Porterbrook Cl.769 'Flex' trains from 319s, initially for Northern

[Bletchleyite]

Don't forget re-pointing the brick work

New windows or a new boiler are one of those investments that can save in the long term due to directly resulting in lower gas consumption. It'd be a bit like giving the 150s new engines which burn less diesel but power the train just as well.

Indeed. And that might well happen - I would be very surprised, for instance, if Northern's new CAF DMUs finish service using the same power equipment they start it with. They may retain the engines, but I would anticipate over the 30-50 year lifespan of a new train they are likely to be repowered in some form, possibly to bi-mode, hybrid or even battery-electric.

 

[Xenophon PCDGS]

Would stopping every train at Ince really be a problem? It might even increase usage.

Ince is not what you would call a station that would see increased usage from new commuters. Usage has remained steady at the 20,000 mark over the last 5/6 years. Have you visited that area in recent times?

 

[D365]

I would be very surprised, for instance, if Northern's new CAF DMUs finish service using the same power equipment they start it with. They may retain the engines, but I would anticipate over the 30-50 year lifespan of a new train they are likely to be repowered in some form, possibly to bi-mode, hybrid or even battery-electric.

Eh? How on earth do you expect electric motors to be added without completely rebuilding??

 

[NotATrainspott]

Because they are smaller and the bodies are cheaper, though, trains are in a way more like houses - if the bodies and bogies are sound, it can and does make economic sense to re-use those but fit new aircon, seats, traction equipment - just as nobody goes around knocking down Victorian terraced houses, but very often do rewire, replumb, refit, repaint, replace the windows and buy new furniture, which gives you a perfectly good like-new house. Or they convert them to flats, which is in some ways a repurposing a bit like the D-train or indeed this.

They're on a spectrum of inherent value. However, housing is somewhat different as its tied to the supply of land. You can replace a train when it becomes obsolete without ever losing the utility of it, as you only scrap the old one when the new one has been built and is in service. However, replacing a house necessarily requires losing the utility of it for the long demolition and reconstruction times, so the incentive to replace is far lower. You can plausibly improve many homes indefinitely without ever losing the utility of owning them. This doesn't apply to all buildings though, and many post-war structures don't fulfil this essential requirement that you're able to continue living in them while updating them. Many tower blocks, for instance, needed to be demolished because of the essential problem of replacing and upgrading their lifts to modern standards. If you need to turf everyone out of a building for months or years to remodel it, then it's often just as economic to replace it completely. The only exceptions are when the structure is listed or has some particular aesthetic or emotional value that is worth more than the loss of utility. Quite a few people will happily wait months to refurbish an old Victorian home with its period features but I don't see anyone being willing to wait the same amount of time to update a modern rabbit-hutch home when it needs an equivalent amount of work.

Also worth remembering is the actual value of the things being retained. If you strip a train back to the bodyshell and replace basically everything, you're also pretty much replacing the entire value of the train. As Siemens pointed out during the Thameslink bid win controversy, most of the value of a train is in all of these subcomponents. The more of them that you replace, the more of the cost of a new train you're approaching but without the benefits of having a blank canvas, or having uninterrupted utility of having a train in the first place. If you need trains, and refurbishing old ones would mean having fewer of them, then new trains that you can have delivered without losing old ones is an economic positive.

 

[Bletchleyite]

Eh? How on earth do you expect electric motors to be added without completely rebuilding??

You can unbolt engine rafts and bolt other things on to drive it instead - any rotating power source of sufficient power level could be substituted. You'd have to do significant mods to add a pantograph, but who says you wouldn't be turning it into a hybrid?

Think of it a bit like the way people have fitted all manner of engines into Land Rover Defenders. Someone even made an electric one using milk float parts - no use on the motorway but potentially very good for on the farm at low speed.

 

[Bletchleyite]

Ince is not what you would call a station that would see increased usage from new commuters. Usage has remained steady at the 20,000 mark over the last 5/6 years. Have you visited that area in recent times?

Not for about 20 years, no (I grew up in the North West but now don't visit very often). But even if there wasn't an increase, you're losing what, 2 minutes?

 

[D365]

You can unbolt engine rafts and bolt other things on to drive it instead - any rotating power source of sufficient power level could be substituted. You'd have to do significant mods to add a pantograph, but who says you wouldn't be turning it into a hybrid?

If that's possible then, how comes nobody has suggested converting a Class 170, for example?

 

[Bletchleyite]

If that's possible then, how comes nobody has suggested converting a Class 170, for example?

