Fantasy/hypothetical - What would a modern day Pacer look like?

[BayPaul]

Might be a poor man's 170, but calling it a modern-day Pacer is a bit harsh, no?

To which one

 

[Energy]

Might be a poor man's 170, but calling it a modern-day Pacer is a bit harsh, no?

Why are the 195s hated so much? They are a poor man's 172 but are still pretty good trains.

 

[py_megapixel]

Why are the 195s hated so much? They are a poor man's 172 but are still pretty good trains.

They could be really excellent if they hadn't been built to a botched specification

 

[Bletchleyite]

Why are the 195s hated so much? They are a poor man's 172 but are still pretty good trains.

They're cheap and nasty. A reasonable successor to the Pacer and 150, but not what they could have been.

 

[BayPaul]

I think in many ways the 195s may end up being the pacer replacements - 2 car non-gangwayed DMUs will end up being cascaded to minor branch lines that don't have the economic case for electrification, as they are replaced by EMUs on metro and inter-urban type routes. For shorter self-contained branches I would like to see battery MUs with rapid chargers at both ends. Ordering still more small DMUs, however cheap would seem like a bad idea.

 

[Irascible]

For shorter self-contained branches I would like to see battery MUs with rapid chargers at both ends. Ordering still more small DMUs, however cheap would seem like a bad idea.

This is making the assumption that small branch terminii will have the infrastructure to support fast charging a pretty large vehicle. Having had half my flat rewired recently & chatted to the ( pretty well connected ) electrician a lot, that does not seem like something you can assume. Having a lightweight unit with bus-based power eggs/rafts/whatever you want to call them you can change later on without reconstructing half the unit does seem like something to aim for ( this is not limited to lightweight DMU replacements, ofc ).

One thing that came up during my chatting was plans to replace natural gas with hydrogen in the gas network. I personally think that sounds like a somewhat unworkable nightmare of leaks ( h2 molecules are so much smaller than hydrocarbons ) but if that issue can be solved then that is also a power distribution network, whether you have fuel cells at substations ( which would still need battery piles to enable fast charging anyway ) or on vehicles.

 

[Bletchleyite]

I think in many ways the 195s may end up being the pacer replacements - 2 car non-gangwayed DMUs will end up being cascaded to minor branch lines that don't have the economic case for electrification, as they are replaced by EMUs on metro and inter-urban type routes.

I believe that was precisely the justification for ordering 2-car units. Not ordering them with gangways was just cheap though.

 

[HST43257]

142 + electric + comfort + everything else good = 323

Simple maths

 

[BayPaul]

This is making the assumption that small branch terminii will have the infrastructure to support fast charging a pretty large vehicle. Having had half my flat rewired recently & chatted to the ( pretty well connected ) electrician a lot, that does not seem like something you can assume. Having a lightweight unit with bus-based power eggs/rafts/whatever you want to call them you can change later on without reconstructing half the unit does seem like something to aim for ( this is not limited to lightweight DMU replacements, ofc ).

One thing that came up during my chatting was plans to replace natural gas with hydrogen in the gas network. I personally think that sounds like a somewhat unworkable nightmare of leaks ( h2 molecules are so much smaller than hydrocarbons ) but if that issue can be solved then that is also a power distribution network, whether you have fuel cells at substations ( which would still need battery piles to enable fast charging anyway ) or on vehicles.

That's an issue that can be partly solved with a battery buffer in the terminal charger, that trickle charges it all day, but I agree it won't work everywhere. Personally I hope that the gas network is switched off and we move to electric for domestic heating and cooking rather than go down the H2 route - I can't see how they would get it to work, and H2 in that sort of quantity isn't very environmentally friendly even if they did.

 

[Bletchleyite]

That's an issue that can be partly solved with a battery buffer in the terminal charger, that trickle charges it all day, but I agree it won't work everywhere. Personally I hope that the gas network is switched off and we move to electric for domestic heating and cooking rather than go down the H2 route - I can't see how they would get it to work, and H2 in that sort of quantity isn't very environmentally friendly even if they did.

Though heat pumps, which are the main alternative, create other pollution - noise pollution. This is a major downside of them. A modern boiler is near-silent, an air-source heat pump quite noisy. Countries that have aircon rattling away constantly might not notice (as it's just an aircon unit in reverse) but in the UK it wouldn't be welcome.

You could move to resistance heating only, but you'd have to build a load of nuclear to get the price down.

 

[Irascible]

That's an issue that can be partly solved with a battery buffer in the terminal charger, that trickle charges it all day, but I agree it won't work everywhere. Personally I hope that the gas network is switched off and we move to electric for domestic heating and cooking rather than go down the H2 route - I can't see how they would get it to work, and H2 in that sort of quantity isn't very environmentally friendly even if they did.

He talked at length about problems installing overnight chargers for cars - said it's easier to get permission now that there's smarter chargers that can load balance with other chargers, but also that in practice once you've installed a bunch of them you start having problems actually getting cars charged overnight because they've load-balanced down that far. I am in a reasonably rural area but it's not *that* rural here, so it's probably the level of infrastructure you'd be looking at for a small terminus outside the southeast.

Electric is definitely the way to go for generating tractive effort no matter the source though, think we can all agree there. If they have to be ICE generators for a bit, as long as they're easily replaceable within the lifespan of the vehicle then it shouldn't stop new orders, I feel.