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West Midlands Franchise ITT released by DfT

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12guard4

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6 cars lose time because it takes longer to check all the doors are closed and clear. Barnt Green plat.3 is the worst by far and is much more difficult than Sutton Coldfield due to lack of width. In theory there is no problems with running every x city train as a 6 car other than unit availability. DCO is essentially a total waste of time IMO and is just a stop gap between conductors and DOO.
 
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pemma

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One more day to go of June, then it is overdue - like most rail related things from the DfT!

I think it's realistic to expect it'll be a few weeks late due to what can and can't happen in the run up to a General Election.
 

Darkinsider

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Reading discussion re Cross City and DCO / extra 323's with interest. There must be a temptation to reverse the proposed 323 move from Manchester whereby all 323's end up north. This would allow TP 350's and Off lease 707's to come to Birmingham (40 sets).5 car 707's dedicated to Cross City so all trans are 5 car with no gangways entire lengh of train would massively boost capacity. Already talk of removing toilets from the 323's. The other advantage is 707's already have full DCO kit fitted and first 2 were delivered with 25kv equipment.
 

F Great Eastern

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Another idea is to return 26x323 (78 cars) and replace with 26x360 (109 cars)

Considering that the 350s would have a lot in common with the 360s it would make a lot of sense maintenance wise.
 

The Planner

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Where are all these being maintained? Soho only does 323s and its Northampton for 350s. Duddeston is still a long way from happening.
 

ChrisHogan

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Where are all these being maintained? Soho only does 323s and its Northampton for 350s. Duddeston is still a long way from happening.

There's maintenance capacity at Soho LMD for the combined 323 fleets (or the new fleet for CrossCity that both bidders seem to be offering in 2020/1); the problem is finding secure stabling (ideally with CET facilities) for the units other than at Soho and New Street. Wolverhampton may be used more in the future once the station transfers to WM TOC.
 

Darkinsider

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Would not immagine it would take to long to get up and running stabling / maintenance facilities at either Duddeston or even Kings Norton. 360 / 707 are also both Siemens units so a certain commonality with 350's would help.

As i understand there is allready not enough stabling facilities in Birmingham now. Don't a number if 323's get stabled at Newstreeet overnight.
 

F Great Eastern

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707s would be quite different from 350/360 units but the later two would be very similar in most (but not all) respects.
 

pemma

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Reading discussion re Cross City and DCO / extra 323's with interest. There must be a temptation to reverse the proposed 323 move from Manchester whereby all 323's end up north. This would allow TP 350's and Off lease 707's to come to Birmingham (40 sets).5 car 707's dedicated to Cross City so all trans are 5 car with no gangways entire lengh of train would massively boost capacity. Already talk of removing toilets from the 323's. The other advantage is 707's already have full DCO kit fitted and first 2 were delivered with 25kv equipment.

Some problems with that suggestion:
1. Northern have already ordered 331s so will have no need for the 323s. If you're thinking Northern could use 323s instead of 319s, then that won't utilise all the 323s (Northern's post-2019 rolling stock plan requires 27 x 319s) and Porterbrook ideally wanted one TOC to take on all the 323s (43 sets.)
2. 5 car 707s are 100m, while 3 car 323s are 70m. That will mean the 707s will be too long to double up on Cross City lines, while a 707 will be less than 1.5 times the length of a doubled up 323. Even if you reform the 707s in to 4 and 6 car sets then a 6 car 707 will still be shorter than a pair of 323s.
 

ChrisHogan

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Would not immagine it would take to long to get up and running stabling / maintenance facilities at either Duddeston or even Kings Norton. 360 / 707 are also both Siemens units so a certain commonality with 350's would help.

As i understand there is allready not enough stabling facilities in Birmingham now. Don't a number if 323's get stabled at Newstreeet overnight.

Yes, 323s shuffle between Soho and New Street overnight. They need a wash and CET discharge. There's nothing unusual about that; HSTs similarly shuffled between Paddn and OOC HST depot in the 1980s (and I assume they still do today).

