Why are Northern's new Class 195 trains being delivered by road, and not by rail?

notlob.divad said:

There is a simple answer to that one. Wait until there are 2 or 3 sets, put them together and drag them as a 6 / 8 car set. Then the economics is even better.

Click to expand...

But the 'counter' economics are that such an action may delay crew/fitter training, thus delaying entry into service. Everything impacts on everything else somewhere or other!

If it was possible to land the trains at Liverpool Docks would they still be moved to Edge Hill by road?

61653 HTAFC said:

Fair point, but if the freight train driver who would be dragging said units by rail from the docks is instead driving an actual freight train, that removes significantly more.

Click to expand...

I see your point but surely other factors have to be considered as well, such as the tailbacks a long wagon has the potential to make and surely it's easier to crane a train onto the tracks at the docks rather than have Allelys having to slowly unload (particularly if the drama of the Train Truckers is to be believed )
We may also be heading into the pedantic of the argument here but wouldn't this be the sort of contract ROG would love? Do their drivers tend to be at the helm of other freight trains as I only seem to see them doing unit drags?

The_Train said:

I see your point but surely other factors have to be considered as well, such as the tailbacks a long wagon has the potential to make and surely it's easier to crane a train onto the tracks at the docks rather than have Allelys having to slowly unload (particularly if the drama of the Train Truckers is to be believed )
We may also be heading into the pedantic of the argument here but wouldn't this be the sort of contract ROG would love? Do their drivers tend to be at the helm of other freight trains as I only seem to see them doing unit drags?

Click to expand...

ROG does seem to have a core business in unit moves, but other FOCs have also done this work: particularly Freightliner (or was it GBRF?) who have had a lot of work linked with moving and testing the new TPE fleets. Any drivers (and locomotives) doing that work won't be available to work regular freight trains.

Ultimately it comes down to cost. No business will choose a more expensive option without a very good reason, so if it's cheaper to go by road then it'll go by road. The more vehicles that need moving at once, the more likely that going by rail will be the best option.

MotorcycleAlan said:

When I ran a business I made decisions based upon facts presented to me, and would have objected to unqualified armchair experts telling me they knew better. Surely the people that make decisions on how to get goods from A to B, base those decisions on the facts, not what the public may or may not think (as if they would even care outside of this forum). Throughout the rail industry there are many highly qualified and trained experts, who work tirelessly to complete their work, and they really must laugh if they look here and see completely unqualified people, telling them there is a better way of doing things. Just let them get on with the job.

Click to expand...

I was going to say something similar, but shorter, and with the diplomacy of a battleship, but decided against at the time. I'm a bit sick of people thinking anything they disagree with must have been thought up by a bunch of troglodytes who don't have a clue and need forcefully pushing aside to make way for them and their ideas which must by default be correct even though they come with the benefit of zero experience.

Why don't we get some dragons and fly the ruddy things over? Feed em a few sheep at each end and they'll be happy?!?!

Spartacus said:

I was going to say something similar, but shorter, and with the diplomacy of a battleship, but decided against at the time. I'm a bit sick of people thinking anything they disagree with must have been thought up by a bunch of troglodytes who don't have a clue and need forcefully pushing aside to make way for them and their ideas which must by default be correct even though they come with the benefit of zero experience.

Why don't we get some dragons and fly the ruddy things over? Feed em a few sheep at each end and they'll be happy?!?!

Click to expand...

Now dragon deliveries would be cool, I'd even consider a change of career to work in the dragon logistics sector, providing fire-proof equipment was supplied of course...!!

Spartacus said:

I was going to say something similar, but shorter, and with the diplomacy of a battleship, but decided against at the time. I'm a bit sick of people thinking anything they disagree with must have been thought up by a bunch of troglodytes who don't have a clue and need forcefully pushing aside to make way for them and their ideas which must by default be correct even though they come with the benefit of zero experience.

Why don't we get some dragons and fly the ruddy things over? Feed em a few sheep at each end and they'll be happy?!?!

Click to expand...

Indeed but the way society is going. Disagree and you just automatically get you back up and start berating them

I'm surprised that so many people are surprised by this...

Rail works well on simple bulk flows, predictable markets. It's not designed to be as flexible as lorry haulage - Eddie Stobart don't have to worry about finding a path down the M6 for their 62mph trucks, and whether it'll come into conflict with a fast car scheduled along the road at the same time. You just stick it on the back of a lorry and send it off.

The railway can never cope with that level of flexibility - not today, not thirty years ago in BR days, not a hundred years ago with private companies.

Put it this way - if you think that the railway should be able to accommodate these relatively "one off" deliveries (there's more than one 195, sure, but it's not like a predictable weekly flow like a colliery or a supermarket train, that is worth pathing as it'll happen regularly in future weeks/ months/ years) then how many paths do you think we set aside for this kind of unpredictable flow?

