Entire 800/801/802 fleet stood down for safety checks

[AdamWW]

This really is the most daft comment. Our railway infrastructure is not victorian... Virtually everything has been renewed or upgraded.
It's like saying that my modern car isn't designed for these Roman roads we drive along...

And in any case, if they weren't designed for our infrastructure (Victorian or not) what were they designed for?

 

[uww11x]

This really is the most daft comment. Our railway infrastructure is not victorian... Virtually everything has been renewed or upgraded.
It's like saying that my modern car isn't designed for these Roman roads we drive along...

Haven't been on the Cumbrian Coast then lol. That's still in the stone age (Well aware IET's don't frequent the line)

 

[Ianno87]

Rough riding seems to be endemic with recent trains. On GN, for example, the 387s ride extremely badly, the 700s are slightly better, but being in a 365 is like waking in padded fur slippers by comparison, the ride is in a different league in terms of refinement.

I cannot use a laptop on a 365 for love nor money given the amount my screen wobbles about.

 

[Dren Ahmeti]

Any source for this? Because it all sounds very unlikely.

Not really - probably unsourced wibble that’s lovingly injected into the public domain...
Bear in mind, everything and anything will attempt to be used - this is huge, on a scale that’s never really happened before.

 

[HamworthyGoods]

Not really - probably unsourced wibble that’s lovingly injected into the public domain...
Bear in mind, everything and anything will attempt to be used - this is huge, on a scale that’s never really happened before.

With Hull back in traffic and quite a few LNER ones I’m not sure this is any more huge than the temporary groundings of mk4s, 155s, 158s, 4CIGs, 1992 Central Line stock etc that many of us remember.

 

[Dren Ahmeti]

With Hull back in traffic and quite a few LNER ones I’m not sure this is any more huge than the groundings of mk4s, 155s, 158s, 4CIGs, 1992 Central Line stock etc that many of us remember.

Maybe I’m not old enough - but since Hatfield (not even old enough for that!) and the Thameslink 700 power frequency incident, I personally haven’t really seen something on this level.

 

[Doomotron]

I wonder if the units were built by AnsaldoBreda?

 

[HST274]

With Hull back in traffic and quite a few LNER ones I’m not sure this is any more huge than the temporary groundings of mk4s, 155s, 158s, 4CIGs, 1992 Central Line stock etc that many of us remember.

Does GWR have the worst of the deal? It does look like it with almost 0 long distances services.
-Robert

 

[millemille]

Cracks in vehicle or bogie structure are a challenging issue, from an engineering perspective, to address.

Their detection through routine planned maintenance is reliant on good old fashioned visual inspection by a maintainer with a torch walking around the vehicle, and it is - from a human factors point of view - the worst kind of maintenance possible. Maintainers are expected to carry out a detailed examination - relying largely on memory as to what their mental picture to reference to determine if something is wrong looks like - hundreds of times a year and the vast majority of the time there will be nothing wrong to find.

There was an operator about 8 years ago who had a multiple unit reported by a driver for banging from the underframe. The unit was given an initial inspection by a line of route fitter at a terminal and was declared fit for an ECS move back to a maintenance depot at reduced speed. Went back to depot on the back of a formation. Moved into the shed and given an underframe examination overnight. NDF. Given a clean bill of health and released for an ECS from that depot to one about 15 miles away to form an early morning departure. Taken from the first depot, now being driven from the vehicle originally reported, and hadn't got 5 miles down the line when the driver rings the bobby and tells him there's something seriously wrong with this train. It runs at severely reduced speed and is met at the depot entrance by the fitters who take one look at the train and s**t themselves. The leading bogie is only attached to the vehicle by the traction motor cables and the brake air hoses and every time the driver takes power it shoots forward under the vehicle and is crashing into the suspension air tanks. Turns out the centre pivot bolster had completely cracked through. But it was never spotted by the pit exam or any of the previous underframe inspection carried out every 10,000 miles because everything was sitting in the correct place at the time and you had to look very closely and have a very good appreciation of what that part of the train should look like normally to spot it.

Failure to detect cracks through through routine visual inspection is in no way a reflection on the competency of the inspector, it's a fact of life that it will be missed by the majority of people and it takes a confluence of circumstances for cracks to be detected through routine maintenance before outright failure occurs.

