Marston Vale line suspension over - FULL services start running 19/02/24

[43096]

Scotrail are using them as Northern did - paired with a PRM compliant unit, 156s in this case.

The ScotRail 153s are PRM compliant.

 

[Greybeard33]

Sorry, I wasn't clear, what I meant was that, instead of the maintenance division being sold on and a maintenance contract being agreed with the new owners under the same/similar terms, new (more expensive for LNWR) terms would have had to be agreed. I fully agree that isn't an easy thing to do, and costs would certainly have gone up for LNWR.

I would suspect the administrators will have asked LNWR if they had interest in taking over the maintenance division and the 230s (it would be a potential source of income to pay creditors), but I suspect that bletchleyite is right here, and LNWR didn't want to buy the units and maintenance division outright:

According to RAIL Magazine back in February:

In a report filed to Companies House on January 23, Grant Thornton [Vivarail administrator] advises that a proposal for maintenance operations to continue on the Class 230 fleet was rejected by WMT due to increased costs, a lack of warranty support, and a requirement for indemnities in favour of the administrators. As a result, a further 22 employees were made redundant, leaving just seven to assist in the liquidation process.

WMT reports that Vivarail was replacing up to three engines a week on its Class 230 diesel multiple units, resulting in low availability and higher-than-expected operating costs.

Vivarail dream over as the liquidation process begins

Vivarail will be wound up and its remaining assets sold to pay creditors, after no rescue bids were received for the failed train manufacturer.

www.railmagazine.com

 

[Woods]

Long-suffering users of the Marston Vale line may like to know that:

1) The WMT units have now been sold and will very likely never operate as diesel units again but hopefully they will see new life one day as battery trains for another operator.

2) All the diesel genset spares at Bletchley have been scrapped or sold to TfW to help them maintain their 230 units as there is considerable commonality of parts.

3) Had they been so inclined, and had they acted quickly enough, West Midlands Trains COULD have cobbled together a team of ex-Vivarail employees to keep the units running in the short term. Several approaches were made by ex-Vivarail employees to help them out but the message came back that it was all too complicated. I suspect also that the DfT and WMT saw an opportunity for an easy contribution towards their idiotic 10% across the board penny-pinching savings, where it could all be blamed on the collapse of Vivarail.

4) Vivarail had known for some time that the WMT contract was a total loss maker for them and had been trying to renegotiate the contract with WMT to make it sustainable. The failure to agree a new contract was one of the factors in Vivarail's ultimate demise. It was bleeding them dry. Unfortunately the losers turned out to be the passengers on the Marston Vale line and the winners were Grant Thornton who pocketed some £1.5m from the administration.

 

[61653 HTAFC]

Long-suffering users of the Marston Vale line may like to know that:

1) The WMT units have now been sold and will very likely never operate as diesel units again but hopefully they will see new life one day as battery trains for another operator.

2) All the diesel genset spares at Bletchley have been scrapped or sold to TfW to help them maintain their 230 units as there is considerable commonality of parts.

3) Had they been so inclined, and had they acted quickly enough, West Midlands Trains COULD have cobbled together a team of ex-Vivarail employees to keep the units running in the short term. Several approaches were made by ex-Vivarail employees to help them out but the message came back that it was all too complicated. I suspect also that the DfT and WMT saw an opportunity for an easy contribution towards their idiotic 10% across the board penny-pinching savings, where it could all be blamed on the collapse of Vivarail.

4) Vivarail had known for some time that the WMT contract was a total loss maker for them and had been trying to renegotiate the contract with WMT to make it sustainable. The failure to agree a new contract was one of the factors in Vivarail's ultimate demise. It was bleeding them dry. Unfortunately the losers turned out to be the passengers on the Marston Vale line and the winners were Grant Thornton who pocketed some £1.5m from the administration.

Some of that is frankly atrocious. I think I can hear steam coming out of @DarloRich 's ears from here in West Yorkshire, and rightly so.

