Do GWR 800/802s decouple in service and should sets be extended to 9 cars?

[mmh]

Take this Christmas for example 5x2 IETs, Bristol to Paddington, the front 5 coaches are rammed, the rear 5 which came from Taunton still have available seats, but nobody wants to risk hopping off the train to join the rear 5. And at Reading 2x5 fully rammed. It seems stupid to have 2 lots of first class in different places and the inability to walk down the entire length of the train.

Well that's poor management of an overcrowded service. Not unusual on a joining service from Holyhead to be advised to move to the front train at Chester while the attachment's taking place if the rear train is heaving (which can easily happen at unpredictable times if there's disruption to the ferries)

 

[Clarence Yard]

That's the problem. The daft policy of completely eradicating 9 car sets west of Plymouth on the new timetable

There isn’t such a policy. There is an existing option for GWR to take, in times of high demand, an extra 9 car unit on availability, which allows two extra 5 car sets or equivalent to be in diagram between Plymouth and Penzance at any one time. As I have said many times before, there was a choice here for the base 802 fleet deployment - Cornish half hourly and extra services to Exeter/Plymouth or longer trains in Cornwall, GWR couldn’t have both. The W of E 802 fleet, if it went all longer between Plymouth and Penzance would probably have ended up as 8 car.

There have been hardly any cancellations due to coupling issues. Nearly all of the short forms have been due to lack of units coming off depot. I will repeat, if a unit comes onto Laira, Long Rock or Maliphant and dies, there is usually no spare to replace it as Hitachi tend to keep any spares at either North Pole or Stoke Gifford. Likewise if you short form or misform onto those depots at night (which is a TOC fault so Hitachi get a free pass), you will get the same off. That has hit the SW services at times but also formations from Swansea.

A 9 car unit diagram on the Cotswold might appear wasteful at times but you have to look at the demand throughout it’s duty cycle and on particular days. There is a logic to all this, based on passenger loading information that FG/GWR have access to as well as the operational possibilities. You are also not able to swap units around entirely at will, especially if it is going to leave you short later on.

 

[Envoy]

Well, tell Hitachi that they darn well ought to keep some spare parts at Maliphant (Swansea), Laira (Plymouth) & Long Rock (Penzance).

 

[HowardGWR]

A 9 car unit diagram on the Cotswold might appear wasteful at times but you have to look at the demand throughout it’s duty cycle and on particular days. There is a logic to all this, based on passenger loading information that FG/GWR have access to as well as the operational possibilities. You are also not able to swap units around entirely at will, especially if it is going to leave you short later on.

Yes but correspondents here, who don't have access to that information, just somehow know better.

 

[Clarence Yard]

Well, tell Hitachi that they darn well ought to keep some spare parts at Maliphant (Swansea), Laira (Plymouth) & Long Rock (Penzance).

Spare units, not spare parts.

 

[Energy]

Spare units cost quite a bit, which units are failing? If it is 5 cars when they operate in multiple then that would make sense.

By the way, what do they use as thunderbird locomotives? Are the 57s compatible?

 

[FGW_DID]

By the way, what do they use as thunderbird locomotives? Are the 57s compatible?

Yes, the 57s can be used.

 

[jimm]

The argument that 9 cars would carry around fresh air at some times is silly in my opinion. If longer trains were ordered now, there would be no capacity issues in the future due to the constant rise of passengers using trains as a form of transport. Who knows if, for instance, due to the increase in frequency of trains from Cheltenham to Paddington becoming hourly, more and more people start using the services, and next thing you know, in 5-10 years time, all those off peak 5 car runs are rammed.

Given that that Cotswold Line, where the busiest stations have has shorter journey times to Paddington (and railcards and ticket types are on offer that are not available further west) does not generate huge volumes of off-peak passengers and has had a reasonably frequent off-peak service since 1993 - that has generated steady but not spectacular growth over that time - then the likes of Stroud, Gloucester and Cheltenham are not likely to start generating hundreds and hundreds of extra passengers all through the day any time soon.

