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Great Western IEP order - Are there too many Bi-modes ?

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Pumbaa

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Is that a movement on the "up to 35 cars" previously mentioned? I just wonder whether procuring 1 (essentially) 220 vehicle for the purpose of inserting it into a 221 formation is going to be financially viable, given the further costs which would surely be incurred?

Correct. Sequence of events went something like this;

- Govt and ROSCOs confirmed they were interested in Thor concept, Govt to appease Derby after Bombardier had called curtains on it, and ROSCO to attempt to do its job properly.
- Bombardier quoted silly money assuming it had a monopoly on it and after probing it came out they would be sending the work to Europe.
- Job dead in water after Govt releases Bombardier were out to shaft them.
- Alstom piped up that they were still willing to do the work for a normal price, Bombardier agrees. eVoyager emerges.

For the purposes of the project, the 4 car 221 XC has will be stripped of all 'Super' cabability and downgraded to just Voyager. Bogies, tilt equipment and electronics, the lot. All XC fleet are now uniform 5 cars.

It has not proved possible to extend the concept to the 221s for two reasons;

a) the transformer car is to be unpowered; you can't fit powered bogies beneath, and cross feed them from ajoining cars without serious re-engineering and a complete lack of space besides. One transformer car can just about cope with the 4 cars. As soon as you add an extra car, the transformer car can't cope. So you either extend the 220s by 1 car to 5 cars, or by several cars to 8+. The economics just fall over at current.

b) assuming that the transformer capacity wasn't an issue, and you wanted to lengthen the 221s to 6-car or 5-car, you can't anyway. There is not enough space to fit the electro gubbins beneath the transformer car, fit tilting bogies, tilt controls and associated guff. It's just not feasible - there is simply not enough room underneath.

So that's the compromise. All 220s become 5 car and the 1 4-car 221 XC have. Virgin and the remaining 221s get diddly.

Until either they all return to XC (may happen in 2016) and get de-tilted, the XC network is fully AC and then it makes sense to lengthen to 8+... And like hell is that going to happen!
 
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jimm

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If you are going to imply that Electris trains on hills are slower, than diesels I suggest that you check your facts about 21st Century electric trains.

As sprinterman notes, I was indicating the complete opposite of what you suggest, in order to highlight the adverse effects on the entire timetable of continuing to run 1970s diesel trains to Swansea in 2017-18, when every other GW main line express west of Reading would be a brand new high-acceleration IEP. Given Rhydgaled's username and the current lack of electric trains in Wales, it seems a pertinent question to raise.

Apologies for missing the full ITT note about Pembroke Dock but the fact remains that this is a peripheral service running on a handful of days each year. I'm sure someone will devise a cunning plan to find some stock to operate these trains if IEP really won't fit through Narberth tunnel. The requirement to operate a handful of summer services through this tunnel certainly should not dictate the entire GW rolling stock strategy, which older posts by Rhydgaled appear to advocate when proposing moving Class 91s and Mk4s from East Coast - trains that will themselves be 30 years old in 2018.

You can't run a long enough DMU formation because there aren't enough DMUs.

Do you know what dmus might be available in 2017? I don't, but with electrification and stock cascades around that time, who knows what might be up for grabs.

RE 22X v 180 seat numbers, yes, all those disabled toilets have a lot to do with it, though plain simple better interior design comes into it as well. Where are these two toilet-less airline-seated coaches coming from? Are you now advocating building expensive new coaches so you don't have to, er, build expensive new coaches?

Oxford fasts will be IEPs, end of story (using some of the supposed 'excess' of bimodes - see these current 180 diagrams to see why they need to be bi-modes http://www.railforums.co.uk/showthread.php?t=70068). No need to double up off-peak services that start/terminate at Oxford, as you don't need to accommodate people travelling to/from the Cotswolds - those are the services where 2x5 or a longer IEP are needed for part or all of the journey - and on the quieter off-peak Cotswold trains one IEP set would suffice for the entire journey to/from London.

