If you want to discuss wider issues relating to the new franchise (such as why it includes HS2 in later years) please do so on the main award thread here. This thread is related to rolling stock questions about the new franchise.
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WCML New Rolling Stock Discussion
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EE Andy b1
Established Member
As I asked earlier, if WC went for 13 Stadler Flirt Bi-modes and 10 Flirt electric units is there any reason why these couldn't be doubled from say Crewe with an ex North Wales/Chester Bi-mode & ex Liverpool South Parkway/Blackpool EMU through to Euston and similar thing with Shrewsbury & Walsal. One path for two destinations.
Bletchleyite
Veteran Member
I would love to see Stadler, as you might imagine, but I suspect either 80x or a lower speed version of the Alstom HS2 proposal are more likely.
EE Andy b1
Established Member
Aye, seems more than likely. We can live in hope.
krus_aragon
Established Member
That's quite possible (though it doesn't have to be Stadler for that to work, does it?).
It would resolve the issue of how to keep serving all of Blackpool/Holyhead/Wrexham without any extra paths to Euston. Though if both the bi-mode and EMU fleets are short enough to double up, that means there aren't many extra carriages coming for the new planned services.
Good assessment.
Some reasons that the TPEs north of Preston aren’t that far behind the Pendolinos in terms of end to end timings:
1) the EPS differentials are generally smaller north of Lancaster, and there are many more places where there are no differentials at all. Much of this is down to signal sighting, or the nature of the track layouts in the station areas (Preston, Lancaster and Carlisle particularly).
2) dwell times are shorter for the TPEs (as you say).
3) the TPE trains are (usually) considerably shorter. This means they can get back up to linespeed from any Permanent Speed Restrictions more quickly. As an example, leaving Carlisle, an 11 coach Pendolinos has, effectively, an extra 1/10th of a mile at 20mph compared to a 4 coach TPE. At each individual restriction it is a relatively small effect, but it adds up to a couple of minutes over the whole journey.
4) the 350s acceleration is better than a Pendolino, albeit this advantage disappears at higher speeds.
I gather that there is some work looking into how non EPS speeds could be improved north of Preston, however the West Coast upgrade team did a pretty good job up there 20 years ago and there’s not much left to gain. ETCS would be the most significant benefit as it would remove all the signal based speed restrictions, although oddly that would enable further increases in EPS speeds also.
Hitachi has a tilt system of its own design, which is used on trains operating on 3ft 6in gauge track in Japan, Taiwan and Australia.
https://www.hitachi-rail.com/products/rolling_stock/tilting/index.html
Bletchleyite
Veteran Member
Indeed not. The now almost-standard paired-up 5 x 26m 80x would also deliver that.
krus_aragon
Established Member
Right, I've had a closer look. (Note, I'm only looking at the weekday diagrams, and concentrating on what's needed for off-wire work for Shrewsbury, Chester and North Wales. I'm assuming everything else is taken care of by other stock, and haven't considered where units are fueled or stabled overnight.)
Of the 12 diagrams in question, 9 spend most of their day on off-wire duties (503, 504, 506, 507, 508, 510, 512, 513, 514). Of the remaining three, 501 is only working off-wire journeys between 0710 and 1137, and 511 starts the day at Wrexham and switches to wired journeys after getting to Euston at 0941. The third, 518, is used to reinforce 513 on the 1120 departure from Chester Monday-Thursday, and is then under the wires. (On Friday it takes over 514's diagram, and 514 runs under the wires all day.)
If the under-wire journeys are all handed over to EMUs, diagram 501 could be merged with 514, and 511 could merge with 508. If one foregoes the strengthening of the 1120 ex-CTR on Monday-Thursday offered by diagram 518, that means the basic requirement for diesel / bi-mode units is 9 diagrams (plus maintenance spares). From the 13 (5-car?) bi-modes announced, that leaves 4 units for maintenance and strengthening diagrams, or occasional work under the wires.
