D854_Tiger

The government needs to get a grip on this whole franchising malarkey else they're creating a free pass for Calamity Corbyn to unleash his snowflake mates, from the student union bar, onto our railways.

So what have they done, they sent in Chancer Grayling a political buffoon, unsure of what he is saying and with little idea of how to say it

20 years, due for renewal now in 2020 I think - whats the betting they wont get a renewal......

 

South West Trains and Southern were on the brink of signing 20 year deals to when the SRA pulled the plug - only Chiltern managed to sign before the policy change.

Ironically how many TOCs have gained unofficial/unintended 15-20 year deals with a fraction of the improvements, if any Chiltern managed?

 

Great Western 1996 to 2022 (probably).

South West Trains 1996 to 2017.

Virgin West Coast 1997 to 2020 (at least).

 

Then those second round contracts who are getting extensions on the short deals.

East Midland Trains.

Cross Country

TPE

South Eastern

 

If long term 'fund it yourself' deals had been let I wonder what kind of network we'd have now ?

The appeal to this government of twenty five year franchises is that it would be a great way to take the wind out of the sails of the party opposite, their big ideas for renationalisation and a key manifesto policy.

Politically it would be a very smart move, once they've worked out a way to make a franchise last more than a year that is.

 

(ii) The duties they will perform are not that taxing - only 4 coaches long rather than the 8 or nine being dragged round on the GWML and running at 100ph max, meaning less stress on the engines and other components

 

Personally, I believe 2 + 4 (some will be 2+5) is f*****g ridiculous.

I am looking forward to it immensely.

As it happens 'all the branchlines' weren't 'left off'.  Greenford and Bourne End/Marlow were excluded - in both cases because of train length as neither Greenford nor Bourne End could accommodate a 4 car Class 387 set.  Windsor and Henley were both included in the electrification scheme albeit as supplementaries and not part of the original proposal but have subsequently been deferred (DafT speak for completely cancelled) under the Grayling led money saving cutback of GW electrification.  Both these branches would no doubt have used simple ohle because that is what has been used throughout the GW electrification ('simple' as opposed to compound catenary - which hasn't appeared in new UK electrification for many years).

 

Bedwyn was bo doubt left off because it simply couldn't be justified however one stacked the numbers.  Operationally leaving it off sounds daft as it is the current terminus for many B&H local trains.   On the other hand no extra bi-,mode 800s have been acquired to run services to Bedwyn, all that changed is the way in which 5 car units will be diagrammed in a way which would allow (some?)daytime off-peak trains to be covered through to Bedwyn.  whether or not that proposal will now happen remains unclear to me in view of the problems of extending the turnback siding at Bedwyn which at one stage NR was saying was no longer possible (A 'decision' they no doubt reached after actually realising what extending the siding would involve instead of what they thought it might involve before they'd looked at it - rather like the whole electrification scheme in microcosm almost where one simple question of those who knew the site would have told them what the potential problem was)

Judging by the number of class 802s GW has ordered they (or the DfT) must have big plans to increase the frequency of their services over the WoE route.

One magazine suggested there would be scope (under consideration) for an hourly London - Westbury (and probably Frome) IET service, covering all the stops between Newbury and Westbury, though class 800 as some of the class 802s are now being ear marked for the Cotswolds routes eventually (wonder why). There was also talk of some of these Westbury trains running through to Trowbridge and even Bristol.

Another hourly service would cover the stops between Westbury and Exeter, leaving the WoE express services to be either non-stop, one-stop or two-stop between Exeter and Reading. London - Plymouth would be served half-hourly by these faster trains for most (if not all) of the day.

That came from some press release GW sent out but with the health warning that the final timetable is still being finalised.

Commuter traffic has grown exponentially over recent years on the Westbury route, similar to the Cotswold Line, these railways are no longer the rural backwaters they were deemed to be back in the 1960/70 dark ages when rationalisation was the order of the day.

The GA bi modes are only for the local services, not to run through trains between Yarmouth and London.

 

The route got the trains it had because they were available, this order is the first time in decades that the Norwich line has had new, purpose built trains. Just like how the Waterloo - Exeter line had whatever BR could find behind the sofa until the 159s came along.

