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

[Clarence Yard]

Not really - short forming could perpetuate or even worsen the situation. You are always trying to get the expected booked formations onto each depot the following evening.

You need to rebalance the misforms during the day by set swaps and, if any exist, putting spare 5 cars out of Stoke Gifford or North Pole during the day to make 10.

In general, the availability of the 9 cars has been better to target than the 5 cars and that also helps when a 9 has to cover for a 10.

 

[Energy]

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.

Didn't know that, Penzance could also be used by Hitachi but Laira would make sense, seems a little dumb that a maintenance base wasn't made in that area.

 

[JonathanH]

Didn't know that, Penzance could also be used by Hitachi but Laira would make sense, seems a little dumb that a maintenance base wasn't made in that area.

Not really - the 800 fleet deployment didn't include West Country services beyond Exeter so no Hitachi depot was needed. The 802s receive major maintenance at Stoke Gifford and North Pole. If there is capacity to do this maintenance at those depots and Laira can do light maintenance on the 802s, why do you need to spend money on another depot.

All decisions in every industry are about being efficient with money and resources. Anything else is irresponsible no matter who is paying.

 

[irish_rail]

Not really - the 800 fleet deployment didn't include West Country services beyond Exeter so no Hitachi depot was needed. The 802s receive major maintenance at Stoke Gifford and North Pole. If there is capacity to do this maintenance at those depots and Laira can do light maintenance on the 802s, why do you need to spend money on another depot.

All decisions in every industry are about being efficient with money and resources. Anything else is irresponsible no matter who is paying.

A depot at Laira would hardly be inefficient. I would argue It is very much needed.

 

[Clarence Yard]

No it isn’t. It’s there already! It is just that Hitachi do not choose to do certain work there, preferring it done at their own major locations. They also prefer not to stable any (maintenance) spare stock there, which is something I would try and change.

 

[jimm]

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.

Have you ever heard of a thing called the service level commitment? This is part of every rail franchise agreement in which the Department for Transport tells the franchisee what services it is required to provide on each route.

It is not up to the operator to 'favour' one route over another, it does what it is told to do - and in the case of GWR and LNER, when it comes to the Class 800s and 801s, uses the trains it is told to use as well, on terms that were agreed by the DFT and Hitachi, not the train operators.

Unless you know different and can show us some clear evidence of this supposed favouritism, please don't post unsubstantiated claims.

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.

Amazingly, the railways have thought of this kind of thing, which is why there are extra trains to the West Country in the summer holiday season every year (and at Easter and Christmas) and changes to timetables and rolling stock allocations for events like Bath Christmas Market.

From Somerset Live on November 26, 2019

More than 140 trains will serve the Bath Christmas Market on Saturday (November 30) providing in excess of 60,000 seats to take customers to and from the city.
Between 7am and 10.03pm, a train will serve the station every six minutes, with operator Great Western Railway laying on 29 extra services on top of the usual Saturday timetable.

https://www.somersetlive.co.uk/in-your-area/extra-trains-bath-christmas-market-3580657

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.

If you want to ignore the point I have made about the relationships between the trains that go down to Penzance and back to London across the course of each day and from day to day, that's your problem. But I'm afraid there is no getting away from it.

If you want a nine-car train on a particular Penzance service out of London, then the service that set works coming back the other way later that day, or the next morning, is inevitably going to be a nine-car, whether or not it appears on your little list - surely it's not that hard to grasp such a basic point?

As a result, your little list then becomes nine-cars on rather a lot of Paddington-Penzance services - which you have been told over and over again is not affordable unless you bin the 2tph frequency on the main line in Cornwall - so which is it to be?

And do try looking on realtimetrains at the series of ecs moves from Long Rock depot to Penzance station every morning before the London departures.

The first London service that is formed by a set that comes from Plymouth is the 10.15, which you regularly demand should be a nine-car all the time. And guess what that set appears to do once it gets to Paddington? Forms the 16.04 to Penzance. Every IET sent to Penzance from the 16.04 onwards overnights at Long Rock.

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?

Apologies, my mistake. But as you say, many people are probably still thinking old timetable, not realising that they won't get turfed out at Swindon now if they get the next train, whatever day of the week it is - and the weekend between Christmas and New Year is still not a typical one for travel patterns.