The 8:58 Cheltenham to Paddington yesterday was cancelled between Cheltenham and Gloucester due to lack of train crew.
The 5 cars were full and standing on leaving Stroud.
When we were delayed for 40 minutes at Slough due to signalling problems the driver released the doors for passengers to stretch their legs, 5 minutes later a Bristol to Paddington service did the same on the other up platform. On seeing the Bristol train with seats available a few passengers switched trains. Inevitably when the problems were cleared the Bristol service was given priority.
While 5 cars are adequate on most weekend services on this route this one clearly needs 9

And of course one service on the Sunday between Christmas and New Year - when a lot of people are still on an extended break and won't be back at work until Thursday, so are not following typical travel patterns - is an entirely representative one on which to base claims about what rolling stock is needed.

Would agree if all of the Hitachi IETs/Satsumas/AT300s etc etc were able to work with each other, e.g. an 800 with an 802...

It's not as simple as knocking in a few extra coaches to extend the units, like it was with loco hauled/HSTs. Who knows if Hitachi will agree to build just extra coaches in the future? Or will it end up being the same as with Bombardier's Voyager fleet.

So trains should be built to only last for 5-10 years? Seems wasteful in my eyes. Once extra capacity is required, more cash needs to be splashed out for extra newly built units, instead of just spending the money once, and not worry about overcrowding for years and years...

In technical terms, if someone will pay to build them, it is as simple as adding extra coaches all the way up to maximum train length of 312m* (ie 12-car) formations. The ability of infrastructure at stations and depots to accommodate such long trains is, of course, a different manner.

*From page 22 of the IEP technical specification
https://assets.publishing.service.g...s/attachment_data/file/82840/tts-redacted.pdf

Hitachi have not said a thing about how long they may be able to build more IET coaches or trains and their A-Train platform has been around in various forms since the 1990s, so future production/further development of the UK variant is perfectly possible. Alstom built more Pendolino coaches and complete trains for Virgin a decade after the first order and BR built the TGS coaches for HSTs four years after they entered service, while the Mk3bs for West Coast services were built at Derby a decade after the Mk3a order.

Personally, I think that all of the GWR 800s and 802s should have been made nine carriages, and an entirely separate bi mode train (with a more appropriate amount of carriages) should have been ordered to handle the more regional Oxford and Bedwyn services. That would allow for the 800/802s to stick to the main GWR expresses. I don't see why Cornwall, South Wales and even Cheltenham should get any less than nine carriages, it's only one more than what they were getting only two or so years ago, and passenger numbers will only increase. Then again I'm no expert.

Do you mean all or not?

First you say all of GWR's 800 and 802s should be nine-cars - that's 93 sets and 93 nine-car trains will never ever be viable to operate, even in magic moneytree land. Then you say that that another type of bi-mode should have been ordered (so much for simplifying the train fleet after years of random HSTs, 180s and Turbos on the Oxford/Cotswold trains) for 'more regional' routes, as these are not 'main expresses', while 'even Cheltenham' should have nine-car trains.

You clearly know little or nothing about traffic between Oxford and London (a route that has had two FGW/GWR fast trains per hour since 2006) compared with Cheltenham (a route that has had, er, an HST every couple of hours outside the peaks*, with a dmu shuttle to and from Swindon in between the HSTs), never mind all the passengers along the Cotswold Line beyond Oxford, who can do a decent job of filling a nine-car IET in the peaks all by themselves. Which is why the route's peak trains are allocated nine-car sets - so where does that leave your 'more appropriate amount of carriages'?

*And when GWR had all 14 180s on its books up to 2008, they worked many of the off-peak Cheltenham route trains, which is a bit of a clue as to the volume of traffic there.

Just out of interest, are the 80x trains restricted to be formed in odd numbers (i.e 5, 7 or 9-car units)?

No, see above. The key factor in the decision on formations was that in terms of seating capacity 2x5 or 1x9 are pretty much the same.

It's not about having all nine car trains in Cornwall. It's about having some. I don't think you get what is being said here. Arguments like other areas and TOC's using 5 car set's are not the issue and it has already pointed out that most Cross Country services are too small anyway. It's about more 9 or 10 car trains on the Cornish routes which some people seem to think don't get busy during holidays. I suggest you come on one next summer and see for yourselves. 5 car trains in Sheffield, Sunderland, Edinburgh, Plymouth etc. I say 9 car train to Great Malvern. Cuts both ways.