Indeed and the class 159s were a standard design intended for and deployed across the entire network.

Quite:

DSCN1278.JPG

Someone let the kids lose with crayon box again.

That livery says to me, "This is what happens when good design meets the group standard and the group standard is allowed to win four nil."

It reminds me of a broken kaleidoscope.

GWR did off their own bat - and got a far better lease deal than the 800s procured by the DfT on behalf of the franchise (the ECML batch has similarly sky high leasing charges for the same reason)

 

GWR went for the 802s mainly because it helped with fleet standardisation. At the time of ordering the 800s pretty much all InterCity operations were in the hands of a single train type (the HST). With Hatachi already investing in maintenance facilities dedicated to the 800s it made logistical sense to go for the 802s for West of England services (at one stage the HSTs were going to be refurbished and retained for these services). However because FGW had a free hand, Hitachi responded with a competitive leasing deal.

 

Had the DfT not effectively forced 800s on them, its quite possible that GWR may have developed a plan based around the offerings of another manufacturer - remember that before the DfT selected Hitachi as their development partner, the likes of Siemens and Alstom were interested in providing 'next generation' InterCity trains to replace the HSTs and had train procurement been left in the hands of the ROSCos / TOCs you could well have had a number of potential options out there for FGW etc to chose from at far more competitive prices than the DfT offering.

The notion you could ever have centralised planning, for the long term, under our political system is largely pie in the sky, most especially when you fail to back that up with longer than seven years for a franchise commitment. 

It always did sound rather half hearted, at least going back to letting the TOCs and the ROSCOs all go their own separate ways is being honest about it.

Manky purple, silver & orange doesn't remind me of blue, cream & khaki. I had my eyes tested last Monday, do I need a refund?

I feel your pain.

GA don't have to run any further is the difference. The GWR inter city trains have to run to Hereford, Swansea, Plymouth etc, whereas there most recent buzz word for the GEML was "Norwich in 90"; ie the longest journey on the route would be an hour and a half. Not the 3 hours (or so) that many GWR trains have to run.

 

If the GWR service didn't go past Bristol or Cardiff then a train like a 444 might make a lot of sense.

Well GA are ordering bi-modes and one reason why more trains from London don't go to say Yarmouth has always been the lack of wires, then how much difference is there between a class 444 and an all electric class 801, apart from top speed, they are both EMUs.

BR certainly viewed the former GE lines as worthy of similar equipment to other IC routes, class 47s, class 86s and class 90s plus mk3.

It just seems to me, here we are three orders in, and the concept of a standard IC design has already gone out of the window, however, I guess the test of the IEP concept will be what gets ordered for the MML and whatever comes next on XC.

My guess is that Hitachi will not be given a free pass, will have to compete and why not, but, if so, that does rather blow a hole in the whole IEP concept of a standardised national fleet and beg the question why anyone bothered.

They don't seem to be in a hurry to re-livery the 350 fleet, I've only seen one in the new livery and that was just after the franchise change so I'm guessing it was done for initial publicity. They have got around to putting their own name over the former LM name on the train side.

I've warmed a little to the West Midlands livery but only because it is reminding me of the old Birmingham Corporation Bus livery.

I noticed a London Northwestern Railway class 350 the other day bearing the new company's name had been qualified by Operated by West Midlands Trains.

So now we are to have trains calling at Reading operated by TfL and trains calling at Wembley Central operated by West Midlands trains.

Blimey, these new mayors do like their empire building but does it have to be a twenty paces.

 

D854_Tiger, on 24 Feb 2018 - 14:26, said:

 

 

Well I'm confused now.

 

Who ordered the GWR 802s?

 

If we're going to split hairs, we can say they aren't part of the IEP, they're just trains with a nearly identical design to the IEP trains. (And to really split hairs, since so far as I know the original idea was for a train which could be also be used elsewhere, you could argue that follow-on orders are in a sense also part of the IEP).

 

GWR is calling its 800 IETs and it would be somewhat confusing not to say perverse were they to decide to call the 802s something else.

 

I suspect the class 802s will mostly be called cheaper.

