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Northern Unit Refurbishments

TheNekomancer

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11 Mar 2019
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I saw a 144 "Evo" when I was at Brough about a month ago, is that related? seems a bit weird to do those up when its being replaced soon
 
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YorkshireBear

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I saw a 144 "Evo" when I was at Brough about a month ago, is that related? seems a bit weird to do those up when its being replaced soon

That was in the old Northern Franchise, was a porterbrook funded refurb to demonstrate pacers could be made DDA compliant.
 

61653 HTAFC

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And then it's been written into every franchise that they must be withdrawn before 1/1/2020
The obvious home for it would be on the Cardiff Bay shuttle, up until the South Wales Metro takes whatever shape it ends up with. You'd probably want a second one though, which doesn't currently exist.

Despite being the only Pacer fit for the post-2020 railway, it probably won't be wanted by any preservationists for that very reason. That is unless a preserved railway wants to actually provide a public service onto the 'big railway', such as Swanage to Wareham or Bishop's Lydeard to Taunton.
 

Andyh82

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Northern Have tweeted today that 50% of trains have now been refurbished.
 
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Northern Have tweeted today that 50% of trains have now been refurbished.

Northern's boast seems a little disingenuous. I dont believe it is not true to say that 50% of the fleet that will remain after 2020 have:
  • received the new livery, and
  • received PRM modifications, and
  • had the full internal 'refurbishment' (including recovered seats with the new moquette, new flooring, at-seat power, etc).
It might well be true that 50% of the fleet have had at least one of the above treatments.

Also, whatever percentage completed to date has taken the company 34 months to reach. There are only 9.5 months (42 weeks!) remaining to complete the rest of the fleet.
 

Bantamzen

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Northern's boast seems a little disingenuous. I dont believe it is not true to say that 50% of the fleet that will remain after 2020 have:
  • received the new livery, and
  • received PRM modifications, and
  • had the full internal 'refurbishment' (including recovered seats with the new moquette, new flooring, at-seat power, etc).
It might well be true that 50% of the fleet have had at least one of the above treatments.

Also, whatever percentage completed to date has taken the company 34 months to reach. There are only 9.5 months (42 weeks!) remaining to complete the rest of the fleet.

I'm sure there are people at Northern who share the same frustrations. But there are a number of factors that will have played a part in this, the major ones being regularly discussed on this forum.

Firstly there is the age of the fleet. With the best will in the world, refurbishing a fleet that is on average well into its twighlight years of service must come with its own problems. We know the 155s were to say the least challenging, with some in quite a poor state of repair, perhaps not surprising when they have been intensively used in a fleet with very little slack. So it is equally possible that similar problems have been encountered with other types of unit.

Then of course there is workshop capacity, which is finite. With delays to early jobs due to worse than expected unit conditions, and many TOCs requiring their services (with similar potential for delays) it should not be a surprise by now that the Northern work is probably behind schedule.

Such is the nature of this kind of work, and unfortunately it is very likely that all of it will not be done by the end of the year. And I suspect that this won't be the only end of year target missed. This forum is going to get interesting next January!
 

Harvey B

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Hi there, how many trains are Northern actually refurbishing? (in total) Because Northern are promising to refurbish 243 trains but I can only count 241 i'm not counting the 769s as they're technically 'new' units (even though they are 319 conversions) and i'm not counting the units going off lease this year (142s and 144s, 153s, 321s, 322s and 323s) and the 180s and 185s as they are not really northern units.
75 Class 150s
7 Class 155s
47 Class 156s
53 Class 158s (45 units with 2 cars, 8 units with 3 cars)
16 Class 170s
27 Class 319s
& 16 Class 333s
If you get a calculator and add the numbers up you get 241
Can anyone tell me where I've gone wrong here and where the other 2 trains actually came from?
 

jonesy3001

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the northern 323s are going for PRM mods at the end of the month has they will be staying with northern with the 323s from WMT batch to join when there lease is up with them, it's been a strong rumour for a long time.
 

507021

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Hi there, how many trains are Northern actually refurbishing? (in total) Because Northern are promising to refurbish 243 trains but I can only count 241 i'm not counting the 769s as they're technically 'new' units (even though they are 319 conversions) and i'm not counting the units going off lease this year (142s and 144s, 153s, 321s, 322s and 323s) and the 180s and 185s as they are not really northern units.
75 Class 150s
7 Class 155s
47 Class 156s
53 Class 158s (45 units with 2 cars, 8 units with 3 cars)
16 Class 170s
27 Class 319s
& 16 Class 333s
If you get a calculator and add the numbers up you get 241
Can anyone tell me where I've gone wrong here and where the other 2 trains actually came from?

Three of the 319s (372/373, 446) aren't staying permanently, so that's 238 units.

If 150001/002 and 150202/207/216 join Northern from GWR, then that's 243 units.
 

507021

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the northern 323s are going for PRM mods at the end of the month has they will be staying with northern with the 323s from WMT batch to join when there lease is up with them, it's been a strong rumour for a long time.

