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Class 800 upgrades to address performance and reliability issues

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74A

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1a77 delayed again today due to problems with the unit to be attached at Plymouth. Seems it left 13 late and was 29 late into London. What is so worrying is that at present there are only a handful of attachments a day and a disproportionate amount of delays and complications.

The attachment itself wasn't the problem. The ECS unit from Laira was 15 minutes late.
 
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ainsworth74

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Enough bickering. Knock it off. If these petty arguments continue then action will be taken by the Forum Staff including but not limited to the deletion of posts. They add nothing to the topic, make posters look silly and take the thread off-topic. If you're not happy with a post because you believe it breaks the rules or otherwise causes concern you must report the post using the "Report" button found at the bottom of every post.

Further for the avoidance of any doubt the Forum Rules on abbreviations we require that they be defined in the first instance in all cases (though we apply common sense in that we don't expect something like HST to be defined) and that abbreviations must not be made up. If it's not a standard abbreviation then it shouldn't really be used at all and most certainly should not be used without being defined first.
 

irish_rail

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The attachment itself wasn't the problem. The ECS unit from Laira was 15 minutes late.
Correct. And this highlights the in-efficency and high risk of this type of operation. 2 separate trains means double the chance of something going wrong. In today's case I believe 5a77 had a broken DSD. Why does 1a77 need to be reliant on 4 DSDs when it could quite easily run with just 2. The element of risk involved with the coupling of sets is what bugs me most. Also whilst travelling on 1a77 today I noticed over 10 passengers on at least 2 occasions having to switch between sets by running down the train due to being in the wrong portion , including 3 first class passengers who at Taunton had to run the length of the train due to the rear set being in reverse. This is not the kind of service we should be striving to provide. So much for excellent customer experience.
 

northernbelle

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I saw 800002 earlier which entered traffic a few days ago. There appears to be an additional piece of equipment underslung on the DPTF end of the centre car 813002. Can anyone confirm if this is the additional electrical noise suppression equipment they are due to receive?

If it is, it will be interesting to see if it has affected the ongoing screen-freeze problems experience by plugged in devices when the train is in electric mode.
 

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Mikey C

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The 9 car 800 I was on this morning (a Cardiff service) left Paddington on diesel power. The noise was definitely noticeable but still quiet, whereas an annoying vibration was more irritating!

The electronic seat reservation displays seem to be full working, both 800s I was on today used them exclusively
 

74A

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Correct. And this highlights the in-efficency and high risk of this type of operation. 2 separate trains means double the chance of something going wrong. In today's case I believe 5a77 had a broken DSD. Why does 1a77 need to be reliant on 4 DSDs when it could quite easily run with just 2. The element of risk involved with the coupling of sets is what bugs me most. Also whilst travelling on 1a77 today I noticed over 10 passengers on at least 2 occasions having to switch between sets by running down the train due to being in the wrong portion , including 3 first class passengers who at Taunton had to run the length of the train due to the rear set being in reverse. This is not the kind of service we should be striving to provide. So much for excellent customer experience.

10 car trains are not required to run through to penzance for 98% of the time. It has been decided that carting fresh air around for most of the time is not acceptable. So there are two options. Either you run 10 cars to Plymouth and then split. 5 cars go through to Penzance. The other 5 then join up with 5 from Penzance and return to London. Yes there is operational issues and things can go wrong.

There is an alternative however. You could have 10 cars running to Plymouth and terminate. A shuttle could then run from Plymouth to Penzance. Operationally much more reliable but not very good for the customer who would have to change trains. So they have gone for the first option to provide a through journey.

What is not going to happen is for a load of extra trains to be provided which would just run empty between Plymouth and Penzance.
 
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I saw 800002 earlier which entered traffic a few days ago. There appears to be an additional piece of equipment underslung on the DPTF end of the centre car 813002. Can anyone confirm if this is the additional electrical noise suppression equipment they are due to receive?

I can confirm it is.
 

F Great Eastern

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On a service from Cardiff today which was 2x 5 cars I'm sure that we were running on Diesel and very poor and useless air conditioning and barely audible announcements until Didcot Parkway

Then at Didcot all the vibrating on the train stopped, like engines going off, everything went quiet for about 20 seconds, after that air conditioning ramped up and announcements were fine after that and much better acceleration less noise and vibration.

