Meridians post-electrification

SpacePhoenix · 10 Jan 2015

If all tilting was disabled on the WCML and the max speed limits reduced accordingly how much extra time would be added to a journey end-to-end?

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The Ham · 10 Jan 2015

w1bbl3 said:
I would have thought that logically due to the lack of tilt directly cascading 222's to XC would be more sensible than sending them to west coast. This would enable withdrawal of the HST services and reduction if not elimination of doubled up 220's by using 7 car 222's. Beyond this some of 170's could be replaced by 4 car 220's particularly the Nottingham > Cardiff route to take advantage of 100mph+ mainline running.

This would open options for 170's being cascaded as 15x replacements, effectively creating the potential for no new DMU's to be needed until well into the 2030's.

Regarding west coast I can't think of a tilt capable bi-mode or that such a small order to cover London > North Wales services would be viable, a follow on order of short 390's would make sense to release 221's from under the wires running Scotland > London via Birmingham. These could be further released to XC.

I've already said that I'd forgotten about the need to tilt on the WCML. The problem with XC having the 222's is their current inability for the 222's to run paired with with 220's or 221's. Which was why I had suggested keeping them apart.

The other problem with the 222's going to XC is that with only a small amount of electrification in CP6 more routes could be run by EMU's meaning that they could have a short life there. For instance wire up the two routes York/Sheffield (about 45 miles) and wire up Derby/Birmingham (about 40 miles) and the Reading (Southampton) to Leeds services could (in addition to the south coast to Manchester services) be run by EMU's. Such an EMU could be at least 7 coaches long to provide a large increase in capacity on those services as well as freeing up at least 20 sets to be used elsewhere (a bigger improvement than getting all the 222's).

If in CP6 or CP7 the routes between Cardiff/Bristol and Birmingham is wired (125 miles) then a load of other services including the Cardiff to Nottingham services could then also be run by EMU's.

Domh245 · 10 Jan 2015

SpacePhoenix said:
If all tilting was disabled on the WCML and the max speed limits reduced accordingly how much extra time would be added to a journey end-to-end?

At most, it would only be 5 or so minutes quicker than the equivalent timetable from the pre-tilt days (eg 2000), the savings coming from enhanced acceleration.

higthomas · 10 Jan 2015

trawscymru27 said:
How about putting the 222s on Waterloo - Salisbury - Exeter services? This would release a whole load of 158s/159s (versatile units of good quality that I believe can be used on most routes) for cascade to Northern/EMT/FGW. I think the West of England services are heavily used and a lot of the services are made of 4/5/6/7/8 cars. The linespeeds are quite high too (maybe not 125 mph but at least 90 mph in places).

This idea has come up before and I think it was scuppered by the rather surprising loss of capacity, which really wouldn't be acceptable on a busy commuter rout into Waterloo.

Edit: Whoops, I hadn't realised I was reading only page one. For a more detailed answer seer page two.

AndyLandy · 10 Jan 2015

sprinterguy said:
I think that the 222s would make a good regional fleet for the Wales franchise in place of the 175s. The 220/221/222s dont cut much mustard with me as Intercity trains, but I think that theyd do fine as regional ones.

That's actually about the only other use I could think of for them. Unless Grand Central, or some other OA TOC, takes them and frees up the 180s for Wales.

The Ham · 10 Jan 2015

sprinterguy said:
I think that the 222s would make a good regional fleet for the Wales franchise in place of the 175s. The 220/221/222s dont cut much mustard with me as Intercity trains, but I think that theyd do fine as regional ones.

With some reformation, 17 x 6 car and 10 x 4 car units (one spare intermediate vehicle left over) to replace 16 x 3 car and 11 x 2 car class 175 units sounds like a pretty good way to increase capacity on busy Marches and North Wales coast services.

