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Bad ride quality in some 80x carriages

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mike57

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I know this has been aired in other threads, but I want to relate our experience this weekend.

Travelling between Doncaster and Peterborough we were in coach J of a 9 coach unit. 3 times there were spells of violent vertical vibrations. Maybe not at 'going to leave the tracks level', but very unpleasant for passengers, and certainly way beyond the normal jumps and jerks that you get on the ECML. As an engineer this feels like an undamped movement. The adjacent carriage wasn't affected, as on the second occasion I was returning from the toilet in the adjacent carriage.

In all 3 cases I would estimate we were at or close to 125mph.

We have done the same journey in carriages D and E a couple of times this year in a Hull trains 802 (the last one a couple of weeks ago) and there were no issues. We experienced a similar but not as bad vibration last year on an LNER 80x service returning to Doncaster. Anecdotally others have experienced it as well.

Whilst it may not be an immediate safety issue it does imply something is wrong, either a design issue or maintenance issue. There were no members of staff in evidence to report it to or experience it, but surely LNER must be aware of the issue.
 
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Irascible

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It came out in the investigation of the GWR cracking issue that Hitachi had been a little less thorough than they might have been when modelling the suspension - should have been mitigated by earlier wheel swaps, iirc. May not be anything related to your issue of course.
 
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Clarence Yard

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Wear on the anti roll bar bushes and dampers result in a rapidly deteriorating ride quality at a certain point. Hitachi then change them out.
 
Swanley 59

Swanley 59

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Clarence Yard said:
Wear on the anti roll bar bushes and dampers result in a rapidly deteriorating ride quality at a certain point. Hitachi then change them out.
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Are some classes more prone to this issue that others? In my experience, Lumo 803s mostly ride passably well, LNER 801s are variable - some good, some poor - whereas TPE 802s are always poor to terrible. A recent, but mercifully short, trip on an 802 from Newcastle to Morpeth was the roughest riding train I've experienced since the demise of the Pacers.
 
fgwrich

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mike57 said:
I know this has been aired in other threads, but I want to relate our experience this weekend.

Travelling between Doncaster and Peterborough we were in coach J of a 9 coach unit. 3 times there were spells of violent vertical vibrations. Maybe not at 'going to leave the tracks level', but very unpleasant for passengers, and certainly way beyond the normal jumps and jerks that you get on the ECML. As an engineer this feels like an undamped movement. The adjacent carriage wasn't affected, as on the second occasion I was returning from the toilet in the adjacent carriage.

In all 3 cases I would estimate we were at or close to 125mph.

We have done the same journey in carriages D and E a couple of times this year in a Hull trains 802 (the last one a couple of weeks ago) and there were no issues. We experienced a similar but not as bad vibration last year on an LNER 80x service returning to Doncaster. Anecdotally others have experienced it as well.

Whilst it may not be an immediate safety issue it does imply something is wrong, either a design issue or maintenance issue. There were no members of staff in evidence to report it to or experience it, but surely LNER must be aware of the issue.
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Looking at the unit layout I can see that, unsurprisingly, coach J is a lightweight bogied vehicle - they are the worst riding vehicles in the 80X family and aren't much better under the 385s either. I've now actively chosen to avoid them when booking on either GW or LNER now. Oddly they seem to suffer from Osccilation at speed, something I've not encountered with other light weight bogies.
 
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Clarence Yard

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Swanley 59 said:
Are some classes more prone to this issue that others? In my experience, Lumo 803s mostly ride passably well, LNER 801s are variable - some good, some poor - whereas TPE 802s are always poor to terrible. A recent, but mercifully short, trip on an 802 from Newcastle to Morpeth was the roughest riding train I've experienced since the demise of the Pacers.
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No, it is age and mileage related, coupled with wheel wear. The end (DPT) vehicles tend to go through wheelsets more than the intermediate vehicles, both motored and trailer.
 
43096

43096

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Clarence Yard said:
No, it is age and mileage related, coupled with wheel wear. The end (DPT) vehicles tend to go through wheelsets more than the intermediate vehicles, both motored and trailer.
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Let’s be honest, the design is just a steaming pile of manure. The ride quality has been abysmal from day one.
 
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ic31420

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Clarence Yard said:
No, it is age and mileage related, coupled with wheel wear. The end (DPT) vehicles tend to go through wheelsets more than the intermediate vehicles, both motored and trailer.
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Why is that? I can't think of a reason that would happen?
 
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mike57

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fgwrich said:
Looking at the unit layout I can see that, unsurprisingly, coach J is a lightweight bogied vehicle
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OK that explains why only that coach was affected, and it makes sense. Carriage was also full, ~70 people plus luggage say another ~6t of load, not sure if that comes into it.