There was a lot of 'can the driver please contact the train manager' and vice versa being played and talk about the front 5 coaches over the PA in the 15 minutes proceeding so seemed well planned.
 

CharlesR

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On a service from Cardiff today which was 2x 5 cars I'm sure that we were running on Diesel and very poor and useless air conditioning and barely audible announcements until Didcot Parkway

Then at Didcot all the vibrating on the train stopped, like engines going off, everything went quiet for about 20 seconds, after that air conditioning ramped up and announcements were fine after that and much better acceleration less noise and vibration.

There was a lot of 'can the driver please contact the train manager' and vice versa being played and talk about the front 5 coaches over the PA in the 15 minutes proceeding so seemed well planned.

I would be surprised if it was to do with it running on diesel, it might have been a case of turning it on and back on again.
 

fgwrich

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On a service from Cardiff today which was 2x 5 cars I'm sure that we were running on Diesel and very poor and useless air conditioning and barely audible announcements until Didcot Parkway

Then at Didcot all the vibrating on the train stopped, like engines going off, everything went quiet for about 20 seconds, after that air conditioning ramped up and announcements were fine after that and much better acceleration less noise and vibration.

There was a lot of 'can the driver please contact the train manager' and vice versa being played and talk about the front 5 coaches over the PA in the 15 minutes proceeding so seemed well planned.

I know the pair that you're talking about as I was working on the platform at Reading while they came in. Unsurprisingly there was a lot of complaints about the air con not working properly in the rear sets. Oddly though, they arrived in on Electric, then switched to Diesel upon departure. The rear set was sounding rather wheezy though, possibly suffering from blocked radiator grills?
 

F Great Eastern

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I know the pair that you're talking about as I was working on the platform at Reading while they came in. Unsurprisingly there was a lot of complaints about the air con not working properly in the rear sets. Oddly though, they arrived in on Electric, then switched to Diesel upon departure. The rear set was sounding rather wheezy though, possibly suffering from blocked radiator grills?

I was in Coach C and the front carriages were not much better truth be told. Was getting quite sticky until we got in at Didcot and when the engines went off I thought we might have a fault as there were many calls over the tannoy between staff between Swindon and Didcot.

May have switched back to Diesel at Reading, hard to tell as the train was very busy and noisy after leaving but there was engine noise all from Cardiff to Didcot and between Didcot and Reading it sounded more traction motor like without the hum and vibration of the engines and much better acceleration.
 

coppercapped

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No, it wouldn’t. Likely it would be the W of E would get canned. Hitachi supply diagrammed trains, not just trains and they determine where the spare units are. So GWR can do in day adjustments, as a reaction, but they don’t have the say over what unit comes off which depot to operate which service.

Take yesterday, for example. The problem with 1L34 was because the other half of the train got failed late overnight at Maliphant. There were no spares at Maliphant (they were all at North Pole that night) so the train was presented to GWR as load 5. It is always likely that diagrams that don’t start in London or Bristol are going to be the most vulnerable.

Because of the maintenance regimes, you have to be very careful where and when you adjust a diagram and mixing of the two fleets - they are not on the same maintenance regime - has to be very carefully done, if at all. You can get it disastrously wrong if you are not careful and get a unit stuck, which then has to be ferried back (sometimes after a Hitachi concession has been obtained) to Home Depot for attention. In one recent case, that took five days. If you present late for maintenance, they can give it back late (at no cost to Hitachi) and if you set up an imbalance of types at a depot overnight, the same result occurs and you can make a poor deployment situation even worse.

I really don’t get this fear of coupling and uncoupling. The 802 5 car sets will only have 42 other coupling possibilities per unit per location. When we introduced the Turbos it was 114 other coupling possibilities per unit per location and we soon found and dealt with the dodgy units and dodgy locations. I haven’t heard about any serious issues at Plymouth recently. Compared to other places on the network, managing 17 split and joins a day seems like a doddle to me.
Sometimes the wheels turn very slowly! So now I've just got round to being able to formulate the questions that have been rumbling around in the back of my mind for the last 10 days or so... :s

Really it's all about the maintenance regime. I remember you writing that the IEP sets and the Eversholt sets are on different - but related - maintenance cycles because of the differences in the respective contracts. But does this mean that all mechanical and electrical maintenance is only carried out at Stoke Gifford, North Pole and, to a lesser extent, at Maliphant? Can anything mechanical or electrical be done to the Eversholt sets (or even the IEP ones) at, say, Long Rock or Laira? Or is the only work done on sets which overnight at places like this cosmetic - possibly including toilet tank filling and/or emptying?