Apart from Wolverhampton, there's the stabling siding at Lichfield City that will take 6-cars (we stopped using this in 1993 when the CrossCity service was run with the awful 308s as they invariably failed with flat batteries and never came out the following morning), the bay at Four Oaks will take another 6-cars, Coventry and so on.

I really don't think stabling of the extra emus mandated by the DfT in the ITT for WM in the Birmingham area is really a big problem. Things might change if new high-spec. emus are built and they are leased with a maintenance provision in the contract.
 

Darkinsider

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Some problems with that suggestion:
1. Northern have already ordered 331s so will have no need for the 323s. If you're thinking Northern could use 323s instead of 319s, then that won't utilise all the 323s (Northern's post-2019 rolling stock plan requires 27 x 319s) and Porterbrook ideally wanted one TOC to take on all the 323s (43 sets.)
2. 5 car 707s are 100m, while 3 car 323s are 70m. That will mean the 707s will be too long to double up on Cross City lines, while a 707 will be less than 1.5 times the length of a doubled up 323. Even if you reform the 707s in to 4 and 6 car sets then a 6 car 707 will still be shorter than a pair of 323s.

Although the 707's are indeed shorter than a 6 car 323 the actual cubic space inside for passengers would i suspect be greater than 6 car 323 as the 707 has no internal gangways i.e. like the new tube stock it's one long coach.

Poterbrook have mentioned diesal engine's in 323 which if they where to stay in Birmingham coukd get then to Burton OT via Arlewas i guess. Could that be a plan. Even extend from Cov terminators to Leamington therefore not requiring class 230's inomg tern.
 

pemma

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Surely losing internal gangways and not having redundant cabs doesn't make up for 40m of lost length.
 

the sniper

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Yes, 323s shuffle between Soho and New Street overnight. They need a wash and CET discharge.

I was pretty sure normally just under half a dozen 323s stay at New Street without going to Soho. They get cleaned internally at New Street, they just don't get tanked.
 

TheDavibob

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Surely losing internal gangways and not having redundant cabs doesn't make up for 40m of lost length.

Bays of 6 take up a lot of floor space, too, but I agree that 5-car 707s would be a hideous loss of space for a line that needs as much as it can get at peak times.
 

ChrisHogan

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Although the 707's are indeed shorter than a 6 car 323 the actual cubic space inside for passengers would i suspect be greater than 6 car 323 as the 707 has no internal gangways i.e. like the new tube stock it's one long coach.

Poterbrook have mentioned diesal engine's in 323 which if they where to stay in Birmingham coukd get then to Burton OT via Arlewas i guess. Could that be a plan. Even extend from Cov terminators to Leamington therefore not requiring class 230's inomg tern.

I don't understand why everybody is so keen to dump 707s on the West Midlands franchise. It makes no sense to me to convert dc emus to ac when there is plenty of work for them elsewhere in the South East.

The whole reason why one (and probably both) bidders for WM are looking at high-spec emus is the obligation in the ITT to run a near normal service on CrossCity in the winter leaffall period (page 48 of the Stakeholder briefing). The 707s have been rejected by First/MTR for SW franchise for the same reasons they wouldn't be suitable for WM and CrossCity. I imagine something like a Crossrail Aventra (with 6 cars) or equivalent from Siemens, Hitachi, etc. etc. would be likely choice. It needs to be recognised that it has never proved possible to run a normal service on CrossCity with the 6 tph service and 323s in the autumn, despite various permutations of split service, reduced service and skipped stops tried by LM and before it, CT.

The other problem is that 150 cars is too many for the WM branded services of WM, meaning some would have to go elsewhere. The platforms north of Walsall on the Rugeley line are only about 70 metres long as well and I don't think electrification is planned to include platform extensions. Note sure that the ORR would approve of SDO north of Walsall.

Hybrid 323s on the Coventry to Leamington service isn't a runner either as 323s are rarely seen at Coventry; they normally don't work east of Birmingham International and all the Coventry services are normally 350s these days. I would have thought a couple more 153s would be more likely, at least initially - perhaps replaced by 170/5s if new bi-modes are leased for the Shrewsbury services.
 
