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London Transport Traction Group; Project 483

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lttgroup

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A few of you may have seen this elsewhere, if you have then I apologise but we are trying to get our name an aims known within the railway community!I am the secretary of a new organisation, the London Transport Traction Group. We formed earlier this year with our chief aim being to secure, for operational preservation, one of the remaining Class 483 units when they reach final withdrawal later this financial year.
In order to answer a few of the more common, or likely, questions that we have been or might be asked I've prepared a few points, reproduced elsewhere, outlining the current state and aims of the project, which we have dubbed 'Project 483'.
  • We intend to secure a single Class 483 unit for operation under its own power on a heritage railway.
  • Although we have only second-hand information at present we believe that, despite the generally poor condition of the fleet, one unit might be salvageable for further use.
  • We have been in touch with a potential provider of the required equipment to enable self-powered operation, who showed some interest in the scheme.
  • The group has also been in touch with a heritage railway who would be interested in storing and operating a unit on their line. I will not say which one at present as we are still waiting on a few other things.
  • A request to acquire a unit has been submitted to South Western Railway, we are currently awaiting a, hopefully, positive response.
  • We are intending to preserve a unit in its class 483 form as there are numerous differences between the class 483s and their 1938TS origins. The 1938TS is also well-represented in preservation by the London Transport Museum's operational set, whereas the tube trains of the Isle of Wight are not currently represented in preservation (I believe the ex-Island Class 485/486 cars at Acton are being backdated to LT condition).
  • The aforementioned heritage railway is not the Isle of Wight Steam railway, as we are well aware of the lack of available space at Havenstreet. The railway has outlined its plans for representation of the tube stock in its collection, and the LTTG would be very happy to support the IoWSR in achieving positive outcomes for both us and them.
For more information, please see our website - www.lttractiongroup.co.uk - where you will also find links to our other social media outlets.

If you think you might be able to help, or have any other enquiries, then please email me at [email protected]
 
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SER 235

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Sounds intriguing, hopefully you get a Unit which is not a rust bucket. Is there anyway to support this group?
 

A0wen

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  • We intend to secure a single Class 483 unit for operation under its own power on a heritage railway.

Just out of interest - how do you propose to meet this aim ?

As far as I'm aware there's only one UK heritage railway using 3rd rail - and their track is 2' narrower, the 3rd rail is in a different position and operates at about 1/6th the voltage the mainline does.
 

reddragon

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Just out of interest - how do you propose to meet this aim ?

As far as I'm aware there's only one UK heritage railway using 3rd rail - and their track is 2' narrower, the 3rd rail is in a different position and operates at about 1/6th the voltage the mainline does.

London Underground operate many battery locos which could for the basis of self powered tube stock, as could the Vivarail option
 

A0wen

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London Underground operate many battery locos which could for the basis of self powered tube stock, as could the Vivarail option

Not sure the Viva rail option works with 'tube' sized stock. Don't forget the D trains are pretty close to standard sized rolling stock, wheres the 483s are not even close.

And according to this https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/London_Underground_battery-electric_locomotives LU's battery locos work at 320v when not on the live rails - so I'm not sure they'd be capable of providing the power.

The only possible option would be one of the preserved MLVs....
 

birchesgreen

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Third bullet point "We have been in touch with a potential provider of the required equipment to enable self-powered operation, who showed some interest in the scheme."

There are a lot of companies looking to move into this area, wouldn't be surprised if they'd jump at the chance to test out their tech.
 

lttgroup

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We have, indeed, been in touch with a supplier who deem it to be possible to do it with tube-sized stock, albeit at a cost (which is to be expected).

There have been some new developments concerning this project, but I am not yet at liberty to post them publicly.
 

341o2

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Any updates on delivery of the new units and withdrawal of the 483's?

Since lockdown, only one ferry route for essential travel only, and the Island could see localised lockdown implemented
 

357

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One of the best things to do to drive traffic away from your website is to announce an announcement. Why not just make the announcement when the information is actually available?
 

43096

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One of the best things to do to drive traffic away from your website is to announce an announcement. Why not just make the announcement when the information is actually available?
Quite - always better to under promise and over deliver. Given the fanfare about it, it better had be as exciting as they’re making out.
 

Ralph Ayres

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Sorry to be negative, but I worry that this could be a dilution of available resources (people and money) and end up as yet another stalled project rusting on a siding somewhere. There is as mentioned already a preserved 38 stock, and it's hard to see how preserving another in its Island Line form has more worth or will generate more interest than say getting a SR SUB operational, or the old Ryde Pier tram for that matter. For me at least, with the possible exception of the dinosaur livery, the main attraction of the 483s was simply the chance to travel on a 38 stock, not the modifications that were done to make it suitable for the Isle of Wight.
 

lttgroup

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We like to think so. It was mostly done because we're having to make various changes to the website so we deemed it best to let people know in advance.