 

The IEP analysed and identified routes where a new inter city fleet might be deployed.

East Anglia was ruled out and thought better suited to a Class 444 regional express type train.

That view has been mirrored by NR and the DafT at other times over the last decade.

 

 

It's entirely possible.

The all-electric version would make a sensible replacement for diesel powered Super Voyagers on services such as Birmingham to Scotland, which runs fully under the wires.

It's not as if there's another off-the-shelf inter city train readily available ATM.

 

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I would be most interested to understand how the GA Norwich route differs from the GW Bristol and Cardiff routes.

The look pretty similar to me, apart from a noticeable lack of wires on two of those routes, and one might believe ideal for this standard IC train design we have been promised and paid through the nose for.

I'm sorry but a standard IC train design that turns out to be not so standard is either a failed design or is a mistake that is now being scuppered by the kind backtracking that strongly suggests a**e covering.

I will tell you what it looks like to me someone thought the IEP was good idea, it wasn't and it turned out to be an expensive mistake and the current bunch of incumbents are engaged in damage limitation over an idea they find it hard to really care about because it wasn't their idea.

The one saving grace the IEP has going for it, currently, and keeps politicians attention focused is that it's built over here but other train builders are about to do the same thing and unless those IET leasing costs come down ....

But what's the point of either mixing WoE trains with Bristol/SWales ones all the way to Wootton Bassett, or mixing WoE passengers with Swindon/Bristol ones if you extend certain services to the west? Watch one of the signalling websites and monitor the traffic across Wootton Bassett Junction even now, without the additional Bristol TM - Parkway - Paddingtons. Its tight, even if everything is on time. Will the WoE trains take the Bristol - Chippenham paths being looked at as an extension of Bristol suburban operations providing trains to a new station at Corsham? Or will they run via Parkway and Ashley Bank, locations which are seeing big investment to cope with the traffic already planned. Could WoE trains be scheduled that way without risking the overall integrity of the route?

 

And how do trains via Bristol help people connecting at Westbury? Or at Castle Cary? Both locations where the local authorities have aspirations to increase rail traffic. How do they serve Pewsey, where additional calls are requested, and what train service does the hoped for Devizes Parkway get? 

 

With the WoE service gone, will the stone trains alone generate enough revenue to keep Westbury to Bedwyn open? Are the loadings on the outer suburban trains, plus the stone receipts enough to keep the line beyond Newbury? What chance the Heart of Wessex line if the WoE inter-citys are re-routed, and the freight traffic lost as uneconomic?  

 

As with your previous comments saying that only end-to-end times matter, and that running faster between London and Swindon is fine for Chippenham to Bristol users as overall the train maintains the same start to stop timings, you show an astonishing ignorance of the actual, and aspirational traffic patterns on the WoE line. As for the Chippenham to Bristol user, you should have seen the crowds waiting for the 13:44 Down this afternoon; as good as for any weekday morning rush hour train. I know it's late running (seemingly due to problems changing from electric to diesel) potentially increased its actual numbers, but few passengers arrived on the platform after its booked time. 

 

Running a railway is a rather more complex task than it appears.

The original GW IET timetable proposal envisaged four trains per hour to Bristol, two of which would be limited stop (Parkway and Swindon or Reading) and one of which would be extended to Exeter or Paignton.

I have read nothing since or noticed cancellation of train orders to suggest that is no longer the plan.

How hard would it be to extend a second Bristol train say to Plymouth, running non-stop to Exeter, and substituting a class 800 with a class 802.

I am not suggesting the Westbury route should be run down, quite the contrary, but not every train needs to go to the far West to maintain its level of service.

It's probably academic to talk of further electrification but the via Bristol route is the obvious one, not least with its potential for knock on effect for further XC electrification. Of course, if that were the case, places like Wooton Basset would probably need flying junctions and Swindon to Didcot four tracking but, forgive me for pointing out, that is exactly the kind of thing that has been happening on both the WCML and ECML as they have been upgraded.

We seem to be forgetting that the class 802s will be bi-mode, well what's the point of that just to get to Newbury, how many tanks of diesel full could be saved going via Bristol (not to mention emissions) and let's also see how the track access charge debate pans out. If lowering that pantograph turns out to be more expensive than keeping it up, I know which way I would want to send my trains, most especially if it turned out to be quicker as well.

