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DfT and CrossCountry rule out surplus HST’s as a capacity relief
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Jorge Da Silva
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Been on a service from Doncaster to Birmingham, and they were busy. 4-car Voyagers were not able to cope.
CC 72100
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That's what I was getting at, north of York additional XC capacity doesn't seem top of the priority list.
delt1c
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It is crazy that there is available stock stored, but passengers are crammed in like sardines on operating stock. What comes 1st passenger or profit?
Every time I've boarded one at Bristol they have been really busy, both southbound to Exeter and northbound to Birmingham.
There is at least 1 set waiting to go in for conversion, but I believe the plan is for enough sets to be converted to enable all power door operation from the PRM deadline....
Personally, I think they should extend these to 8 coaches so as additional stock becomes available from WC etc, the minimum set size through the core is 8 coach (HST or 2x4 VOY) - even if this requires some timetable juggling because HST is a little slower....
It'll never happen though as the franchise doesn't go to London thus no benefit to anyone at DfT.
Speed43125
Member
Weird. I went XC from Doncaster to Oxford, then Oxford to Coventry. Both times seemed perfectly reasonable. it was all 4 car stuff, but never seemed too crowded. It was my connecting 10 car Voyager VT service that was bloody crowded!
Merle Haggard
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My understanding, and I might be wrong, is that the XC HSTs are 7 cars because this load is the limit of climbing the Lickey OPCO - XC of course not being prepared to 'waste' money on un-necessary contingencies like Thunderbirds...
tbtc
Veteran Member
It's almost like people are so keen for HSTs to be the answer that they've conveniently forgotten about what happened when TPE tried to replace modern compliant trains with longer but non-accessible trains. And this was obviously before the 1 January 2020 deadline. So the idea that XC will be okay to replace Voyagers with non-compliant HSTs in the 2020s seems a little... wishful... I mean, I'd rather have an eight coach HST to a Voyager (FWIW I came back from Durham to Sheffield today on the delayed 14:53 Voyager)... but it's not going to happen as things are - we can debate the needs of the number of able bodied people who'd benefit from that change if you want but it's not going to be acceptable to replace accessible trains with inaccessible trains (and WABTEC aren't converting HSTs fast enough for there to be a chance of some more for XC).
It's a nice idea in theory but XC's timings can be very tight in some areas (whilst painfully slow in others), so it'd be impractical to scatter a few minutes here and there into their timetable (compared to, say, GWR/ScotRail, who can amend their times to accommodate the slow acceleration of a long HST).
As I've said before, running the Plymouth - Glasgow a couple of minutes late out of Sheffield means getting to Aldwarke Junction behind the Dearne Valley stopper which means arriving in Leeds half an hour later (and tweaking the northbound Dearne Valley stopper has implications on the single track Holmes Chord, the flat crossings at both ends of the Rotherham loop, the the TramTrain etc). Same will apply to being stuck behind the Cross City stoppers through Birmingham or the North Berwick services west of Drem or the Paignton stoppers through Devon etc.
It's really not easy for XC to "juggle" things to accommodate how sluggish an eight coach HST will be against a Voyager.
It's a nice idea in theory but XC's timings can be very tight in some areas (whilst painfully slow in others), so it'd be impractical to scatter a few minutes here and there into their timetable (compared to, say, GWR/ScotRail, who can amend their times to accommodate the slow acceleration of a long HST).
As I've said before, running the Plymouth - Glasgow a couple of minutes late out of Sheffield means getting to Aldwarke Junction behind the Dearne Valley stopper which means arriving in Leeds half an hour later (and tweaking the northbound Dearne Valley stopper has implications on the single track Holmes Chord, the flat crossings at both ends of the Rotherham loop, the the TramTrain etc). Same will apply to being stuck behind the Cross City stoppers through Birmingham or the North Berwick services west of Drem or the Paignton stoppers through Devon etc.
It's really not easy for XC to "juggle" things to accommodate how sluggish an eight coach HST will be against a Voyager.
Don't let people make you think that every XC train is packed to the rafters. It simply isn't true. However, many at peak travelling times (not necessarily peak in the rush hour sense) are very busy and some significantly overloaded.
43096
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XC01/03/04 have sliding doors and are in traffic; XC05 has slam doors and is in traffic; XC02 is at Wabtec for conversion. Based on recent throughput, I would expect XC02 back around the end of the year, allowing XC05 to be stopped and make XC PRM compliant for 31/12/19.
As for lengthening the sets, XC have 5 spare TS vehicles to do that: the sets were originally converted for XC as 5 x 8-car sets.
Kingham West
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I think most trains through Oxford are packed, it’s generally not good enough.
Reading -Bournmouth fine .
The service offered is just not good enough, for discretionary passengers.
There is a problem, it’s about time the operator and Dft just said sorry, stop finding reasons why things can’t be done.
darloscott
Member
Let's not kid ourselves that the 2020 deadline has come out of nowhere. The rail industry has had 15+ years to get all of this sorted. The fact that there is a scramble going on at present to sort things is crazy.