I will say now that we have been making firm arrangements for the storage and future operation of a unit.
 

lttgroup

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Sorry to be negative, but I worry that this could be a dilution of available resources (people and money) and end up as yet another stalled project rusting on a siding somewhere.
This is very much something that we will be doing everything that we can to avoid, and it's a part of our agreement for storage.
There is as mentioned already a preserved 38 stock, and it's hard to see how preserving another in its Island Line form has more worth or will generate more interest than say getting a SR SUB operational, or the old Ryde Pier tram for that matter. For me at least, with the possible exception of the dinosaur livery, the main attraction of the 483s was simply the chance to travel on a 38 stock, not the modifications that were done to make it suitable for the Isle of Wight.
This is a fair observation. However, with the latest developments we are confident of gaining sufficient support for the venture.
 

Journeyman

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Sorry to be negative, but I worry that this could be a dilution of available resources (people and money) and end up as yet another stalled project rusting on a siding somewhere. There is as mentioned already a preserved 38 stock, and it's hard to see how preserving another in its Island Line form has more worth or will generate more interest than say getting a SR SUB operational, or the old Ryde Pier tram for that matter. For me at least, with the possible exception of the dinosaur livery, the main attraction of the 483s was simply the chance to travel on a 38 stock, not the modifications that were done to make it suitable for the Isle of Wight.

Very much inclined to agree. The LT museum set will keep the flag flying for the 38 Stock - I'm not convinced there's much merit in attempting to save the heavily modified versions that are completely falling to pieces. If you want to allocate precious resources to EMU preservation, I can think of plenty of more worthy candidates, including the 4-DD cars.
 

birchesgreen

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I am inclined to disagree. There are quite a lot of EMUs in preservation but few of them every run (except as hauled stock) so a 483 that can move on it's own will be pretty attractive.
 

Journeyman

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I am inclined to disagree. There are quite a lot of EMUs in preservation but few of them every run (except as hauled stock) so a 483 that can move on it's own will be pretty attractive.

I'd far rather that effort was put into something not already represented in operational preservation. The 2-BIL at Shildon would be much more worthy.
 
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SER 235

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Very much inclined to agree. The LT museum set will keep the flag flying for the 38 Stock - I'm not convinced there's much merit in attempting to save the heavily modified versions that are completely falling to pieces. If you want to allocate precious resources to EMU preservation, I can think of plenty of more worthy candidates, including the 4-DD cars.
I agree with your point and I have to empathize that I do like the 4DD the point, but if you applied the same theory of someone already has a preserved train then there would be one 2 EPB (there are 3 fully preserved sets) infact if the original presovationists went "well they have an A4 why do we need to preserve one" we would probably be stuck with mallard and don't say that one lives in Canada, there are still 4 in the UK all owned and preserved by different people. A better analogy would be the S15s of which 7 are preserved which means that with the S15s that there is a preserved example of the most common varients.
 

Journeyman

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But you can't tell people how to spend their money.

No, that's true.

I agree with your point and I have to empathize that I do like the 4DD the point, but if you applied the same theory of someone already has a preserved train then there would be one 2 EPB (there are 3 fully preserved sets) infact if the original presovationists went "well they have an A4 why do we need to preserve one" we would probably be stuck with mallard and don't say that one lives in Canada, there are still 4 in the UK all owned and preserved by different people. A better analogy would be the S15s of which 7 are preserved which means that with the S15s that there is a preserved example of the most common varients.

I see where you're coming from - of course there's nothing wrong with having multiple preserved examples of particular types of train, especially as represented at different times of their history. However, an absolutely pristine operational 38 Stock unit already exists, but many other preserved EMUs are in danger of extinction, therefore I think there's better candidates for a project like this.
 

birchesgreen

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I think people should be free to help out in whatever preservation group they want and the trains they feel passion for rather than some other project just because.
 

lttgroup

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Here is the news:

Negotiations are still very much ongoing, but this is an important step towards fulfilling the group's aims.
 

Speed43125

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Here is the news:

Negotiations are still very much ongoing, but this is an important step towards fulfilling the group's aims.
Given it's extremely unlikely you are going for some form of 3rd/4th rail system on the EOR, is this basically going to be a BEMU conversion, with provision to run on 3rd/4th rail (your release mentions talks with SWR)?
 

43096

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Here is the news:

Negotiations are still very much ongoing, but this is an important step towards fulfilling the group's aims.
Hate to say it........ So the "exciting" announcement was you're in negotiations to take a train you haven't got yet to a railway you haven't got an agreed deal with yet.

Piece of advice: announce something when you have something definite to announce, and don't trail it in advance, even less so as "big news" or "exciting". Don't feel the need to make announcements during a negotiation process - only the relevant people need to know where the negotiations are at and who they are with.
 

lttgroup

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We were given a statement by the EOR specifically for public release, therefore we publicly released it. Naturally there are details which we couldn't reproduce in a public announcement.

The EOR and the LTTG are, as it happens, rather excited by the possibilities that both organisations will be presented with through cooperation.
 
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