This is probably just the sort of individual service that GWR will be monitoring anyway, to help decide if they have got the allocations of stock right, or whether some fine-tuning will be needed at some point next year. Determining how many people off to London for a Saturday day out want to arrive at 10am or 11am is probably not the easiest thing to predict, especially on route with one of the biggest changes to its operations in the new timetable.

A five-car GWR IET seats 326 people (36 of those in first class), a high-density HST was something like 580 (with 76 first class seats in 1.5 coaches of first in their final configuration).

 

[irish_rail]

Looks like the couplings are going as well as ever today. 1015 and 1215 off plymouth both significantly delayed by coupling issues , surprise surprise. And this happens every day. Why oh why are Hitachi getting away with it. They won't be happy until GWR loses all it's custom on the Plymouth to London route.....
And I can tell you, morale on the ground staff wise is rock bottom , we are all rather embarrassed of the appalling service we are currently providing.
But no doubt the usual suspects will tell me to stop complaining and be glad that Plymouth has London trains at all.....sigh.

 

[irish_rail]

Have you ever heard of a thing called the service level commitment? This is part of every rail franchise agreement in which the Department for Transport tells the franchisee what services it is required to provide on each route.

It is not up to the operator to 'favour' one route over another, it does what it is told to do - and in the case of GWR and LNER, when it comes to the Class 800s and 801s, uses the trains it is told to use as well, on terms that were agreed by the DFT and Hitachi, not the train operators.

Unless you know different and can show us some clear evidence of this supposed favouritism, please don't post unsubstantiated claims.



Amazingly, the railways have thought of this kind of thing, which is why there are extra trains to the West Country in the summer holiday season every year (and at Easter and Christmas) and changes to timetables and rolling stock allocations for events like Bath Christmas Market.

From Somerset Live on November 26, 2019



https://www.somersetlive.co.uk/in-your-area/extra-trains-bath-christmas-market-3580657




If you want to ignore the point I have made about the relationships between the trains that go down to Penzance and back to London across the course of each day and from day to day, that's your problem. But I'm afraid there is no getting away from it.

If you want a nine-car train on a particular Penzance service out of London, then the service that set works coming back the other way later that day, or the next morning, is inevitably going to be a nine-car, whether or not it appears on your little list - surely it's not that hard to grasp such a basic point?

As a result, your little list then becomes nine-cars on rather a lot of Paddington-Penzance services - which you have been told over and over again is not affordable unless you bin the 2tph frequency on the main line in Cornwall - so which is it to be?

And do try looking on realtimetrains at the series of ecs moves from Long Rock depot to Penzance station every morning before the London departures.

The first London service that is formed by a set that comes from Plymouth is the 10.15, which you regularly demand should be a nine-car all the time. And guess what that set appears to do once it gets to Paddington? Forms the 16.04 to Penzance. Every IET sent to Penzance from the 14.04 onwards overnights at Long Rock.



Apologies, my mistake. But as you say, many people are probably still thinking old timetable, not realising that they won't get turfed out at Swindon now if they get the next train, whatever day of the week it is - and the weekend between Christmas and New Year is still not a typical one for travel patterns.

This is probably just the sort of individual service that GWR will be monitoring anyway, to help decide if they have got the allocations of stock right, or whether some fine-tuning will be needed at some point next year. Determining how many people off to London for a Saturday day out want to arrive at 10am or 11am is probably not the easiest thing to predict, especially on route with one of the biggest changes to its operations in the new timetable.

A five-car GWR IET seats 326 people (36 of those in first class), a high-density HST was something like 580 (with 76 first class seats in 1.5 coaches of first in their final configuration).

Well in answer to your point jimm, the 802s are used on all routes so there is nothing stopping say a 9 car IET off Penzance arriveling at paddington then going onto a different circuit, and vice versa. But to give one example of odd diagramming, the 5.47 ply to London is a 9 car but then it forms a paignton, when it would be well placed to work the 1004 to Penzance.

 

[coradiafan2000]

Looks like the couplings are going as well as ever today. 1015 and 1215 off plymouth both significantly delayed by coupling issues , surprise surprise. And this happens every day. Why oh why are Hitachi getting away with it. They won't be happy until GWR loses all it's custom on the Plymouth to London route.....
And I can tell you, morale on the ground staff wise is rock bottom , we are all rather embarrassed of the appalling service we are currently providing.
But no doubt the usual suspects will tell me to stop complaining and be glad that Plymouth has London trains at all.....sigh.

