The withdrawal of certain trains making me feel old

[Wolfie]

I think there's a culture that a train should last at least 40 years. Many of them do, and you can be pretty sure there are some on the rails that almost certainly will (Pendolinos and 350/450s to name two), but to give another example I'd be surprised if Class 22x weren't all razor blades within 10 years, because large-engined DMUs are no longer acceptable and it isn't economically viable to convert them to bi-mode (it's been studied in depth). That'll have them only about 30 years old by the time they go, possibly newer.

Agreed. The rapid evolution in electronics means that supporting some systems us increasingly problematic too. It may be uneconomic to replace them.

 

[nw1]

The one thing that will make people feel really old, I suspect, is living through three generations of trains on your 'local' network - depending on how frequently the trains are replaced or moved on to other lines. Thinking specifically of cases where a given class spends its whole life on one network, so you get say 30-40 years of service.

Not happened to me yet - the South Western network is what I'd consider 'local' and I've only lived through the CIG/VEPs and 444/450s. Probably won't happen for a while yet, I suspect. (If however one considers the Bournemouth line only, I've already lived through REPs and TCs, 442s, and 444s).

But for someone born in let's say the late fifties, they would have a very good chance of remembering the first-generation EMUs (CORs, BILs, HALs, NOLs, LAVs and the rest), the CIGs and VEPs of course, and the 444s and 450s.

For other lines, which see units replaced more frequently, this could of course happen when you are still in your twenties. If I'd have lived in say Cambridge, for example, I'd have seen at least three generations on London services (loco-hauled diesel, 317s and 365s) well before I'd hit 30.

 

[Pinza-C55]

I remember as a boy being on a Crewe Works tour sometime in 1976 and saw the first HST Class 43 power car in the then amazing yellow and rail blue livery and thought wow - the future
so I am adding HSTs to the list

I remember seeing my first HST coming off the north end of the King Edward Bridge in Newcastle in I think late 1977. I may even have a photo of it.

 

[Taunton]

Must admit I never really get the hatred seen for the SE Networkers on here. The interior is a little drab, but that’s more down to the colours used more than anything else. I get that the 3+2 is cramped at times, but it’s better than the awful interiors London Overground have, and could easily be fixed by removing the third seat (but then people would moan there aren’t so many seats).

I'm of the same opinion. There was a desire to maximise the numbers sat down, which I think for passengers, especially daily ones, far outweighs any hoo-hah about bicycle spaces or internal indicators being of the right size, while you are jolting along swinging round a pole (or worse, no pole). They came just when passenger numbers had bottomed out and were on the rise again.

Apparently Chris Green went through the layout designs personally, in detail, for things like seats aligned with windows. No satisfaction in this, professional rolling stock designers ought to get these sorts of things right at first drawing, without administration seniors having to get involved. That's how the old GWR did carriages for generations, the team drew them up fine. Sir Felix Pole didn't have to come down to the Swindon drawing office to tell them how to do it.

 

[matchmaker]

When I started secondary school in 1969 I commuted daily on 303s. I had left school, been to university and had started my first job when the 314s were introduced!

 

[DanNCL]

332s. Even up to withdrawal they still looked modern.

91s and mark 4s were commonplace during my childhood, and with the mallard refurbishment seemed nearly new. Makes me feel old seeing some of them making a one way trip to Newport.

The moment I'll feel especially old is when post privatisation fleets begin being withdrawn en masse. With Networkers now being withdrawn, it can't be too many more years until Voyagers, 390s, early Electrostars etc start being withdrawn too, the oldest of those will all be approaching 30 years old by the end of the decade.

 

[superjohn]

I grew up around a 125, 225 and 317 dominated southern ECML. The decline of all three is a little unsettling, they were always around in one colour or another and are now going or gone.

It’s also a bit weird to find myself restoring some of the old Cambridge based loco hauled stock that I spent so many Saturdays riding on as a youngster.

