GEML franchise 2016

[Geswedey]

No mention of DOO or DCO anywhere is there, perhaps there are no plans for an extension of DOO or perhaps hidden as not deemed to be good timing if it is planned.

 

[WatcherZero]

Well the Transport Secretary did announce the franchise award at the Bombardier factory this morning and neglected to mention the Stadler order....

 

[The Ham]

Lease costs are only part of the TOC's equation when deciding to get new stock, maintenance costs also come into it. Given that the Desiro Cities have (IIRC) maintenance costs about 1/3 lower than the original Desiros.

Another cost is staff training, having two unit types for staff to know about is cheaper than more than two. The higher the number of types of units, the higher the costs. This is then potentially made worse if certain units need to be maintained at certain depots, which can lead to (otherwise) unnecessary stock movements (which adds costs).

 

[jayiscupid]

having been on a lot of Stadler trains throughout Europe, I can tell you that the FLIRT is not a proper intercity train, it's an average commuter train and short distance regional unit and Stadler don't really have any great experience in building intercity trains of the standards of what else was on offer.

It's a very cheap option for an Intercity train, if you can even call it that and will represent a downgrade on what is already there in my belief. The fact they are going to use the same train on regional services as Intercity tells you all you need to know.

They really cut the corners here and when the carriages arrive the people of East Anglia will never forgive them for it, it's a terrible low budget choice, I can see the merits of ordering it for rural services, but a flagship intercity? Come on.

Be best for everyone they canceled the airport trains (complete waste of money) and used that money to actually order a proper intercity train and retain the 379s which are plenty good enough. But they won't, since they crave the headline grabbing full fleet replacement, even if that means we have to suffer third rate trains on the flagship service.

Stadler have more than one train type in their offering. The Flirts you will have ridden on would be configured for commuter routes but they now have the Express versions as provided to PKP in Poland, Leo Express in Czech Rep and MTR Express in Sweden.

In addition to this they're currently building the new EC250 Giruno trains for SBB which are an 11 coach EuroCity express capable of 250km/h and from the artists impressions are nothing like a "cheap option". This is what I would expect they will base the Abellio Intercity version on.

A quick look on the Stadtler website would have told you all this.

http://www.railjournal.com/index.php/rolling-stock/sbb-orders-transalpine-emus-from-stadler.html
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Do you really think they are going to be compatible or anything remotely similar to the 360s in this country? Really I've never been one to stick up for keeping old trains on, but it seems that peoples views of what is old is now very different to what it was 10 years ago.

I've ridden the Thai ones many times from the airport to the city centre. They were an add on order to the Great Eastern ones and aside from the upgraded aircon module on the roof to cope with the hot Thai weather and the longitudinal seats inside on the metro ones you could be forgiven for thinking you're in England.
Thai Railways is struggling with capacity as they need more units and put a tender out earlier this year for 8 x 4 car units.
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Having looked at the photos, they don't seem to be very durable for an intercity train, the design isn't bad, but I'd have doubts about the robustness of them. The general design whilst clinical is modern though.

The seats look very thin and short on padding for an intercity train and the luggage panels look to be one continuous panel that is only fixed to the train at either end rather than at intervals, a design which normally lends itself to rattles. They'd have to be a bit souped up from that I think to be a good intercity train, better seating and better paneling with also more of a downward curve to keep luggage stowed.

How on earth can you judge that a train "doesn't seem to be very durable" from an artists impression let alone a photo of the actual train.

I think your xenophobia might be showing.

 

[dsc17]

I don't think I have ever laughed so much at what the punters were saying on Twitter. Best ones were saying it was a disgrace and even one person said she was going to move away because Abellio got it

Its a major investment for East Anglia and most of the punters were still not happy

wanted new trains and got them but want them now

 

[Wivenswold]

I think what we're looking at is an hourly "luxury" service from Norwich with 10 coach Adventras filling in on the stopping services. I think it's fair to assume that most of the 22 10 cars will be of more long-distance standard for the Clacton/Ipswich peaks and also Norwich services. These would normally sit in Orient Way all day so maybe they'll be better utilized on off-peak Norwich services. They will be better than a 12 car 321 train.

As someone pointed out earlier there are 12 x 12 car formations at the moment, that looks like there's an increase. Of course there will probably be enough 4 car Flirts to also fill in, the Anglia 4 cars will, I would have thought, not be high-capacity and off peak there will be a few spare to create an 8 car NRW - LST service or two.

