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Greater Anglia Rolling Stock Updates

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samuelmorris

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I just had a thought that when the class 720 comes out I wonder if they will do 2 five cars trains and then split at Colchester for Colchester town and Clacton and other places
Off-peak I suspect probably not, but peak time such a practice is already in operation, there are several services that split.
 
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Wivenswold

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Sadly a few of them are Clacton services which will be going from 8 car down to 5. Comparable number of seats, but significantly less standing space.
 

RailWonderer

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This will be a major problem. I'm not the only one here to use shoulder-peak services that will be downgraded from 8 cars to 5. I'd much rather an 8 car 360/379 than a 5 car 720 where I'll be on the platform nervously waiting to see if it turns up full and standing around 9-10am ish. This thread has evaluated many pages back that a 5 car 720 is the same as 6 coaches worth of legacy stock in terms of length with only a few less seats but far less standing capacity.
I'll say it again. If operational people ran the railway instead of bid managers, they would have known it would be easier to keep a 4-8-12 car railway instead of a 5-10 car for this reason, added to infrastructure works like platform extensions, signal repositioning and other unnecessary expenses had they kept to what works now.
 

samuelmorris

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This will be a major problem. I'm not the only one here to use shoulder-peak services that will be downgraded from 8 cars to 5. I'd much rather an 8 car 360/379 than a 5 car 720 where I'll be on the platform nervously waiting to see if it turns up full and standing around 9-10am ish. This thread has evaluated many pages back that a 5 car 720 is the same as 6 coaches worth of legacy stock in terms of length with only a few less seats but far less standing capacity.
I'll say it again. If operational people ran the railway instead of bid managers, they would have known it would be easier to keep a 4-8-12 car railway instead of a 5-10 car for this reason, added to infrastructure works like platform extensions, signal repositioning and other unnecessary expenses had they kept to what works now.
The intention is that there are so many seats that the lack of standing capacity doesn't matter. How that will work out in practice I'm not sure. If crowding gets that bad they have the option to amend the diagrams such that services that need it run 10-car all day.
 

F Great Eastern

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Sadly a few of them are Clacton services which will be going from 8 car down to 5. Comparable number of seats, but significantly less standing space.

Been saying this is a big flaw with the bid since day 1 and is another example of style over substance when it comes to bid managers who never use the lines in question. In fact, some of the people who were involved in this bid rarely use the train at all from what I have heard so what happens in practice won't affect them at all.

When I asked Abellio about the plans for the EMU services they essentially stated
- Every 4 car service is being replaced with a new train with an increase of capacity.
- Every 8 car service is being replaced with a new train with an increase of seating.
- Every 12 car service is being replaced with a new train with an increase of capacity.

Note the different word that is used for the 8 car services which tells you all that you need to know. They have time and time again avoided answering the question about if the 8 car services will all be lengthened to 10 cars and calculations previously done on this forum show that unless they order another batch of units, that's not going to be possible anyway.

When the overcrowding to the point where people physically cannot board of they can only board by being pushed up against other people where they have more room stand now inevitably happens, Abellio will just point out that they have added more seats and the naive press will lap it up as proof that it is not their fault, as Abellio's PR team have the media wrapped around their little finger as the media take in all the style but fail to look underneath at something that is really lacking in substance.

The operational people know what is coming, the bid managers only care about the optics and looking good, not like they'll be traveling on the train. Half the senior management who sold the operations side this pup have already gone anyway, so I would reckon the ops side and the guy who took up the business readiness director post after the former bid manager in the post previously left, will be the people who end up carrying the can when the whole thing goes titsup as most of those responsible will be long gone.
 

jopsuk

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The entire damn 720 fleet should be 10 car with a small fleet of (something else) for shuttles on short bays and the Hertford North service in the hands of Overground and 710s.
 

samuelmorris

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The entire damn 720 fleet should be 10 car with a small fleet of (something else) for shuttles on short bays and the Hertford North service in the hands of Overground and 710s.
This would, however, eliminate direct services from London to various destinations during the peak as there isn't capacity to run all those services with two separate trains.
 