Because at present there is more demand for DMUs than supply. The proposal is to convert EMUs, because EMUs are spare. It's also cheaper to convert something that has a suitable low voltage input than something where you'd also have to add new body-mounted traction motors.

As the 170s and 185s are relatively new and in good condition, I could well see them being converted to something other than "plain DMU" later. Other changes are also likely such as replacement with mechanical gearboxes as SWT have done experimentally on a Class 159.

 

[D365]

To be honest, I don't wish to say it, but I fear you're heading into wibble territory here. I don't see how it is at all realistic that a mechanical or hydraulic-driven diesel unit can have its drivetrain completely replaced by an electrical system.

 

[Bletchleyite]

To be honest, I don't wish to say it, but I fear you're heading into wibble territory here. I don't see how it is at all realistic that a mechanical or hydraulic-driven diesel unit can have its drivetrain completely replaced by an electrical system.

Why? All the input to the bogies is is a rotating driveshaft of a specified rotational speed and torque. It could be replaced with *any* means of providing that, including one not invented yet.

 

[Bletchleyite]

Same with a car, though because car bodies are smaller and cheaper it's less economically feasible to do it. But people do do it with cherished cars - Transit engines in Series Land Rovers are very common. Indeed, Land Rover ended up doing the self same thing with the latter day Defender - bolt the 2.2Tdci Transit/Mondy engine into a vehicle that's basically the same as it was in 1980-bleugh.

 

[D365]

But why would you spend money on taking a train out of service and coming up with a retrofit design if it means rebuilding, say, 80% of the unit?

 

[Bletchleyite]

But why would you spend money on taking a train out of service and coming up with a retrofit design if it means rebuilding, say, 80% of the unit?

Why would it involve rebuilding 80% of the unit?

 

[D365]

Why would it involve rebuilding 80% of the unit?

That was an arbitrary figure but if you were going to fit an electric drivetrain you'd need a cr*p-ton of equipment, an electric bus, the whole shebang. Which is considerably more complex than bolting on a diesel or battery power pack.

 

[Bletchleyite]

That was an arbitrary figure but if you were going to fit an electric drivetrain you'd need a cr*p-ton of equipment, an electric bus, the whole shebang. Which is considerably more complex than bolting on a diesel or battery power pack.

Cutting a pantograph well would probably be the most complex piece of work. But who says we were going to build a 25kV OHLE EMU?

A low voltage bus line is a cable. Dead easy.

 

[edwin_m]

As CAF are building both EMUs and DMUs, it might make sense for them to produce a common bodyshell to which can be fixed either a diesel or an electric traction package, including a pantograph well and transformer fixings on the centre car of the 3-car units. The same bogie could have mountings both for traction motors and for a cardan shaft from a diesel. If they did this it would probably be to reduce design variation and spares holding rather than to make future conversion easier, but it would have that benefit too (at least for the 3-car units). The same might also apply to the LHCS.

 

[Bletchleyite]

The LHCS of course can be converted to electricity by taking the 68 off the end and putting an electric locomotive on instead. I believe this is the long-term intention.

 

[mwmbwls]

The LHCS of course can be converted to electricity by taking the 68 off the end and putting an electric locomotive on instead. I believe this is the long-term intention.

Class 88 ?

 

[Bletchleyite]

Class 88 ?

Yeah.

 

[modernrail]

Well I haven't seen anything here that convinces me the cost of these units should be anything more than a bit above notional plus cost of new kit amortised over the remaining life, let's say 10 years.

Does anybody have a guesstimate of the capex cost of the conversion kit?

Is there a realistic customer for non-modified 319's not already spoken for?

 

[WatcherZero]

£250k including fitting?

 

[modernrail]

If so, that is about £2k per month. I read somewhere that a pacer costs about £20k a month, which is a national disgrace. The civil servants and commercial advisers who screwed that one up at privatisation have no idea of leasing business models. We would laugh in the face of somebody who tried to lease a car at full fat rental for an asset that cost them close to nothing. Passengers have been paying through the nose for a fully paid down vehicle. It is time for some payback by the ROSCO's. They have a duty to their shareholders to maximise profits and sweat assets. Even if they get a pound in leading costs for otherwise unwanted class 319's they are duty bound to do it. Add £2k a month for the conversion and suddenly you have a very viable way to improve capacity and quality in the north overnight.

 

[northwichcat]

£250k including fitting?

If so, that is about £2k per month.