I'd be willing to bet good money that the cracks found in the yaw damper brackets last month have resulted in an increased in diligence - if nothing else - and a focussing of minds on the shop floor where the 800's are maintained, irrespective of any fleet/special checks or new VMI's etc. and that is what has prompted the discovery of the new cracks in the vehicle structure.

When a crack such as this is found there are numerous questions that have to be asked in order to quantify the risk; the most important of which is how confident are you that the crack wasn't there the last time the specific part of the vehicle was inspected? The answer is generally "Not very", because of the reasons described above. So you don't have a reliable frame of reference to determine how long it has taken the crack to propagate and without that information any inspection regime - both in terms of frequency and pass/fail criteria - has to assume worst case and it is only as data starts to be gathered that the inspection regime can row back.

Issues like this have two phases: containment and counter measure.

Containment: how to mitigate against the consequence of failure in the short term. You don't have to definitively know the cause of the failure to contain it. Containment is a movable feast - in terms of the actions taken, between do nothing and ground the whole fleet - as more data is developed. Initial responses could be considered excessively risk adverse with hindsight but are appropriate given the limited data that will be available initially.

Counter measure: how to permanently remove the cause of failure. You do have to definitively know the cause of the failure to employ a counter measure.

The two can run in parallel, but generally the counter measure phase starts some significant period of time after the containment for obvious reasons.

Hitachi/Agility/GWR/LNER etc. are all very much in the containment phase at the moment.

Talk of weld repairs and the like, as the counter measure, are massively premature (as is worrying about bonding out for welding!) because I am absolutely 100% certain that no one in any of the organisation, at this very early stage in the life cycle of such an issue, knows definitively what is causing the cracking.

 

[HamworthyGoods]

Maybe I’m not old enough - but since Hatfield (not even old enough for that!) and the Thameslink 700 power frequency incident, I personally haven’t really seen something on this level.

The grounding of the entire mk4 fleet after the Sandy Derailment in 1998 left GNER with just the 9 HSTs to run the entire ECML Intercity service with various other hire ins.

Fingers crossed not something which happens very often.

 

[hwl]

Any source for this? Because it all sounds very unlikely.

DfT have offered to pay for the hiring in of locos and coaches to run services as needed. Does than make any of them sound more likely?

 

[CAF397]

The grounding of the entire mk4 fleet after the Sandy Derailment in 1998 left GNER with just the 9 HSTs to run the entire ECML Intercity service with various other hire ins.

Fingers crossed not something which happens very often.

Was that when RRNE 321s and WAGN 365s were used, using driver route conductors?

 

[HamworthyGoods]

Was that when RRNE 321s and WAGN 365s were used, using driver route conductors?

Indeed. With the core service provided by the then small HST fleet.

 

[ChiefPlanner]

This really is the most daft comment. Our railway infrastructure is not victorian... Virtually everything has been renewed or upgraded.
It's like saying that my modern car isn't designed for these Roman roads we drive along...

Quite - I somehow doubt that there is any "Victorian" track , sleepers , ballast etc in daily use. Sounds like a tabloid comment.

Even Railtrack were able to note that the oldest bit of track - a pair of hand points in Neath Yard was a mere youngster at 1911 installation. It was replaced of course. Years ago.

 

[Failed Unit]

Earlier in the thread it was suggested that the issue was worse on the bi-modes. Have any instances being found on the 801s? If not I suspect LNER will soon return to normal, with the diesel extensions curtailed.

 

[fgwrich]

I wonder if the units were built by AnsaldoBreda?

Not so far, it is all the Kasado built vehicles that so far seem to be affected in both this and the recent Yaw Damper issues. That will hurt Hitachi more, as the Japanese do not like failure.