Wivenswold

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The coaches are longer from 20m to 24m
Yes, I'm aware of that, 5 cars will be equal length to 6 of our current coaches.

i would say that the loadings on Liverpool Street to Clacton services require 8 cars all day, 12 on the shoulder peaks. There are various commuting destinations on our service, Shenfield (for East London & Southend services), Chelmsford, Colchester and to a lesser extent Clacton. Then there are 3 universities and several large private schools to mix into the usual school traffic. Then there's shoppers spilling out of Westfield with cumbersome shopping. It's a busy service with complex travel patterns and passengers for Clacton who get on at Stratford end up being left behind on and off peak. Throw in that the Colchester area is expected to have 2 garden cities with 20,000 homes containing 2.5 people.

2 x 5 car services per hour would help but as there are no plans to upgrade the frequency of Clacton to London services for the first time since 1963, then GA will have to be very careful with the distribution of services.
 

jamesontheroad

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Two trips on the mainline yesterday, and on both sets of mk. 3 carriages fewer than 3 toilets were functional on the whole train. These were different takes as well, with stickers on the doors of some of the defective toilet compartments suggesting these were not new problems yesterday.
 

samuelmorris

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Yes, I'm aware of that, 5 cars will be equal length to 6 of our current coaches.

i would say that the loadings on Liverpool Street to Clacton services require 8 cars all day, 12 on the shoulder peaks. There are various commuting destinations on our service, Shenfield (for East London & Southend services), Chelmsford, Colchester and to a lesser extent Clacton. Then there are 3 universities and several large private schools to mix into the usual school traffic. Then there's shoppers spilling out of Westfield with cumbersome shopping. It's a busy service with complex travel patterns and passengers for Clacton who get on at Stratford end up being left behind on and off peak. Throw in that the Colchester area is expected to have 2 garden cities with 20,000 homes containing 2.5 people.

2 x 5 car services per hour would help but as there are no plans to upgrade the frequency of Clacton to London services for the first time since 1963, then GA will have to be very careful with the distribution of services.
Shame the Atkins report was largely ignored then...
 

Railperf

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Rail magazine reporting the following number of new trains either stored at various depots, undergoing testing and commissioning, or awaiting acceptance:
Five five-car Class 720/5s, One 12-car Class 745/0 EMU and one 12-car Class 745/1 EMU and Two three-car Class 755/3 bi-modes and 11 four-car Class 755/4 bi-modes.
 

hooverboy

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Two trips on the mainline yesterday, and on both sets of mk. 3 carriages fewer than 3 toilets were functional on the whole train. These were different takes as well, with stickers on the doors of some of the defective toilet compartments suggesting these were not new problems yesterday.
oh, for the days when one
could take a nice quiet dump,and it would be sprayed upon the track at velocity, to fertilise the local wildife, including the oompa loompahs,whether they liked it or not!

retention toilets suck(literally!:D)
 

J@ke

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Saw a class 379 passing through Colchester heading for Liv St today. Thought it was going to be the 14:12 for a second but it didn’t stop. Could this mean that 379s will start running great eastern services due to the delays with the 720s?
 

Alfie1014

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Saw a class 379 passing through Colchester heading for Liv St today. Thought it was going to be the 14:12 for a second but it didn’t stop. Could this mean that 379s will start running great eastern services due to the delays with the 720s?

Nope it’s a OLE filming test run apparently.
 

GarethC

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Does anyone know if the two units which hit trees last week are back in service? Are there any other regional DMUs out of action at the moment?
 

dk1

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Saw a class 379 passing through Colchester heading for Liv St today. Thought it was going to be the 14:12 for a second but it didn’t stop. Could this mean that 379s will start running great eastern services due to the delays with the 720s?
As stated it was only for OHL filming purposes. WA driver route conducted by Anglia.
Does anyone know if the two units which hit trees last week are back in service? Are there any other regional DMUs out of action at the moment?
170203 (East Suffolk incident Saturday morning) is back in traffic. Was only a smashed windscreen.
 