But it varies according to traffic and time of year. I've visited Great Malvern on 9 car IET's and every time they've been empty for half of the journey. I don't see this being mentioned or is it because it's the Gold Plated Cotswolds line.

And you, and certain others, don't get what is being said here, and was said elsewhere over and over previously.

Irishrail's constant argument is that lots of places (by now we've pretty much worked through every GWR express service you care to mention, apart from the West Country) do not actually need nine-car trains much of time, despite the far greater volumes of traffic they see all day, every day, pretty much year-round.

As opposed to the situation in Cornwall - good luck finding a single quote where anyone has stated in any thread on this forum that trains in Cornwall do not get busy in the summer, to back up your allegation.

It has been pointed out I don't know how many times that the rolling stock allocations for the summer period are different (just the same as they were in the past - do you think the stock for the London-Newquay trains appear like magic every summer?) and Clarence Yard keeps trying to tell you that an additional nine-car set is available for several months in the middle of the year.

Maybe you should come on a peak train to Great Malvern and see why GWR diagrams a nine-car IET on them - because all the nine-car sets on off-peak Cotswold Line trains that irishrail keeps going on about (so much for no one mentioning them) scarcely existed before the timetable change and they don't exist now, as the diagrams changed the other week, as the timetable is no longer based in large part on what HSTs used to do.

About three-quarters of Cotswold Line services are five-car and guess when the other 25%, worked by nine-cars, are running - weekday peaks and the busiest times at weekends. Amazing, who'd have thought that...

Some of us have enough common sense not to demand laughable over-provision of seating capacity at times of the day when it is not needed - again, just show me a single quote from this forum where anyone has ever demanded nine-car trains all day on most services or every service running west of Oxford.

The only people interested in gold-plating are the ones demanding that trains between London and Cornwall should have nine cars all the way, all day. And please don't give us the 'we don't mean all of the trains' line yet again - work though the diagrams and a train that is quiet one way pr part of the way is likely to be very busy going in the other direction.

Exactly. Cotswolds don't need 9 cars all day and too be fair I'm seeing more 5 cars on that route these days. However we are still seeing quarter full 9 cars running from Cardiff to swansea during the daytime. I'm not suggesting that this route shouldn't get 9 cars, just that it is an example where a train isn't full throughout it's journey but still justifies a full length train for operational convenience. And yes, as has been stated there are 3 or 4 Cornish trains each day which justify 9 or 10 cars into Cornwall all year round. If GWR put 9 cars on the 1004 1204 1404 off padd and a few of the morning ones off Penzance (doable as the 9ncar sets would work in from Laira so not overnighting at Long rock), then I think most down here would be happier. Although it still wouldn't solve the problems of short formed 5 car trains replacing booked 10 car ones on other Plymouth to padd trains.

'To be fair...'

You are joking, aren't you?

No one has ever said that the Cotswold Line needed nine-car trains all day, or most of the day, or anything like that, have they?

You were told by me months ago (because I actually did the maths, instead of spraying around unfounded claims) that even under the interim way of operating, with IETs taking over the HST/180/Turbo-based timetable, that over 60% of Cotswold Line services were already worked by five-car IETs. You were also told that figure would go up to at least 70% come December, and a few late changes to allocations have pushed that to about 75% now.

Which "few morning ones off Penzance" do you mean? None of the IET departures from Penzance before 9am is worked by a set that comes from Plymouth, so far as I can see. And the trains then have to work back from London in the other direction. Guess what times the early trains up from Penzance return from Paddington, unless they all are all being sent straight to the depot to be replaced by a fresh formation out of North Pole? That's right, the 10.04, 12.04 and 14.04 departures. While the late-morning trains from the South West then work back in the late afternoon...

So all those trains from London in late afternoon and early evening the previous day down to Cornwall and all the early trains they form back out out of Penzance would have to be nine-car sets in order for those trains in the middle of the day from London to be nine-car - so much for some nine-cars, or a few nine-cars.

Work through the whole day's timetable and the only thing there would be few of would be trains between Paddington and Penzance not worked by a nine-car set.

 

[Energy]

Having 9 cars on the Cotswold line is fine, GWR seem to find it profitable enough. It's like th XC routes, barely anyone is travelling from Aberdeen to Penzance but lots will be traveling on Manchester (not sure if it stops at Manchester, I'm just using it as an example) to Birmingham.