Has this been confirmed?
 

Harvey B

Member
Joined
11 Mar 2019
Messages
984
Northern's boast seems a little disingenuous. I dont believe it is not true to say that 50% of the fleet that will remain after 2020 have:
  • received the new livery, and
  • received PRM modifications, and
  • had the full internal 'refurbishment' (including recovered seats with the new moquette, new flooring, at-seat power, etc).
It might well be true that 50% of the fleet have had at least one of the above treatments.

Also, whatever percentage completed to date has taken the company 34 months to reach. There are only 9.5 months (42 weeks!) remaining to complete the rest of the fleet.

That's funny as I think I read a Tweet by Northen saying that the whole fleet will be completed by the end of 2020 so either
A) Northern will have to do PRM mods on all the units beforehand and put them in for new liveries and internal refurbs at a later date if they are planning to refurbish all units by the end of 2020
or
B) when the new trains arrive Northern can send more trains off for full refurbishments then they can hit their targets alot quicker
 

Harvey B

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11 Mar 2019
Messages
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Three of the 319s (372/373, 446) aren't staying permanently, so that's 238 units.

If 150001/002 and 150202/207/216 join Northern from GWR, then that's 243 units.
Thanks alot, i'm guessing these units haven't been delivered to Northern yet. If so, then that must be why under-counting by 2 units
 

507021

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Been commenting on posts on facebook for most of the day and the drivers have been briefed that the 323s will be staying since they are quicker then the 319s and the 319s that will stay will become FLEX units.

Ah right, thanks.
 

507021

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Thanks alot, i'm guessing these units haven't been delivered to Northern yet. If so, then that must be why under-counting by 2 units

No problem.

They haven't joined the fleet yet, and I'm not sure when they're due to arrive unfortunately.
 

Harvey B

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11 Mar 2019
Messages
984
No problem.

They haven't joined the fleet yet, and I'm not sure when they're due to arrive unfortunately.
Thats alright, at least I know that there will be 243 units that will be refurbished.
Also, when are you updating your fleet list as there have been units that have come out of refurbishment and returned to service and other units have gone in for refurbishment
 

Wtloild

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8 Aug 2018
Messages
189
Was really impressed with the Virgin-style toilets on this refurbished Northern 150, until I realised:
- The tap doesn't work
- The toilet doesn't flush

Baby step Northern, baby steps.
 

61653 HTAFC

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Was really impressed with the Virgin-style toilets on this refurbished Northern 150, until I realised:
- The tap doesn't work
- The toilet doesn't flush

Baby step Northern, baby steps.

Hmmmm. It seems the laissez-faire attitude to maintenance that has developed (perhaps out of necessity) within Northern and its predecessors will no longer get by. Modern toilets and modern units need regular refilling with water, along with tanks being emptied.

This in itself isn't a bad thing, but the issues now appearing (stinky toilets, no water)is the downside of the last 30 years of under-investment.
 

anamyd

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Was really impressed with the Virgin-style toilets on this refurbished Northern 150, until I realised:
- The tap doesn't work
- The toilet doesn't flush

Baby step Northern, baby steps.
Virgin-style...? So they say hey to you and tell you about their life as a toilet...? Or just conversion-spec PRM toilet modules...? Tap not working would probably mean that the water has run out, due to it "not needing to be topped up due to the water flush having been replaced by the vacuum flush" but forgetting that the tap still needs water, and the toilet not flushing would probably mean that the retention tank hasn't been emptied due to sufficient emptying facilities possibly yet to be installed...
 

anamyd

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Hmmmm. It seems the laissez-faire attitude to maintenance that has developed (perhaps out of necessity) within Northern and its predecessors will no longer get by. Modern toilets and modern units need regular refilling with water, along with tanks being emptied.

This in itself isn't a bad thing, but the issues now appearing (stinky toilets, no water)is the downside of the last 30 years of under-investment.
What stinky toilets are you referring to...? The original water flush track dumpers or the PRM retrofitted vacuum flush controlled emission ones...?
 

61653 HTAFC

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What stinky toilets are you referring to...? The original water flush track dumpers or the PRM retrofitted vacuum flush controlled emission ones...?
The latter. These units now need emptying regularly- something which Northern didn't have to factor into the vast majority of their diagrams previously. I imagine they aren't over-burdened with emptying points around their network.
 

CHAPS2034

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the northern 323s are going for PRM mods at the end of the month has they will be staying with northern with the 323s from WMT batch to join when there lease is up with them, it's been a strong rumour for a long time.

Has this been confirmed?

Been commenting on posts on facebook for most of the day and the drivers have been briefed that the 323s will be staying since they are quicker then the 319s and the 319s that will stay will become FLEX units.

Makes sense as one of the WMT 323s (217 I think) has just been refurbed with a PRM bog and I believe there is a programme to do the others. Seems daft if they only have a short period left with WMT and then go into storage.
 

507021

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