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sk688

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Three cheers to Mrs May, to probably delaying the mainly shocking service us West Midlands have!

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/business...cing-winner-west-midlands-rail-bid-passes-no/

Anyone have a scooby-do when the kings will be crowned?

Come on now , LM aren't that bad

My only gripes with them , are the running of 4 car 350s on busy services , which get packed to the rafters on weekends , and the 319s ( which is understandable given the loss of the 350/2s ) . Yes , they could reduce the number of shortformed services a bit , but on the whole, I find LM to be a reasonably competent operator ( for the South WCML at least ) , much better than Silverlink of couse
 

fgwrich

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Come on now , LM aren't that bad

My only gripes with them , are the running of 4 car 350s on busy services , which get packed to the rafters on weekends , and the 319s ( which is understandable given the loss of the 350/2s ) . Yes , they could reduce the number of shortformed services a bit , but on the whole, I find LM to be a reasonably competent operator ( for the South WCML at least ) , much better than Silverlink of couse


I'm in two minds really, Some parts of LM do seem to be rather good, but others seem to suffer from the standard level of Govia and just give up at nearly any opportunity. The half hearted effort with the 319s seem to be a good way to show this. That said, Abellio seem to have near issues wherever they operate - Greater Anglia finally starting to settle down with this longer term franchise. Could it be better the devil you know though and does Abellio have the capacity to take on another large Franchise?
 

the sniper

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A DfT spokesman said it would make a decision “in due course”. The delay comes as reports surfaced of possible plans by ministers to pay train companies if the revenue they are making from their services is significantly below what was forecast.

Regarding the last paragraph in that article, is this relevant to this franchise? Any change like this would surely be so significant that it'd require the bidding process to be restarted?

I've always thought that any bidder implementing DCO/DOO in the West Mids, when it wasn't required in the ITT, where publicly at least it hasn't been suggested that the DfT will take on the revenue risk, would have to be mad to do so. Could this be a factor in the delay...?
 

neilstevens2

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still no news about the new West Midlands franchise! Will the timescale still allow the 'new' operator to start the franchise on Oct 15th as specified in the dft document?
 
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still no news about the new West Midlands franchise! Will the timescale still allow the 'new' operator to start the franchise on Oct 15th as specified in the dft document?

The article above states probably not, as the 3 month mobilisation period won't be met. I think that period also doesn't include the 10 Day Standstill after the Franchise announcement, so if October 15th is still the franchise handover, they've missed the cut off by a mile.

Best thing the DfT should do is probably move the franchise handover back to December 1st, so those 3 months can satisfied accordingly.
 

HH

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I'm in two minds really, Some parts of LM do seem to be rather good, but others seem to suffer from the standard level of Govia and just give up at nearly any opportunity. The half hearted effort with the 319s seem to be a good way to show this. That said, Abellio seem to have near issues wherever they operate - Greater Anglia finally starting to settle down with this longer term franchise. Could it be better the devil you know though and does Abellio have the capacity to take on another large Franchise?

Abellio would simply have to hire a few good people; they have plenty of short term resource they can "borrow" from the Netherlands.
 

pemma

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Isn't there normally an option for extending a franchise by up to 12 weeks if the award for the following franchise is made late?
 

DarloRich

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Come on now , LM aren't that bad

My only gripes with them , are the running of 4 car 350s on busy services , which get packed to the rafters on weekends , and the 319s ( which is understandable given the loss of the 350/2s ) . Yes , they could reduce the number of shortformed services a bit , but on the whole, I find LM to be a reasonably competent operator ( for the South WCML at least ) , much better than Silverlink of couse

until things go wrong - then it gets a bit fruity!
 

3141

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Regarding the last paragraph in that article, is this relevant to this franchise? Any change like this would surely be so significant that it'd require the bidding process to be restarted?

An unsuccessful bidder for an existing franchise might say that too, if their revenue forecast now turned out to be closer to what is actually happening than the winner's had been. So presumably the DfT's lawyers will be looking very carefully at any changes.
 
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