The Ham is right - your extra train type would be an extra train type, plain and simple. An electric IEP and a bi-mode will have almost all key components and other features in common, simplifying maintenance and operations. Your scheme introduces another class, with no common parts, different maintenance regime, operating/training requirements...

Creating a large fleet of bi-mode 22X would involve building a considerable number of new coaches - and yet more if I am interpreting your remarks about toilet-less airline-seated coaches correctly. Note also what pumbaa says about the eVoyager project.

You keep mentioning gauging, as though this is some widespread, unsolvable problem. If it was, then they would never have ordered 26m coaches in the first place. Yes, there are places where there will be issues but the same could be said now of 23m coaches in some locations - after nearly 40 years in use in the UK.
 

Rhydgaled

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Do you know what dmus might be available in 2017? I don't, but with electrification and stock cascades around that time, who knows what might be up for grabs.
I know that, what ever is released, most of it will be swallowed up in order to replace 140 Pacers so they don't need expensive disability complience mods. If there are still significant numbers of DMUs made available (which I doubt) then it will probably be decided that these should replace 150s and 153s, again to cut down on the number of trains that need disability complience mods.

RE 22X v 180 seat numbers, yes, all those disabled toilets have a lot to do with it, though plain simple better interior design comes into it as well. Where are these two toilet-less airline-seated coaches coming from? Are you now advocating building expensive new coaches so you don't have to, er, build expensive new coaches?

...

Creating a large fleet of bi-mode 22X would involve building a considerable number of new coaches - and yet more if I am interpreting your remarks about toilet-less airline-seated coaches correctly. Note also what pumbaa says about the eVoyager project.
The toilet-less airline-seated coaches would be the two pantograph/transformer cars necessary to make a 221 bi-mod, since one transformer car supposedly isn't enough for a 221. The 221s would then be the existing diesel vehicles plus two toilet-less airline-seated coaches with pantographs and transformers. Also wasn't the eVoyager concept mooted for ICWC orriginly (before DfT found out Derby wouldn't get the work and that the price was being inflated), then when it resurfaced was a plan for XC 220s? I am suggesting building expensive new coaches for 22xs to avoid building expensive new coaches with diesel engines (IEP bi-modes), we'll still need electric IEP.

You keep mentioning gauging, as though this is some widespread, unsolvable problem. If it was, then they would never have ordered 26m coaches in the first place. Yes, there are places where there will be issues but the same could be said now of 23m coaches in some locations - after nearly 40 years in use in the UK.
Not an unsolvable problem, but expensive to solve. The capital cost of the diesel engines under IEPs will be a disincentive to removing them and the capital cost of clearing additional routes will be a disincentive to cascading IEP bi-modes away. Therefore, they are likely to deter electrification of the lines they are to appear on or end up running entirly under the wires if those routes do get wired.
 

jimm

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Quote:
Originally Posted by jimm
Do you know what dmus might be available in 2017? I don't, but with electrification and stock cascades around that time, who knows what might be up for grabs.

I know that, what ever is released, most of it will be swallowed up in order to replace 140 Pacers so they don't need expensive disability complience mods. If there are still significant numbers of DMUs made available (which I doubt) then it will probably be decided that these should replace 150s and 153s, again to cut down on the number of trains that need disability complience mods.

That was a long way to answer 'no'. On summer Saturdays, there is stock available, because it is not needed to handle weekday peak demand, which is how FGW can run the current Pembroke Dock services. Another example would be XC hiring in HSTs for summer Saturday trains to the West Country in the past.

You make it sound as though it's as easy as plugging in a couple of extra coaches in a 22X and off you go. It's not. Lots of expensive power cabling and other engineering work and cab signalling kit for the new GWML equipment would be needed too - and you have to find a way to fit all this stuff into a train that was not designed for it - yet more expense. Tot all that lot up and you might as well start with a clean sheet of paper. That's what they have done with the IEP.