I don't agree. At 2k a month that would mean Porterbrook would need to lease them out constantly from early 2018 to late 2028 with no off-lease period to break even on the cost of conversion, which doesn't make financial sense for them to do as 2028 will be around the time the 319s are life expired (if not before.) Therefore, I imagine it will be at least £4k a month extra so that they can break even after 60 months of leasing and then not make a loss if they get withdrawn before 2018 or spend months off-lease. If my assumption is correct and that the £250k quoted is correct that would mean the cost to the Northern franchise would be around £385,000 extra per year extra in leasing costs for eight bi-mode sets over leasing 8 normal 319s. (Of course DfT will pick up the tab provided the bi-modes are being used to cover for Network Rail's infrastructure delays.)

 

[modernrail]

£385k is peanuts. I would think you could actually get this down a bit although I agree my £2k might be a bit light, they would want to recover the money within the franchise and include a finance charge. It would be very interesting to see the maintenance and fuel savings over the same period for a run like Southport. It might even equal out. Diesel is expensive stuff compared to grid electricity.

If you add passenger growth due to better capacity/quality you only need 8 extra passengers a day per train (at £16 return) to pay for the bi-mode bit. The spark affect is well documented and there should be a partial gain from bi-modes even if not the full affect.

Add O&M, fuel savings and extra passenger revenue together this seems to be quite a low risk strategy. It all depends how much you could get the per unit leasing cost down to for the underlying unit down to. This is where I think Rail North should play off Eversholt Renatus and Porterbrook 319 flex, with a threat that ROSCO's will be side-lined in future if they don't play ball.

I think it would be perfectly reasonable to revise the franchise plans with Northern if extra bi-modes can be brought to bear, beyond the 8 already planned. Southport, for instance, would be better served by a bi-mode on the existing route to the airport than a connect. The vast majority of passenger flow from Southport is to Manchester and not stations beyond.

One option would be to bring Renatus on to the longer distance routes currently used by 319's and then convert those 319 to bi-mode. This would naturally allow Renatus to concentrate on the more northern connect type routes with 319 flex on the more commuter flows.

If the local authorities and Rail North were to club together to do one thing on rail in the next 2 years, and put some cash in to pay for extras, this might be the most logical priority.

 

[northwichcat]

The spark affect is well documented and there should be a partial gain from bi-modes even if not the full affect.

Improvements spark growth which don't have to be the result of electrification. Just look at how much growth there has been on North TPE since the introduction of new diesel 185s or on XC since 'Operation Princess.'

If bi-mode 319s are used on Windermere services and passenger numbers go up would it really be because passengers prefer travelling on 319s to 185s or would it be because of Windermere will get more through services to Manchester?

 

[modernrail]

The Transpennine line should have been electrified 20 years ago with minimum 6 car trains. That service is one of the most important in the country. The upwards trajectory of passenger numbers pre-dates the switch to 185s. I do agree in general that new trains do generally mean new passengers.

A further thought, it would also make sense to put the northern 321's through Renatus. If they did this and acquired further Renatus and shuffled the deckchairs a bit there could be, shock horror, a near uniform EMU fleet for one part of the network.

 

[najaB]

The Transpennine line should have been electrified 20 years ago...

There are many things that should have happened 20 years ago (I never dated Halle Berry for example) but unfortunately nobody seems to have invented a time machine yet.

 

[NotATrainspott]

If so, that is about £2k per month. I read somewhere that a pacer costs about £20k a month, which is a national disgrace. The civil servants and commercial advisers who screwed that one up at privatisation have no idea of leasing business models. We would laugh in the face of somebody who tried to lease a car at full fat rental for an asset that cost them close to nothing. Passengers have been paying through the nose for a fully paid down vehicle. It is time for some payback by the ROSCO's. They have a duty to their shareholders to maximise profits and sweat assets. Even if they get a pound in leading costs for otherwise unwanted class 319's they are duty bound to do it. Add £2k a month for the conversion and suddenly you have a very viable way to improve capacity and quality in the north overnight.

The leasing costs of old BR units were deliberately made more expensive so that TOCs would have an incentive to upgrade to newer trains. New trains are politically popular, remember.

 

[najaB]

The leasing costs of old BR units were deliberately made more expensive so that TOCs would have an incentive to upgrade to newer trains. New trains are politically popular, remember.

Interesting. I wouldn't have thought a private business would deliberately price their product out of the market, leaving them with assets that aren't making a return - for political purposes.

 

[NotATrainspott]

Interesting. I wouldn't have thought a private business would deliberately price their product out of the market, leaving them with assets that aren't making a return - for political purposes.

No, this was the Government which made it happen. As I said, new trains are politically popular, and the only way to make the privatised railway invest in new trains is to make the old ones unusually expensive. If they hadn't then it is more than obvious that the incoming private operators would have used the old trains for as long as they could, making the public think that privatisation was a terrible idea.