As I have said, all the 800s should be 9 cars but some 802s will still need to be 5 cars for some routes, they just need to be assigned correctly and timetabled well. In my opinion London services should be 9 cars most of the time with only 5 car services for areas which can't have 9 cars, these could be timetabled well so there isn't too much demand, say leaving a few minutes after a 9 car. 2x5 cars could happen but really shouldn't, if it can have 2x5 cars it can have 9 cars.

These 5 car routes should be ones which don't have much steady growth with too low passenger numbers to be able to run a 9 car, for example the cotsworld would be fine with 5 cars but they have enough that GWR can run a 9 car so they don't need to split. If a route has enough demand for 5 cars but really can't have any more then 5 car services or a shuttle to another station and they just don't get a direct service

 

[Energy]

On another note, the 'not all of them' may seem repetitive but I think most will agree that the 58 total 5 car IETs is too many, there are only 35 9 car units. I would suggest halving the 5 car fleet.

 

[coradiafan2000]

Given that that Cotswold Line, where the busiest stations have has shorter journey times to Paddington (and railcards and ticket types are on offer that are not available further west) does not generate huge volumes of off-peak passengers and has had a reasonably frequent off-peak service since 1993 - that has generated steady but not spectacular growth over that time - then the likes of Stroud, Gloucester and Cheltenham are not likely to start generating hundreds and hundreds of extra passengers all through the day any time soon.



And of course one service on the Sunday between Christmas and New Year - when a lot of people are still on an extended break and won't be back at work until Thursday, so are not following typical travel patterns - is an entirely representative one on which to base claims about what rolling stock is needed.



In technical terms, if someone will pay to build them, it is as simple as adding extra coaches all the way up to maximum train length of 312m* (ie 12-car) formations. The ability of infrastructure at stations and depots to accommodate such long trains is, of course, a different manner.

*From page 22 of the IEP technical specification
https://assets.publishing.service.g...s/attachment_data/file/82840/tts-redacted.pdf

Hitachi have not said a thing about how long they may be able to build more IET coaches or trains and their A-Train platform has been around in various forms since the 1990s, so future production/further development of the UK variant is perfectly possible. Alstom built more Pendolino coaches and complete trains for Virgin a decade after the first order and BR built the TGS coaches for HSTs four years after they entered service, while the Mk3bs for West Coast services were built at Derby a decade after the Mk3a order.



Do you mean all or not?

First you say all of GWR's 800 and 802s should be nine-cars - that's 93 sets and 93 nine-car trains will never ever be viable to operate, even in magic moneytree land. Then you say that that another type of bi-mode should have been ordered (so much for simplifying the train fleet after years of random HSTs, 180s and Turbos on the Oxford/Cotswold trains) for 'more regional' routes, as these are not 'main expresses', while 'even Cheltenham' should have nine-car trains.

You clearly know little or nothing about traffic between Oxford and London (a route that has had two FGW/GWR fast trains per hour since 2006) compared with Cheltenham (a route that has had, er, an HST every couple of hours outside the peaks*, with a dmu shuttle to and from Swindon in between the HSTs), never mind all the passengers along the Cotswold Line beyond Oxford, who can do a decent job of filling a nine-car IET in the peaks all by themselves. Which is why the route's peak trains are allocated nine-car sets - so where does that leave your 'more appropriate amount of carriages'?

*And when GWR had all 14 180s on its books up to 2008, they worked many of the off-peak Cheltenham route trains, which is a bit of a clue as to the volume of traffic there.



No, see above. The key factor in the decision on formations was that in terms of seating capacity 2x5 or 1x9 are pretty much the same.





And you, and certain others, don't get what is being said here, and was said elsewhere over and over previously.

Irishrail's constant argument is that lots of places (by now we've pretty much worked through every GWR express service you care to mention, apart from the West Country) do not actually need nine-car trains much of time, despite the far greater volumes of traffic they see all day, every day, pretty much year-round.

As opposed to the situation in Cornwall - good luck finding a single quote where anyone has stated in any thread on this forum that trains in Cornwall do not get busy in the summer, to back up your allegation.