 

[Woods]

Some of that is frankly atrocious. I think I can hear steam coming out of @DarloRich 's ears from here in West Yorkshire, and rightly so.

I'm afraid that this is the unpalatable truth of the modern rail industry. It is staffed by too many people who would rather put it in the 'too difficult' pile than actually get off their backsides, solve problems and make the trains run. Yet they carry on taking good salaries. It is these 'back room boys' (and a few girls) who should be the subject of the public's ire, not the striking front-line staff.

Vivarail got a lot of stick about the 230s on the Marston Vale line, a lot of it very much justified when the units were at the depths of their poor reliability in 2019, but I can tell you that the overwhelming attitude of the staff at Vivarail, inspired by the late and much-missed Adrian Shooter, was, "how can we make this work". That attitude died with the company.

 

[Xenophon PCDGS]

Vivarail got a lot of stick about the 230s on the Marston Vale line, a lot of it very much justified when the units were at the depths of their poor reliability in 2019, but I can tell you that the overwhelming attitude of the staff at Vivarail, inspired by the late and much-missed Adrian Shooter, was, "how can we make this work". That attitude died with the company.

My riposte to that statement is that events past and present on the Marston Vale line and the Borderlands line proved that "aspirations to how can we make this work" do not always result in a satisfactory problem-solving resolution.

 

[A0wen]

3) Had they been so inclined, and had they acted quickly enough, West Midlands Trains COULD have cobbled together a team of ex-Vivarail employees to keep the units running in the short term. Several approaches were made by ex-Vivarail employees to help them out but the message came back that it was all too complicated. I suspect also that the DfT and WMT saw an opportunity for an easy contribution towards their idiotic 10% across the board penny-pinching savings, where it could all be blamed on the collapse of Vivarail.

4) Vivarail had known for some time that the WMT contract was a total loss maker for them and had been trying to renegotiate the contract with WMT to make it sustainable. The failure to agree a new contract was one of the factors in Vivarail's ultimate demise. It was bleeding them dry. Unfortunately the losers turned out to be the passengers on the Marston Vale line and the winners were Grant Thornton who pocketed some £1.5m from the administration.

To be fair, the Rail article linked by @Greybeard33 states (with the key bit in bold):

"Grant Thornton advises that a proposal for maintenance operations to continue on the Class 230 fleet was rejected by WMT due to increased costs, a lack of warranty support, and a requirement for indemnities in favour of the administrators."

The cost increase may have been unpalatable, but to have a cost increase with less or no warranty support and indemnities in place would have been untenable.

To try to illustrate it - you buy a car from a dealership with a £100 a year for 5 years servicing and warranty pack as part of the deal.

The dealer goes into administration and they phone you up and say "you need to pay an additional £ 150 a year for your servicing, plus you don't have a warranty and no recourse against us if there are any problems" - what would you say ? Basically all of the risk has been transferred to you and your costs are going up.

That's the position LNWR were in - so the overall costs could have doubled or trebled. When assessing what to do all options would have been placed on the table - they would have been aware that in a matter of months a rolling stock cascade meant there would be available Class 150s without a home to go to, which would be suitable for the line.

Overall it feels like LNWR have had to strike a balance - and if they were looking at escalating costs and having to carry all the risk, the better thing to do, particularly given the fact the line is relatively lightly used, was to walk away.

The ScotRail 153s are PRM compliant.

OK - didn't see that detail. But either way, they aren't running them on their own and they are paired with PRM compliant 156s, which is basically the same as Northern running them with PRM compliant 150s. So even if they weren't PRM compliant, there was a viable workaround - though not a workaround which would be suitable for the Marston Vale line.

 

[Mag_seven]

A reminder that we need to confine discussion to the actual issue of the temporary withdrawal of rail services on this line.

A seperate speculative thread can be found here:

Alternative solutions for the Marston Vale Line

Thought I would chuck this in to avoid too much speculation in the main thread. Obviously "buses" are one option, but this is to look at other options. As a start, I've found the relevant Sectional Appendices...

www.railforums.co.uk

 

[TT-ONR-NRN]

I have a cutting showing the introduction of the 230s in September 2018. The last recorded picture I have one on the branch is May 2019, so it was sometime after this.