Even if you gutted the interiors of every single coach on that train (yet more expense), you will still struggle to produce a nine-coach 22X with a seating capacity to match FGW's existing HSTs - and it will have far fewer (smellier) toilets as well.

Just as I don't know what dmus may be available come 2017, I don't know what the price of oil will be next week, never mind in 10 years' time. Diesel costs then may be at a level that provides a very strong incentive to keep on electrifying and get rid of the diesel engines - which is also allowed for in the IEP design. What would you do with the engines under 22Xs if those became redundant. Keep on dragging them around? Or spend yet more money to work out how to remove them?

I just don't see what routes there are that you might conceivably redeploy an express-type train on to in future that are likely to pose any significant gauging issues anyway - which lines do you have in mind? Our major main lines are not littered with narrow-bore, curved tunnels like Narberth. There would be no problem on the Chiltern route, for example, with its wide GW/GC clearances.
 
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RobShipway

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As sprinterman notes, I was indicating the complete opposite of what you suggest, in order to highlight the adverse effects on the entire timetable of continuing to run 1970s diesel trains to Swansea in 2017-18, when every other GW main line express west of Reading would be a brand new high-acceleration IEP. Given Rhydgaled's username and the current lack of electric trains in Wales, it seems a pertinent question to raise.

Apologies for missing the full ITT note about Pembroke Dock but the fact remains that this is a peripheral service running on a handful of days each year. I'm sure someone will devise a cunning plan to find some stock to operate these trains if IEP really won't fit through Narberth tunnel. The requirement to operate a handful of summer services through this tunnel certainly should not dictate the entire GW rolling stock strategy, which older posts by Rhydgaled appear to advocate when proposing moving Class 91s and Mk4s from East Coast - trains that will themselves be 30 years old in 2018.



Do you know what dmus might be available in 2017? I don't, but with electrification and stock cascades around that time, who knows what might be up for grabs.

RE 22X v 180 seat numbers, yes, all those disabled toilets have a lot to do with it, though plain simple better interior design comes into it as well. Where are these two toilet-less airline-seated coaches coming from? Are you now advocating building expensive new coaches so you don't have to, er, build expensive new coaches?

Oxford fasts will be IEPs, end of story (using some of the supposed 'excess' of bimodes - see these current 180 diagrams to see why they need to be bi-modes http://www.railforums.co.uk/showthread.php?t=70068). No need to double up off-peak services that start/terminate at Oxford, as you don't need to accommodate people travelling to/from the Cotswolds - those are the services where 2x5 or a longer IEP are needed for part or all of the journey - and on the quieter off-peak Cotswold trains one IEP set would suffice for the entire journey to/from London.

The Ham is right - your extra train type would be an extra train type, plain and simple. An electric IEP and a bi-mode will have almost all key components and other features in common, simplifying maintenance and operations. Your scheme introduces another class, with no common parts, different maintenance regime, operating/training requirements...

Creating a large fleet of bi-mode 22X would involve building a considerable number of new coaches - and yet more if I am interpreting your remarks about toilet-less airline-seated coaches correctly. Note also what pumbaa says about the eVoyager project.

You keep mentioning gauging, as though this is some widespread, unsolvable problem. If it was, then they would never have ordered 26m coaches in the first place. Yes, there are places where there will be issues but the same could be said now of 23m coaches in some locations - after nearly 40 years in use in the UK.

Thanks Jimm, I thought was the point you where trying to make but for some reason it did not read like that when I read it even a few times.
 

sprinterguy

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So how does a cram-em-in 5-car 221 have less seats than a 180, is it the number of disabled toilets? If so, how many seats would adding two toilet-less all-airline-seated (but with almost class175 levels of legroom) TSOs to the 221 add?
There are other inefficiencies in the utilisation of space within a Voyager other than the disabled toilets: The passenger doors are located a good distance inboard of the vehicle ends to accommodate the vehicle taper, and the area of the driving cars that is off limits to passengers due to safety considerations appears much larger on a Voyager than a 180. The plethora of disabled toilets are definitely a primary factor though.

