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How far can trains travel between refuelling?    I recall seeing a thread concerning the shortest HSTs that was talking about a couple of turbos put out to Worcester (beyond engineering) without enough juice. I have a serious reason for the question - about which more anon.

My question is specific to 150 / 153 / 158 units, and allowing for normal stopping patterns and / or giving fuel tank capacities and what a typical mile and typical stop / restart uses.

Class  Fuel Range (miles)
142/0 850
143/6 800
150/1 1600
150/2 1600
153/0 1600
158/0 1600
158/9 1650

Most units a refuelled at the end of each day, and no diagrams exceed 1000 miles.

Fabulous - exactly what I needed to know, thanks!

How do you know all this stuff Devon Metro? :o :D

no diagrams exceed 1000 miles but sets do end up running very close to empty with stepping up etc,i have known a 158 3 car to have done 1700 miles by the time it arrived on depot.

1700 miles is absolute maximum for a 158 but they do not like them going any more than 1500.

if memory serves me correct info can be found on gemini/ravers

Or any relevant diagrams.

Do do 143/6 units have a slightly shorter range than 142/0 units to allow for the fact that they catch fire occasionally?  ;)

On another note though, that's remarkable stock utilization if a 90 mph max unit like a 158 is running 1000 miles in a day (more than 10 hours running flat out) once you factor in lower line speeds, station calls etc etc.

An interesting point. You have highlighted one of the problems of the modern railway between the "bean counters" who want maximum utilisation of every unit with the practicle "railway man" who realise that 100% utilisation is impossible and that striving for ever higher utilisation leads to a drop off in reliability.

This was shown by Hull trains who had 5 unit for 4 diagrams, which meant one spare every day. They achieved the highest reliability for DEMUS. Then someone dropped a unit on the floor and they were left with 4 their reliability plummeted. 

Currently because all units are having to undertake these 1000 mile a day diagrams there are problems when a unit fails because there isn't a spare available.

There is  therefore a balance to struck between utilisation and reliability at the moment. I would suggest that currently we are basically thrashing the units to death

Hence the call for more units, both to increase capacity by running in multiple and to run more trains with shorter daily diagrams. Thus giving more flexibility if a unit fails.

I don't think all units are running the 1000 miles a day - that was a ceiling figure as I read it.   And I think I would actually encourage those units which are in service to be run as efficiently as possible. It seems a shame to have a unit sitting in a bay for 45 minutes prior to a one hour 15 minute journey if it could have bums on its seats and money coming in through its farebox with a bit of re-jigging (with the proviso that recovery time and sensible end-of-route layovers need to be maintained).     First came to this same conclusion on the FGW franchise on lines such as the Looe branch, where the proposals were for a dramatic cut in the service in December 2006 but that was largely mitigated.

As I read it, the best approach is to run the 1000 miles a day or so with each unit, to have high class maintainance to give excellent availability and few breakdowns, and to have an adequate / strategic stock to cover breakdowns - be it by splitting a several-unit diagram or (better but more costly) by having a spare unit or two.

would think that most units  that are on longer distance runs are running up to or near to the 1000 mile mark, also bearing in mind all of this stock is over 20yr old...it like driving a 1985 volkswagon passat to scotland and back every day {no offence to passat owners i only quote this car as my father in law has got one]..it would be quite easy i would expect for someone to find out mileage diagrams.
Also i belive the HST Sets run diagrams longer than 1000 miles in some cases...with all the best maintainence in the world the kit is old and its gonna breakdown.
for those interested fgw hst weekly diagrams can be found on the 125 group preservation site, and if you have a rail map and calculatori it just a bit of maths

they do not actually do 1000 miles a day i think the most is around 700 on the pompey/brighton run.the 1000 mile figure comes from amount they typically do before going back for fuel i.e over 2 days for instance Fratton finish 1 night pompey-cardiff run all next day then finish at westbury the following day another day pompey-cardiff and back on fratton or spm for fuel.

the reason it is usually 1000 miles between fuel is to allow for stepping up sets should there be failures etc.

It was actually four sets for three diagrams. Hence their desperation to put 180s into service as soon as they could get some released by FGW - with unfortunate results, since they never tackled the reliability issues. They currently have five 180s, but one of those was meant to be cover for the rest, while they were being given a repaint and retrim. In the long run the aim was to operate with four sets again, like the 222 fleet.

I believe one of the Adelantes had a prang recently, so is out of action for a few days. That has accentuated the problem for HT.

Bit more than a prang. One of them apparently fried much of its wiring, so is going to need some serious electrical work before it turns a wheel again.

Longest FGW HST diagram is 1094 miles.   

Which when you consider it is a finre tribute to a 35 year old design, admittedly re-engined.

Plus they are now running services with frequent stops for which they were not designed.

But,  no matter how many miles any one unit can do in a day it does not solve the problem of there being too few units to serve the demand both for strenthening in the peak and more frequent services on many routes, particularly to that well know centre of the Wiltshire universe.

How many gallons of fuel can different trains take?