TfW Pacer replacement
It's 1st October next Tuesday. TfW have 3 calendar months to eradicate 30 x Pacers. They are still insisting publicly they will do that by January. Yet they only have two 769s on depot in Canton, neither of which have yet turned a wheel under their own power.
TfW have admitted that they are asking for derogations for the Mk 3 sets, and the 37 + Mk 2 sets for Rhymney. But not for Pacers.
170 driver training doesn't appear to have started yet. No PRM modified class 153s are in service or back in Wales yet.
So, genuine question, how do TfW eradicate 30 Pacers by January and still run a viable service on the Valley lines, which will be most heavily affected by Pacer withdrawal?
Meeting the PRM deadline does now look impossible; even with derogations for the LHCS they still need to finish PRMing the 158s and 150s and get the 153s modified too. Plus will the modified 153s have sufficient seating capacity to run alone anywhere? If they don't the five ex-GWR units will meerly allow previous single 153 diagrams to be strengthened to 2-car and thus would be no help in displacing Pacers. The 230s are late but apparently the start of fault-free running isn't far off, can they make it here by December? That's three or four 150s for internal cascade to the valleys if the 230s do make it into service by then.
On the plus side, I heard from a member of staff yesterday that he thinks the 170s will make it into service ahead of the franchise's original target date for them. The driver's conversion course from 15x to 170s is quite short apparently (think it was two days) and this training was expected to start very soon. How many of the 12x class 170s can be diagrammed each day I wonder, perhaps three 2-car and six 3-car units? That's 9 Pacers gone at a stroke (mostly by cascading 150s, but is there a Pacer diagram on Maesteg-Cheltenham as well that could be directly replaced?) If the 230s do make it in time I think that just about allows the 142s to go.
That just leaves the 143s. Given that the Pacers in the valleys seem to run in pairs quite often, would it be possible to have only 7 Pacer diagrams left in service next year, all being 4-car class 143? Not even the first batch of five 769s would be enough to cover that, we need all nine and I think TfW knows that they're not going to get all nine (if any) 769s into service in 2019. Running the 37s all day instead of peak-only might reduce the number of Pacer pairs in service by one or two (but only Rhymney crews are being trained on 37s apparently, so are more 37 workings even possible?). The other thing that might help is if the PRM 153s can handle the passenger loadings elsewhere on their own; not having to double up the HOWL, Conwy valley etc. would free up a few 153s to form 150+153 formations on Rhymney valley services - would PRM 150 + PRM 153 have a similar capacity to 2x 143? Even then, I cannot see any way of completely eliminating the 143s without at least some of the 769s entering service or other alternative stock being found (which pretty much means LHCS, but the 37s are a two week conversion course for TfW drivers apparently and other locos are probably similar - how many crews sign 67s and is this enough to staff additional 67-hauled services if more were hired?).
Having traveled on the 16.09 Birmingham international to Aberystwyth and Pwllheli yesterday I think TfW hopes that the improved half hourly West Midlands service would mean TfW wouldn’t need to improve capacity on this line might be somewhat dashed given the large numbers of local users still using TfW service between Birmingham and Shrewsbury .in fact I think tfw planned to reduce carriages when the new trains arrived to no more than 4on this route(where some run as 6 cars currently,or at least they did before the recent fleet shortages)
I didn't think TfW had made clear what they plan to do with the Holyhead-Birmingham services or the even-hours departures from Aberystwyth. The ETCS-fleet is reportedly currently intended to all be 2-car, so in the hours that the Pwllheli portion runs those would indeed be 4-car between Machynlleth and Birmingham. However, in the other hours it's unclear whether the Aberystwyth unit would run through to Birmingham and I don't know whether they would be willing to mix ETCS-fitted and non-fitted units in the same train by coupling a unit from Wrexham/Holyhead/Shrewsbury onto the Cambrian trains at Shrewsbury.
I think the answer to the title of this thread, is that in general, TfW's fleet replacement in 2022-24 will not be a disaster, but TfW's plan to meet the PRM deadline on 1/1/2020 is now very difficult, if not impossible, to meet.
As noted above, I don't fully understand what TfW have planned for what is currently the ETCS-curcuit (Cambrian-Birmingham-Holyhead) but from my understanding of the current plans I think it's more like this:
- PRM deadline - disaster in the valleys due to nothing to replace the 143s
- Treherbert/Merthyr Tydfil/Aberdare fleet replacement 2022-24 - unsatisfactory, but potentially resolvable after a few years by cascading the toiletless units to shorter routes
- Rhymney fleet replacement 2022-24 - largely positive
- Long distance fleet replacement 2022-24 - positive in capacity terms on most routes, negative in quality terms, disaster for the Cambrian and potentially a disaster in environmental terms
So why are TfW still insisting all Pacers in Wales will be gone by January? Either they are lying, know something we don't, or are being prevented from telling the truth by Welsh Govt.
Can't see how it will be possible to eliminate the Pacers entirely by the end of the year. Will be embarrassing for TfW but surely they will have to apply for a derogation.
Wasn't there a rumour that TfW had asked for a derogation but were refused it?
If that's true (and I've no idead whether it is) then TfW may well be telling the truth - after all if they legally have to be withdrawn they will be - even though they know they will not be able to replace them (or, if they can, only by extensive short forming).
Wonder why this wasn't addressed during Aviva's stewardship of the franchise. The powers that be could have replaced all the Pacers in the UK much sooner.
Perhaps the biggest disaster of all was the decision to let a no-growth franchise finishing that close to the PRM deadline. Arriva Trains Wales had no requirement to PRM their stock, since their franchise finished before the deadline, but not enough time was allowed for the next TOC to solve it. Perhaps ATW's should have been a 10 or 12 year no-growth franchise instead of 15 years.