He is obsessed with speeding up the end to end journey times so his much loved IETs will be quicker than the HSTs, of course the only way they can do that is to run them fast missing out a lot of the intermediate stations but passenger journey requirements mean those stops are required because there are more and more people travelling by rail and the railway should be serving them instead of going for these pointless 'headline' trains.

You only have to read the media that comes out of the West Country's main population centers to know I am not the only one obsessed by the end to end journey time.

Particularly, the good people of Plymouth who have long complained that, in national terms, they have been hard done by in terms of rail infrastructure.

Agree.  

 

As a former Chartered Engineer of many years, albeit my specialisation is not railways, I am appalled at so shallow an article in a magazine/webzine (call it what you will) called 'The Engineer'.  I sincerely hope we don't see the article quoted by uninformed journalists under some heading like 'Engineers power trains by the sun'!

 

 To understand more where the 'research' is going, one needs to read the report referred to (Riding Sunbeams): I confess to only having read the executive summary plus a few other bits, but am left with the feeling that we are seeing here nothing more than a university project (which is commendable in itself for furthering science - don't get me wrong): there are too many 'ifs', 'mights' and 'possiblys' for any pragmatic application of the supposed advantages, which in any case are a maximum of 10% of the energy needed…though where the figures come from seems to me a bit of smoke and mirrors especially for the UK situation.

 

To keep the research aspect in perspective, I note that one of the authors is from 10/10 climate action, whose aim is quoted as: 10:10 is a registered charity that exists to help people take action on climate change. Whether we’re installing solar panels on schools and community buildings, cooking up a vegan feast, celebrating the power of onshore wind, or lighting up our favourite places with LEDs, we’re positive, inclusive and dedicated to cutting carbon. Charity no: 1157 363 . 

Not a lot to do with railways or major engineering planning, methinks: more about banging the green drum which, again, is commendable but it is a question of context. The other author is a post-doctoral researcher and is not quoted as being an Engineer (by which I mean the true, usually Chartered, sense).

 

Whatever your or my view on the idea, it is a little too early in the development process to affect GWML electrification!

 

 

(Edited for typos)

Many railway lines run through areas with great potential for solar power.

I think we should be told where they are in the UK so we can book our package holidays.

I think the Class 221 Voyagers that were kept by Virgin West Coast were mainly used on the Euston/Holyhead which weren't a Pendolino dragged service or mainly the Birmingham New Street/Edinburgh services, until more Pendolino's were ordered.  I think Virgins diagrams were very tight and therefore they didn't spare any to cover hiring out to Cross Country.  The only place you see Virgin and XC Voyagers together is Central Rivers depot.

Once someone decided to disable the tilt on the XC Voyagers I suspect the idea they could be interchangeable went out of the window, mainly because of crew training and familiarity reasons.

Would any XC driver, trained in the last five or six years, be allowed to drive a tilt enabled class 221 say between New Street and Manchester.

Up to a point. Most trains in the south west would then need to be bi modes to take any kind of advantage of that.

Might make more sense to look at electrifying a larger swathe of Devon so the local trains could go over to EMUs and the inter city trains could use the wires.

(I'm thinking Exmouth - Exeter - Paignton; Don't believe the nonsense that Dawlish couldn't be done, sea walls have been done in the past, such as at Saltcoats on the Ardrossan line). Though I'm spending lots of imaginary money here...

If electrification ever does reach the West Country I would put money on it being an extension of the core GW route via Bristol.

As it is, with HSTs, the time penalty for going via Bristol can be as little as 20 minutes. IETs will be fifteen minutes faster between Bristol and London (allegedly) so a WoE IET might only be five minutes slower via Bristol and that assumes no speed upgrade is possible for the via Weston route, to say 125 mph, something I believe would be far less problematic than via Westbury.

It might be very interesting, just as it is, to see how tempted GW will be to send more of their WoE services via Bristol, once the class 802s are available, it might even be possible to do it quicker than via Westbury, if you were to keep the stops to a minimum between Bristol and London, say just the one at Reading.

