Yes, the fleet replacement could be a disaster.
The loss of toilets on the Aberdare/Merthyr Tydfil/Treherbert routes, I agree, is a step backwards. Something was needed for street running to Cardiff Bay though and would a micro-fleet for Coryton-Cardiff Bay have been viable? Hopefully any future extension beyond Cardiff Bay will see tram-trains moved down off the longer routes and heavy-rail stock with toilets reintroduced on services going north of Taffs Well.
Do any trams have Toilets on? For thats what a Tram-Train is, a tram. You don't see the Class 399s on the Sheffield Supertram services to Rotherham having Toilets.
Indeed, trams don't have toilets. I wouldn't expect them to; the problem is using trams (tram-trains) on long journeys. The Sheffield tram-train journey time is half that of proposed Cardiff Metro services.
I understand that the longest tram trip will be about 50 mins. Presumably, anyone who might need a toilet will go before they catch the tram, just as they would if they caught a bus (often for over 50 mins).
Not having toilets on the long-distance buses is not ideal either, particularly given the closure of public toilets and paywalls going up at some of the remaining ones. However, I don't think providing toilets on buses is remotely feasible, whereas it clearly is feasible to provide toilets on trains to Aberdare etc.
Secondly, the long distance fleet. A fleet of mainly two carriage trains with some three carriage ones? That’s like - no capacity growth whatsoever, when it’s badly needed on Manchester to Milford and Holyhead to Cardiff services. And even worse - the renders I’ve seen show ironing board seats and NO END DOORS.
So not only do we get no upgrade in capacity but a downgrade in seating and now a commuter style door layout that will bring in drafts and noise at every station call.
There is a capacity upgrade, because there will be more multiple operation than now. Regarding the quality of stock, I have sent many e-mails to TfW etc. regarding this over the past year. From their replies, the ironing board seats are not confirmed, but not explictly ruled out either. The suburban door layout however is CONFIRMED as TfW's plan. Perhaps not quite a 'disaster' but that would be a serious retrograde step if it goes ahead and, unlike the tram-trains, I can't see much hope for moving them somewhere they would be more-appropriate after a few years.
The major disaster though is that the Civity units appear to be planned as diesel-mechanical units. See also
this topic This means they will be bad for the environment. The class 230s at least are intended to be diesel-electric battery hybrids; regenerative braking charging the batteries should improve the fuel economy quite a bit compared to a DMU I would have thought. Diesel-mechanical is just not future-proof. Even if the Civity units are just diesel-electric to start with, that would make it easier to add pantographs and/or batteries at a later date. Better yet, passive provision for pantographs etc. should be built in from the outset; there's probably not enough electrification yet to justify them being bi-mode from day one, but if the wires reach Shrewsbury (from Wolverhampton) making the Cambrian units (at least) bi-mode would surely make sense.
Where the big future-proof thinking? Surely either taking more Mk4's from LNER or buying the new MK5 coaches with a bi/mode loco would allow for adding additional carriage if demand increases over the course of the franchise?
Instead they are buying Civity's for North-South services. Why?
Running loco + 3 + DVT doesn't make much sense to me, and I doubt the Holyhead-Cardiff's are that busy to need more than three coaches (otherwise, wouldn't the new Gerald sets be 5 rather than 4 coaches?) If you were to have mark 5s (or more mark 4s) the most sensible route to use them on I would have though would be Manchester-Swansea (as loco + 5 + DVT). However, given that TfW haven't promised an alternative service between Cardiff and Pembrokeshire, that would mean running five coaches through to Milford Haven. Using more than three coaches west of Swansea also doesn't make much sense most of the time. Because there's no other through service between Cardiff and Pembrokeshire planned by TfW, the Manchesters need to be able to split at Swansea, which rules out LHCS.
It looks like a big leap forward in capacity to me, but I guess some people are never going to be happy...
A big leap in capacity... for some. Not the Cambrian though which as it stands is set to lose a fair few seats due to no extra carriages and the new carriages having less seats. Milford Haven is probably the biggest loser, it could lose all its current 3-car workings when the 5-car Manchesters split at Swansea with only the 2-car unit going through to Carmarthen/Milford.
Just because the units have ⅓ ⅔ doors, that does not make them commuter trains.
Sorry, but it does. Or, at least, the double-width doors do. This quote from the
333 vs 331 topic backs me up:
The 331 is a compromise design for both commuter and semi fast services and it hasn’t quite succeeded in that respect. A low capacity seating layout with commuter style standing capacity and no large luggage capacity was never going to work.
