Hybrid 158s

[devon_metro]

FGWs first 3 car hybrid was out yersterday on the Portsmouth-Cardiff line.

http://southwest-railways.50webs.com/158950.htm

 

[1D53]

Whats it formed of?

 

[Death]

Hail All!
I don't know anything about FGW Hybrids (I initially thought this thread was about 158's being converted to use electric traction if available! hock but looking carefully at the photos, it looks like FGW have been doing a few "cut and shuts" with their Sprinter fleet!

If ye look carefully at the images, ye can see the yellow outline of a drivers cab in the middle of the train...So I imagine they've divided some of their 158's up into individual carriages for adding to other 158's to make something that is - In effect - A 159/1 unit. If I remember rightly, SWT have also done something similar with a lot of the Sprinters that they got off of Northern.

Farewell...
>> Death <<

 

[Max]

Hail All!
I don't know anything about FGW Hybrids (I initially thought this thread was about 158's being converted to use electric traction if available! hock but looking carefully at the photos, it looks like FGW have been doing a few "cut and shuts" with their Sprinter fleet!

If ye look carefully at the images, ye can see the yellow outline of a drivers cab in the middle of the train...So I imagine they've divided some of their 158's up into individual carriages for adding to other 158's to make something that is - In effect - A 159/1 unit. If I remember rightly, SWT have also done something similar with a lot of the Sprinters that they got off of Northern.

Farewell...
>> Death <<

TPE had a number of 158s running around in this formation before the introduction of the 185s!

 

[1D53]

TPE and Wessex have both done it before with mixed results.
--- old post above --- --- new post below ---
TPE did 158971-6 with Wessex 158961-6

 

[devon_metro]

Whats it formed of?

57751, 52761 and 57761 158751 + part of 761

 

[bluenoxid]

How many units are they planning to do this to? They got 5 150's so I am assuming that around 4 will be created at least.

As has been said previously, it has happened a number of times. TPE is an obvious one with their 158 fleet

http://noxid.digimig.co.uk/p38843165.html

Another, more historic one has been the 3 car 156's for the Settle and Carlisle in the early 90's

 

[Death]

Hail again!
Wouldn't it have been a little easier for them to just get hold of a load of 153s and attach those to one end?

I've seen some odd rakes before with 153s in 'em (Including a 158 + 153 + 170 combo I once caught at Llandudno Jct!) so surely it's possible?

By the by...One thing that I've observed over time is how the 158s/159s appear to have a vaugely similar train profile to the APT. Were they originally planned to have tilting equipment fitted to them? hock:

Farewell...
>> Death <<

 

[1D53]

153's would reduce the speed of the formation to 75mph which could cause extended journey times. 153's also really don't like being coupled and can cause allsorts of faults!

 

[bluenoxid]

No there were never any plans to fit tilt to 158's. The top speed is not high enough. Fitting a 153 to a 158 is a waste of resources.

bluenoxid

 

[175001]

I've seen some odd rakes before with 153s in 'em (Including a 158 + 153 + 170 combo I once caught at Llandudno Jct!) so surely it's possible?
>> Death <<

You must be seeing things!

170's have never been @ LLJ as FNW, W&B or ATW have never operated them, whilst 175's can't couple to good old BR Sprinters.

At least the 3 cars are all in the same livery

 

[Respite]

London Midland (as central before them) run 170 & 153 formations around the midlands. We often run 153's attached to other 15x units & sometimes couple 153's to other 153's to strengthen a set at peak times. As said they are a tad tempermental to coupling to anything. Also when driven from the 153 end it means that if you have a trailing unit fitted with sanders they will not operate so you end up with more dead weight to stop & lots of sliding. :???:

175's can couple to anything, as long as you hit the other stock hard enough!

 

[Techniquest]

TPE and Wessex have both done it before with mixed results.
--- old post above --- --- new post below ---
TPE did 158971-6 with Wessex 158961-6

Quite right, although I hasten to correct your ones on Wessex Trains. They formed 158961 - 158968 in the end. Plans had been to do three others (158960, 158969 and 158970) but this was cancelled early on.

The FGW hybrid 158s are apparently classified as 158/9s (ta James), much in the same way as Central Trains did with about 8 of them a few years ago. Much confusion could happen if they re-use those numbers too.

Anyone interested in the formations of the previous hybrid 158s, let me know and I'll forward you the details.

 

[Dennis]

158967 - an example of the former Wessex Trains 3-car lashups. It's sad to think that it's taken two years of overcrowding to get such an 'innovation' back on the rails in the West Country, especially when there were units sat festering out of use at Eastleigh. DfT inspired madness, brought to you by FGW.

 

[Techniquest]

Nice photo there of 158967 Dennis. Haven't seen anything with Wessex Trains on it for ages...

Agreed that it is ridiculous we've had to wait so long for this useful innovation of Wessex Trains to come back into life under FGW. Hopefully this will mean less standing on 158s or 150s for the foreseeable future.

 

[1D53]

Nice photo there of 158967 Dennis. Haven't seen anything with Wessex Trains on it for ages...

Come up here then - some of ours still have it!

 

[O L Leigh]

Forming up 3 car Sprinter units is an old trick.

Tyseley did it back in the 1980's by splitting Cl150/2's and inserting the cars into the middle of a Cl150/1 to make up a 3 car unit. It did look a bit odd with the outer two cars in the original Provincial pale blue livery while the middle car had the dark blue Sprinter colours, but I guess the concept worked. I believe that they persisted long enough for the entire 3 car unit to get Centro green colours, though whether or not they still run like this I just couldn't say. Haymarket were the first to repeat the trick with Cl156's to make up 3 car units for the West Highland line. There were also 2 car Cl156/Cl158 hybrids operating out of Newton Heath for a while when the Cl158's were first introduced there and before they were fitted with track circuit actuators to prevent them from "disappearing".

Forming up hybrid "bitsa" 3 car units has been repeated since privatisation. Clipping a Cl153 onto the back might be one easy answer, but it does limit the entire train to 75mph and doesn't give the same quality of accommodation throughout.

(As an aside, there was a tale I heard of a driver getting into bother after the OTMR on a Scud was downloaded. According to the box, the unit had been clocking the thick end of a ton. Turned out that it had been clipped onto the back of a Cl170 but the driver clean forgot it was there.)

O L Leigh

 

[me123]

The class 156 webpage has a whole section dedicated to the 3-carification of 156s and the 156/158 combos as well. Leeds-Carlisle, Inverness-Aberdeen and WHL sets all had 3-car 156s and the Transpennine sets had to have a 156/158 combo due to problems with track circuits.

 

[nowananorack]

Hail All!
I don't know anything about FGW Hybrids (I initially thought this thread was about 158's being converted to use electric traction if available! hock but looking carefully at the photos, it looks like FGW have been doing a few "cut and shuts" with their Sprinter fleet!

If ye look carefully at the images, ye can see the yellow outline of a drivers cab in the middle of the train...So I imagine they've divided some of their 158's up into individual carriages for adding to other 158's to make something that is - In effect - A 159/1 unit. If I remember rightly, SWT have also done something similar with a lot of the Sprinters that they got off of Northern.

Farewell...
>> Death <<

I think you'll find that the 159/1's were originally three car 158's in the range 158798-814 and not cut and shunted two car units as Wessex trains used to do. See also http://www.thejunction.org.uk/flist_159.html

 

[HSTfan!!!]

we had a five car on saturday at newport, 1 x 2 car 158 coupled to 153 coupled to another 2 car 158. That was an interesting sight lol

 

[395 Olympic Javelin]

There has been a 158951 when it was with Central Trains