As I understand it the HST sets were effectively 'common user' - although they were allocated to a given depot for serious attention, if push came to shove then Laira could fix an Old Old set to keep the service running. From your description, and other reports, it seems that GWR has got itself lumbered with two separate fleets - although they are basically the same train - in the sense that an Eversholt set would not turn up on a South Wales working. It also seems to me that within the IEP sets, the nine car ones can overnight at places like Hereford, but the five coach sets all go home to bed at Stoke Gifford or North Pole.

It seems to me that considerable flexibility in the usage of the trains compared to the HST fleet has been lost.
 

Thunderer

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Sometimes the wheels turn very slowly! So now I've just got round to being able to formulate the questions that have been rumbling around in the back of my mind for the last 10 days or so... :s

Really it's all about the maintenance regime. I remember you writing that the IEP sets and the Eversholt sets are on different - but related - maintenance cycles because of the differences in the respective contracts. But does this mean that all mechanical and electrical maintenance is only carried out at Stoke Gifford, North Pole and, to a lesser extent, at Maliphant? Can anything mechanical or electrical be done to the Eversholt sets (or even the IEP ones) at, say, Long Rock or Laira? Or is the only work done on sets which overnight at places like this cosmetic - possibly including toilet tank filling and/or emptying?

As I understand it the HST sets were effectively 'common user' - although they were allocated to a given depot for serious attention, if push came to shove then Laira could fix an Old Old set to keep the service running. From your description, and other reports, it seems that GWR has got itself lumbered with two separate fleets - although they are basically the same train - in the sense that an Eversholt set would not turn up on a South Wales working. It also seems to me that within the IEP sets, the nine car ones can overnight at places like Hereford, but the five coach sets all go home to bed at Stoke Gifford or North Pole.

It seems to me that considerable flexibility in the usage of the trains compared to the HST fleet has been lost.
You are practically spot on. The 800 (under IEP contract) and the 802 fleets have different maintenance contracts. The 800's diagrams are tied to Agility and are contractually worked out, so they do so many miles a day and they must start and end at the scheduled depots (normally North Pole, Stoke Gifford and Malliphant) There was a case a while back where an 802 unit was not available to work an evening Paddington-Plymouth. There was an 800 available to use, but that would have meant it ended up at Laira overnight (its wrong scheduled depot) so the service was cancelled. That is the "mad world" of today's UK railways - yes there is limited flexibility with the 800's, but the 802's appear to be more flexible, they frequently appear on London-South Wales services, I had a ride on 802111 a few weeks ago on a Swansea-Paddington service. The 800's too regularly get to Taunton and occasionally on services between Paddington and Paignton/Plymouth, but they rarely (If ever) end up overnight in depots like Laira or Longrock in Penzance.
 
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irish_rail

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You are practically spot on. The 800 (under IEP contract) and the 802 fleets have different maintenance contracts. The 800's diagrams are tied to Agility and are contractually worked out, so they do so many miles a day and they must start and end at the scheduled depots (normally North Pole, Stoke Gifford and Malliphant) There was a case a while back where an 802 unit was not available to work an evening Paddington-Plymouth. There was an 800 available to use, but that would have meant it ended up at Laira overnight (its wrong scheduled depot) so the service was cancelled. That is the "mad world" of today's UK railways - yes there is limited flexibility with the 800's, but the 802's appear to be more flexible, they frequently appear on London-South Wales services, I had a ride on 802111 a few weeks ago on a Swansea-Paddington service. The 800's too regularly get to Taunton and occasionally on services between Paddington and Paignton/Plymouth, but they rarely (If ever) end up overnight in depots like Laira or Longrock in Penzance.
To the best of my knowledge an 800 has never reached laira or long rock overnight. It really is a shambles as you say when a late service to.plymouth has to be caped due to "wrong type of train" even though it is identical from a drivers and passengers perspective. If only the contract could be ripped up and someone start again with a common sense approach!
 