"Sorry, we can't squeeze more than four passengers trains an hour down your line because we need to leave several paths vacant just in case we have an unusual freight delivery to make..."

It's the same mentality as with people who think it reasonable for a TOC to whip up a hundred Rail Replacement Buses at ten minutes notice, in the event of a problem with a train. We're not on Sodor any more, Toto...

Karl said:

/

Why do trains not use the railway for delivery?

It seems crazy seeing them being delivered by road.

Click to expand...

because the option chosen by the people delivering the trains works best for them.

You make all manner of assumptions based on very little knowledge. Do you know if these units have been cleared for the route from port to depot? Hard to move the train if it is going to crash into the first structure it meets. Fixing that is going to cost loads more than a lorry.............

HUY2ROB said:

If it was possible to land the trains at Liverpool Docks would they still be moved to Edge Hill by road?

Click to expand...

no idea - it will depend on what works for the project

Spartacus said:

I was going to say something similar, but shorter, and with the diplomacy of a battleship, but decided against at the time. I'm a bit sick of people thinking anything they disagree with must have been thought up by a bunch of troglodytes who don't have a clue and need forcefully pushing aside to make way for them and their ideas which must by default be correct even though they come with the benefit of zero experience.

Why don't we get some dragons and fly the ruddy things over? Feed em a few sheep at each end and they'll be happy?!?!

Click to expand...

Indeed - this thread ( and others ) show the fundamental difference between railway enthusiasts and railway professionals. The former often live in a fantasy, perfect world while the later have to live in the real, pragmatic world.

Is it not the case that the more recent 195 and 331 deliveries have been/are being completed at Llanwern (rather than Irun), and that a lack of service paths from the factory or lack of rail access to it means that road delivery is the current modus operandi? I'm sure that CAF would want to use rail to deliver their Civity stock if they could. There's tons of hurdles (such as crew contracting, commissioning etc.) that have to be sorted before deliveries can be made by rail. Remember, ROG's fleet is pretty stretched at the moment with work for TfL (Crossrail & LO alike).

Bantamzen said:

Again I disagree, it doesn't matter. What matters is getting the units to where they are needed when they are needed.

Click to expand...

You could argue the same for all the passengers and freight that does travel by rail. Just pust them on the roads...

talltim said:

You could argue the same for all the passengers and freight that does travel by rail. Just pust them on the roads...

Click to expand...

If you have a nice predictable flow (like commuters who do regular journeys every weekday, freight that needs delivering every Tuesday, leisure passengers who head for the shops/hills each weekend) then rail is great. Dependable bulk flows are what rail does best.

If you have an irregular flow or a short-notice demand then rail has never been particularly flexible. Not just the modern privatised railway, also British Rail, also the predecessor companies.

For example, look at the football fixtures for this coming Saturday. Middlesbrough are down at Cardiff. Might take hundreds of fans down, enough to fill a charter (especially given the lack of a direct train). But how do you run that service? Which drivers have route knowledge all the way and what stock is cleared all the way? How many paths should we keep empty through the various pinch-points and bottlenecks between Teesside and Wales? Sorry we can't accommodate increased services for local trains in York/ Sheffield/ Birmingham (etc) because we need them just in case the path might be useful for a "footex"? See also Blackburn fans going down to Reading, Hull fans going to Luton, Norwich fans going to Burnley, Brighton fans going to Newcastle... you could run hundreds of footexes every weekend if it weren't for the inconvenient fact that the railway is full, we don't have the luxury of maintaining driver route knowledge on every bit of line in the UK at the same time and we can't leave hundreds of empty paths on a "just in case" basis.

If this were a delivery of one new train a week for the next fifty weeks then it might be worth getting a regular path sorted out, it might be worth route training the drivers and ensuring that every inch of the line was cleared for that size of stock. But it's going to be a haphazard "dribs and drabs" delivery of trains that will only be a temporary demand. The railway isn't flexible enough to cope with that (given that any path taken by such occasional trains is a path that could be used for regular clock face trains every hour of the daytime).

I've no problem with the suggestions that it'd be nice if rail were flexible enough to accommodate such services - wouldn't it be nice etc - what is frustrating is some on the thread (not a dig at anyone in particular...) who have ignored the explanations from those in the industry that things are a bit more complicated than a Thomas The Tank Engine episode, where the Fat Controller can click his fingers and some random slow freight can be squeezed in amongst the regular fast passenger services. Nor is it a model railway where you can rip up the "timetable" to run whatever you want - the days of Speedlink are long gone.