Maybe not that much of a capacity improvement as the 3 coach 175's have basically the same capacity as a 4 coach 22x (although I assume that the former have no first class). This then leads to the question "are the relevant platforms long enough to cope with longer trains?".

bunnahabhain · 10 Jan 2015

The ideal route for them will probably be Liverpool to Norwich in 6 car formations with the MCO turned into an MSO leaving just a small half coach of first class, if South TPE were transferred over or a third fast over the Hope Valley started up, there is your stock for it. Perhaps Scottish internal express services could be another alternative with a mixture of 5 and 6 car sets.

The Ham · 10 Jan 2015

bunnahabhain said:
Perhaps Scottish internal express services could be another alternative with a mixture of 5 and 6 car sets.

The next holder of Scotrail has said that they will be using short HST's, given that that will be until quite some time after MML electrification the 222's would need another use until then.
--- old post above --- --- new post below ---
As posted elsewhere the 222's could be used to run the services to Cornwall and provide a more frequent service AND more seats over the day, even though each train would have less:

JamesRowden said:
JamesRowden said:

Using my calculations from a couple of years ago, I think that the number of 222s in existence are exactly the number (including spares) which would be required to operate an hourly Paddington-Plymouth-Penzance service. My calculations assumed doubled up sets between Paddington and Plymouth, and the train splitting at Plymouth with a single set continuing to Penzance. The trains could be 5+5 or 5+6 between Paddington and Plymouth, and 5-car or 6-car between Plymouth and Penzance.

My calculations are as follows:

Paddington<->Plymouth = 4 Hours (with 1A91s diversion via Swindon and its extended journey time between Paddington and Reading)
Plymouth<->Penzance = 2 Hours

Therefore, if an average turn-around time of 60 minutes was provided for each unit at its termini, the number of sets required would equal:
(4+1)X2+(4+2+1)X2=24

There are twenty seven 222 sets and a total of 143 carriages. Therefore they can be configured into:

8 6-car Sets

19 5-car sets

I think that three spare sets seems reasonable.

Two sets could be released from the service if the termini turn-around times were reduced from an average of 60 minutes to an average 30 minutes (during the engineering works used for the calculations). But I doubt that this would produce a robust service during such engineering works. Obviously there would be greater turn-around times when there aren't any engineering works. So therefore there could be some excess units on a weekday (or a non-engineering-work-weekend) to run an additional service or to strengthen a service west of Plymouth.
--- old post above --- --- new post below ---
Obviously using the 222s rather than HSTs would affect the journey times with:

Additional time required for splitting/joining

The greater acceleration of the 222s reducing the journey times between stations

Click to expand...

Having a look at this, there are a few things which I think are a little different. Overall journey time is basically 5.5 hours rather than the 6 hours quoted.

Based on this it is possible to (by some units running 3 legs a day) run double sets of 222's the full length of the route from Paddington to Penzance every hour for 13 hours. This does however require 26 units, which isn't viable. However by cutting two legs (one return journey) you save 2 units resulting in 3 spare sets. Given the capacity enhancements set out below the alternative is to run 13 hourly services but with 2 of them as 5 coach trains whilst still maintaining the same number of daily seats.

The 10 coach sets would have 500 seats (not including the tip up seats) whilst the 11 coach sets could have 568 seats. Over the course of a day (based on 6x11 and 6x10 coach trains) would result in 6408 seats a day each way. Even with IEP (630 seats per train) on the current 9 trains per day would be 5670 seats a day each way. That would be an increase of 13% over the increase of 18% which IEP would provide over the existing HST's (about 1/3 increase over existing).

There could be scope to improve things over what is stated above as the 222's are likely to be able to complete each leg faster (due to better acceleration and automated doors), there could also be a shorter (i.e. less than the hour allowed for) turn around at each end.

Meridians post-electrification

SpacePhoenix

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RailUK Forums

The Ham

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Domh245

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higthomas

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AndyLandy

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The Ham

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bunnahabhain

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The Ham

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