86246

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From what GA have been sending out in the past couple of days, it is going to be a busy Saturday for the rural units.

As well as being an August Saturday there will be Racing at Newmarket, Cambridge playing at Colchester and 4,000 Ipswich fans will be at Peterborough (with additional return service provided). Also Norwich are at home to Newcastle with ticket acceptance via London due to the EMT strike.

A very big combination of events to prepare for. I wonder if more than the one EMT 158 will be hired in on the strike day ?
 

F Great Eastern

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From what GA have been sending out in the past couple of days, it is going to be a busy Saturday for the rural units.

As well as being an August Saturday there will be Racing at Newmarket, Cambridge playing at Colchester and 4,000 Ipswich fans will be at Peterborough (with additional return service provided). Also Norwich are at home to Newcastle with ticket acceptance via London due to the EMT strike.

A very big combination of events to prepare for. I wonder if more than the one EMT 158 will be hired in on the strike day ?

They've made a bloody big mess of it as well, as for the last few days they have stated that they were not providing extra trains as they do not have the capacity, there was no chance of extra trains and advised people not to travel unless essential or to use alternative arrangements or routes where possible. This is still the official advice from GA.

The extra trains that are running are not advertised anywhere on the Greater Anglia site nor do they show on the journey planner or ticket purchasing website. I know of a couple of Ipswich who have been advised to go via London and paid a pretty penny because of this today and are furious that these new trains have been added very late and are not being advertised so the ticket office staff don't know about them.
 
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Class 170101

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The extra trains between Ipswich and Peterborough are currently showing as Q trains in RTT
http://www.realtimetrains.co.uk/sea...7/0200-0159?stp=WVS&show=all&order=wtt&toc=LE

So I guess they may or may not operate. Given how many units were damaged in the wind last weekend (trees down etc) might explain the risk adverse nature of the decision.

The football fixtures combination isn't helping. Oddly enough it might have been better had the Norwich game moved for TV this weekend (to Sunday).
 

F Great Eastern

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The extra trains between Ipswich and Peterborough are currently showing as Q trains in RTT
http://www.realtimetrains.co.uk/sea...7/0200-0159?stp=WVS&show=all&order=wtt&toc=LE

So I guess they may or may not operate. Given how many units were damaged in the wind last weekend (trees down etc) might explain the risk adverse nature of the decision.

This is the problem, they've stated to the football club the service is operating, they've stated to the press and media that these services are operating but none of their frontline staff have heard about it, the station staff don't know about it, the customer service staff don't know about it and it isn't mentioned anywhere on the GA website and doesn't feature in the journey planner.

As stated yesterday, passengers continue to be advised to seek other arrangements because there is no possibility of adding an extra train. That entry has been on RTT for pretty much the whole week. The organisation of this has been chaos and it's like they couldn't organise a piss up in a brewery.
 

Wivenswold

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Wow, this is simple business stuff. Plan, decide, announce, do and if anything changes tell everyone.

What chance the LNER franchise colours were intended to look similar to GA because the old Eastern Region is coming back. Maybe it's the medication.
 

47421

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Anyone know what latest is on 720s? Is it still just a single unit been out on test at Old Dalby? Any idea when we will see one at Ilford?
 

dk1

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Well there are single 153s on the Wherry & Bittern Lines this morning & even one planned for the 12:40 Cambridge unless anything changes. That should be interesting with the EMT strike & no service East of Grantham. With all the additional Summer Yarmouth's there will be very little scope. Not sure whether any 158s have been hired in but as with the 755s, driver knowledge is very limited as are drivers themselves today. Extra buses are on standby.
 

Bikeman78

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Well there are single 153s on the Wherry & Bittern Lines this morning & even one planned for the 12:40 Cambridge unless anything changes. That should be interesting with the EMT strike & no service East of Grantham. With all the additional Summer Yarmouth's there will be very little scope. Not sure whether any 158s have been hired in but as with the 755s, driver knowledge is very limited as are drivers themselves today. Extra buses are on standby.
Is the 37 set being used? That could free up a DMU to pair up with another.
 
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