Yes, the whole "Look at us, we're so innovative we've taken an old tube train and got it on a national rail service!" PR shebang. They milked it so much there were even posters on 230003-005 telling everyone about it. I hope the four years publicity this vanity project brought Vivarail and LNR was worth it, because if they hadn't taken a chance on what seemed like a crayonista fantasy from the start and ordered new trains instead rather than ones that hardly seem much newer than Sprinters (all three of LNRs and SWR's D-Trains all felt at pre-2000 built to me anyway), perhaps the users of the Marston Vale would actually have a service.

I agree wholeheartedly with DarloRich that the whole situ has properly stitched up the Marston Vale, and while a company may not be able to help going bust, I refuse to believe that allowing a small company whose bread and butter was an innovative yet ultimately ambitious project recycling old tube trains into stock aiming to compete with new build orders (and one which didn't have a massive deal of orders anyhow) to take complete charge of the maintenance and running of these trains, was anything other than short-sightedness by LNR. SWR are fine because they took them in-house. I would say TfW are fine also, but the units seem to be ridden with issues of their own.

This sort of hoo-ha, along with the disasters that are the Class 769, are why I don't like all of these Mister Maker projects messing around with old stock, and it's why I hope the plans for Hydrogen/Battery 321s or whatever they're converting some into don't take off. You'll notice they've cancelled the 165 hybrid project too.

If you don't agree with me that's fine and all part of having an opinion. But that is how I feel about it anyway.

 

[Bletchleyite]

I think the thing that stitched the MV up was the stupid decision, when it was rebuilt and resignalled in the early 2000s, to build 40m platforms rather than 50m ones, thus restricting operation to two classes of DMU which were old even then, and one of those classes is too small for the demand on the school trains.

This was very much pennywise but pound-foolish. What would 10m per platform have cost? Next to nothing in railway terms.

 

[Xenophon PCDGS]

I think the thing that stitched the MV up was the stupid decision, when it was rebuilt and resignalled in the early 2000s, to build 40m platforms rather than 50m ones, thus restricting operation to two classes of DMU which were old even then, and one of those classes is too small for the demand on the school trains.

This was very much pennywise but pound-foolish. What would 10m per platform have cost? Next to nothing in railway terms.

One might well note another, but "a great deal of distance away", example of that type of railway economics in the "Modern mini-platforms" that were constructed at the adjoining stations at Beauly and at Conon Bridge.

 

[zwk500]

One might well note another, but "a great deal of distance away", example of that type of railway economics in the "Modern mini-platforms" that were constructed at the adjoining stations at Beauly and at Conon Bridge.

The issue for the Marston Vale is that the value of any changes to the infrastructure now is limited by the impending decision about what EWR will do to the route.

 

[43066]

a small company whose bread and butter was an innovative yet ultimately ambitious project

The problem wasn’t so much the innovation and ambition, it was the fact that it ultimately resulted in something of a lemon!

 

[yorksrob]

To be fair to the concept seems to have worked a lot better for the Island line. Fortunately they opted to retain the traditional third rail electrification which has avoided the more experimental elements.

 

[TT-ONR-NRN]

The problem wasn’t so much the innovation and ambition, it was the fact that it ultimately resulted in something of a lemon!

I quite agree.

 

[Xenophon PCDGS]

The problem wasn’t so much the innovation and ambition, it was the fact that it ultimately resulted in something of a lemon!

I note your wording above, particularly in respect to the word "ambition" appertaining to the late-departed Adrian Shooter and see that as something discussed between two deceased parties with the example of the Mark Anthony speech extract below....
"The noble Brutus,
Hath told you that Caesar was ambitious.
Is it were so, it was a grievous fault
And grieviously hath Caesar answered it"

 

[43096]

The problem wasn’t so much the innovation and ambition, it was the fact that it ultimately resulted in something of a lemon!

