rdlover777
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Because fixed 12 car trains are awesome
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Parliamentary debate on rolling stock on HS1
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Because fixed 12 car trains are awesome
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59CosG95
Established Member
But does Hitachi at Ashford have the space to maintain them? (I've never been to Ashford depot, but I suspect that they have jacks capable of lifting a full 6-car set AND ONLY THAT, not 2 6-car sets coupled together.)
In all honesty, the most likely order would be for more of the same type (i.e. more 6-car 395s).
D365
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Feel free to make a 12 car 395 for your model railway then.
ZL exile
Member
If lifting is the problem with the depot, you could always build the 12 car set so that it splits into two 6 car sets with a cab at one end only, like the Class 373 sets, then order an odd number, gives one for maintenance , the rest running the service, obviously may need scaling up in terms of numbers, but pretty easy to do so.
What do you do if your maintenance one is pointing the wrong way?
ZL exile
Member
Turn the set plenty of opportunities, on a planned basis to use triangles to turn the set. Anyway if a large order is placed, it may well be 2 or 3 spares that are required. Didn’t seem to be a problem with HST power cars or Class 91’s.
Class 91s have a cab at each end.
You suggested one spare. If that spare is the wrong way round then it has to find a triangle, and it can only leave the depot in the direction it is facing.
So from Ashford it has to go all round via Dover, Deal and Ashford, or well into London.
ZL exile
Member
not very often you see a Cass 91 blunt end first, gets turned very rapidly if required.
If your are doing planned maintenance, the the one needing to come off, can have that set turned whilst in traffic in the lead up to it, or if you need more than one spare set for order size you have them facing opposite directions, it’s not hard, also not hard to do the turning move. Note at present the weekend Turing moves for the Class 332 sets. Eurostar manage with one spare Class 373 power car for their fleet too
Though of course there are not to many occasions when you need to lift the complete set, so the number of times a turning move is required is minimal.
Correction: since the easiest way to provide more capacity is through longer trains rather than more services, fixed formations would be cheaper and operationally simpler (except in depots).
Esker-pades
Established Member
Trailers are cheaper than cab vehicles.
There is more capacity overall than in 1x12 than a 2x6.
59CosG95
Established Member
Well, those points certainly add up.
If this does get the go-ahead, I wait with bated breath to find out the maintenance regime...or in fact, how much more power the units will draw on 3rd rail whilst maintaining the same rate of acceleration as the 6-car units.
I suspect most of Kent will need a PSU for this!
sprinterguy
Established Member
Blimey, I can't believe that this is being made to sound so difficult, even by Hitachi themselves (Who granted are in the best position to know what they're talking about).
There's an ongoing AT-300 production line, and an assembly plant at Newton Aycliffe that's looking for more work. The 395s are a pre-existing design that Hitachi already have the blueprints for and experience of fitting all the pre-requisite HS1 safety systems to.
Hitachi have already proven themselves more than willing to tailor their services to suit the customers demand with the class 804 build for EMR with shorter 24m carriages, so if it's really too difficult to build some additional 6-car, 20 metre AT-300s to the class 395 spec then the railway's organisational inertia has overtaken sanity once and for all.
Perhaps it requires a new Southeastern direct award from a commercial and financial standpoint, but from a technological standpoint how hard could it be?
There's an ongoing AT-300 production line, and an assembly plant at Newton Aycliffe that's looking for more work. The 395s are a pre-existing design that Hitachi already have the blueprints for and experience of fitting all the pre-requisite HS1 safety systems to.
Hitachi have already proven themselves more than willing to tailor their services to suit the customers demand with the class 804 build for EMR with shorter 24m carriages, so if it's really too difficult to build some additional 6-car, 20 metre AT-300s to the class 395 spec then the railway's organisational inertia has overtaken sanity once and for all.
Perhaps it requires a new Southeastern direct award from a commercial and financial standpoint, but from a technological standpoint how hard could it be?
No - Needs to be 6 car for exactly those reasons!
This will be a small-ish order of just 7-9x 6car units excluding any Marshlink (bi-mode) extension plans.
I agree, i come back to what i said originally in so its a poitician saying how difficult it is, not the engineers who make trains
D365
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Besides, the main reason that some fixed formation trains have appeared in the last decade is because that's the only way to provide additional sq. metres of passenger space once train lengths and/or frequencies are maxed out. I don't think HS1 has either of those issues yet.
rdlover777
Member
While on the idea of 1x12 395s, i quickly drew up a side profile of a 395/1 that i dub the Seven Sister's class
Chris125
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How many more 6-car 395s can the depot cope with? AIUI stabling has long been an issue for Southeastern and with Chart Leacon being partially reopened presumably a larger high-speed fleet would need yet more room to be found. Longer trains on the 3rd rail network could well require power upgrades too.
Remember that any Networker replacement (that presumably would be Hitachi as well) would need both a new depot and power upgrades, so buying new HS1 trains at the same time as the Networker replacements would make sense.
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