It has been pointed out I don't know how many times that the rolling stock allocations for the summer period are different (just the same as they were in the past - do you think the stock for the London-Newquay trains appear like magic every summer?) and Clarence Yard keeps trying to tell you that an additional nine-car set is available for several months in the middle of the year.

Maybe you should come on a peak train to Great Malvern and see why GWR diagrams a nine-car IET on them - because all the nine-car sets on off-peak Cotswold Line trains that irishrail keeps going on about (so much for no one mentioning them) scarcely existed before the timetable change and they don't exist now, as the diagrams changed the other week, as the timetable is no longer based in large part on what HSTs used to do.

About three-quarters of Cotswold Line services are five-car and guess when the other 25%, worked by nine-cars, are running - weekday peaks and the busiest times at weekends. Amazing, who'd have thought that...

Some of us have enough common sense not to demand laughable over-provision of seating capacity at times of the day when it is not needed - again, just show me a single quote from this forum where anyone has ever demanded nine-car trains all day on most services or every service running west of Oxford.

The only people interested in gold-plating are the ones demanding that trains between London and Cornwall should have nine cars all the way, all day. And please don't give us the 'we don't mean all of the trains' line yet again - work though the diagrams and a train that is quiet one way pr part of the way is likely to be very busy going in the other direction.



'To be fair...'

You are joking, aren't you?

No one has ever said that the Cotswold Line needed nine-car trains all day, or most of the day, or anything like that, have they?

You were told by me months ago (because I actually did the maths, instead of spraying around unfounded claims) that even under the interim way of operating, with IETs taking over the HST/180/Turbo-based timetable, that over 60% of Cotswold Line services were already worked by five-car IETs. You were also told that figure would go up to at least 70% come December, and a few late changes to allocations have pushed that to about 75% now.

Which "few morning ones off Penzance" do you mean? None of the IET departures from Penzance before 9am is worked by a set that comes from Plymouth, so far as I can see. And the trains then have to work back from London in the other direction. Guess what times the early trains up from Penzance return from Paddington, unless they all are all being sent straight to the depot to be replaced by a fresh formation out of North Pole? That's right, the 10.04, 12.04 and 14.04 departures. While the late-morning trains from the South West then work back in the late afternoon...

So all those trains from London in late afternoon and early evening the previous day down to Cornwall and all the early trains they form back out out of Penzance would have to be nine-car sets in order for those trains in the middle of the day from London to be nine-car - so much for some nine-cars, or a few nine-cars.

Work through the whole day's timetable and the only thing there would be few of would be trains between Paddington and Penzance not worked by a nine-car set.

To clarify I meant that five coaches should only run as far as Oxford, I agree that the Cotswold services through to Great Malvern etc should remain 9 cars. I'll admit I've only been to Oxford a handful of times, so don't fully know what the passenger numbers are like. It seemed not long ago that 3 coach turbos were the norm for services terminating at Oxford and Bedwyn not long ago, so I assumed for example a five coach train would be a reasonable increase.

 

[Clarence Yard]

Spare units cost quite a bit, which units are failing? If it is 5 cars when they operate in multiple then that would make sense.

Not diagrammed spares, which would be hideously expensive in daily payments.

What I am referring to is where the spare units coming off maintenance or repairs tend to occur and that isn't at the country end so the country end is where the short forms are most likely to arise.

 

[coppercapped]

Sometimes the DfT logic seems very different to everyone else's.

The DfT's logic, for all those aspects of the areas it is active in — trunk roads, air transport, maritime transport, road vehicle and driver licensing, etc. — is based on policies that have been adopted and the need to keep its annual budget within the limits set by the Treasury as part of the Annual Spending Review.

It is supposed to set the strategic direction for these activities and, with the exception of the railways, exercises its authority through arms length agencies such as the Civil Aviation Authority. The issue, as I see it, is that it is neither structured nor has staff with the right background to make what are effectively commercial decisions for the railways in an appropriate length of time.

Train operating companies are all about product — the civil service is all about process.

Well, tell Hitachi that they darn well ought to keep some spare parts at Maliphant (Swansea), Laira (Plymouth) & Long Rock (Penzance).