Note 'commuter style standing capacity'. Standing capacity is what you get when you double the door width and standing should only ever be required (if at all) in the commuting peaks and even then only for short-distance passengers (<15 minutes) in my opinion. Therefore, any train with double-width doors (unless you have fewer doors)
is a commuter design. As soon as you add standing capacity, you have compromised the suitablity of the train for any other purpose. You can still make the train fairly reasonable, but if you make that compromise you are always going to fall short of a class 158 or 175.
It's a valid point - when replacing the 175's that are the mainstay of this route, why are they being downgraded to Civity commuter trains, rather than being upgraded to loco hauled (or an intercity DMU) for what could be considered an Intercity service (Swansea/Cardiff to Manchester/Liverpool/Holyhead).
After all, TPE are upgrading from 185 DMU's to IET's and loco-hauled Mk5's. TFW state they are adding a 1st class service between Swansea and Manchester.
That is entirely in keeping with the titled of the thread "Could TFWs fleet replacement be a disaster?"
Exactly, 175s/158s to 196s (that's what they look like, class number is not confirmed) would be a DOWNGRADE. 185s to the Nova units is an UPGRADE (except perhaps for the seats if TPE have chosen ironing boards). Personally, I think the class 175s are just about ideal; the upgrades we need are more carriages to a similar spec and unit-end gangways to allow the guard, trolley and passengers to move freely throughout the train. And the Nova 2s are part of the Civity family, apparently, so surely CAF could do a 3-car 100mph diesel version of that (with the class 196 cabs) for Wales & Borders services.
⅓ ⅔ doors are a requirement as these units will work many bust commuter services.
Actually, while they will undoubtedly carry large numbers of commuters into the big cities, most of the Civity routes are Regional Express services. They don't make (m)any intermediate stops within 15 minutes of the big cities. Even Manchester-Llandudno has a fairly long gap between Newton-Le-Willows and Manchester; too far to ask pepole to stand. The potential problem stations they do stop at (eg. Stockport) are also served by Intercity services; in this respect they are no different from the VT Euston-Manchester (via Crewe) services.
The class 175 is near enough ideal for routes like Cardiff to Holyhead. Dwell time issues are caused by overcrowding, not the location of the vestibules. As an example, the 20:32 from Chester to Holyhead yesterday, a two carriage 175, was ten minutes late departing, purely due to overcrowding.
Thank you. On a train that is not overcrowded, the location of the vestibles probably makes only a few seconds difference to the dwell time. Slam-doors probably make a bigger impact and I believe the Paddington-Swansea services are still timed for slam-door stock yet are allowed only 30secs more dwell time than the Carmarthen-Manchester services at Port Talbot, Neath and Bridgend. VT's dwell times at Stockport, Wilmslow and Crewe aren't far off the TfW services either.
I'm afraid I don't trust the "they've ordered 2 carriage trains but they'll only run them in pairs" take. Why would you do that?
I agree, if you put it like that it doesn't make any sense. However, there are sections of route where the train is relatively quiet (eg. Cambrian coast in winter) so running a 4/5-car train and splitting it en-route makes sense. Having shorter units (with end gangways) also allows more through services to multiple destinations (eg. Liverpool-Chester is planned to split for Cardiff/Llandudno), although I do think more of these portions could do with being 3-car rather than 2.
I do agree on the numbers ordered - there is a real need for 6-car trains between Birmingham and the Cambrian line particularly in summer[1], and they have not ordered enough sets to do that.
[1] Ideally 3+3 - though that would require SDO or platform lengthenings on the Coast - not only the Aber part is getting busy.
I do hope they will have SDO (I've not read anything either way). One of the many problems with the Cambrian is that 3-cars would be overkill on the Cambrian coast most of the year, but as you say 3-car would be useful at times. Also, that's the portion that would interwork with the north Wales coast if the Aberystwyth services were made hourly through to Birmingham. I think the number of new CAF units should be reduced, but not the number of vehicles allowing more 3-car sets (making up the unit count by retaining 158s and/or 175s).
There are cases on modern trains of the lavatories locking out of use automatically when the retention tank is full, so you could end up with an on board lavvie that can't be used because the tank is full, so anyone rocking up expecting a loo would be deprived of one.
That's another problem with the proposed Civity units. They are planning fewer toilets, so the tank(s) on the remaining toilet(s) would fill up quicker. Assuming that the maximum number of CET tanks that can be fitted on a unit with diesel engines under the floors is one per vehicle, that is the number we should have on a long-distance train.