I wonder how the track access charges are going to work for a bi-mode, Uncle Roger has been discussing this recently albeit in his usual acerbic way, thanks to some of the stuff he has been hearing.

In theory, a bi-mode running under the wires should be charged more than both a diesel working or an electric working but I believe some a**e covering politics are in play to convince us all how eco-friendly bi-modes are and that to justify this the track access charges should reflect it.

Hmm. How will their plans fit in with B_____?

I was just waiting for someone to ask that but best not here.

How does ERTMS handle this situation.

Communications based signalling systems use sophisticated encryption methods to check that the telegram being received by the train is the one that it is supposed to get. This is a continuous process happening typically more than once per second. In case of doubt the train will stop. It is inherently extremely improbable that a third party could generate a signal that would be interpreted by the train to allow it to do something unsafe.

 

In Bangkok the BTS Skytrain system suffered from interference with the signalling system that resulted in telegram loss and service disruption. This was thought to be due to high powered (and often illegal) third party transmitting devices that unintentionally swamped the radio. Not unsafe, but disruptive.

Any radio communication can suffer from interference, left to its own devices the atmosphere can even do that, in the right (albeit rare) circumstances, but provided a system has been designed to be fail safe the worst that can happen is stuff stops moving.

Hacking into an encrypted communication is actually impossible, if the latest encryption techniques are being used, and that impossibility can be proven mathematically.

Indeed, many of these latest most sophisticated techniques are nowadays supported by freely available software, available on the Internet, which has worried GCHQ sufficiently for them to prompt government into introducing legislation to make it an offence for a user not to provide the key, once the necessary warrant has been raised.

An admission by the experts that even they have no solution to breaking such encryption, they face exactly the same problem breaking the dark net, so much so, they gave up trying on the sexy computer stuff and have fallen back onto more tried and trusted traditional techniques, such as follow the money and infiltration, and then surprised themselves with all the success they were having.

Far more worrying for safety critical systems is the security of the wider system, what (and how) is it connected to, all the encryption in the world over the radio is of little use if there is a backdoor way in via the Internet.

I once did some work for a well known Telecom operator and Internet provider (who shall remain nameless) and was offered the use of a brand new workstation, which needed its software installing. A task I offered to do and could they provide the superuser password allowing me to do so.

The superuser is commonly known as 'root' the password I was provided with was r00t and yep it turned out that password didn't just get me into one workstation it got me into their entire interconnected network, one press of a carriage return and I could have outed their entire operation and corrupted all their billing data for good measure.

It was the Internet equivalent of leaving the sophisticated encrypted locking mechanism of the bank vault unlocked and the bank's front door wide open.

Most of the worst hacking that goes on across the Internet is very unsophisticated because why resort to deviously complex software and high order mathematics, when you can cause mischief just by looking up the right person's Facebook page and pretty much work out their life story in five minutes and, more often than not, the passwords that go with it.

With what you have previously posted about your intimate knowledge of them I thought you were leading the staff introducing them into service, oh wait Brian is doing that isnt he!

I know I shouldn't really bother my empty head having any opinion on them and leave it to the experts, it's just that my fare box and taxes are paying for them (eventually) and I'm funny that way.

OK. So the plan is to replace the HSTs (Wasn't this originally the HST2 project?)

 

What are the options if you're not going to design anything new?

 

All that comes to mind for 125 mph diesel trains is the Voyager/Meridian design and the 180s.

 

I don't think the 180s were considered all that successful and would probably need some redesign for a 9 coach train.

 

The Voyagers were designed around tilt requirements so probably not where you'd really want to start for a non-tilting train. And I don't know if you could fit a modern emissions-compliant engine under a Voyager anyway.

 

And I believe at the start of the programme the understanding was that the GWML would likely be electrified during the life of the trains, so a train which can start out as diesel powered and be converted to electric power later will have more life than one which can't.

 

The alternative in the "only buy something existing" view could be that you order a fleet of Pendolinos for the GWML when its electrified, and also for the ECML when the 91+MK4's need replacing. And then you're buying tilting trains and not using the tilt.