That will require a renegotiation of the maintenance and delivery contracts agreed between Agility Trains (West) and the Department for Transport for the IEP sets. There may — may — be some flexibility for the 802 sets ordered by the ROSCO for GWR but as the order was closely scrutinised by the DfT don't expect miracles.

In other words...don't hold your breath!

 

[JonathanH]

As I have said, all the 800s should be 9 cars but some 802s will still need to be 5 cars for some routes, they just need to be assigned correctly and timetabled well.

This debate would be set in much better context if the proponents of changing 5-car units to 9-car ones could set out a list of specific individual services where they think that a longer train is needed now.

The fact that there are loads of 5-car units operating in pairs is water under the bridge. The cost of making them all 9-car just because people don't like towing unused cabs around the network would be eye-watering.

 

[Energy]

The cost of making them all 9-car just because people don't like towing unused cabs around the network would be eye-watering.

I would rather existing 5 car units got extended to 9 cars so other 5 car units got sent elsewhere than more 5 car units get ordered, the displaced 5 car units could go to say replacing the short HSTs.

 

[Master29]

As opposed to the situation in Cornwall - good luck finding a single quote where anyone has stated in any thread on this forum that trains in Cornwall do not get busy in the summer, to back up your allegation.

Er, that is precisely what I said. Your point?

It has been pointed out I don't know how many times that the rolling stock allocations for the summer period are different (just the same as they were in the past - do you think the stock for the London-Newquay trains appear like magic every summer?) and Clarence Yard keeps trying to tell you that an additional nine-car set is available for several months in the middle of the year.

Again, I don't dispute this.

Maybe you should come on a peak train to Great Malvern and see why GWR diagrams a nine-car IET on them

I have and they were empty, although this was before the new timetable. Clarence Yard has given an explanation to this, however.

Some of us have enough common sense not to demand laughable over-provision of seating capacity at times of the day when it is not needed - again, just show me a single quote from this forum where anyone has ever demanded nine-car trains all day on most services or every service running west of Oxford.

I never said they had. You're once again putting words into peoples mouths.

The only people interested in gold-plating are the ones demanding that trains between London and Cornwall should have nine cars all the way, all day. And please don't give us the 'we don't mean all of the trains' line yet again - work though the diagrams and a train that is quiet one way pr part of the way is likely to be very busy going in the other direction.

Oh come on. That's not exactly true is it. Even Clarence Yard has admitted in the past there has been a tendency to favour certain parts of the network over others although not in these exact words.

 

[Master29]

I would rather existing 5 car units got extended to 9 cars so other 5 car units got sent elsewhere than more 5 car units get ordered, the displaced 5 car units could go to say replacing the short HSTs.

As opposed to carrying pointless unused kitchens on most services.

 

[JonathanH]

I would rather existing 5 car units got extended to 9 cars so other 5 car units got sent elsewhere than more 5 car units get ordered, the displaced 5 car units could go to say replacing the short HSTs.

The short HSTs that have just had a fortune spent on them to have sliding doors?

Why not let the fleet prove itself in service and then in a few years time replace the HSTs with 5-cars displaced by extending IETs rather than spending money now? Alternatively order a proper regional train to replace HSTs, Turbos, and 158s in the natural lifespan.

You can't use the 5-car 800s to replace short HSTs anyway given the need to get them back to Stoke Gifford, Maliphant or North Pole each night, not for 20-odd more years anyway.

 

[Master29]

Yes but correspondents here, who don't have access to that information, just somehow know better.

Why the cynical tone?

 

[Energy]

You can't use the 5-car 800s to replace short HSTs anyway given the need to get them back to Stoke Gifford, Maliphant or North Pole each night, not for 20-odd more years anyway.

Maliphant could work for some routes to south wales., I was more suggesting the 800s all get extended and 5 car 802s are used to replace short HSTs as the 802s can be maintained at Laira.

 

[irish_rail]

Not diagrammed spares, which would be hideously expensive in daily payments.

What I am referring to is where the spare units coming off maintenance or repairs tend to occur and that isn't at the country end so the country end is where the short forms are most likely to arise.

Yet ironically in the morning it is trains coming from the country end that are busiest and most in need of being full formation. I'd say there is definitely a case for some sort of Hitachi base in Plymouth, be it laira or tavistock yard.

