Crickey - a lot of posts in the last few days and not really any positives to glean from it.
Hi all, first post over here so please let me know if you have any feedback/questions.
SWR released a bulletin for Operational Staff about 701 Operations.
Guards on the 701s now can operate from the rear cab in /0s and /5s. However they will have to wear a Hivis Jacket and this can only be used if the train is full and standing. This also means that if their is a short platform (eg Motspur Park & Thames Ditton) and it is full and standing the Guard will not be able to safely alight to the platform from the cab which means the train will not stop at the station. This raises concerns on trains per hour during peak times, as I've seen rammed 701s this new procedure could lead to more runfast calls at short stations.
Also, discussions with Guards suggest that they may be planning to have a guard office onboard 701s. Absolutely unbelievable to me.
Unbelievable - well it is actually rater believable.
I wonder if Covid will be trotted out as an excuse again ?.
In reality it is Covid that has meant SWR can just about cope with a lack of trains - at the moment.
This and HS2 are not a good advert for the UK railways - I am talking about the perception non railway people have.
In my life I have always been interested in excuses and trying to be understanding (some might say gullible). But eventually, if there are too many problems and excuses, anyone gets to the point where they lose interest. This farce has gone on for so long and taken so many twists and turns it is hard to take the railway seriously - hopefully just this part of the railway.
Thanks, as I thought.
The main problem then appears to be the Hounslow loop, where there are a number of short plans with very busy trains calling in the peaks.
There are short platforms at the western ends of the Windsor and Reading lines, but unless there's major service disruption or events such as Royal Ascot or Twickenham rugby trains are not rammed at these locations. Likewise on the Chertsey line, but these services operate via the Hounslow loop..
I can see the railway just simply not serving these areas when there are events planned at Twickenham and/or Royal Ascot.
Example - Coventry Arena anybody !.
Or they should all have been built as 5-cars in the first place as that would avoid the problem? Whatever, the entire project is an utter fiasco from start to finish (assuming there is a finish…).
Crying over spilt milk but yes Greater Anglia amended their order and simplified their Aventra fleet by splitting their originally ten car 720s into pairs of five car 720s. Granted the majority of their fleet were to be 5 car (89 iirc) so adding a further 44 that were to be 22 ten car was perhaps a little less radical.
I wonder if SWR did not see this option being relevant.
For me the easiest solution seems to be TEMPORARILY removing a trailer and making the 701s nine car. It is bound to involve software changes but ideally no hardware changes - hopefully there is a really dumb trailer in them - after all the 345s could live without two intermediate coaches as seven car units BUT that did require a different software version. Which would be easier to code as the 345s were more complex anyway needing to cope with three (?) different signalling systems.
I wonder at what point it becomes inevitable that south-western metro services will completely collapse sometime next year?
There must come a point in time when:
- There's insufficient time to get enough staff trained on 701s to roll out the minimum necessary fleet by next year
- There's insufficient time to get the various faults on the 701s sorted out to roll out the minimum necessary fleet by next year
- There's insufficient time to carry out overhauls of the 455s to keep them in service beyond next year (even if such were to be authorised or even possible)
If such a point is reached without solutions to those issues, service collapse will be almost inevitable as the 455s will run out of hours or miles and have to be withdrawn. Even possibly drafting in the 350/2s would need work doing to them, approvals, route proving, and no doubt more staff training needing union agreements.
All the while SWR management and unions are bickering with each other and fighting their internal battles, that day draws nearer. I doubt that we've reached it yet, but how far away is it? I hope that someone is keeping track of it, but I suspect that SWR management's plan is just to walk away and blame the oncoming disaster on GBR.
I would say that at this late stage only sorting the 701s is a possibility. This has dragged on for so long. The 455s have had a stay of execution for maybe three years already.
Really ought not be too difficult to allocate pairs of two 5car units to couple of non standard peak hour workings.
Neither station is in the very complicated and expensive to lengthen the platform category, when you compare it to some of the work done for 2017 10car scheme eg moving signal and bridging an A road to extend platform at Kingston.
If we are talking about just two stations and four services then someone needs to wake up and deal with the rules rather than the exception to them !.
When you look at the speed platforms were constructed for stations like Hersham and Berrylands for new electric trains, then compare it to current glacial pace of fixing the problem, it makes you wonder where all the staff expertise in getting things done and delivering a solution on South Western has gone.
I think. Really since privatisation, a lot of knowledge has left the UK rail industry and headed for railways overseas. I once read it argued that those managers and engineers that had emigrated were unlikely to return.