This Forum is a wonderful opportunity for those who don't work in the industry (like myself) to learn from those who do work in the industry about how things actually function, the problems that lay-people like me might not have considered etc. Not everyone seems to want to learn though. Really need to get away from this mindset that heavy rail is the answer to every problem (regenerating dilapidated towns, re-balancing the UK economy by cancelling Crossrail to spend the money in Manchester instead, solving climate change, providing millions of jobs to stimulate a post-Brexit recession, teaching people Gaelic...) - it's a big blunt tool that is great at what it does best but lacks the flexibility to tackle every problem - and sadly doesn't have the spare capacity to bend over backwards to suit a handful of short term deliveries of 195/331s.

Most of that is simply not true. BR would run all sorts of weird and wonderful one offs. Even today ROG were set up to operate this sort of work and GBRf also have a toe in the one-off movement market - that is why they purchased the Colas 47s. It is niche but there are operators who specifically cater for it.

Bertie the bus said:

Most of that is simply not true. BR would run all sorts of weird and wonderful one offs. Even today ROG were set up to operate this sort of work and GBRf also have a toe in the one-off movement market - that is why they purchased the Colas 47s. It is niche but there are operators who specifically cater for it.

Click to expand...

For every wierd and wonderful one off run there are hundreds that don't.

Next time you speak to them why don't you ask why it is apparently economical to send a light engine from Leicester to the outskirts of Glasgow to drag a scrap 3-car unit all the way to Newport but it doesn't make economic sense to drag a new 3-car unit about half that distance from Bristol - Liverpool?

Bertie the bus said:

Next time you speak to them why don't you ask why it is apparently economical to send a light engine from Leicester to the outskirts of Glasgow to drag a scrap 3-car unit all the way to Newport but it doesn't make economic sense to drag a new 3-car unit about half that distance from Bristol - Liverpool?

Click to expand...

Because a 314 is known to be safe to drag as is, but the 195/331 isn't as delivered as separate cars and would need assembly and testing first substantially increasing the cost?
The longer distance improves rail's relative costs as it isn't a flat / mile cost.

tbtc said:

I'm surprised that so many people are surprised by this...

Rail works well on simple bulk flows, predictable markets. It's not designed to be as flexible as lorry haulage - Eddie Stobart don't have to worry about finding a path down the M6 for their 62mph trucks, and whether it'll come into conflict with a fast car scheduled along the road at the same time. You just stick it on the back of a lorry and send it off.

The railway can never cope with that level of flexibility - not today, not thirty years ago in BR days, not a hundred years ago with private companies.

Put it this way - if you think that the railway should be able to accommodate these relatively "one off" deliveries (there's more than one 195, sure, but it's not like a predictable weekly flow like a colliery or a supermarket train, that is worth pathing as it'll happen regularly in future weeks/ months/ years) then how many paths do you think we set aside for this kind of unpredictable flow?

"Sorry, we can't squeeze more than four passengers trains an hour down your line because we need to leave several paths vacant just in case we have an unusual freight delivery to make..."

It's the same mentality as with people who think it reasonable for a TOC to whip up a hundred Rail Replacement Buses at ten minutes notice, in the event of a problem with a train. We're not on Sodor any more, Toto...

Click to expand...

True but the system isn't packed with traffic 24/7. Many weird moves can be done during the night.

hwl said:

Because a 314 is known to be safe to drag as is, but the 195/331 isn't as delivered as separate cars and would need assembly and testing first substantially increasing the cost?
The longer distance improves rail's relative costs as it isn't a flat / mile cost.

Click to expand...

No to both. 397s have to be assembled but are dragged. As for distance there are large numbers of examples, long and short distances, where units are dragged about. If it was only economical to drag them long distances then they would have used road transport to get the 334s to Kilmarnock when they were refurbishing them.

Bertie the bus said:

Most of that is simply not true. BR would run all sorts of weird and wonderful one offs. Even today ROG were set up to operate this sort of work and GBRf also have a toe in the one-off movement market - that is why they purchased the Colas 47s. It is niche but there are operators who specifically cater for it.

Click to expand...

BR also didn't run as intensive a service on most routes either. Not so difficult to, for example, get a path for a slow unit drag across Doncaster from the Goole to Sheffield lines when there's only 4tph on the ECML back in the day.

I like the idea of chucking a train on a lorry and sending it off. I seem to recall that not long ago social media was full of adverse comment after a Southern unit caused road chaos in the Crystal Palace area. Road routes have to be checked to ensure that the route is suitable for the load.

Fairly recently there was a post on a forum complaining about a lorry carrying a rail carriage not reversing to give way to oncoming traffic.

In rail towers it might seem reasonable to take trains by road but I suspect if you asked the population at large a huge number wouldn’t understand why they go by road.

Chrisgr31 said:

....I suspect if you asked the population at large a huge number wouldn’t understand why they go by road.