I don't think anyone wants Plymouth or indeed Penzance to stop getting London trains, they've been having them for long enough with no one complaining, so I fail to see why they would now.

Issues like what you mention do make you wonder what the point of it all is though. It's all well and good saying what the benefits of these five coach trains are, but in practice it seems it seems like a different story, at least until they iron out all these problems.

 

[jimm]

Well in answer to your point jimm, the 802s are used on all routes so there is nothing stopping say a 9 car IET off Penzance arriveling at paddington then going onto a different circuit, and vice versa. But to give one example of odd diagramming, the 5.47 ply to London is a 9 car but then it forms a paignton, when it would be well placed to work the 1004 to Penzance.

No, there isn't, but the fact remains that the people doing the diagramming don't do things on a whim - so the set that goes to Paignton arrives back at Paddington shortly after 17.00, in perfect time to work a busy peak train back out again.

You can keep trying to play pick and mix with bits of the service all you like, but if lots of nine-cars go to Penzance, lots of them have to come back. And the sums for lots of nine-car trains through Cornwall do not add up, unless you want to scrap the 2pth frequency on theCornish main line... repeat ad infinitum.

 

[Master29]

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.

Clarence Yard makes an interesting case stating that should the need arise west of Plymouth then presumably there will be a case for acquiring more stock. I wonder if this is the extra 150 vehicles quoted in Rail Magazine (I think) optional order when the original AT300 order was placed. It'll be a case of wait and see I'm afraid. What I try and get through to Jimm and others is not that he is incorrect as he rarely is in fairness. It's the issue of what the Daft and GWR should be doing. Time will tell.

 

[irish_rail]

No, there isn't, but the fact remains that the people doing the diagramming don't do things on a whim - so the set that goes to Paignton arrives back at Paddington shortly after 17.00, in perfect time to work a busy peak train back out again.

You can keep trying to play pick and mix with bits of the service all you like, but if lots of nine-cars go to Penzance, lots of them have to come back. And the sums for lots of nine-car trains through Cornwall do not add up, unless you want to scrap the 2pth frequency on theCornish main line... repeat ad infinitum.

And this is what's wrong with the GWR franchise. It's totally geared around the peaks in and out of London, when in fact these are not nearly the busiest trains on the west country route. But we have our stock descions overly influenced by the need to carry Reading commuters on other services. If ever there was an argument for a separate west country franchise this is it.

 

[irish_rail]

Clarence Yard makes an interesting case stating that should the need arise west of Plymouth then presumably there will be a case for acquiring more stock. I wonder if this is the extra 150 vehicles quoted in Rail Magazine (I think) optional order when the original AT300 order was placed. It'll be a case of wait and see I'm afraid. What I try and get through to Jimm and others is not that he is incorrect as he rarely is in fairness. It's the issue of what the Daft and GWR should be doing. Time will tell.

Well I've had a very very senior person confirm to me what should be happening, and that is fewer 5 cars and more 9 cars but unfortunately DFT refuses to stump up despite the need being there. He fully admitted the splitting and joining of 5 cars at Plymouth is far from ideal.

 

[Clarence Yard]

Clarence Yard makes an interesting case stating that should the need arise west of Plymouth then presumably there will be a case for acquiring more stock. I wonder if this is the extra 150 vehicles quoted in Rail Magazine (I think) optional order when the original AT300 order was placed. It'll be a case of wait and see I'm afraid. What I try and get through to Jimm and others is not that he is incorrect as he rarely is in fairness. It's the issue of what the Daft and GWR should be doing. Time will tell.

That option ran out ages ago. It would have to be a new procurement and it wouldn’t be cheap.

You have to show the DfT that you have the passenger numbers to justify it, something that just isn’t there at the moment. Only when everything settles down in the new timetable will we be able to see if it really exists.

It is no secret that some senior people in GWR wanted an all 9 car fleet. That’s tough - they weren’t given the choice and they are currently employed to try to make what they were given actually work in practise. Sometimes on the railway you don’t get to shape things the way you want them to be.

 

[tbtc]

Change the record jimm, for a decent while now I have only been arguing for 9 cars on several services into Cornwall

Well in answer to your point jimm, the 802s are used on all routes so there is nothing stopping say a 9 car IET off Penzance arriveling at paddington then going onto a different circuit, and vice versa

This reminds me of a conversation I had with a colleague about her regular bus journey - she wanted to know why they run a double decker at seven in the morning (when the route is pretty quiet) yet only a single decker when she goes home.