Thunderer

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To the best of my knowledge an 800 has never reached laira or long rock overnight. It really is a shambles as you say when a late service to.plymouth has to be caped due to "wrong type of train" even though it is identical from a drivers and passengers perspective. If only the contract could be ripped up and someone start again with a common sense approach!
I agree..it should be ripped up and started again. Its the result of too much Government "meddling". First have already hinted they will not be re-bidding for the GWR contract in a few years time now they have won the WCML contract and I don't blame them. Running two fleets of trains (one with VERY limited flexibility) is always going to cause more hassle to the operator, plus its the operator that has to take all the flack for these scenario's and failures as the general public blame GWR. It's a mess and it will continue to be like that whilst the GWML has two fleets of the "practically the same" train, but with very different running and maintenance contracts. LNER have come out of the IEP contract a bit better as all the Azuma's are part of the IEP contract, so operationally, they will have one fleet of trains running to the same contract, plus the LNER routes have far more electrification in place than the GWML routes, so the units will be running around 85-90% of the time off the overhead 25Kv, even the Kings X - Inverness can run on 25Kv now between London and Stirling...
 
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I agree..it should be ripped up and started again. Its the result of too much Government "meddling". First have already hinted they will not be re-bidding for the GWR contract in a few years time now they have won the WCML contract and I don't blame them. Running two fleets of trains (one with VERY limited flexibility) is always going to cause more hassle to the operator, plus its the operator that has to take all the flack for these scenario's and failures as the general public blame GWR. It's a mess and it will continue to be like that whilst the GWML has two fleets of the "practically the same" train, but with very different running and maintenance contracts. LNER have come out of the IEP contract a bit better as all the Azuma's are part of the IEP contract, so operationally, they will have one fleet of trains running to the same contract, plus the LNER routes have far more electrification in place than the GWML routes, so the units will be running around 85-90% of the time off the overhead 25Kv, even the Kings X - Inverness can run on 25Kv now between London and Stirling...
If they were practically the same train, it would be OK to align exams etc. I agree it’s a nonsensical situation and the whole fleet should be the same spec as 802, but it’s not and has to dealt with.
 

a_c_skinner

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With deepest apologies for losing track(!) of this but have the 800s been modified to approach the 802 specifications? I've a vague recollection of engines uprated and a very vague recollection of a suggestion of retro-fitting larger fuel capacity.

On topic in the light of another thread about standardising some aspects of rolling stock this situation is foolish, especially if a good deal of the lack of flexibility is contractual not operational.
 

irish_rail

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With deepest apologies for losing track(!) of this but have the 800s been modified to approach the 802 specifications? I've a vague recollection of engines uprated and a very vague recollection of a suggestion of retro-fitting larger fuel capacity.

On topic in the light of another thread about standardising some aspects of rolling stock this situation is foolish, especially if a good deal of the lack of flexibility is contractual not operational.
No. The 800s are definitely slower than the 802s both on electric and especially diesel.
 

Mintona

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They are actually having engines updated in preparation for December to match the 802s. I think a start has been made already, I had 800005 the other day and the thing absolutely flew on diesel. I also had 800027 & 800028 and I could see on the engine screen that 800027 was providing significantly more power than 800028. It was enough to drag 028 around at a higher speed than normal.
 

Railperf

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They are actually having engines updated in preparation for December to match the 802s. I think a start has been made already, I had 800005 the other day and the thing absolutely flew on diesel. I also had 800027 & 800028 and I could see on the engine screen that 800027 was providing significantly more power than 800028. It was enough to drag 028 around at a higher speed than normal.
800310 flies on Electric like an 802. Haven't sampled it in diesel mode. 802s are slightly faster than an 800 but no match for a HST to 125mph or beyond - and much slower than a 755 on diesel!
 