Click to expand...

I suspect if you asked the population at large a huge number wouldn't understand why trains don't have steering wheels either

And? Just demonstrates what a poor job has been done about explaining rail to the general population

Chrisgr31 said:

I like the idea of chucking a train on a lorry and sending it off. I seem to recall that not long ago social media was full of adverse comment after a Southern unit caused road chaos in the Crystal Palace area. Road routes have to be checked to ensure that the route is suitable for the load.

Fairly recently there was a post on a forum complaining about a lorry carrying a rail carriage not reversing to give way to oncoming traffic.

In rail towers it might seem reasonable to take trains by road but I suspect if you asked the population at large a huge number wouldn’t understand why they go by road.

Click to expand...

The Palace one was a missed turn a mile earlier, the lorry should have been turning left at Crown Point instead but both are horrid left turns because Croydon Council did't engage brain when erecting new CCTV masts... (all HGV route A Roads so no excuse for bad road design).

59CosG95 said:

Is it not the case that the more recent 195 and 331 deliveries have been/are being completed at Llanwern (rather than Irun), and that a lack of service paths from the factory or lack of rail access to it means that road delivery is the current modus operandi? I'm sure that CAF would want to use rail to deliver their Civity stock if they could. There's tons of hurdles (such as crew contracting, commissioning etc.) that have to be sorted before deliveries can be made by rail. Remember, ROG's fleet is pretty stretched at the moment with work for TfL (Crossrail & LO alike).

Click to expand...

Road has been used for nearly all 195 / 331 deliveries, including those arriving at Bristol Docks, although I believe you're correct in saying there's no mainline connection yet at the Llanwern factory. I think the ones that came over from the Velim test track may have been hauled via rail through the tunnel, bearing in mind that those units will have spent weeks running around a test track so slightly different situation to ones that have been unloaded as separate carriages off a ship.

As is usually the case for most things to do with the railways, the answer to "why deliver by road instead of rail" can be neatly summarised as "It's complicated". However complicated you think it is, there's generally something that could make it more complicated than that.

hwl said:

Aren't the 397s delivered by road to the former Aluminium smelting plan on Anglesey, then delivered by rail.

Click to expand...

Yes, but perversely they arrived at an east coast port and were taken by road past Manchester to Holyhead, to be eventually formed into a train for the delivery journey to Longsight.
Only the first couple of sets I think, it's not a regular route.

Also "taxpayer money" won't be being spent on these movements.
Delivery is in the hands of the manufacturers and the ROSCO owners, which are private commercial firms.

CAF now also have the facility at Newport where stock from Spain can be assembled/fitted out and delivered to TOCs, so you might expect some optimisation of delivery in the future.
Similar setups are likely to apply for major orders in the future (eg HS2 stock, and the Siemens TfL order).

The barge/ferry/barge delivery operation for oversize Airbus A380 components (eg Welsh wings) will soon finish, with the run-down of A380 production.
Beluga air transporters transport most Airbus parts for final assembly of other models in Toulouse or Hamburg.
Boeing transports 737 fuselages across the USA by rail for final assembly in Seattle.
There was a spectacular derailment of such a train recently, with a trainload of 737 frames ending up in a river.

LNW-GW Joint said:

CAF now also have the facility at Newport where stock from Spain can be assembled/fitted out and delivered to TOCs, so you might expect some optimisation of delivery in the future.
Similar setups are likely to apply for major orders in the future (eg HS2 stock, and the Siemens TfL order).

Click to expand...

The Newport facility without rail access...
(Unless they do a deal with Tata next door?)

hwl said:

The Newport facility without rail access...
(Unless they do a deal with Tata next door?)

Click to expand...

It's not exactly a million miles away from some tracks - I'm sure they're trying to sort something out, but these things always seem to take 5 times longer than anyone expected.

Chrisgr31 said:

In rail towers it might seem reasonable to take trains by road but I suspect if you asked the population at large a huge number wouldn’t understand why they go by road.

Click to expand...

They don't have to understand, and I doubt many (if any) care either. They care that their new trains are arriving into passenger service on schedule.

Chrisgr31 said:

I like the idea of chucking a train on a lorry and sending it off. I seem to recall that not long ago social media was full of adverse comment after a Southern unit caused road chaos in the Crystal Palace area. Road routes have to be checked to ensure that the route is suitable for the load.

Fairly recently there was a post on a forum complaining about a lorry carrying a rail carriage not reversing to give way to oncoming traffic.

In rail towers it might seem reasonable to take trains by road but I suspect if you asked the population at large a huge number wouldn’t understand why they go by road.

Click to expand...

Presumably road haulage enthusiasts start foaming at the mouth at things like this: https://www.flickr.com/photos/40826712@N00/3180038560