 

[43074]

I think what we're looking at is an hourly "luxury" service from Norwich with 10 coach Adventras filling in on the stopping services. I think it's fair to assume that most of the 22 10 cars will be of more long-distance standard for the Clacton/Ipswich peaks and also Norwich services. These would normally sit in Orient Way all day so maybe they'll be better utilized on off-peak Norwich services. They will be better than a 12 car 321 train.

As someone pointed out earlier there are 12 x 12 car formations at the moment, that looks like there's an increase. Of course there will probably be enough 4 car Flirts to also fill in, the Anglia 4 cars will, I would have thought, not be high-capacity and off peak there will be a few spare to create an 8 car NRW - LST service or two.

I'd have thought there'll be an hourly FLIRT, calling at Ipswich, Colchester & Liverpool Street - that's 1 hr 40 from Norwich so theoretically requires 4 units, and an hourly FLIRT calling at Diss, Stowmarket, Ipswich, Manningtree, Colchester & Liverpool Street taking slightly longer and with 5 units, and the 3rd service will be an Aventra worked extension of the current Ipswich terminators I'd guess. There are only 10 InterCity FLIRTs and 10 on Stansted Express, of which 9 will be needed to provide the service.

 

[jon0844]

I don't think I have ever laughed so much at what the punters were saying on Twitter. Best ones were saying it was a disgrace and even one person said she was going to move away because Abellio got it

Its a major investment for East Anglia and most of the punters were still not happy

wanted new trains and got them but want them now

I think there's a group of people who are very vocal, but most certainly don't represent users. And I recall most had issues with the services east of Liverpool Street rather than north.

 

[chubs]

Personally, it comes back to what I was saying earlier, we're already talking about half baked solutions to reach the 3 trains an hour to Norwich and about fleet availability and what happens when one gets taken out of service, since failures and accidents are going to happen.

For me it just seems like we are speculating wildly when we have very little information. The railway gazette breakdown might not even be correct?

Personally I'll hold off judgement until we actually get some facts.

 

[F Great Eastern]

I actually think there's beginning to be signs of there being some longer term planning here.

Their 387s will join with GWR, all the 365s will get together once more, other compatible trains will join up (maybe the 317s will survive, maybe not, but certainly the 319s and 321s) and so on.

Quite the opposite, there is no real place for the 321s a common theme has been to replace 314/319 stock elsewhere, but these trains already are being replaced by new or already cascaded stock, your contribution is welcome in the cascade thread in the rolling stock forum if you believe that there is something we've missed however!

Lots of people are talking about "options" for the 321s but the options they propose are ones which are already covered by other rolling stock for the most part. The fact is that a large number if not all of them are going to be going to Booths very soon.
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For me it just seems like we are speculating wildly when we have very little information. The railway gazette breakdown might not even be correct?

Personally I'll hold off judgement until we actually get some facts.

How they going to run a service with 10? They can't do it, it's logistically impossible before you even think of breakdowns with 3 services an hour, they're essentially proposing to increase the services by 50% to Norwich whilst at the same time cutting the amount of rolling stock to do it.

Even if they operate one service as a suburban service rather than a proper intercity, they're still go to be on very dodgy ground when it comes to contingency.
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Well the Transport Secretary did announce the franchise award at the Bombardier factory this morning and neglected to mention the Stadler order....

Politics - That has a lot to do with this particular way the rolling stock is being handled.

 

[43074]

How they going to run a service with 10? They can't do it, it's logistically impossible before you even think of breakdowns with 3 services an hour, they're essentially proposing to increase the services by 50% to Norwich whilst at the same time cutting the amount of rolling stock to do it.

Even if they operate one service as a suburban service rather than a proper intercity, they're still go to be on very dodgy ground when it comes to contingency.

Easy, as I speculated above:

I'd have thought there'll be an hourly FLIRT, calling at Ipswich, Colchester & Liverpool Street - that's 1 hr 40 from Norwich so theoretically requires 4 units, and an hourly FLIRT calling at Diss, Stowmarket, Ipswich, Manningtree, Colchester & Liverpool Street taking slightly longer and with 5 units, and the 3rd service will be an Aventra worked extension of the current Ipswich terminators I'd guess. There are only 10 InterCity FLIRTs and 10 on Stansted Express, of which 9 will be needed to provide the service.

And we don't know where the journey time improvements will come from as well, I'd suspect that could reduce the unit count further.

 

[dsc17]

I personally think that is a start to order 10, I think they will order more as they go

 

[klewer]

Personally, I'm pleased that it's gone the way it has - the region has been crying out for new stock for the last few years and by replacing everything EMU with Aventra type stock they'll have far more flexibility across the fleet than at present. The fact that they'll be maintaining just two types of EMU will be an operational boon to them.