The best example we have of what the maximum seated capacity of a Voyager or Meridian vehicle would be is the MS vehicle in EMTs' 222s, which has only a standard "cupboard" style toilet and seats 68 in relative comfort.

Aren't there two Oxford fasts each hour, but only of them extends to the Cotswolds? If so, what is the 2nd Oxford fast each hour formed of, suburban EMUs or 100% under the wires doubled-up 5-car bi-mode IEPs? Certainly not IEP electrics, see PhilipW's assessment of numbers, not enough IEP electrics for Cardiff, Swansea and Bristol, let alone Oxford:
A pair of Bi-mode IEPs, but only of course on the peak time workings that require them, as off-peak a single 5-car unit would be sufficient most of the time. Or perhaps a 9-car electric set could be spared if it was wished to run a pair of 5-car Bi-mode units on a peak time Bristol or South Wales service to give increased seating capacity on the Bristol service over a 9-car set.There is that flexibility in having long and short formations in the fleet.
 

Rhydgaled

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You make it sound as though it's as easy as plugging in a couple of extra coaches in a 22X and off you go. It's not. Lots of expensive power cabling and other engineering work and cab signalling kit for the new GWML equipment would be needed too - and you have to find a way to fit all this stuff into a train that was not designed for it - yet more expense. Tot all that lot up and you might as well start with a clean sheet of paper. That's what they have done with the IEP.
The differences between an IEP bi-mode and a 22x bi-mode that make me support the latter but not the former are:
  • The diesel engines under a 22x already exist, so there is no increase in DGICMUs*
  • The diesel engines under a 22x are already around 10 years old, so they'll reach end of life between 2030 and 2040, IEPs won't be here until nearly 2020 giving life-expiry around 2050, meaning the earliest date the network can be rid of DGICMUs is pushed back
  • The IEP's 26m vehicles limit cascading options (the least important reason)
In that regard, if you could take the diesel engines out of 22xs (which I doubt) and put them in the new IEPs, with the 22xs becoming pure EMUs (again probably not possible), I wouldn't have such a problem with the idea since they'd need to bin the diesel engines by 2040 anyeay and the IEPs would then be all-electric.

*Diesel-Guzzling InterCity Multiple Unit

Just as I don't know what dmus may be available come 2017, I don't know what the price of oil will be next week, never mind in 10 years' time. Diesel costs then may be at a level that provides a very strong incentive to keep on electrifying and get rid of the diesel engines - which is also allowed for in the IEP design. What would you do with the engines under 22Xs if those became redundant. Keep on dragging them around? Or spend yet more money to work out how to remove them?
You might not have to remove the 22x engines since they will be life-expired sooner anyway, and you have more diesel engines to throw away if you order bi-mode IEPs on top of the current 22x fleet.

I just don't see what routes there are that you might conceivably redeploy an express-type train on to in future that are likely to pose any significant gauging issues anyway - which lines do you have in mind? Our major main lines are not littered with narrow-bore, curved tunnels like Narberth. There would be no problem on the Chiltern route, for example, with its wide GW/GC clearances.
The non-electrified IC routes where IEPs might be cascaded are:
Euston - Chester/North Wales (already furnished with Voyagers)
CrossCountry (which includes some twisty bits, esspecially south of Taunton) and
Paddington - Plymouth/Penzance (also twisty, though plans suggest all of it will be cleared, I hope that isn't the case - waste of money since IEP will hopefully not be going down that way).