 

[WesternLancer]

Apparently Chris Green went through the layout designs personally, in detail, for things like seats aligned with windows. No satisfaction in this, professional rolling stock designers ought to get these sorts of things right at first drawing, without administration seniors having to get involved. That's how the old GWR did carriages for generations, the team drew them up fine. Sir Felix Pole didn't have to come down to the Swindon drawing office to tell them how to do it.

Point well made. Sounds like Chris G was probably unimpressed by the internal layout of the Mk3 EMUs perhaps, (excepting the 442s) and probably the Mk 3 derived DMUs...and IMHO rightly so. Probably disliked their front ends too.

 

[Bletchleyite]

Point well made. Sounds like Chris G was probably unimpressed by the internal layout of the Mk3 EMUs perhaps, (excepting the 442s) and probably the Mk 3 derived DMUs...and IMHO rightly so. Probably disliked their front ends too.

I personally don't care what the outside looks like, but designing a train (as they did with all production PEP EMUs and Mk3 based EMUs and DMUs) that has not a single seat* with an acceptable window view really takes an incredible level of either lack of thought or vindictiveness.

* OK, in some Mk3 EMUs there are 3 rows, the back row by the cab, a row under the pantograph and the one backing onto 1st. But mostly not.

 

[WesternLancer]

I personally don't care what the outside looks like, but designing a train (as they did with all production PEP EMUs and Mk3 based EMUs and DMUs) that has not a single seat* with an acceptable window view really takes an incredible level of either lack of thought or vindictiveness.

* OK, in some Mk3 EMUs there are 3 rows, the back row by the cab, a row under the pantograph and the one backing onto 1st. But mostly not.

Yes, I agree.

Tho I also think external appearance does matter too.

At the station waiting for a train the other day with my partner and a 156 pulls in (the interiors of which I have always thought were OK), and she said - 'why does the front of it just have to look so ugly - as if nobody cared what it looked like' - and I think it does send a message that if you think no one cares about such stuff, then they maybe won't care about other things either - eg comfort, customer service etc etc - sends the wrong messages I think. I doubt many car manufactures set out with the guidance to the design team 'don't worry what the outside looks like...' after all!

Obv always been a tricky one to get right on gangwayed units, which is important feature of itself.

 

[APT618S]

I remember seeing my first HST coming off the north end of the King Edward Bridge in Newcastle in I think late 1977. I may even have a photo of it.

Same here. I was at the north end of P9/P10 (now 3/4) when 254003 arrived from the south on presumably a test or training run before they entered revenue service.

 

[Strathclyder]

314s for me; they and the Cathcart Circle will always be entwined in my mind. The reality of it really sunk in when I did the farewell tour back in December 2019. The demise of the 318s, 320s & 334s within the next 10-15 years will be the ones that will really make me feel old, having travelled extensively on all 3 classes since the mid-2000s, both for commuting (when I went to college in Glasgow), day-trips (memories of family days out to Ayr & Largs with 318s & 334s on the Ayrshire Coast Line as the traction are abundant) and as part of my general travels

If light rail/metro is allowed, then the current Metro-Cammell Glasgow Subway stock is another example. COVID has only forestalled their demise (turns out that Subway bash I did in early March 2020 before the then-planned switch to the Stadler stock - a few weeks before the first lockdown as it turned out - was ever so slightly premature), but their time will come too. Hope I'm able to take one last spin before the change-over does happen, relive a few childhood memories.

 

[Peter Mugridge]

What is worse is the realisation that much of the stock being built now is likely to outlast me...

 

[ChiefPlanner]

Not just Britain - in New York when the BMT Standards came off the subway in the 1960's - there was a well documented groundswell that "Brooklyn ain't Brooklyn without the old cars.

How they coped with endemic vandalism , crime and so on in the next decade I cannot guess.

(I personally miss the EPB stock - and more recently the 313 and 315 family)

 

[CBlue]

Definite 317's and 321's for me. Probably the first stock I travelled on as a child was likely one of the two classes.

The first Networkers and Electrostars I travelled on seemed space-age in comparison!

