Further Class 180 Failure Issue on ECML

[jammmmmsssssss]

According to a recent post in the general RTT discussion, the underlying VSTP speed data problem has only recently been fixed, so RTT will be having to remove their correction factor. Been there for years, something to do with miles per hour being stored as metres per second, IIRC.

Oh yeah I forgot about that

 

[TPO]

Are Angel responsible for maintenance on the 180s though? If they’re on a dry lease then GC are responsible for everything.

Although the VMOI (vehicle maintenance and overhaul instructions) will have been written and mandated by Angel......

TPO

 

[43066]

The 180s have earned a reputation for a propensity to catch fire due to historically that being the case, don't know if it's true now though. Electric Cars have a propensity to catch fire if you ask some people but any more than petrol, you don't really see that comparison and no one thinks too much of it if a petrol car catches fire, I wonder if the 180s suffer the same bad press

Definitely a real issue rather than just bad press.

They were also regularly catching fire, amongst other types of breakdown, during EMR’s tenure with them. Astonishingly unreliable units when compared to 222s, for example and they don’t appear to have got any better over the years despite moving through various operators and (presumably) maintenance regimes.

 

[Towers]

Occasionally, something is sadly so poorly designed or has such a substantial weakness somewhere that it simply cannot fixed. The 180s would seem to fall into that rather unfortunate category, nobody has ever got them to a desirable level of reliability really even when they were just about tolerable on the Western the second time around. One can presumably expect to see them visiting Newport Docks or similar when they depart their current tenure!

 

[Wolfie]

Whilst the 180s certainly have earned a reputation for fires, I imagine regulators would mainly be concerned if there was a sudden increase in how often they occurred, and also the risk of injury when they occur.

Of course, I’m not an expert, but it doesn’t seem like they happen too often, and I can’t recall them being too serious (such as flames entering the saloon, for example).

So I wouldn’t have thought 180s would at the moment be considered an unacceptable risk.

See what happened when the maintenance regime at TfW changed for their "little sister" 175s....

Which would no doubt lead to the fleet being pulled for urgent checks, as happened with the 175s, as well as the IETs and 332s with cracks in the not too distant past.

There's plenty of precedent that action will be taken should they suddenly be deemed an unacceptable risk.

Exactly.