But when you innovate it doesn’t always work. That’s what happens when you do something new.

 

[Bletchleyite]

The issue for the Marston Vale is that the value of any changes to the infrastructure now is limited by the impending decision about what EWR will do to the route.

To be fair 150s by the end of the year are probably better than what I genuinely expected when the service stopped, i.e. it wouldn't reopen until EWR implemented the 5 station proposal and started service from Oxford to Bedford.

To be fair to the concept seems to have worked a lot better for the Island line. Fortunately they opted to retain the traditional third rail electrification which has avoided the more experimental elements.

Retractioning and tarting up EMUs is a much more established thing to do than converting them to DMUs, of course.

 

[Dr Hoo]

The problem wasn’t so much the innovation and ambition, it was the fact that it ultimately resulted in something of a lemon!

Quite. There's nothing wrong with (say) the 'ambition' to run marathon; but to attempt it in an oversized pair of 25-year-old trainers that you bought at a car boot sale and patched up with super glue and gaffer tape is asking a lot.

 

[Bogallan]

As a Bletchley guard working the line, I always enjoyed working the trains when they were working. Reliability was atrocious at some points as we all know - I remember one day, going up Brogborough bank from Lidlington at 5mph all the way! Generally, most of the guards and drivers enjoyed the units, the passengers too were happy when the units worked as they should. Latterly they were performing well. Incidentally, the three units were to be named, from memory, the names being, “Alan Turing”, “Spirit of the Vale” and “Paula Radcliffe”, representing associations for Bletchley, the intermediate stations and Bedford. The namings were, naturally, postponed, never to return, following the poor running of the units and the poor publicity that would have ensued.

 

[MattRat]

My riposte to that statement is that events past and present on the Marston Vale line and the Borderlands line proved that "aspirations to how can we make this work" do not always result in a satisfactory problem-solving resolution.

What aspirations? It was a project to turn what should be scrap heaps into trains, which the 769s already proved didn't work, and oh look, all we have to show for it are scrap heaps.

Was there really no other options?

 

[Woods]

My riposte to that statement is that events past and present on the Marston Vale line and the Borderlands line proved that "aspirations to how can we make this work" do not always result in a satisfactory problem-solving resolution.

But as @Bogallan says above, the WMT units were latterly performing well (in 2021 and 2022). And the TfW units will get there.

Quite. There's nothing wrong with (say) the 'ambition' to run marathon; but to attempt it in an oversized pair of 25-year-old trainers that you bought at a car boot sale and patched up with super glue and gaffer tape is asking a lot.

The 'super glue and gaffer tape' view of the 230s is, I must say, a very lazy and boring stereotype. The real problems arose because:

a) The Ford Puma-based diesel genset package was not sufficiently proven, productionised or ruggedised before being deployed into passenger service (particularly true of the WMT units).

b) The build quality could have been a lot better in some areas. This was, again, particularly true of the WMT units which were delivered to Bletchley in 2018/19 in an unholy rush, indeed I think units 230003 and 230004 were actually incomplete when they were despatched! It would have been far better to keep the trains for longer at Long Marston and finish the build and testing properly rather than have them limp from Long Marston to Bletchley and then spend the next 12 months finishing them off and constantly battling with faults. But such was the desire to 'satisfy the customer'. Anyway, water under the bridge now.....

c) There were a number of silly design faults, most of which were eventually corrected through Engineering Changes.

But none of this was really because the trains were 'old tube trains', well atleast not a direct consequence of that. Remember that the trains were completely re-wired and internally re-fitted, apart from the bodyshells, bogies, some of the seats and the map panels - there wasn't much left of the original train. That which did remain from the old D78 didn't really cause any problems and many passengers had positive things to say about the experience of using the trains (when they were running.....)

The problem wasn’t so much the innovation and ambition, it was the fact that it ultimately resulted in something of a lemon!