 

[Dr_Paul]

But for someone born in let's say the late fifties, they would have a very good chance of remembering the first-generation EMUs (CORs, BILs, HALs, NOLs, LAVs and the rest), the CIGs and VEPs of course, and the 444s and 450s.

I was born in 1955 in Richmond, so I remember the tail-end of the prewar Southern electrics (mostly on the Reading services) and grew up with 4-SUBs and 4-EPBs as the stock on which I travelled the most (to and from North Sheen); then when I went to work in the early 1970s I came across the Mark I stock in and out of Waterloo. I saw them all go without their departure making me feel old.

What will make me feel positively ancient (at 66) will be the withdrawal of the 455s. Although the 442s came into use some years after them, their departure from the Bournemouth route didn't have much of an impact on me although they hadn't been around for that long. This presumably was because I didn't travel in them (I only had one short trip in one, Clapham Junction to Waterloo). Since then the Porkers' much-repeated Lazarus trick of reappearing from the dead gives the impression that they haven't gone for good. The 455s, on the other hand, have been almost exclusively the stock on which I have travelled up and down to Waterloo for over 35 years, that is, more than half of my life. Whilst I do like the 707s that have replaced some of the 455s, I'll miss the 455s and their passing will impress upon me that I'm getting on a bit.

 

[Cowley]

What is worse is the realisation that much of the stock being built now is likely to outlast me...

Oh. That’s a bit of a sobering thought isn’t it?

 

[Springs Branch]

It made me wonder if anyone else gets the feeling of being old when a type of train is scheduled for withdrawal?

For me, there are two instances, at opposite ends of the rolling-stock spectrum:-

1) Mk 3 Loco-hauled stock on main line service.
I remember taking a special trip into Manchester in the mid-1970s and buying a Day Return from Piccadilly to Macclesfield so I could sample the brand-new Mk.3s just introduced on the Manchester-Euston route. It was a mid-day, mid-week train and I had an entire Second Class carriage to myself on the journey out to MAC (such was the Inter-City patronage in those days) which allowed me to choose the one seat which vaguely matched up a window.
I know there are still plenty of Mk 3s about on the National network, but I guess it's more niche usage now, rather than the mainstay of premier main lines.

2) Pacers.
These were introduced when most provincial services were in the hands of increasingly decrepit 1st Gen DMUs, an era when the words "new" and "train" were not often used in the same sentence Up North.
I took another special trip to Oldham (by the Trans-Lancs Express bus, IIRC) just to ride a brand-new GMPTE orange & brown specimen from Oldham Mumps to Manchester Vic. The thoughts "underwhelming" and "despair for the future of railways" came to mind at the time.

Unlike the Mk 3s, the Pacers don't hold any happy memories of grand days out or the sunny days of youth for me, so glad to see the back of them.

 

[2392]

It's not just the motive power Diesels, electrics or DMUs/EMUs either. Speaking of rolling stock based here in the North East, the demise of the loose coupled 21 tonner coal wagons and their replacements the various air braked MGRs. Both replaced by for want of a better term the Bogie MGR wagons, of which even they seem to be going. Mind you it's not really surprising considering the demise of coal mining here in the North East. The last of the Coastal Deep mines the Big E, Ellington closed in the mid-late ninties, even the open cast mines are going too or having their planning applications refused. Who would have thought the term.- "It's like taking coals to Newcastle!" Would come true as coal is being imported these days to the Tyne!

 

[mike57]

For me its the HST, I was in my early 20's when they were introduced and they were a step change on the ECML in terms of journey times, and they have been around for the rest of my adult life.

 

[nw1]

Oh. That’s a bit of a sobering thought isn’t it?

Indeed, if you are older than (average life expectancy - 35) then that will probably be true.
I think I'm still young enough to outlast the 444s, 450s and 377s, but anything much newer than that, I'm not so sure...

 

[Marvin]

Ho boy, seeing 91s on the scrap line and Pacers in preservation makes me feel older than coal.