 

[Pete_uk]

That will require a renegotiation of the maintenance and delivery contracts agreed between Agility Trains (West) and the Department for Transport for the IEP sets. There may — may — be some flexibility for the 802 sets ordered by the ROSCO for GWR but as the order was closely scrutinised by the DfT don't expect miracles.

In other words...don't hold your breath!

Is that not one of the biggest problems with the 800s? The stupidly rigid and expensive contracts?

 

[jimm]

To clarify I meant that five coaches should only run as far as Oxford, I agree that the Cotswold services through to Great Malvern etc should remain 9 cars. I'll admit I've only been to Oxford a handful of times, so don't fully know what the passenger numbers are like. It seemed not long ago that 3 coach turbos were the norm for services terminating at Oxford and Bedwyn not long ago, so I assumed for example a five coach train would be a reasonable increase.

So you don't know much at all about loadings at Oxford. Five-car trains would be utterly inadequate for peak services that start and terminate there and they can struggle to cope at the times of the day as well, particularly in the summer tourist season. Turbos have not been 'the norm' for a very long time, with HSTs often used along with the Class 180s, as all the Turbos that could be replaced by them were desperately needed to boost capacity in the Thames Valley.

Er, that is precisely what I said. Your point?

I know what you meant, but you also wrote this, didn't you?

Cornish routes which some people seem to think don't get busy during holidays

Clearly implying that you think someone, somewhere does not think there are busy trains in Cornwall in the summer and so cannot see the utterly compelling case for this to somehow translate into nine-car trains all the year round...

I have and they were empty, although this was before the new timetable. Clarence Yard has given an explanation to this, however.

Exactly, before the new timetable - and I pointed out, long before the new timetable started, that it would result in an increase in the proportion of Cotswold Line services worked by five-car trains, which was already the majority anyway.

Yet this same spurious claim about nine-car IETs on off-peak trains on the Cotswold Line, and all kinds of places other than poor old Cornwall, keeps being posted on this forum. It is high time that you, and others, stopped repeating it.

I never said they had. You're once again putting words into peoples mouths.

Really? So what exactly did you mean then, by mentioning empty 9-car IETs on the Cotswold Line and wondering whether their use was 'because it's the Gold Plated Cotswold Line'?

I've visited Great Malvern on 9 car IET's and every time they've been empty for half of the journey. I don't see this being mentioned or is it because it's the Gold Plated Cotswolds line.

Your words, not mine.

Oh come on. That's not exactly true is it. Even Clarence Yard has admitted in the past there has been a tendency to favour certain parts of the network over others although not in these exact words.

What does what I wrote have to do with favouring certain parts of the network?

Considering the god-awful shambles that services on the Cotswold Line were during the autumn of 2017 and the first half of 2018 while the 180s were being phased out, the new drivers' depot at Worcester was being built up and the impact of the delayed IET training programme was being felt across GWR, the idea that the Cotswold Line somehow gets special favours compared with Cornwall or anywhere else is laughable.

The point I was making was that you, and certain other people, keep demanding nine-car trains in Cornwall for what would effectively be all the time - which would most certainly amount to gold-plating/gross over-provision of seating capacity for much of the year.

Clarence Yard has attempted on numerous occasions to get across the point that - whatever the train stabling situation at Penzance - the sums did not add up for both nine-car trains all the time on London-Penzance and the baseline 2tph service on the main line through the county.

Do you want to get rid of the 2tph service, so you can have nine-car trains on the London services? I expect there are some people making journeys within Cornwall, or who go no further than Plymouth, who might not be too impressed with going back to the old timetable pattern and its random intervals between trains.

 

[Energy]

TOCs certainly favour routes, they favour the ones which make the most money, if I'm GWR then of course I would favour an express service to London over a local train.

Clearly implying that you think someone, somewhere does not think there are busy trains in Cornwall in the summer and so cannot see the utterly compelling case for this to somehow translate into nine-car trains all the year round...

Maybe the solution is having them still be 9 cars but cutting the number of services to the route during seasons with less demand, say cutting the journey and shortening it so the service ends at an earlier station. I wouldn't stop an entire service as some of it, like say Oxford to London, will still have lots of demand. Another example is putting it on another route, for example Bath will be popular during the winter because of the Christmas market but Cornwall won't be that popular, so during the winter they could transfer some stock onto a service which stops at Bath.