I had to try to explain that the diagrams will probably be based around having the double decker at the busiest bit of the route at the busiest time, but that this meant that at other times of the day there'd be a single decker running through the city centre whilst a double decker is carrying just two or three passengers at the outer terminal.

Same with IET. Slice it however you want but the diagrams providing the morning rush hour into Paddington aren't the diagrams that provide the afternoon rush hour departures from Paddington. And I don't think that GWR are going to muck around by inter-working all of the different corridors just so that your route can have nice big trains whenever you want them. Imagine the complications, with the staff ready for the Plymouth departure but the train is stuck on the other side of Oxford because of delays there (which is no consolation to the passengers waiting for an Oxford service who can see their train that worked in from Plymouth but the Oxford staff are stuck elsewhere)

Either accept that the diagrams don't allow Plymouth services to sit idle at Paddington for eight hours in the middle of the day to provide long trains on all of the key flows or demand nine coach trains on all Plymouth services (at the cost of losing the second train per hour through Cornwall).

 

[Melancholia]

Looks like the couplings are going as well as ever today. 1015 and 1215 off plymouth both significantly delayed by coupling issues , surprise surprise. And this happens every day. Why oh why are Hitachi getting away with it. They won't be happy until GWR loses all it's custom on the Plymouth to London route.....
And I can tell you, morale on the ground staff wise is rock bottom , we are all rather embarrassed of the appalling service we are currently providing.
But no doubt the usual suspects will tell me to stop complaining and be glad that Plymouth has London trains at all.....sigh.

That really is shockingly poor. This coupling/uncoupling anywhere should stop being a norm, as it's just been an additional issue since the introduction of IETs.

Staff morale and motivation is at an all time low. There's only so much an individual can endure, when every day is the same case of short form, faults etc issues with the IETs. So much that I know so many staff that have left front line work, including myself, due to starting to hate their jobs, and forcing themselves to go into work, which was not an issue only a few years back.

 

[hwl]

Only when everything settles down in the new timetable will we be able to see if it really exists.

Precisely as the old TT loading levels were often very uneven so some gains to be had from more even distribution. Passenegers also don't always adjust habits over night.

 

[mmh]

That really is shockingly poor. This coupling/uncoupling anywhere should stop being a norm, as it's just been an additional issue since the introduction of IETs.

Or alternatively, any train with an issue coupling should be fixed. It happens all day every day all over the network with few issues, and these trains were specifically planned to be routinely split and joined.

 

[irish_rail]

Or alternatively, any train with an issue coupling should be fixed. It happens all day every day all over the network with few issues, and these trains were specifically planned to be routinely split and joined.

Well they've had 2 years to fix the problems but with zero improvement! Same as voyagers still can't cope with dawlish 15 years on. What makes you think it will ever be fixable. Coupling and uncoupling adds an unacceptable level of risk. Yes, we are stuck with it, but it doesn't make it right, I'm getting tired of people trying to defend a method of operation that even senior management dislike.

 

[mmh]

Well they've had 2 years to fix the problems but with zero improvement! Same as voyagers still can't cope with dawlish 15 years on. What makes you think it will ever be fixable. Coupling and uncoupling adds an unacceptable level of risk. Yes, we are stuck with it, but it doesn't make it right, I'm getting tired of people trying to defend a method of operation that even senior management dislike.

If it's genuinely an unacceptable level of risk, then it's the trains that are at fault, and I stand by saying they need to be technically fixed, not worked around. The Southern region has never had these problems despite relying on splitting and joining since the year dot. Short forms due to a missing unit that should have coupled (which are rare) are far more often due to late running or a complete failure of a unit, not the coupling process. And most of their trains involve mechanical gangway opening / closing. The 800s should be far simpler, and more reliable. They're also newer. West Coast and TFW, there'll be others, have timetables entirely based around splitting and joining.

If the trains are broken, fix them. They cost enough.

 

[Clarence Yard]

It really isn’t a major issue but every fail to couple needs to be looked at - is it staff, is it the infrastructure, is it one unit or a wierd odd combo of individual units that are prone to failure?

We have been here before with Turbos and that got sorted.

 

[Melancholia]

Or alternatively, any train with an issue coupling should be fixed. It happens all day every day all over the network with few issues, and these trains were specifically planned to be routinely split and joined.