It was certainly an undamped vibration rather than reflection of track imperfections into the coach. Started suddendly and continued until something 'broke' the oscillation, in two cases I think a slight change of speed, in the other a curve. Hard to estimate the frequency of oscillation, but at a guess ~2Hz, but was unchanging whilst it was oscillating. Certainly very unpleasant.

I do find it hard to comprehend how something like this has made it through design and testing without being identified and addressed. Too much reliance on modelling and not enough on real world testing maybe. 125mph bogies have been around in the UK since the mid 70s, with design probably starting earlier than that, how come 50 years of design experience have just been ignored.

Where can one find out the configuration of each unit? I would certainly avoid coach J on a 9 coach in future.
 
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Irascible

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mike57 said:
I do find it hard to comprehend how something like this has made it through design and testing without being identified and addressed. Too much reliance on modelling and not enough on real world testing maybe
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IIRC - and it was a while ago so I'm very open to correction - the basic modelling was sufficient but they didn't model or account for wear, either in part or whole.

First high speed bogies here were probably those under the APT-POP vehicles which rolled out in 1971, so the design would have been going a couple of years before, in parallel with the Mk3s which showed up in 1972. I'd expect it'd have been earlier if there was better track around, although weren't some B4-family cleared for 110? anyway, our railway was something of a pioneer of high speed on existing track, but that was the far side of the 1980s.
 
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It does seem very much associated with weight. Carriages in the USA have always been significantly heavier than in Britain. In the 1930s, just before "lightweight" vehicles came along, they could be getting on for 100 tons each, and nowadays the Amtrak Superliners are around 75 tons. They always ride very well on high quality track, and cope so well with some of the poor quality lesser lines there, on which UK stock would probably derail. The USA manufacturers have also been good with bogie design - the best riding of the BR Mk 1 fleet were those with Commonwealth bogies. Those are an American design, licensed by a Sheffield steel company.
 
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Irascible

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The only things Amtrak has which hit european speeds are on the NE corridor, and since the Metroliners which were a bit problematic they've all used European tech. IETs ride ok at 70mph too :p - I'd rather be on a 158, but still - and even the original Mk1s are ok. B4/5 are as good as commonwealth under a mk1, I think.
 
nctd2306

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Irascible said:
The only things Amtrak has which hit european speeds are on the NE corridor, and since the Metroliners which were a bit problematic they've all used European tech. IETs ride ok at 70mph too :p - I'd rather be on a 158, but still - and even the original Mk1s are ok. B4/5 are as good as commonwealth under a mk1, I think.
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To be a bit pedentaic, they are (very) slowly bringing a few other lines up to speed, there are a couple of routes in the Midwest where trains reach 100-110mph, indeed on the Amtrak live map which shows the current speed of the train, I regularly see the Superliner operated Texas Eagle reach 100mph, they and the similar Surfliner carriages also reach reach 90mph in California I'd be interested to see what the ride quality is like on those services
 
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43096 said:
Let’s be honest, the design is just a steaming pile of manure. The ride quality has been abysmal from day one.
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and with my cynical hat firmly in place, I wonder if all the test runs that were conducted with real people on board rather than dummies sitting in the seats were done at lower speeds to disguise the fact that this new multi-billion pound project was a bag of nails when you let it loose between Paddington and Swindon or York and London
 
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mike57

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43096 said:
Let’s be honest, the design is just a steaming pile of manure. The ride quality has been abysmal from day one.
Click to expand...
I think there are actually two issues here:

Generally the ride quality is poorer than the stock that was replaced
There is a specific harmonic/hunting issue with some carriages
 
ac6000cw

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Irascible said:
The only things Amtrak has which hit european speeds are on the NE corridor, and since the Metroliners which were a bit problematic they've all used European tech.
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The Amfleet passenger cars are home-grown (all Budd, including the bogie design AFAIK, which is different to the Metroliners) and since 1978 must have run millions of miles at 125mph hauled by (European-derived) AEM-7, HHP-8 and ACS-64 electric locos.
 
ac6000cw

ac6000cw

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mike57 said:
I think there are actually two issues here:

Generally the ride quality is poorer than the stock that was replaced
There is a specific harmonic/hunting issue with some carriages
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Bogied rail vehicles are basically beams supported on springs near the ends, which will have a natural (quite low) resonant frequency, 'excited' by energy from the motion of the vehicle (e.g. track level variations, curves, rail joints, switches etc.). To control the oscillations the kinetic energy in the resonant system needs to be taken out (normally by damping, which basically converts kinetic energy into heat).