It's nothing to how I'll feel once the Sprinters are all gone though. As for the suggestion upthread that the Voyagers and Pendolinos may not have long left - fie! They only came out a year or so ago, didn't they?

 

[Statto]

HSTs for me along with the Merseyrail 507/508s, i remember pre teen when the 507/08s were first in service, 508s came later as they went to the Southern region first, Merseyrail Wirral Line is my local network.

 

[Ken H]

I will start to really feel old when they start cutting cl 150, 156, 158 etc. Cant be long....

 

[61653 HTAFC]

Seeing the Pacers go didn't make me feel old (had they gone 15 years ago as per their designed lifespan, it might have made me feel old!)... Seeing 442s go does though, because in my head I still think of them as fairly modern units.

In terms of my local lines, for the fast Trans-Pennine services I've gone through 47s; 150s & 156s; 158s; 170s & 185s; to currently a mix of 185s, 802s and 68s+mk5s. On locals, just 1st gen units followed by Pacers; followed by Sprinters. What makes me feel old on that front isn't so much the changes, just how ancient the stuff at the beginning seems now!

 

[Pinza-C55]

For me its the HST, I was in my early 20's when they were introduced and they were a step change on the ECML in terms of journey times, and they have been around for the rest of my adult life.

I "had" a friend who was a Deltic basher like me and his proud boast in the late 90s was that he had never travelled on an HST.

 

[nw1]

I "had" a friend who was a Deltic basher like me and his proud boast in the late 90s was that he had never travelled on an HST.

Not quite the same thing, but the comment reminded me of one strange quirk of my haulage experience: the only time I was on a service train hauled by a Deltic (Royal Scots Grey) was in the late 90s.

Deliberately got out of bed early one grotty November morning to get one-off Deltic haulage on a Virgin XC on the morning Poole-Liverpool service.

In one way the Deltics were 'before my time' - but 16 years after starting to use trains regularly, I was on a service hauled by one. Indeed, due to the fact that I have not used the ECML since 1993, I can say truthfully that I have had Deltic haulage more recently than 91 haulage!

 

[AM9]

Most of my early years' rail travel was on the Underground and the GE services from Ilford to Liverpool St. So I've seen:

The Central line introduce the 1959 stock (new looking unpainted aluminium stock with rubber suspension and all equipment beneath floors with cam controllers, replacing LT 'Standard Stock' with equipment compartments behind cabs containing clunky contactors). Then in tyhe earlu '90s, the introduction of the 92 stock, modern large windows and stunning acceleration. Now they are near for replacement with Siemens Inspiros.​

The GE line in my earliest memories ran the original 1500VDC 3-car Shenfield units. They had air operated sliding doors and seemed to amble along but were actually a lot faster than a deep tube train scuttling along. There were also the Southend compartment stock trains running on DC but I rarely went on them. I them remember the line's 1960'ish conversion from DC to ac, at the time I wasn't aware of the OLE changes but the new EMUs with single arm Stone-Faiveley pantographs looked modern like those I'd seen in pictures on the 'E3000' locos on the WCML. There there were the AM9s, something really flash for the GE lines. The Shenfields were repalced by the 315s in the early '80s and the compartment stock with 321s in the '90s. Now the 315s have gone and its the 345s.​

Much to remind me that I am just old (in my '70s).

 

[OuterDistant]

I felt this the other week when I saw 91s having gone for scrap. I was 9 when one was being wheeled out on BBC Railwatch and described as taking us into the future.

I felt bit better when comparing it with a car of similar age. F-reg Vauxhall Astra GTE, maybe?

 

[Polarbear]

For me, seeing 87035 in the rail museum at York came as a bit of a shock to the system.

Looking back a bit further, my childhood memories are of Chester station with many different 1st generation DMU's (classes 101, 103, 108 and 120 being the most common), and 25's & 40's on the North Wales routes. That part of the country, (like several others), is about to embark on another step-change with the introduction of 197's.