Ah ****e, are there any off lease EMUs to swap them for?
I would not define the Brighton to London mainline entirely as a metro route. There is metro services on and off the Brighton mainline though.
The class 350/1's are not being release by LNWR (West Midland Trains) and as said above, with modifications made to allow them to run at 110mph, I doubt that you would be able to add third rail shoes to them.
Last time I checked, most recently at Newhaven, there was not any third rail sections across the level crossing, but I will stand corrected on that point as the third rail ends before the crossing at Newhaven Town station, then starts again after the crossing of the road?
The only possible spare units, which you may be able to convert is the class 379 units. But there would be a cost to doing that has has been discussed on many threads before including the Future of Class 379 thread.
www.google.co.uk
OK, and who is going to fund a battery unit in this economy?
The issue really is that a battery emu is still a small specialised fleet, only that you need a much larger specialised fleet as a battery emu can't recharge off DC lines in the cycle of the existing services so it needs to swap on to wholly electrified services in between the unelectrified trips. If you really can't do the electrification you are better off kicking the bucket down the road until the end of the 171s life by which time the technology has improved.
They'd be a good fit for SWR thoughAh gotcha!
The new standards means Southern have got spend boatloads on new stock , especially considering that you can't do dual top contact bottom contact rails like can do dual AC DC trains. That ORR haven't just given "YOU MUST PHASE THIS OUT BY YEAR XXXX" order like they did with non locking slam door trains , they understand that their is a risk reward balance that tips in favour of allowing the old standards to exist where they are already, considering that other risks exist as a consequence on the top contact third rail ban, to consider the risk reward balance exists elsewhere and its not immoral to consider allowing the old standards to be built where the new standards are not economically feasible.
Marshlink and North downs shouldn't be a problem for charging, even better if the Marshlink services went through to Brighton again (although that particular ship may have regrettably gone). The only other DMU island wholly within 3rd rail is Uckfield, for which the problem is not charging between Hurst Green and London but getting from HG to Uckfield and back in one go. However the Vivarail-produced solution that AIUI is still being taken forward for Greenford would potentially provide the top-up needed.
As I understand it roughly based on the existing service which only has a 10 to 15 minute turnround at Ashford and no platform availability to extend it along with limitations on the power supply on the East Coastway a Marshlink service would have to do a Brighton to Ashford return trip followed by a return trip to Seaford to achieve reliable service operation. Alternatively you could put the unit in to the sidings at Eastbourne for an hour. Either way youd need extra units to cover the service.
You won't get a 455 through Oxted tunnel though!
25 mile each way = 80km round trip, which is right on the limit of what is in service now so no allowance for variance in demand on the battery supply. A Greenford/Vivarail-type solution would probably be needed at Uckfield (but perfectly doable, of course).
When I did a tiny bit of work on it 3rd Rail was certainly the preferred option from an operational point of view but having also read the RSSB paper about how to mitigate the risks of 3rd rail I struggle to see how the costs of the mitigations likely required would be justified in the context of battery trains being a practical alternative.
The speaker in the video more or address this and answers this. And its where comparisons with Greenford don't entirely stack up when viewed against a line like Uckfield.
Just skimmed the report. The temporary physical barriers seemed to have a decent BCR. Is this a prohibitively expensive move in reality?
I don't see why longer trains will particularly be an issue for batteries as each unit would have batteries for itself. Schemes have so far focused on areas where you can recover a failed unit quickly, because it's still very much in the operational proving stage.
Aspirations of HS to Hastings were dead long before the MP who's pet project it was stepped down. You'd need to remodel Ashford to achieve it in any event, likely in a manner detrimental to every other service at Ashford.
The Hoo branch is now effectively dead, AIUI. The Housing Infrastructure Fund money that was planned to pay for it was pulled as part of the latest budget cuts.
So is the lack of infill due to the fact it's cheaper to continue with diesels va the costs to switch the infrastructure to 3rd rail, rather than because it isn't as safe?
The cost of making it safe is the problem.
No, we just need a actual government to invest in the railways and have bridges redeveloped rather than having to rely on a outdated system that isn't used anywhere else for long distance rail services.
Whether the trains are 3, 6, 9 or 12 car trains they should have batteries every third car either under the passenger area or as in class 755/756 units within a smaller power carriage.
Why would you have small sections of OLE for charging when there's a solution that fits in the 4'? OLE makes sense as a replacement for stretches of 3rd rail at the edge of the interface (i.e. Reading to Ascot, give SWR dual-voltage units as well), but you wouldn't be equipping random platforms at Brighton with it.
You wouldn't, it was a hypothetical example of where charging concerns (for the Blackwater/North Downs Line) might come into play for OLE consideration. But given there's too much of the network unelectrified as it is, you wouldn't bother wasting money replacing what's already there unless forced to.