The Planner
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The work goes down as far as Crewe though its coughing and spluttering a bit currently from what I hear. As for the 350s, the engineering allowances were reduced recently for TPE for many of the above reasons in that they can accelerate away from a TSR quicker.
I did wonder about that. Is that from Dec 19?
absolutelymilk
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I don't think anyone has yet mentioned the capacity uplift simply from replacing a 5-car Voyager (250 seats) with a 5-car 802 (326-342 seats depending on the layout). That is assuming of course that they are 26m as opposed to the 24m version as the EMR ones are.
LNW-GW Joint
Veteran Member
There is only one Euston-Wolverhampton service, the one that goes on to Scotland.
Some of the Shrewsbury services are combined with this service, and some are separate (irregular)
However most early Birmingham-Euston trains come from Oxley and start at Wolverhampton, and the reverse in the evening.
The Planner
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Should be.
Trying to keep up but would 13 sets, taking into account maintenance, be enough to double up all Chester and N Wales services between Euston/Chester all day weekdays? Bearing in mind the Shrewsbury work as well.
krus_aragon
Established Member
No. Chester to Euston is two hours each way, plus recovery time makes a five hour round trip. If you want everything between Euston and Chester to be doubled-up, that'll require ten units. The remaining three units aren't going to stretch very far: if you assume one is on Shrewsbury duty, and another on maintenance, that leaves only one unit spare for the NW coast. Chester-Holyhead-Chester is four hours with recovery time, so with only one unit west of Chester at any time, the current service would have to be cannibalised.
It may be more practical to consider whether all the Chester / North Wales services could be doubled up between Euston and Crewe (or Chester), as this could be done with the help of the EMU units that are running elsewhere north of Crewe.
Does that mean there is a spare Crewe-Wolverhampton-Birmingham path where the previous Birmingham-Scotland service used to run before it became an extension of the Euston-Wolverhampton services? And, if not, where did that path go?
Just to ask. Can the Hitachi sets work in multi if one is pure electric and the other a bi-mode? Only asking as if you think about it. A Blackpool currently couples up to a Holyhead. So in that scenario, the two differing types could multi at Crewe or Wolves.... Just a thought. The second Liverpool *could* multi with a NW/Chester service in theory if possible. (Don’t take this as insider info. Because it isn’t! )
EE Andy b1
Established Member
That's why I mentioned the Stadler Flirt units for the same reason. I've not seen anything to confirm or not if a Bi-mode would work in muti with an electric only unit. But why not? Would make sense as the idea would be to drop the diesels if future electrification was granted.
Chiltern006
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Just throwing this in there, AT300s dont tilt, so will it be something new or a tilting AT300? Orders of more pendolinos or a Bi-Mode version???
krus_aragon
Established Member
Give it another week or two, until the end of the stand-still period, and I'm sure we'll be told in a glowing press release just who's building the new stock.
The Planner
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Depends how you look at it, if the Scotland New St is in the same path (I can't remember if it is), then the WMT Shrewsbury New St is in its path now at xx.35. Northbound I'm sure the Birmingham Scotland was xx.20 where the Crewe/Rugeley is now.
Class 170101
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I don't think there is room for another Birmingham to Scotland path linked to the southwest / south coast through New Street if thats whats being tried, unfortunately.
LNW-GW Joint
Veteran Member
Southbound it's the same to Wolverhampton (with a wait there for the old Euston path to kick in).
Northbound it goes at xx15 from New St but there's an extra stop (compared to the old Scotland) at Sandwell.
Apart from maybe a new Shrewsbury train, didn't the LNWR Stoke service become an extra path south of Stafford when it was diverted through Birmingham?
But then these are the first extra paths via Norton Bridge since the grade separation there.
sprinterguy
Established Member
Yep, that'd work just fine. I'm expecting to see such workings with the ECML fleet, and wouldn't be at all surprised to see it with whatever West Coast orders.
Presumably the Aventra platform could do that as well; doesn't really rule anyone out even assuming that routinely coupling bi-modes to EMUs is what the new TOC are planning.
Ah, Virgin cutting the number of paths they had north of Birmingham from 2tph to 1tph has enabled extra WMT services. Thanks for the answer anyway.