Hopefully history will eventually prove that it wasn't such a lemon. The Island Line 484s are doing alright, the TfW units will get there and hopefully the GWR battery train will be the start of something a little more widespread on their branch lines. Three out of the four UK Vivarail 'fleets' eventually in service wouldn't be a bad result all things considered.

 

[Egg Centric]

Yes, the whole "Look at us, we're so innovative we've taken an old tube train and got it on a national rail service!" PR shebang. They milked it so much there were even posters on 230003-005 telling everyone about it. I hope the four years publicity this vanity project brought Vivarail and LNR was worth it, because if they hadn't taken a chance on what seemed like a crayonista fantasy from the start and ordered new trains instead rather than ones that hardly seem much newer than Sprinters (all three of LNRs and SWR's D-Trains all felt at pre-2000 built to me anyway), perhaps the users of the Marston Vale would actually have a service.

I agree wholeheartedly with DarloRich that the whole situ has properly stitched up the Marston Vale, and while a company may not be able to help going bust, I refuse to believe that allowing a small company whose bread and butter was an innovative yet ultimately ambitious project recycling old tube trains into stock aiming to compete with new build orders (and one which didn't have a massive deal of orders anyhow) to take complete charge of the maintenance and running of these trains, was anything other than short-sightedness by LNR. SWR are fine because they took them in-house. I would say TfW are fine also, but the units seem to be ridden with issues of their own.

This sort of hoo-ha, along with the disasters that are the Class 769, are why I don't like all of these Mister Maker projects messing around with old stock, and it's why I hope the plans for Hydrogen/Battery 321s or whatever they're converting some into don't take off. You'll notice they've cancelled the 165 hybrid project too.

If you don't agree with me that's fine and all part of having an opinion. But that is how I feel about it anyway.

I have an opposite conclusion to you - entrepreneurship requires taking risks and it's incredibly difficult these days with all the regulation to be a railway entrepreneur.

It's easy to say in hindsight that the d-train was silly but the concept absolutely wasn't deranged. It just wasn't good enough in the end. If you take risks, you will fail a lot of the time. These things happen.

All the risk mitigation and bureaucracy means that very few manage to deal with all the paperwork, safety requirements, and so on. This means that ultimately eggs are put in one basket. You see this also with the latter days of the franchise awards where they turned into farces with single bidders.

This applies to many other things in life of course.

 

[Woods]

I have an opposite conclusion to you - entrepreneurship requires taking risks and it's incredibly difficult these days with all the regulation to be a railway entrepreneur.

It's easy to say in hindsight that the d-train was silly but the concept absolutely wasn't deranged. It just wasn't good enough in the end. If you take risks, you will fail a lot of the time. These things happen.

All the risk mitigation and bureaucracy means that very few manage to deal with all the paperwork, safety requirements, and so on. This means that ultimately eggs are put in one basket. You see this also with the latter days of the franchise awards where they turned into farces with single bidders.

This applies to many other things in life of course.

Couldn't agree more. Vivarail took risks, driven by Adrian Shooter who was one of the rail industry's very rare entrepreneurs. Adrian's risk taking and innovation paid off famously well with the massive improvements that were made on the Chiltern route (which is now very much taken for granted) but Adrian also oversaw failures in life; Red Star parcels in his earlier career, and latterly Vivarail.

But you're right, it is incredibly difficult these days to be a railway entrepreneur. And you're also quite correct, you do need nerves of steel (plus plenty of time and money) to navigate the complex and insular world of 'industry approvals', much of which is there for good safety reasons, but by god it's enough to put off new starters from trying.

Plenty of people in the rail industry like to talk about innovation, there are focus groups, research groups, and shed tonnes of marketing people over-using the word. But the reality is, hardly anybody likes to be the first to do something genuinely new. This is why we now have old ideas being re-sold as 'innovative' e.g. converting EMUs to carry parcels; still a good idea, but hardly risky and definitely not innovative.

 

[Xenophon PCDGS]

Three out of the four UK Vivarail 'fleets' eventually in service wouldn't be a bad result all things considered.