The resonant frequency (and the amplitude of the oscillations) will depend on vehicle length, mass, stiffness, spring characteristics, damping etc.

IIRC, the BR (Met-Camm) Mk.4 carriages had resonance-related ride problems when new, which resulted in them being fitted with extra dampers at the vehicle ends (I think between adjacent vehicles, under the inter-car gangways).
 
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sh24

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mike57 said:
I think there are actually two issues here:

Generally the ride quality is poorer than the stock that was replaced
There is a specific harmonic/hunting issue with some carriages
Click to expand...

I use GWR's IETs most weeks. I've not experienced the second issue - maybe the slower line speeds from Reading to the W Country help with that - but on the first point they can be pretty shocking on anything other than flawless track. On a jointed section (Yeovil Junction to Pen Mill) they leap and bounce like a bucking bronco on every joint.

While loathe to join the everything modern is rubbish movement (I remember how hated HST's were in the 80's) IETs aren't exactly the most amazing new trains. Stadler on the other hand, I continue to be impressed by. Genuinely good.
 
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cambsy

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i Can’t remember any particularly bad rides on 800’s, but have had what would describe as lively running on these units, and the ride quality gives more impression of lively running. The 225 sets when first introduced were prone to rough riding, think due to the sets being designed for 140 mph but only running at 125 mph, so work was done on their SIG bogies to dampen for 125 mph, but when they ran 130-140 mph the ride improved. Best riding and most comfortable were the MK 3’s before got older, but are still in my opinion some of the best coaching stock ever.

the Stadler units are in my opinion the Best built and riding units of the modern era, just seem really well built and put together, and can go like the proverbial rocket ship especially the 755’s On electric.
 
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Irascible

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Regularily smashing into the suspension stops can't be doing the track all that much good. How can you only model a perfect system? that's just mindblowing. The basic lesson that's been forgotten is don't cut corners, which is a current and broadly infected disease. Hitachi stock having problems isn't unique to Britain either.

I do feel Hitachi spinning off the UK operation into it's own company & then bailing out of the whole thing has a non-zero probability given there is going to be wear on rather larger & more expensive components going on in the background. Does the crack fix program change out any big components for later variants?

ac6000cw said:
The Amfleet passenger cars are home-grown (all Budd, including the bogie design AFAIK, which is different to the Metroliners) and since 1978 must have run millions of miles at 125mph hauled by (European-derived) AEM-7, HHP-8 and ACS-64 electric locos.
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My bad! somehow mentally I lumped those in with Metroliners. There wasn't meant to be an implication that the knowledge wasn't there, but the original implication was that we didn't have any.
 
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roughyed

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Swanley 59 said:
Are some classes more prone to this issue that others? In my experience, Lumo 803s mostly ride passably well, LNER 801s are variable - some good, some poor - whereas TPE 802s are always poor to terrible. A recent, but mercifully short, trip on an 802 from Newcastle to Morpeth was the roughest riding train I've experienced since the demise of the Pacers.
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My wife and I had our first experience of a TPE 802 when travelling from Manchester to Edinburgh last month. We had reserved seats in coach B. Apart from being rammed the journey north wasn't too bad, found the seats ok and the ride not bad, the worst thing was a regular loud bang from underneath the end of our carriage. We didn't see a single member of staff to ask what this noise was so we dismissed it as just one of those things.
The return journey was far more stressful, as the train rolled past us at Haymarket we noticed that coach D had lots of green lights showing, so we got on this carriage and it WAS nearly empty. Immediately we noticed that it was rather cold but thought we could tolerate that for an uncramped QUIET ! journey. How wrong we were. We set off for Carstairs and before long the carriage started to buck up and down alarmingly, the vibration was horrible and there was the loud banging again under the carriage. We could only describe it as a white knuckle ride. Luckily the staff were dutiful and we were advised that coach A was warmer and so we moved, the staff admitted that other people had complained about the ride quality but couldn't tell us what the loud banging was. Coach A was a lot warmer if a little cosy, but although the ride was a lot better the underfloor banging was still there.
 
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roughyed

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greyman42 said:
Are you sure you were not on a class 397?
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DOH I am just a casual observer and occasional traveller but I should have known that the 302s are bi mode and the 397s are pure electric. Does this mean that the 397s are very bad riding also. We travelled on the 12 22 from piccadilly on 22/4 and the 10 17 from haymarket on the 25/4, it was coach D on this train that gave the rough ride, but both trains had the awful underfloor banging. I am sure that one of you guys that no all about diagrams could confirm that both trains were 397s.
 
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