The Stadlers may be an unknown quantity to us here in the UK but I have no doubt that they'll be a big improvement over what's in place - LHCS simply doesn't have a place on the congested GEML these days thanks to poor acceleration and lack of capacity vs. train length.

The Anglian DMU fleet is way past its best (yes, even the 170's although a damn good refurb will help the next lessor) so again a new fleet will have a positive impact as well as offering Abellio more flexibility.

Will be interested to see what impact any new service pattern has on the Essex "village" stations on the GEML (think Marks Tey, Kelvedon, Hatfield Peverel, Ingatestone here) but I suppose it's a case of wait and see.

Existing stock such as 170/360/379 can now be put to use with similar stock around the country so it's a big win-win.

 

[J-2739]

Shall I make a different thread on the Aventras and FLIRTs on the Rolling Stock section?

 

[HH]

Let's just hope the new trains perform rather better than the Class 700s are currently doing on Thameslink...

 

[F Great Eastern]

700s are generally doing fine for what is a new build unit rather than one built on something else that already existed.

 

[Haydn1971]

Given all the fuss about the ramped interiors of the AT300 bi-modes, I'm surprised we haven't seen all hell break out about the stepped and ramped interiors of the Stadler trains - steps back from lighting the blue touch paper hahaha

 

[samuelmorris]

I don't think I have ever laughed so much at what the punters were saying on Twitter. Best ones were saying it was a disgrace and even one person said she was going to move away because Abellio got it

Its a major investment for East Anglia and most of the punters were still not happy

wanted new trains and got them but want them now

The reasons for this are fairly obvious

1 - there is still a strong negative opinion of Abellio held by many. The fact that they picked up the new franchise will obviously not go down well with some, hence the petition for an inquiry. I am normally quite supportive of these guys because campaigning for better services can hardly do more harm than good, but I won't be signing this. If anything else, recent evidence has pointed out how toxic holding inquiries into the franchising process is, it's what got us the 2 year no-investment extension in the first place.

I think more of us are agreed that it's best NX didn't re-take the franchise.

2 - You call impatience as much as you like, but in 2014/2015 the condition of the rolling stock at AGA was pretty bad. Interiors disgusting (ignoring comments about fleas), exteriors similarly filthy and number of cancellations due to train faults was far higher than anywhere else I've seen. Based on that experience people are, rightly, concerned about how things will go with 3-4 more years of the existing stock being run flat out all day, especially if the new rolling stock presumably sees the cancellation of their refurbishment in favour of just swapping the seat covers.

I'm still seeing a large number of fault-based cancellations now but possibly not as many, the interiors of the stock are still a bit shabby but no longer anywhere near as dirty and the same goes for the outside. Regularly using routes in the GTR region, even before the current staffing issues, really put my experiences with Abellio into perspective. Pretty much every single service I use from them, peak or off-peak is between 5 and 20 minutes late. That's not going to ruin anyone's career but it's still really shoddy. I feel for people that live further out and only get 1 or 2tph and are hit hard by train fault cancellations but as someone that uses Liverpool Street - Shenfield on the fast services on a regular basis, I'm 2-3 minutes late almost every day, but it's been several months since it's been more than 10. Honestly, if you add a +/-3 minutes to the timetabled arrival of their services, AGA are doing pretty well in my books at the moment, really my only complaint is the aging rolling stock, particularly as Shenfield doesn't see 360s in the peak. So if it's the same operator, no longer having the excuses of it being a short franchise, and new rolling stock across the board, I'm fairly satisfied.

To my recollection, this is not only the first UK outing for anything Stadler, but will also be the first introduction of mainline Aventra stock, versus the metro versions on TfL services (unless c2c stock is similar, but that will be introduced at a similar time). Therefore I have to concede, the likelihood of technical issues delaying the introduction of this lot is pretty high. One can only hope that the burden of keeping the existing fleet operational does not see maintenance crews overwhelmed by introducing the new stock.

I'm under no illusion that the Anglian franchise is going to be especially wonderful over the next couple of years, but it's my hope that by the tail end of 2019 things will start to improve. I wouldn't expect the 93% PPM figure, if attainable at all, to hit before around 2022 when all existing stock is gone and the new units are bedded in, though of course I'd love to be proven wrong

 

[northwichcat]

1 - there is still a strong negative opinion of Abellio held by many. The fact that they picked up the new franchise will obviously not go down well with some, hence the petition for an inquiry.

