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Abellio Greater Anglia Class 755s (Regional Trains)

dk1

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@dk1 have you heard what went wrong at Audley End on 410 yesterday?
Only that multiple alarms where sounding and that reboot wasnt an option. It's not a unit that's given me any problems so will be interested to find out the issue.
 
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Tug

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Trains are also more of a systems integration problem certainly the cars, possibly also than aircraft. Other than infant self driving tech or EV chargers, there's no interface between the car and the infrastructure it drives on as that's all processed by the human driving it. With rail, the train has to be continuously communicating with all the relevant infrastructure and associated technology. Just making the train move should be very reliable these days (it's a bit of a shocker that it isn't with 755s, 230s etc) but having it correctly deal with signalling, track circuits, doors opening in the right places, all the safeguards correctly operating etc, that's where most of the challenge lies.

I hear what you are saying & I agree completely but to me that increases the need for adequate testing before introduction rather than providing an excuse for failure. The problem is that this isn't a one off but nobody seems to learn from their past mistakes.
 

samuelmorris

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I hear what you are saying & I agree completely but to me that increases the need for adequate testing before introduction rather than providing an excuse for failure. The problem is that this isn't a one off but nobody seems to learn from their past mistakes.
Agree, I don't for a minute think that it's acceptable
 

LAX54

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I think it's just always been like that. Never worth building your hope's up as things generally dissapoint. The train operators, NR & BR before them don't help themselves as build it up so much banging on about how many millions they've spent, only for it not to work as planned.
Could that be because the Managers who are in charge of a new bit of kit, move on, the newbie into the Job, is often not railway orientated, and takes the Manufacturer at their word ? Stadler, they say as a 'good name', but based on their exports to us, (and The Netherlands?) maybe not as good as their blurb!
 

bahnause

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bülach (switzerland)
I hear what you are saying & I agree completely but to me that increases the need for adequate testing before introduction rather than providing an excuse for failure. The problem is that this isn't a one off but nobody seems to learn from their past mistakes.

The timeframe between placing the order and the delivery date is too short.
 

306024

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........Stadler, they say as a 'good name', but based on their exports to us, (and The Netherlands?) maybe not as good as their blurb!

Remember talking to a Swiss Conductor a while back just after the GA order had been placed. His personal concern was that Stadler were growing too fast, too quickly, he knew them when they were in their infancy.

Whether this proves to be true time will tell, the 755s are a nice train, but must improve their reliability.
 

Stompehh

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5 Apr 2013
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Can you imagine buying a car that needs rebooting regularly or flying in an aircraft that stops working periodically? Why should a train be any different? Car & aircraft manufacturers run many many hours of testing before they would dare release a product to the public so why are railways any different?
I am an engineer working in aviation. Aircraft systems very regularly need to be rebooted, including on aircraft we all fly on all the time. The important thing is that systems fail in a safe manner, and it is exactly the same for trains. Typically if a system needs a reboot it is because its monitoring function has detected an error, so it has put itself into a "failed" state, often after a certain number of "re-tries". The reboot can then be done when whichever condition caused the original fault is no longer present.

The reason railways need so much more testing and adjustment done after delivery to the customer is that a huge amount of their function is reliant on the infrastructure (track and signalling). This is not the case at all for cars and aircraft. The fact that rail infrastructure, particularly the signalling interface, varies so much from location to location (even between regions in the UK) is a big contributor to the complexity of this problem and is why the manufacturer can't do this kind of testing at their own base.
 

LAX54

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Remember talking to a Swiss Conductor a while back just after the GA order had been placed. His personal concern was that Stadler were growing too fast, too quickly, he knew them when they were in their infancy.

Whether this proves to be true time will tell, the 755s are a nice train, but must improve their reliability.

Build quick to complete order, sub-contract where you can, including the build of the things, Swiss design, Polish built.
 

Icky Qualms

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Correct me if I'm wrong but wasn't 410 the first flirt in passenger service?
Only that multiple alarms where sounding and that reboot wasnt an option. It's not a unit that's given me any problems so will be interested to find out the issue.
 

Railperf

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Rail Advent reports best ever punctuality figures for trains on the Norwich to Sheringham line with 97.3% of services running to time.
 

Railperf

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0540 colchester to Peterborough terminating at Ipswich due to a 'train fault' cue ' unit only has 35% diesel in the tank - wasn't refueled overnight'! Edit : terminated at Stowmarket. Not much fun for passengers who have a choice of waiting 2 hours for the next one, or going the long way round via Cambridge and Ely.
Apparently Colchester refuelling point only delivering 25 litres per fill.
 
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306024

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Rail Advent reports best ever punctuality figures for trains on the Norwich to Sheringham line with 97.3% of services running to time.

That's a straight lift from a news item on the GA website. All part of repairing the damage of the previous months debacle.
 

Shunter_69

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755’s can’t be refuelled 2 days on the bounce at Colchester. Something to do with not being able to top up the Adblue.
 

Railperf

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755’s can’t be refuelled 2 days on the bounce at Colchester. Something to do with not being able to top up the Adblue.
They say the fuel pump has a fault where it will not deliver more than 25 litres in one hit. At that rate they estimated it would take 3 hrs to fill the tanks.
 

Shunter_69

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Sounds odd given they are refilled from a tanker. Not sure how the process works though, assumed it was just a case of attaching a pipe like in a petrol station.
 

Paulie558

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Correct me if I'm wrong but wasn't 410 the first flirt in passenger service?
Yes,went through my FB photos to check .
29/07/19.
Was on the 07?? Service Lowestoft to Norwich,and then on Norwich to Yarmouth during the day,returning to Lowestoft in the evening.
 

Railperf

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Sounds odd given they are refilled from a tanker. Not sure how the process works though, assumed it was just a case of attaching a pipe like in a petrol station.
The trigger keeps clicking off after appx 25 litres - much like how it does when your tank is full.
 

Shunter_69

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Maybe they just need to change the entry angle of the nozzle. Seems to work on my car when it thinks it’s full but I know it isn’t
 

Class 170101

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But surely the unit had to shunt from Platform 6 where the fuelling is to the carriage sidings - surely someone would have noticed at that point it was short fuelled otherwise how did they know at Stowmarket that it was?
 

LAX54

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But surely the unit had to shunt from Platform 6 where the fuelling is to the carriage sidings - surely someone would have noticed at that point it was short fuelled otherwise how did they know at Stowmarket that it was?
Think there is an issue with the fuel gauges sometimes reading lower than the actual amount of fuel in the tank, had a few terminate Stowmarket or Ipswich due to low fuel, only to find they had nearly half a tank.
 

LowLevel

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1K84 appears to have died on the down Thetford approaching Trowse. 1L13 stuck behind at Wymondham.
 

Tug

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Having given flack about the 755 and their introduction I thought that offering a bit of praise might be a good thing.

The Norwich - Yarmouth line opened today after a 16 day possession with new signalling and new automatic level crossings. All this meant that GA needed more 755's than they have for a couple of weeks and there were obviously possibilities of problems, but it appears to have all worked. Well done GA, Raitrack & everyone involved.

Here's hoping that the reopening of the Lowestoft lines next Monday, with the demand for even more 755's, works as well.
 

gingerheid

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GA needed more 755's than they have for a couple of weeks and there were obviously possibilities of problems, but it appears to have all worked.

Felixstowe has been bustituted most of the day due to a train fault...

Currently staring nervously at 419...
 

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