Great Western Coffee Shop

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-35725299

"Moves are finally afoot to get rid of much-maligned trains built from the body of a bus. But how did Britain's railways come to rely on the Pacer?"

It is a shame that BBC journalists can't quite match the pictures to the story. The photos are of Class 143 & 144. The "just stick a Leyland National bus body onto a train" are the class 142. As the photo af an interior shows, the Kilmarnock built Class 143/4 trains are better than class 142 anyway and have nothing to do with Leyland National buses.

Although the new Arriva Northern (starts April) franchise marks the end of Pacers on Northern, there is not yet any solution in sight for Arriva Wales or GWR. WHEN electrification extends to Bristol and Cardiff (and Oxford - 2020?) new electric trains will free up Class 165/6 to go elsewhere on GWR and allow class 150 to push the Pacers to the scrapyard. In Wales the valleys may wait hit even longer for electrification.

If these dates slip, my money is on special extension of the 2020 Accessility Deadline for Wales and West Country.

Sorry to be so optimistic!

As far as I know there has been no whisper of that being a possibility, but IMHO it would be the sensible thing to do.  So long as there is sign that electrification has started (and I am thinking of the valley lines in particular here), I think that people will be patient.   Without signs of real progress in electrification, promises of new trains tomorrow will be much harder to sell.   

Think this may need to be added to the Acronyms page! :)

Not entirely true, as it says later in the article:
I believe that single renovated 144 is compliant.

Great Western electrification doesn't need to reach Bristol and Cardiff to release 165s/166s, they don't run that far out. Oxford however... Come to think of it, are there any services which only run between Reading and PAD, or are we going to have to wait until the wires reach Oxford before the Turbo cascade can start?

It looks like the ValleyLines are going to have quite a long wait for electrification, I expect they will still be diesel in 2020 and see either:

• Pacers getting a temporary exemption from the TSI PRM regulations
• Porterbrook 'ePacers'
• converted London Underground D-stock
• some combination of the above

The turbos can start to be released once the wires reach Reading, but possibly may wait until they reach Didcot to release a decent number. Bear in mind they'll be moving depot, so they'll be wanting to move a decent number in order to keep both depots working & not sitting on their hands.

The wires will reach Didcot before they reach Reading, as Reading-Didcot is scheduled to be finished this September (for IEP testing).  Maidenhead to Reading isn't due until the end of next year IIRC.

indeed, so end of next year earliest.

Two train per hour off-peak and more in the peak.  The off-peak service requires a minimum of 5 units to resource (the diagrams are not that simple in practice as economies are made by such things as a RDG-PAD, forming a PAD-OXF rather than laying over at PAD for 25 minutes, but it's a good figure for starters).  Add the OXF-PAD stoppers into the mix and you're looking at around 10 units minimum off-peak that could be potentially cascaded should the OXF-PAD services become DID-PAD services come next December.  In reality it would probably be more than that given the number of units that sit idle off-peak or are marshalled into 4/5/6 car off-peak services.

Enough to start the cascade ball rolling in early 2018 at the latest I'd have thought?

does anyone know how the welsh valleys are going to be electrified?  Hopefully, they will be choosing an OLE system that is not as shall we say "sturdily engineered" as on the mainline.  Surely, something lighter weight and lower cost would be adequate and demonstrate that the UK can do electrification to a sensible timescale and budget.   

I fear that if they adopt the same approach, costs will inflate due to more bridges needing to be altered, and the deeper they pile, the greater the chance of running into mine workings. 

I believe that the mainline OLE design (Series 1) is designed for trains running at 140 mph with two pantographs up.  One of the consequences is that the contact wire has to be thicker and tensioned to a higher force.  These criteria wouldn't apply on the Welsh Valley lines, and so I believe the intention is to use a design called Series 2 which would be for lines where the maximum speed would be 100 mph.  Therefore the requirement for the "masculine" design of masts and booms could be relaxed somewhat.  Absolute wire height and associated bridge clearances would still need to be addressed as these are dictated by the requirements of the new European Technical Standards for Interoperability.

I did take a gander at the Huyton area last year, on the Liverpool to Wigan line, which was Series 2 OHLE I think.  I must admit I still thought it a little masculine.  Good to see the Class 319s plying their trade and looking very smart in their new livery, though once again I was struck by their poor acceleration and I'm glad they never found their way onto the GWML as originally planned!

This photo demonstrates the Series 2 design, though the zoom lens foreshortens the view and makes it look worse:

No, no-one knows. Part of the issue is that Welsh rail infrastructure is currently the responsibility of the DfT in London, Cardiff would like it to be devolved to them but there's a high degree of interdependence between Welsh and English networks (the Marches line and Shrewsbury are signalled out of Cardiff for example), so it's not as clear cut as say, Scotland. Certain parties in Wales would like to convert some of the Valley lines to light rail as a way to gain control of the infrastructure (and theoretically save costs), but it's unclear as to whether light rail could really handle the passenger volumes and whether it would really save any money.

Anyway, the difference in cost of the new Furrer+Frey OHLE and say a lightweight tram line isn't massive. The 'big ticket' items with electrification (in no particular order) are:

- Provision of OHLE, power supplies and associated control systems
- Replacement of bridges/lowering of track/adjustments to canopies to allow sufficient clearance (generally the same whatever the voltage)
- Immunisation of signalling against electrification currents, replacement of gantries (recent resignalling should be compatible anyway) - resignalling is generally done as a precursor to electrification.
- Provision of new rolling stock (even if it's leased, you have one-off costs relating to staff training etc)

Not strictly part of electrification, but inevitably accompanying it, is work to handle the higher traffic volumes that will almost inevitably result from electrification and faster/more frequent services. These include improvements to trackwork (e.g. Filton Bank quadrupling), platform extensions, fly-overs/dive-unders and then you have the 1001 other jobs that have needed doing for years but are hard to ignore when you have people and plan on the track such as track renewals, tunnel linings etc.

The announcement yesterday that Scotrail is keeping an additional 39 class 170 vehicles will reduce further the options for a dmu cascade in 2018 that could have enabled the last pacers to be withdrawn before 2020.

But great news for Scottish rail services!

No one had yet picked up the ScotRail Class 170s that were potentially being released as it was always likely ScotRail would retain most of the fleet. The nine 170s going to GTR/Southern are unaffected by this announcement.