When the Northern shortlist was revealed it seemed like everyone in the former ATN area went "Oh no. Anyone but Arriva to win." However, when Arriva were announced as the winners and said they would be putting brand new trains on a number of former ATN routes as well as adding new services and extra capacity people changed their minds about Arriva.

 

[ainsworth74]

When the Northern shortlist was revealed it seemed like everyone in the former ATN area went "Oh no. Anyone but Arriva to win." However, when Arriva were announced as the winners and said they would be putting brand new trains on a number of former ATN routes as well as adding new services and extra capacity people changed their minds about Arriva.

Oh I don't know. I'm very much in a holding pattern at the moment. I'm pleased with what I've heard but I still don't trust new ATN after old ATN so we'll wait and see personally speaking!

 

[F Great Eastern]

To be honest, I think that the people who moaned that Abellio have retained would be even more unhappy if NX won the bid, they have an even worse reputation amongst the moaners.

 

[BuryBlue]

And in fairness, if that's "all" AGA is getting, they haven't said what they're going to get rid of yet. If there's an intercity train shortage there's quite a few options available:

Keep some 90's and Mk3s

Take a few of the IC225/Mk4s from VTEC - recently refurbished to good standard as a fleet; power cars are not *that* old.

(I'm sure there's more)

Use a commuter class EMU.

There will be a plan in place.

 

[ainsworth74]

To be honest, I think that the people who moaned that Abellio have retained would be even more unhappy if NX won the bid, they have an even worse reputation amongst the moaners.

Indeed. NXEA were a shower of the proverbial by all accounts.

And yet c2c just over the way are a very good operator.

 

[Philip Phlopp]

Given all the fuss about the ramped interiors of the AT300 bi-modes, I'm surprised we haven't seen all hell break out about the stepped and ramped interiors of the Stadler trains - steps back from lighting the blue touch paper hahaha

We don't know what the interiors for GB stock will look like, but for a pure EMU, there's no reason for any raised floors and stepped access.

It should be perfectly achievable to package the required traction equipment underneath a level floor that's ~1100mm above railhead, though articulated bogie issues might allow a lower central floor section with higher end sections, and sloping/stepped access to the inter-vehicle corridors.

The bi-mode units are more complicated, but if they opt for an intermediate power car approach as seen on the Italian bound bi-mode units, there's still no reason for anything other than completely level passenger saloons.

 

[northwichcat]

Oh I don't know. I'm very much in a holding pattern at the moment. I'm pleased with what I've heard but I still don't trust new ATN after old ATN so we'll wait and see personally speaking!

Well probably passengers need winning over more in the North East where less improvements have been promised.

I remember in 2003 when the shortlist for TPE was announced as First & Kelios, Arriva and Connex. As I had experience of both ATN and FNW and heard the media reports about Connex in the South I wanted the 'none of the above' option!

When the Northern shortlist was announced I originally thought Govia might be a good option but then I realised most of the LM improvements were franchise requirements and they were actually cutting back services more than other operators e.g. ticket offices and trolley services.

It's strange that NX are seen as the company no-one particularly wants now when people were unhappy when NX lost MML to Stagecoach - a complimentary cup of tea obviously means a lot to British passengers!

 

[F Great Eastern]

Indeed. NXEA were a shower of the proverbial by all accounts.

I actually stopped traveling by train for a while because of NXEA, the service was so bad.

 

[Bletchleyite]

Oh I don't know. I'm very much in a holding pattern at the moment. I'm pleased with what I've heard but I still don't trust new ATN after old ATN so we'll wait and see personally speaking!

I don't trust the management, which is broadly the same as old Northern.


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

 

[Dave1987]

Given all the fuss about the ramped interiors of the AT300 bi-modes, I'm surprised we haven't seen all hell break out about the stepped and ramped interiors of the Stadler trains - steps back from lighting the blue touch paper hahaha

Philip has already provided a reasonable response (as usual) even though I'm sure that comment was aimed at me.

I'm still no fan of bi-modes as it wastes huge amounts of energy and gives an excuse to delay/postpone/cancel electrification schemes.

 

[northwichcat]

I'm still no fan of bi-modes as it wastes huge amounts of energy and gives an excuse to delay/postpone/cancel electrification schemes.

So would you prefer new DMUs?

 

[SPADTrap]

No, they'll be the GA Intercity FLIRTs and I guess dotted throughout the day the bi-mode rural FLIRTs from Lowestoft

What about the WA/Stannex FLIRT?