If they were "planned" to couple and detach, why so many issues, that could've been avoided by having the trains designed and built properly, in order to avoid any issues? As irish_rail said, it's been over TWO years since introduction now, and should've been resolved before the introduction of mass attaching/detaching in the new timetable. Since there's no indication of those problems being resolved, a different plan needs to be made up; one that avoids coupling and uncoupling.

 

[irish_rail]

If they were "planned" to couple and detach, why so many issues, that could've been avoided by having the trains designed and built properly, in order to avoid any issues? As irish_rail said, it's been over TWO years since introduction now, and should've been resolved before the introduction of mass attaching/detaching in the new timetable. Since there's no indication of those problems being resolved, a different plan needs to be made up; one that avoids coupling and uncoupling.

Exclactly, and a new plan is needed soon before we lose all our customers down here!!! People will only put up with uncomfortable seats on trains with no buffet , formed of half it's usual length and running God knows how many minutes late , for so long....

 

[Energy]

Have you ever heard of a thing called the service level commitment? This is part of every rail franchise agreement in which the Department for Transport tells the franchisee what services it is required to provide on each route.

It is not up to the operator to 'favour' one route over another, it does what it is told to do - and in the case of GWR and LNER, when it comes to the Class 800s and 801s, uses the trains it is told to use as well, on terms that were agreed by the DFT and Hitachi, not the train operators.

Unless you know different and can show us some clear evidence of this supposed favouritism, please don't post unsubstantiated claims.

They are required to operate some services but they may choose to do the bare minimum, an example of this is how Barlaston station has not had a train stop there since pause for dramatic effect 2004 with a bus route being the official rail replacement bus as rail tickets are accepted on it. Another example is the Chiltern 'ghost train' which used to run from Paddington once per day and Northern who ran a service from Stockport to Stalybridge one way, once per week. Operators can favour routes by providing the minimal service required on the ones which don't make money.

 

[Clarence Yard]

There aren’t so many issues with coupling. It’s an overblown fear and every occasion is being blown out of proportion - the amount of coupling fails on GWR remains very small.

 

[mmh]

If they were "planned" to couple and detach, why so many issues, that could've been avoided by having the trains designed and built properly, in order to avoid any issues? As irish_rail said, it's been over TWO years since introduction now, and should've been resolved before the introduction of mass attaching/detaching in the new timetable. Since there's no indication of those problems being resolved, a different plan needs to be made up; one that avoids coupling and uncoupling.

Well, as I said, trains couple and uncouple all day, every day, right across the network. And have done since before I and most of us were born. Feels to me like there's two issues here - if the trains can't reliably couple, as I say, they need fixing. The other issue may be people taking immediate exception to a train that used to be, say, 7 or 8 car HST being replaced with a 5 car multiple unit. I've seen that myself, I've done it myself - I live in North Wales where we'll never see an HST again. However, the splitting multiple unit timetable we now have for London trains mostly works fine. If there's disruption it can be awful, but that was always the case.

I'm struggling to understand why the west country is different. Perhaps it isn't, and it's just new change rather than old change.

 

[mmh]

There aren’t so many issues with coupling. It’s an overblown fear and every occasion is being blown out of proportion - the amount of coupling fails on GWR remains very small.

Thank you, I suspected that might be the case. On a route that's been multiple units splitting for years, North Wales, I imagine these days the number of failed couplings is insignificant and probably no worse than failed diesel loco attachments in the past.

I miss those, but it wasn't a heyday of reliability.

 

[FGW_DID]

There aren’t so many issues with coupling. It’s an overblown fear and every occasion is being blown out of proportion - the amount of coupling fails on GWR remains very small.

Indeed, I know they can & do happen anywhere on the Network but it does seem to appear that the bulk of the issues are always at Plymouth!

 

[Energy]

Splitting is good in the right places, for high speed trains it isn't great as there are no end doors so people get stuck in half of the train, DB run 8 carriage trains coupled together on ICE but they are 8 carriages each, not 5.

 

[irish_rail]

Indeed, I know they can & do happen anywhere on the Network but it does seem to appear that the bulk of the issues are always at Plymouth!

Probably because we have the vast majority of coupling action at Plymouth on the GWR network. Clarence yard states the amount of problems is small, but I don't think there has been a single day of the new timetable yet that hasn't experienced some coupling problems be it failure, or more likely delay. And bear in mind there are less than 20 couplings a day at Plymouth, it's not like the odd failure amongst 100s.