disruptions/ebbsfleet-international-20240108/

 

Luckily this time it was sorted in 3 hours… but you only have to be unlucky once.

 

Edited January 8 by adb968008

[Ron Ron Ron]

1 hour ago, adb968008 said:

This aged well..

 

You wait 20 years and two closures come in one week.

 

https://www.nationalrail.co.uk/service-disruptions/ebbsfleet-international-20240108/

 

Luckily this time it was sorted in 3 hours… but you only have to be unlucky once.

 

You are grasping at straws.

 

That was just a short term delay caused by a train fault (SouthEastern), cleared quickly…..

 

Incident reported: 08 Jan 2024 at 12:03

Incident cleared: 08 Jan 2024 at 13:11

 

 

.

[adb968008]

3 hours ago, Ron Ron Ron said:

You are grasping at straws.

 

Acts of god usually are.

 

it still happened, regardless what exceptions you try to sugar coat it with… it could have been worse… a class 325 blocked the wcml for 2 days just before christmas… failures happen when you least expect.

 

Failure to plan, is a plan to fail. Eurostar on a wing and a prayer.. it should not be every man for himself when it goes wrong.

Edited January 8 by adb968008

[The Stationmaster]

On 04/01/2024 at 21:34, Ron Ron Ron said:

 

I'm not sure why you've quoted me, on a completely different and unrelated aspect Mike?

Did you quote the wrong post?

 

 

.

Sorry Rion - you're right and, I obviously did,  Or something very odd happened as I'm sure I picked up another post not yours.  It's either age, finger trouble, or RMweb witchcraft.  Take your pick!

 

And for whatever reason this post never appeared to here it is again (if you have seen it before).

 

Coming back to the matter of a diversionary route I'm not at all sure how a method, let alonbe a route, could be created at a sustainable cost - whoever has to pay for it.  It is - as Phil ppinted out some time back - and always has been an Open access operator so it is not even attempting to meet any sort of franchise or contract commitment (and, as was noted in another post abvoe) how many them bother to try to run trains when things get awkward? 

 

and as ROn has noted several times just what has been the frequency of any sort of serious interruption of service within England?  the only (part way) valid chance of providing some sort of alternative route within Enf gland would have been tom retain Waterloo and trains witha capacity to operate on the 3rd rail network - and that opportunity was discarded a long while ago - because of the cost of retaining it.

 

PS SNCf uses the term Chef du Train on its trains (as does part of SNCB).  The term does not apply to the staff on Cross Channel Eurostar trains where the role with a degree of equivalence to that of a Guard is titled 'Train Manager'.  There are in fact two Trains mangers on each Ceross Channel train - titled, imaginatively (not), TM1 and TM2.  One of them is there for only one reasons - to sit in the back cab as the train passes through the Tunnel ready to take control if necessary and drive the train back out in the opposite direction from the one in which it had been moving.  It's arranged like that to save time needed for  the Driver to change ends.  Eurostar UK filled the role by training a proportion of TMs to drive to the standard needed for that purpose.  

 

SNCF, for example, took a different route. and to appease their trade unions,  prided a Driver to cover the TM2 role - which means that job on a French manned train could't assist in any passenger facing tasks.  I don't know if that changed when Eurostar moved to a different managerial structure  and if that change allowed a move away from the normal procedure for manning international trains - it would certainly have been an opportunity for change but might not have been grasped.

[icn]

On 08/01/2024 at 17:35, The Stationmaster said:

PS SNCf uses the term Chef du Train on its trains (as does part of SNCB).  The term does not apply to the staff on Cross Channel Eurostar trains where the role with a degree of equivalence to that of a Guard is titled 'Train Manager'.  There are in fact two Trains mangers on each Ceross Channel train - titled, imaginatively (not), TM1 and TM2.  One of them is there for only one reasons - to sit in the back cab as the train passes through the Tunnel ready to take control if necessary and drive the train back out in the opposite direction from the one in which it had been moving.  It's arranged like that to save time needed for  the Driver to change ends.  Eurostar UK filled the role by training a proportion of TMs to drive to the standard needed for that purpose.  

 

 

SNCF, for example, took a different route. and to appease their trade unions,  prided a Driver to cover the TM2 role - which means that job on a French manned train could't assist in any passenger facing tasks.  I don't know if that changed when Eurostar moved to a different managerial structure  and if that change allowed a move away from the normal procedure for manning international trains - it would certainly have been an opportunity for change but might not have been grasped.

 

One wonders if that will change when they upgrade to ETCS which offers a reversing mode which was introduced precisely for tunnel usage. Then again perhaps not, as reversing mode isn't much use if they need to split the train.