 

[EnlargedTrain2]

Hearing more and more rumours of stock being hired in, latest one is:
“LSL
WCRC
PULLMAN
Are all supplying additional train coaches for FGW, LNER and HULL trains as of tomorrow for approximately 10 days
Also
gwr are running the 57s each way trips to and from Bristol with seating stock being sent down tomorrow

IETs grounded for the next 10-14 days as of today

LSL are going to be running out of Paddington to Plymouth with 8 coaches
LSL are running the 90 and 8 coaches via ecml to York”

my lad, whats your source? as much as id love it be true, its likely not, but if you can prove me otherwise then go ahead mate

 

[Leeds1970]

I'm assuming that as the trains are relatively new, they would be under some form of warranty? Which begs the question although passenger numbers are still quite low would Hitachi have to compensate the operators for lost revenue / cost of coach replacements or would the operators just have to bare the costs themselves ?

 

[55002]

Earlier in the thread it was suggested that the issue was worse on the bi-modes. Have any instances being found on the 801s? If not I suspect LNER will soon return to normal, with the diesel extensions curtailed.

Like I said earlier they had around 13/14 801s out today providing an hourly Leeds and hourly Edinburgh service this afternoon..which is good start

 

[DimTim]

I’ve not seen reading this thread how many coaches in each rake are affected in each rake. Is it one or many?

There’s also been comment of shuffling coaches in sets to get a ‘good’ set. With modern electronics does a Coach D need to be replaced by another D or could a coach C be substituted?

 

[Master29]

my lad, whats your source? as much as id love it be true, its likely not, but if you can prove me otherwise then go ahead mate

To be fair, he did say it was just rumours at this stage

 

[Omnishambles]

Cracks in vehicle or bogie structure are a challenging issue, from an engineering perspective, to address.

Their detection through routine planned maintenance is reliant on good old fashioned visual inspection by a maintainer with a torch walking around the vehicle, and it is - from a human factors point of view - the worst kind of maintenance possible. Maintainers are expected to carry out a detailed examination - relying largely on memory as to what their mental picture to reference to determine if something is wrong looks like - hundreds of times a year and the vast majority of the time there will be nothing wrong to find.

There was an operator about 8 years ago who had a multiple unit reported by a driver for banging from the underframe. The unit was given an initial inspection by a line of route fitter at a terminal and was declared fit for an ECS move back to a maintenance depot at reduced speed. Went back to depot on the back of a formation. Moved into the shed and given an underframe examination overnight. NDF. Given a clean bill of health and released for an ECS from that depot to one about 15 miles away to form an early morning departure. Taken from the first depot, now being driven from the vehicle originally reported, and hadn't got 5 miles down the line when the driver rings the bobby and tells him there's something seriously wrong with this train. It runs at severely reduced speed and is met at the depot entrance by the fitters who take one look at the train and s**t themselves. The leading bogie is only attached to the vehicle by the traction motor cables and the brake air hoses and every time the driver takes power it shoots forward under the vehicle and is crashing into the suspension air tanks. Turns out the centre pivot bolster had completely cracked through. But it was never spotted by the pit exam or any of the previous underframe inspection carried out every 10,000 miles because everything was sitting in the correct place at the time and you had to look very closely and have a very good appreciation of what that part of the train should look like normally to spot it.

Failure to detect cracks through through routine visual inspection is in no way a reflection on the competency of the inspector, it's a fact of life that it will be missed by the majority of people and it takes a confluence of circumstances for cracks to be detected through routine maintenance before outright failure occurs.

I'd be willing to bet good money that the cracks found in the yaw damper brackets last month have resulted in an increased in diligence - if nothing else - and a focussing of minds on the shop floor where the 800's are maintained, irrespective of any fleet/special checks or new VMI's etc. and that is what has prompted the discovery of the new cracks in the vehicle structure.

When a crack such as this is found there are numerous questions that have to be asked in order to quantify the risk; the most important of which is how confident are you that the crack wasn't there the last time the specific part of the vehicle was inspected? The answer is generally "Not very", because of the reasons described above. So you don't have a reliable frame of reference to determine how long it has taken the crack to propagate and without that information any inspection regime - both in terms of frequency and pass/fail criteria - has to assume worst case and it is only as data starts to be gathered that the inspection regime can row back.

Issues like this have two phases: containment and counter measure.

Containment: how to mitigate against the consequence of failure in the short term. You don't have to definitively know the cause of the failure to contain it. Containment is a movable feast - in terms of the actions taken, between do nothing and ground the whole fleet - as more data is developed. Initial responses could be considered excessively risk adverse with hindsight but are appropriate given the limited data that will be available initially.