 

[coradiafan2000]

Things never seemed this complicated a few years ago when it was mainly HSTs. Things sure are changing, what with the new timetable and increased passenger numbers.

 

[Clarence Yard]

TOCs certainly favour routes, they favour the ones which make the most money, if I'm GWR then of course I would favour an express service to London over a local train.

Maybe the solution is having them still be 9 cars but cutting the number of services to the route during seasons with less demand, say cutting the journey and shortening it so the service ends at an earlier station. I wouldn't stop an entire service as some of it, like say Oxford to London, will still have lots of demand. Another example is putting it on another route, for example Bath will be popular during the winter because of the Christmas market but Cornwall won't be that popular, so during the winter they could transfer some stock onto a service which stops at Bath.

The service specification is a contract with the DfT so altering the timetable as you suggest is not really on. You could have days when Cornwall, Bath and a host of other places will experience high demand and then you have to make choices. As a lot of DfT emphasis is around peak seats into conurbations, your base plan will have to reflect that.

Favouring routes is not something that TOCs normally do when it comes to stock allocation. You try and match supply and demand in both your base plan and on high demand days, all with the stock you have effectively been “authorised” to have. In today’s railway and really since the sector era, the amount of spare stock you have to play with is nil, so you are at the mercy of getting your supposed availability out each day.

Going 9 or 10 car from London to Plymouth/Exeter/Paignton on nearly every train in winter is an awful lot of seats and something that also had to be fought for. If the demand west of Plymouth, when the new timetable settles down, shows that more than 5 cars is needed on the base winter service on more than one or two trains, then it will aid the case for buying more cars. But we are a long way from that at this moment in time.

 

[irish_rail]

Change the record jimm, for a decent while now I have only been arguing for 9 cars on several services into Cornwall.
I have consigned myself to the fact the risk of short forms between Plymouth and London is one we must live with , probably for a long time. However I cannot accept certain services , namely the 1004 1204 and 1404 going into Cornwall as a 5 car. Similarly in the morning departures from Penzance after 9 until 11ish also need more than 5 coaches, and btw I'm fairly sure the stock for at least one of those does start it's diagram at Laira and not Long Rock.

 

[Weekender]

Jimm, the journey referred to in post 123 was on Saturday not Sunday as you referred to in your reply.
In the old timetable the equivalent 8:58 Cheltenham to Paddington was always a popular service probably largely due to the next service only running as far as Swindon.
Hopefully as people get used to the new timetable passengers from Stroud and Kemble will realise if they travel an hour earlier or an hour later they should always get a seat.
Out of interest what is the reduction in capacity between a 5 car IET and a 125?

 

[w1bbl3]

Maliphant could work for some routes to south wales., I was more suggesting the 800s all get extended and 5 car 802s are used to replace short HSTs as the 802s can be maintained at Laira.

Laira isn't currently a maintenance base for Hitachi only light servicing so using five cars to replace the short HST sets would still require the diagramming to send the units back to Stoke Gifford (or North Pole). Maliphant is also only a light servicing base so any Wales to West Country diagramming would again need to see Stoke Gifford for heavy maintenance. I'd expect that Hitachi would need to establish a full heavy maintenance base at Laira to make your proposal viable as I just can't see Stoke Gifford having the capacity for the 802's to be based there for heavy maintenance together with existing IEP maintenance requirements.

I just can't see the demand for all five car services to be extended to nines throughout the day everywhere on the network, there are I'm sure some services that currently see fives which should ideally be nines or if it wasn't for infrastructure limitations 2x5's but once the new timetable has bedded in maybe GWR can build a case to DfT for additional cars.

 

[Randomer]

Likewise if you short form or misform onto those depots at night (which is a TOC fault so Hitachi get a free pass), you will get the same off. That has hit the SW services at times but also formations from Swansea.

Does this mean that if a diagram is short formed off the depot due to Hitachi not provisioning a unit GWR have to fix this during the day by potentially short forming another service later on in the day to restore the balance of units?

Mostly I'm trying to get this clear in my head but I am aware it skirts close to being commercially sensitive.