Fingers crossed if we're getting any it's these ones - the ex EMR units we already have are by a long way better then the other 153s in the fleet. I wish it was those ones we were keeping long term.
I'd rather the original ones once prmed the tfw ones are lovely only thing is is to replace pacers and be compliant or at least offer fully compliant trains all time they need to prm these 153's as well
As I understand it, most of the 153s are not having PRM mods because they are only expected to be used short term. In my opinion, bringing in more non PRM 153s purely to ditch Pacers is daft. A 153 is less reliable than a Pacer or a 150 and also has a lower power to weight ratio than any Pacer or Sprinter.
I expect you are right. They'll need a lot of 153s to replace all the Welsh Pacers though!
Define 'short term' though. We're almost into 2021. The 769s are now 2 and a half years late and counting. The way things are going, the first of TfW's new CAF DMUs will be in passenger service before the 769s are.
There's also the added complication that 153s can't go any further up than Radyr on the Taff Valley lines, blocking them from being used on most Valleys diagrams via Queen St, which is where Pacers can be found.
As bad as things have been, given the 769s are going through staff training and a single 197 hasn't been completed yet, that does seem unlikely.
Whilst this is true, overall the 153s are more flexible then the Pacers. Apart from the Taff Valley, the only other place they can't go is the Cambrian lines. They can be used pretty much everywhere else on the TfW network, whilst Pacers are pretty much useless outside South or West Wales.
Nine 769s plus twelve 170s and two 150s (cascaded south after introduction of 230s) equals 23 trains incoming to replace 30 Pacers. If we assume that the 769s can each replace a pair of Pacers and the other 14 units only replace 1 Pacer each that's a total of 32 Pacers which could be replaced if TfW had that many.
Some of the current TfW valleys diagrams are peak only aren't they - the Rhymneys particularly ?
However, the class 170s started running in December and hadn't replaced any Pacers by March 23 when lockdown started. All that happened was an increase in the number of four car trains on the valleys. There were still 25 or 26 diagrams for the 30 units.
I've been told that ex-West Midlands Trains 153371 and 153375 attempted to move to Canton today but apparently had "gone a different way" and failed at Worcestershire Parkway, this is just what I was told. Anyway here's the schedule:
www.realtimetrains.co.uk
769006 is now out as well, so 4 have turned a wheel. 5 to go.
I've heard that the class 153s have failed and will be rescued by an XC class 170...
It didn't strike anything, the drive shaft and associated equipment decided it didn't want to be apart of the train anymore
With any luck they'll go straight back where they came from!
It didn't. Hence it not coming back yet.
I heard that too. I also heard that it had the scrape marks before it went to Treherbert. However, to come back, it will need to pass six platforms that it didn't pass on the way up.
Possible to send it down the way it went up but at night ?? When there are less services I'm not local so not sure