Counter measure: how to permanently remove the cause of failure. You do have to definitively know the cause of the failure to employ a counter measure.

The two can run in parallel, but generally the counter measure phase starts some significant period of time after the containment for obvious reasons.

Hitachi/Agility/GWR/LNER etc. are all very much in the containment phase at the moment.

Talk of weld repairs and the like, as the counter measure, are massively premature (as is worrying about bonding out for welding!) because I am absolutely 100% certain that no one in any of the organisation, at this very early stage in the life cycle of such an issue, knows definitively what is causing the cracking.

The most coherent and intelligent piece I’ve read in this thread. Agree with the excellent summary of the current situation in the ’contain’ phase with no one having any idea of root cause at this point, and possibly not even looking to that as exams take place.

I’ve not seen reading this thread how many coaches in each rake are affected in each rake. Is it one or many?

There’s also been comment of shuffling coaches in sets to get a ‘good’ set. With modern electronics does a Coach D need to be replaced by another D or could a coach C be substituted?

TBH I don’t think this can be done

 

[iainp]

ScotRail should run some HST’s on the ECML

 

[YorkshireBear]

I'm assuming that as the trains are relatively new, they would be under some form of warranty? Which begs the question although passenger numbers are still quite low would Hitachi have to compensate the operators for lost revenue / cost of coach replacements or would the operators just have to bare the costs themselves ?

I think for the 800s and 801s they get paid for every vehicle they provide they get laid with penalities for not providing the required. I sense the penalty here will be quite large. I think the 802 are more traditional.

 

[HamworthyGoods]

ScotRail should run some HST’s on the ECML

Scotrail have a strike tomorrow...

 

[JonathanH]

ScotRail should run some HST’s on the ECML

Or just between Inverness / Aberdeen and Edinburgh, which is all that would be necessary.

 

[AlexNL]

I’ve not seen reading this thread how many coaches in each rake are affected in each rake. Is it one or many?

There’s also been comment of shuffling coaches in sets to get a ‘good’ set. With modern electronics does a Coach D need to be replaced by another D or could a coach C be substituted?

One of the things which could complicate matters is the TCMS: if you change the formation the computer might not like it when it suddenly has a different vehicle in its formation than is normally there. I don't know how easy it is to tell the TCMS that this is fine.

Other than that the new vehicle is probably at a slightly different phase in its maintenance regime, so to keep the administrative overhead nightmare away you'll probably have to redo inspection on the entire set to resync the maintenance schedule.

I don't think the option of shuffling coaches around is completely off the table, but will be seen more of a last resort thing as it can be quite involved.

 

[Wilts Wanderer]

Talk of warranty etc is off the mark for the GWR trains, as the sets are owned and maintained by Agility Trains, GWR just lease them on a day to day basis. The contractual relationship will penalise Agility for every diagram not covered each day, which I imagine will be a hefty rebate on what GWR (funded from DfT) pay each day.

 

[Master29]

Talk of warranty etc is off the mark for the GWR trains, as the sets are owned and maintained by Agility Trains, GWR just lease them on a day to day basis. The contractual relationship will penalise Agility for every diagram not covered each day, which I imagine will be a hefty rebate on what GWR (funded from DfT) pay each day.

In other words the taxpayer. In any case it is only the IEP stock owned by Agility and not the 802's.

 

[ainsworth74]

I'm assuming that as the trains are relatively new, they would be under some form of warranty? Which begs the question although passenger numbers are still quite low would Hitachi have to compensate the operators for lost revenue / cost of coach replacements or would the operators just have to bare the costs themselves ?

The units procured under the IEP project (all of LNERs and all the 800s of GWR) are the responsibility of Agility Trains (Hitachi basically). They'll be on the hook for fixing it and won't be getting paid as they get paid for providing trains to fulfil diagrams. Fail to provide a train and there will be no money. As to liability for additional costs I'm not sure it maybe contained in the Train Available and Reliability Agreements but they're dense legalist documents that I have looked at but then fled in terror.

The 802s for TPE, HT and GWR were procured under a different more conventional agreement so its hard to say how that shakes out. But I'd gamble that assuming it's Hitachi at fault they're going to be paying through the nose for these too.