43096
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The present situation is one entirely of DfT's own making. No-one else.
fgwrich
Established Member
This is agree with, whereas the below comment I'm afraid I have to disagree with. Yes, during peak hours XC serviced are grossly overcrowded, however living on the South Coast Axis of Cross Country and being a regular commuter using XC and GW, the XC Services are very well used throughout all times of the day. Even more so at weekends, where even on services at around midday it is common to find people standing on a 4 car from principle stations such as Reading - Oxford - Banbury or Leamington - Birmingham. I travelled up to Birmingham yesterday and was greeted with a 4 car 221. Although the circumstances were a little different with the following hourly Manchester service cancelled, the bi-hourly Newcastle service was still due to run. This however didn't prevent passengers cramming onboard at each stop, with the overcrowding already being fairly bad by Basingstoke. By Oxford, I'd had enough of standing and spoke to the guard to see if the upgrade was available. When I left the service at International, there was still a considerable amount standing, and further congestion on the platforms.
The situation may be different on other Cross Country routes, but the Reading / Southampton Central / Bournemouth services are rarely lightly loaded, and often retain healthy loadings throughout the day, well up into the evenings (I work a non regular shift pattern and often return home on the 22:22 or 22:52 services from Reading). Something needs to be done to introduce further capacity into the XC Franchise, particularly on the South Coast route. Whether this is through longer train sets (HSTs until the 222s?) on the South West services, with doubled up Voyagers for the Bournemouth services I don't know.
DarloRich
Veteran Member
The answer to this poll is : all options. it isnt one or the other in isolation
There won’t be by the time the new regulations come into force, it’s the last one to go into Wabtec to be converted.
We all remember very well what happenned when TPE said that wheelchair users would not be carried on the Pretendolino and would have to wait for the next train, or would be called a taxi if two Pretendolino sets were running in succession.
Since XC don't operate such a policy now and would be unlikely to introduce one, I don't see what relevance that unhappy episode has to the current discussion.
a_c_skinner
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I do think that is true. The civil service default mode is everything is OK, the status quo should be maintained, do not do anything capable of being criticised and so on. It is this that has left the railway in a "can't do" operating mode, it has cascaded down to the management at the front line for obvious reasons and has left the industry worrying about everything except the customers.
DfT and Arriva XC want to order new trains? The very thought is chilling; horrifying even. Hitachi already has 173 bi-mode AT300 units in service or on order, not counting the 801s, with another 13 high-speed bi-modes (likely to also be AT300s) on-order for the West Coast Partnership. That's a total of 186 units, almost twice as many units as XC's entire current fleet (97 units, including the Turbostars). If the railway is to retain any credibility in the face of a net-zero carbon target then new intercity trains for routes which are not entirely electrified should be immediately ruled out. As it is the class 800s will probably last until the late 2040s and the 33 East Midlands Railway bi-modes until 2052 if not later. We need a rolling stock plan that reflects the need to have electrified all lines faster than 100mph by 2050, which means making good use of the 186 high-speed bi-modes that the UK is already committed to and not ordering any more.
As a result I voted for the "No use Voyagers/Meridians" option in the poll because the option I wanted ("yes but only until Voyagers and Meridians are cascaded in") was not available.
The stats were an updated version of an RSSB report, 'Traction Energy Metrics', published years ago. The RSSB appear to have taken down the report from their website but I've uploaded a copy to my webspace. Voyagers and Meridians are indeed terrible, but any diesel able to keep to those timings will also drink fuel quite rapidly (unless battery hybrid technology is used like the class 230s for Wrexham-Bidston perhaps).
Transport for Wales have recently asked for a PRM dispensation for the mark 2s that they have brought in due to a lack of capacity and late delivery of 769s. XC taking on a few extra IC125s until they can take on all the 222s and 221s wouldn't be much different, except that TfW had an alternative (the 769s) that failed to deliver whereas XC don't.
Bletchleyite
Veteran Member
In what way does 80x not do that? They provide the capacity now, and can run on electricity more and more as lines are wired. Then remove the diesel engines once the wiring is complete and you have a competent InterCity EMU which has another 20 years in it. They are perfect for transitional states like now.
That they are being used as an excuse not to electrify is not a good reason to keep Voyagers running around belching fumes and bog smells. That excuse simply needs not to be used.
They are indeed great for transitional states. However we already have 186 of them, I simply don't think we need any more. Life-expiry of the 33 EMR units in 2052 is a good target date for elimination of diesels; building more such units just increases the risk that they will be used as an excuse for not electrifying. Ordering new bi-modes for XC is the best way of ensuring that the Midland Main Line stays unwired until 2050, as there'd be nowhere to cascade the midland units were it wired earlier. The life-expiry date of any units ordered for XC would also be later than 2052, as a new XC fleet likely wouldn't be in service before 2025. While you could remove the diesel engines, the existance of said engines in the first place is an obstacle to progress.
Bletchleyite
Veteran Member
There's no need to cascade them anywhere from the Midland - just remove the engines and make them EMUs.
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