A pair of Bi-mode IEPs, but only of course on the peak time workings that require them, as off-peak a single 5-car unit would be sufficient most of the time. Or perhaps a 9-car electric set could be spared if it was wished to run a pair of 5-car Bi-mode units on a peak time Bristol or South Wales service to give increased seating capacity on the Bristol service over a 9-car set.There is that flexibility in having long and short formations in the fleet.
I don't have a problem with a mix of train lengths, provided the shorter trains are kept off services which would be standing-room-only if a shorter set worked them. However there is no such flexibility since EVERY IEP bi-mode planned on GW is 5-car and EVERY IEP electric 9-car. In that regard, a mix of 7-car and 9-car IEP electrics might be a good idea. The off-wires services (the Cotswolds line in particular) are the problem. Again, a mix of 7-car and 9-car IEPs would probably be a good plan if only the line was wired. Since it isn't, and I want to limit the numbers of DGICMUs as much as possible and be rid of them as soon as possible, there is a problem.
 

jimm

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Quote:
Originally Posted by jimm
You make it sound as though it's as easy as plugging in a couple of extra coaches in a 22X and off you go. It's not. Lots of expensive power cabling and other engineering work and cab signalling kit for the new GWML equipment would be needed too - and you have to find a way to fit all this stuff into a train that was not designed for it - yet more expense. Tot all that lot up and you might as well start with a clean sheet of paper. That's what they have done with the IEP.

The differences between an IEP bi-mode and a 22x bi-mode that make me support the latter but not the former are:
The diesel engines under a 22x already exist, so there is no increase in DGICMUs*
The diesel engines under a 22x are already around 10 years old, so they'll reach end of life between 2030 and 2040, IEPs won't be here until nearly 2020 giving life-expiry around 2050, meaning the earliest date the network can be rid of DGICMUs is pushed back
The IEP's 26m vehicles limit cascading options (the least important reason)
In that regard, if you could take the diesel engines out of 22xs (which I doubt) and put them in the new IEPs, with the 22xs becoming pure EMUs (again probably not possible), I wouldn't have such a problem with the idea since they'd need to bin the diesel engines by 2040 anyeay and the IEPs would then be all-electric.

*Diesel-Guzzling InterCity Multiple Unit

What does any of that have to do with the huge expense of retro-engineering an existing train to fit it for the role you suggest, which i was pointing out in the passage you quote? Nothing at all.

You can 'support' all the ideas you like, but before proposing them, perhaps I could suggest you submit them to a simple reality check to see whether they are remotely practical/affordable.

I'm no engineer but you don't really need to be to see all the issues I pointed out with making eVoyagers happen (which are all factors in the questions over that project which pumbaa has pointed out above). I assume you are familiar with the problems there were just trying to fit ERTMS kit into ATW's Class 158s and making the screens in the cabs free of reflections. That work was child's play compared with creating a bi-mode 22X.

The engines wouldn't be 'thrown away' if they were removed. Ex-BR locomotive engines were sold on for all sorts of other roles - preservationists have bought some back from industrial users to go into preserved locos. There's a lot of life left in internal combustion engines of all sorts, in all kinds of roles, for years to come, whether you like it or not.

And if we don't have an IEP bi-mode or a 22X bi-mode, then what would we need to move trains around off the wires... big locomotives with big diesel engines (or several smaller engines, like er, a bi-mode IEP) in them. You would have the same problem of what you do with these locos and their engines if wires spread.

So there are some "twisty bits" on our railways, are there? Aston Magna curve (engineer IK Brunel) on the Cotswold Line is quite 'twisty', on a par with anything I can think of in the South West, and IEPs are going to run round that curve quite happily. There may be platforms in places that need adjustment to take IEPs but the same was the case when Mk3s appeared. They were dealt with. Hardly the big issue you seem to make out.
 

The Ham

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The differences between an IEP bi-mode and a 22x bi-mode that make me support the latter but not the former are:
  • The diesel engines under a 22x already exist, so there is no increase in DGICMUs*
  • The diesel engines under a 22x are already around 10 years old, so they'll reach end of life between 2030 and 2040, IEPs won't be here until nearly 2020 giving life-expiry around 2050, meaning the earliest date the network can be rid of DGICMUs is pushed back
  • The IEP's 26m vehicles limit cascading options (the least important reason)
In that regard, if you could take the diesel engines out of 22xs (which I doubt) and put them in the new IEPs, with the 22xs becoming pure EMUs (again probably not possible), I wouldn't have such a problem with the idea since they'd need to bin the diesel engines by 2040 anyeay and the IEPs would then be all-electric.