Peter C

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I rode on an IET (don't know the number) into Paddington last year, and it was relatively quick from what I remember. I didn't record anything from the day - shame! :(

I have seen the units leave Didcot Parkway on electric power (including 800310 @Railperf ) and I can confirm that they are incredibly quick off the mark!
800310 flies on Electric like an 802. Haven't sampled it in diesel mode. 802s are slightly faster than an 800 but no match for a HST to 125mph or beyond - and much slower than a 755 on diesel!
An 800/802 may be quicker off the mark than a 43, but they are the same if not worse at going at the higher speeds nearer 125mph. The videos produced by GWR to show them off omitted the sections where the HSTs caught up with the IETs a short while later! :)

-Peter
 

CharlesR

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An 800/802 may be quicker off the mark than a 43, but they are the same if not worse at going at the higher speeds nearer 125mph. The videos produced by GWR to show them off omitted the sections where the HSTs caught up with the IETs a short while later! :)

Do you read this thread? This isn’t one of the 43v800 rolling arguments, this is for performance and reliability surrounding the 800/802 fleet.

Also if you mean the video with the annoying audio on it, it’s a pure video without any editing (minus audio)
 

Railperf

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Do you read this thread? This isn’t one of the 43v800 rolling arguments, this is for performance and reliability surrounding the 800/802 fleet.

Also if you mean the video with the annoying audio on it, it’s a pure video without any editing (minus audio)
Do you read this thread? This isn’t one of the 43v800 rolling arguments, this is for performance and reliability surrounding the 800/802 fleet.

Also if you mean the video with the annoying audio on it, it’s a pure video without any editing (minus audio)
Yes i know. I started the thread. Out of interest - can we list the GWR 800s that we know have been upgraded to 802 performance levels to date?
800310 seems to be one of those. Judging by @Mintona 's comments above it looks like 005 and 027 have also been upgraded too.
Any further clarification would be much appreciated.
 

Peter C

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Do you read this thread? This isn’t one of the 43v800 rolling arguments, this is for performance and reliability surrounding the 800/802 fleet.

Also if you mean the video with the annoying audio on it, it’s a pure video without any editing (minus audio)
I do apologise. @Railperf said that an IET was no match for a HST at higher speeds, and I was merely expanding on that point ever so slightly. I do apologise for including one slightly off-topic piece of information in my otherwise alright post.

-Peter
 

Clarence Yard

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With deepest apologies for losing track(!) of this but have the 800s been modified to approach the 802 specifications? I've a vague recollection of engines uprated and a very vague recollection of a suggestion of retro-fitting larger fuel capacity.

On topic in the light of another thread about standardising some aspects of rolling stock this situation is foolish, especially if a good deal of the lack of flexibility is contractual not operational.

It’s mainly about modifying the engine software to replicate the 802 performance profile. That is what is being done now. It’s a further tweak from the software modification that took them up to 700kw.

The fuel tanks were large from new in the majority of the 800 fleet. 800004 was the first retrofit (done prior to the fuel tests in early 2017) and, iirc, 800001-3 were the only other ones that had to be retrofitted.
 

Mitchell Hurd

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Hello everyone. I hope this is relevant to this thread - another (but quite new problem) with the 10-car GWR IET's is that for instance you could be sat in Coach H at the starting station then around 5 minutes before departure it changes to Coach B (same layout as H).

On the 14/08/19 at Cardiff Central I noticed the 16:50ish IET to Swansea with Coach A at the front (looking at the timetable this would have run the 19:25 to Didcot Parkway I had seat C36 on) and Coach G at the rear.

When the 19:25 came into Cardiff Central, coach A being at the front meant my booked seat was actually facing forwards unexpectedly (clicked 'Don't Mind when booking as I can't fully trust the GWR IET's to run in the correct formation).

I got off at Didcot at like 20:45 and it showed the incorrect formation - anyone wanting say Coach A or B would have had to run virtually the length of Platform 2 to get to their seat.

So it looks as though Coach G (rear coach) to Swansea (14:45 from London) changed to Coach A (front coach) for its 18:30ish to London Paddington.

If GWR encounters this regularly then maybe it's time to opt for more 9-car sets, avoiding this issue and give the 2x5-formed sets to say XC who would have much newer trains. I know this would require training obviously but at least the 5-car sets have more seats than the Voyagers!

In my Modern Railways magazine (the one with the GWR special in it), GWR admitted that a uniform fleet of 9-car sets might have been more preferable.
Interesting!
 
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