 

Then again we have another fleet of 125 mph+ electric trains - the 395s. So maybe instead of Pendolinos you could go to Hitachi and order a fleet based on the platform used in the 395 design, but modified for the needs of intercity services...which is probably going to look not too far off an 800...

 

And if we don't take away the bi-mode bit, then none of the above works anyway. And the alternatives to bi-modes (stop through services off the wires, drag them with a loco, run diesels most of the way under the wires) don't seem that great either.

I'm not so much questioning the train just the way it was specified and ordered, the harsh reality is that the DfT, in a highly questionable attempt to stop the train leasing companies ripping us off (if indeed they ever were), has arrived at one of the most expensive trains ever produced for the UK, that does nothing previous trains didn't already do, and whichever way you want to write that up .....

Oh and apparently it might have s**t seats, which is a bit like paying eight hundred quid for a suit and finding there's a great big hole where your a**e goes.

I'm going to really go for it now and suggest maybe a fleet of nine car tilting Voyagers would not have been such a bad idea for the WoE main line, what Plymouth has been crying out for, for a very long time, is something a bit more imaginative that doesn't spend the first hour or so never getting past 40 mph, not the gesture of bi-mode that's mostly going to be used in one mode only, and, in the process, serve as a reminder to the West Country of what the government really thinks of them (less important than Newbury).

I know Pendolinos were looked at for the ECML and the tilt might have been useful north of Newcastle.

I reckon ideally for GW we should have just left it to the TOCs and the manufacturers, then we could well have ended up with something bi-mode that looks remarkably like a class 800 but surely nothing like as expensive.

I really cannot understand the obsession with having a common fleet, how many times did the HST's commonality prove to be useful, how many times was that really exploited, had they serviced them all in one place maybe but they never did.

Know for a fact or urban myth?

 

Originally the IEP trains were due to be delivered towards the end of FGW's franchise, so they would have had little or no interest.

Then the delay in the programme put delivery some time after the franchise had ended, when First may have been long gone from the GW.

 

Had the GW franchise been relet in 2013 as planned (or 2015, if First had taken up the extension option) and not deferred; It's altogether possible that First could have lost and never have operated them on the GWML.

It might have been another operator (note that Arriva, NEX or Stagecoach were the other shortlisted bidders named  in 2012).

 

 

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Thus far, the only TOCs that have ordered IETs are those TOCs that have been told they must have them, or follow on orders, where doing anything different didn't add up.

It's very noticeable that Greater Anglia did not order them (why not) when at one time Uncle Roger was telling us the intention was that IETs were going to spread far and wide, he even specifically mentioned Kings Lynn.

Supposedly there will be new (non-tilting) trains ordered for the next WCML franchise, to supplement the Pendolinos, will be interesting to see if they're IETs.

It looks as if the MML is going to get bi-mode and XC is crying out for them, but again, will they be IET, given the choice.

I wonder how they compare on the leasing cost and remember IET was a New Labour big idea, quite probably the current incumbents feel they need have no particular loyalty to it.

Like the UK derivatives of European platforms (e.g. Desiro) the Class 800 series is also based on a common Hitachi platform.

The AT300 platform is a derivative of Hitachi's successful A Train platform.

There's already 10 years worth of UK operational experience of another of the AT300 family.; the Class 395 Javelin.

 

 

 

 

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I cannot disagree with that just that by the time the DfT had finished with their input the IET had moved a long way from being a common platform.

My big problem with the IET, which I'm sure is a wonderful train, is that it isn't really doing anything that existing train fleets couldn't already do, no doubt wonderful design, but take way the (questionable) bi-mode bit, and they've largely reinvented the wheel.

We did with the buckeye - worked well enough for the Southern Region..................

 

TBH, though, the outer end of the DT doesn't require an auto coupler with full electric/control/air as my understanding is that it wouldn't normally be coupled to anything else - except for emergency purposes. The weight of the set - coaches plus 68 will probably dictate the use of a loco to rescue it, so buffers are a good idea.

 

But it does look awful.

 

Cheers,

Mick

Well at least it matches the other end and not much point having nice lines when it's going to be at the back of the train half the time.