*Diesel-Guzzling InterCity Multiple Unit

You might not have to remove the 22x engines since they will be life-expired sooner anyway, and you have more diesel engines to throw away if you order bi-mode IEPs on top of the current 22x fleet.

The non-electrified IC routes where IEPs might be cascaded are:
Euston - Chester/North Wales (already furnished with Voyagers)
CrossCountry (which includes some twisty bits, esspecially south of Taunton) and
Paddington - Plymouth/Penzance (also twisty, though plans suggest all of it will be cleared, I hope that isn't the case - waste of money since IEP will hopefully not be going down that way).

I don't have a problem with a mix of train lengths, provided the shorter trains are kept off services which would be standing-room-only if a shorter set worked them. However there is no such flexibility since EVERY IEP bi-mode planned on GW is 5-car and EVERY IEP electric 9-car. In that regard, a mix of 7-car and 9-car IEP electrics might be a good idea. The off-wires services (the Cotswolds line in particular) are the problem. Again, a mix of 7-car and 9-car IEPs would probably be a good plan if only the line was wired. Since it isn't, and I want to limit the numbers of DGICMUs as much as possible and be rid of them as soon as possible, there is a problem.

The problem with GW using bi-model 22x's is that all the 220's and 221's are already with crosscountry and ICWC. Leaving (assuming 2 pantagraphs per 5+ coach current configeration) 23 x 7 coach and 4 x 9 coach with 1 coach in store class 222's. Which is a total of 197 x 23m coaches compared with 180 x 26m coaches, but with a lot less flexibility as you could not double up the 7 coach trains as they would be 62m longer than the 2x5 x 26m coach IEP's.

If you muddled up all the sets a lot to go for 5 and 11 coach 222's you end up with 20 x 5 and 7 x 11, however you have less space on the 5 coach 222's than the IEP's and a shortfall of trains compared to the IEP order (36 bi-model 5 coach trains). This would mean that there would have to be an order for more class 222's to make up the shortfall just to meet the GW order and you'd have no 222's you could cascade elsewhere.

This all also assumes that the 222's are freed from the MML in time from it being electrified to run on the GW.

The problem with your suggestion of 7 coach IEP's is that they have to run on their own. I would suggest that the number of routes too busy to run a 5 coach IEP but not busy enough to run a 9 coach IEP is very limited and so it is better to run these routes as 9 coaches rather than have 7 coaches (OK it is likely that they will run as 5 coaches for as long as possible). As once you run out of routes for which a 7 coach train is suitable what do you do with them? Ensure that you only ever order them in pairs so that you can reconfigure them to 5 and 9 coach trains, in which case you might have well have ordered them in the first place and saved the reconfigeration costs and had more flexibility in which trains could be used on which routes from day one. As oh dear the 9 coach that was going to run is delayed/broken down, the only trains we have spare a 7 coaches we'll have to send one of them even though there will be over crowded rather than if they were 5 coaches when we could have sent 2 and it would have been fine.
 

sprinterguy

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I don't have a problem with a mix of train lengths, provided the shorter trains are kept off services which would be standing-room-only if a shorter set worked them. However there is no such flexibility since EVERY IEP bi-mode planned on GW is 5-car and EVERY IEP electric 9-car. In that regard, a mix of 7-car and 9-car IEP electrics might be a good idea. The off-wires services (the Cotswolds line in particular) are the problem. Again, a mix of 7-car and 9-car IEPs would probably be a good plan if only the line was wired. Since it isn't, and I want to limit the numbers of DGICMUs as much as possible and be rid of them as soon as possible, there is a problem.
There's more flexibility in having just two different types of IEP on the Great Western rather than three, and as all the 5-car units are Bi-mode they can all be mixed and matched to work off-wires services as well as any completely under the wires services as required without the need to maintain diagrams for separate sub-fleets as you would if some were pure electric and some were bi-mode.
 
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