Which of those four referred-to UK Vivarail fleets is the least known. I can only recall three of these, but at the age of 78, my memory could serve me false. What is the minimum number of units that can be called a fleet?

 

[Woods]

Which of those four referred-to UK Vivarail fleets is the least known. I can only recall three of these, but at the age of 78, my memory could serve me false. What is the minimum number of units that can be called a fleet?

To be fair, one of these four 'fleets' is currently only a single train! I was thinking of:

1. The WMT diesel fleet of three trains, 230003 to 230005. Now withdrawn from service and never going to see action on the Marston Vale line again.
2. The TfW diesel-battery hybrid fleet of five trains, 230006 to 230010. Nearly all in service on the Wrexham to Bidston line.
3. The SWR Island Line fleet of five trains, 484001 to 484005. All in service.
4. GWR's single battery train, 230001, still undergoing testing, but scheduled to enter service on the West Ealing to Greenford branch at some point.

 

[Bletchleyite]

Do we know who has purchased the WMT units?

 

[Xenophon PCDGS]

To be fair, one of these four 'fleets' is currently only a single train! I was thinking of:

1. The WMT diesel fleet of three trains, 230003 to 230005. Now withdrawn from service and never going to see action on the Marston Vale line again.
2. The TfW diesel-battery hybrid fleet of five trains, 230006 to 230010. Nearly all in service on the Wrexham to Bidston line.
3. The SWR Island Line fleet of five trains, 484001 to 484005. All in service.
4. GWR's single battery train, 230001, still undergoing testing, but scheduled to enter service on the West Ealing to Greenford branch at some point.

Thanks for that clarification. Now that Vivarail are no more, who will be the chosen one to build a continuation of 230001 and how will these be produced?

Do we know who has purchased the WMT units?

To expand that, do we know of all items disposed of by the liquidators and are there any further items to be disposed which will see the end of all assets and which should enable the liquidators to pay something to the preferential creditors.

 

[61653 HTAFC]

As a Bletchley guard working the line, I always enjoyed working the trains when they were working. Reliability was atrocious at some points as we all know - I remember one day, going up Brogborough bank from Lidlington at 5mph all the way! Generally, most of the guards and drivers enjoyed the units, the passengers too were happy when the units worked as they should. Latterly they were performing well. Incidentally, the three units were to be named, from memory, the names being, “Alan Turing”, “Spirit of the Vale” and “Paula Radcliffe”, representing associations for Bletchley, the intermediate stations and Bedford. The namings were, naturally, postponed, never to return, following the poor running of the units and the poor publicity that would have ensued.

That naming would no doubt have been mocked in the event of the 5mph crawl you mention!

Speaking of Ms. Radcliffe, remind me were the Marston Vale units fitted with toilets? If so, presumably they were not ones which dropped their contents on the ground!

 

[Woods]

Thanks for that clarification. Now that Vivarail are no more, who will be the chosen one to build a continuation of 230001 and how will these be produced?


To expand that, do we know of all items disposed of by the liquidators and are there any further items to be disposed which will see the end of all assets and which should enable the liquidators to pay something to the preferential creditors.

230001 is being finished off right now by the team of 9 ex-Vivarail engineers who were taken on by GWR, with the help of a few guys from Reading depot.

Where and how any future 230s might be constructed is still up for debate but it would almost certainly involve a third party such as Wabtec at Doncaster or Gemini at Wolverton

Unfortunately, the administrators of Vivarail (Grant Thornton) have already written to 'normal' creditors saying that there was nothing left in the pot to pay them a penny. That is to say, not after the remaining employees had been paid off, HMRC had had their dues, and Grant Thornton had taken their enormous £1.5m fee for the privilege!

That naming would no doubt have been mocked in the event of the 5mph crawl you mention!

Speaking of Ms. Radcliffe, remind me were the Marston Vale units fitted with toilets? If so, presumably they were not ones which dropped their contents on the ground!

Yes the Marston Vale units had toilets, of the non-drop variety

Do we know who has purchased the WMT units?

I do but not at liberty to say right now I'm afraid.