Actually, I was thinking in the context of post-HS2 being able to route the Holyhead/Chester-Euston services via Birmingham the without losing the current Birmingham-Scotland services that call at Wolverhampton etc. Would be a big improvement over the current rather indirect routing of nearly all Chester-Birmingham services via Wrexham and Shrewsbury. Even better if you could get an hourly north Wales - Birmingham via Crewe and Stafford now without waiting for HS2.
tbtc
Veteran Member
There's a tidal flow to the Welsh services though - you could run a few doubled up units all the way *from* Holyhead in the morning, with a single unit providing the Euston - Chester services at breakfast time - similarly, run single units south from Chester in the afternoon/evening to permit double units to run all the way *to* Holyhead at that time.
Every four hours west of Chester might then be acceptable for the middle of the day (to provide double up trains every hour south of Chester).
Also, the capacity along the coast is going to see quite an increase with the new Liverpool services plus longer trains on the Birmingham/Cardiff trains too, so the local stations aren't wholly reliant upon the WCML franchise for additional seats (and there will be more connections at Chester in future than are currently available).
Good luck trying to convince the Welsh Assembly that they can have a 4 hourly gap. Especially when from Bangor the service does start to fill up, plus on several occasions I’ve watched people at the likes Rhyl and Prestatyn struggling to actually get on a 5 car Voyager. Certainly could never justify an hourly Holyhead based on Holyhead itself, but you’ve got to remember the train crew depot there, the flows from Bangor which are consistently there.
There is clearly a market for North Wales to be exploited, you only have to see how rammed the A55 and M56 and parts of the A5 are every week without fail at peak times. Rail needs to do far more to capitalise on it. The Liverpool train is doing very well from all accounts so far, so there’s potential there without a doubt. Maybe not so much London itself but there are huge connections with both North Wales to the North West and West Midlands and who knows, Greta Thunbergs flight shaming idea seems to be gaining a lot of attention. Maybe a Holyhead to Ireland train/boat revival could exploit this too. Anyway. Shouldn’t carry on with this as it’s more about the stock. Shortest platform I’m aware of on the route is a 7 car platform at Flint. All the others can take 10 so in theory these sets could be 10 cars! Only needing something like an SDO balise as now with 390s
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tbtc
Veteran Member
The number of passengers on the coast travelling to Milton Keynes/ Euston are a small minority. Obviously there are a handful of occasions when it's the end of term at Bangor or a Ryanair strike puts large numbers of passengers on the ferries, but we shouldn't be building the timetable around such things.
TfW are providing more services west of Chester and providing longer services west of Chester - if there are huge markets from north Wales to the north west (e.g. Manchester/ Liverpool) and the West Midlands (e.g. Wolverhampton/ Birmingham) then isn't that the responsibility of the TOC who run direct services from north Wales to such destinations?
Looking at the current MF timetable, there are no VT services west of Chester between 11:12 and 18:07... similarly no arrivals into Chester between 10:35 and 14:35... the Assembly may want the moon on a stick but running an hourly Holyhead - Euston service in the morning peak and an hourly Euston - Holyhead service in the evening peak (with a four-hourly service during the middle of the day, to permit all morning arrivals into Euston to be doubled up and every afternoon departure from Euston to be doubled up) seems a good use of resources to me (especially if the new trains have more than a single Voyager) - given that there are more local trains on the line west of Chester (and therefore more connections available).
No TOC runs more than a handfull of properly direct (via Crewe) services between Chester/N.Wales and Wolverhampton/Birmingham though, which is why I think the new stock order should consider the possibility of doing Holyhead-Chester-Crewe-Wolverhampton-Birmingham-Euston in future. Unless HS2 just abstracts everyone from the classic lines a 5-car wouldn't be sufficient south of Birmingham and between Crewe and Holyhead you'd have passengers for London and Birmingham on the same train helping to fill seats throughout the journey (unless the north Wales coast is wired and HS2 trains run through to Holyhead).
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