Great Western Coffee Shop

An interesting article in the Financial times about the options for replacing the locomotives for the HST Fleet. For copyright reasons I can only provide a link to the article, and you do need to register (free) to view it on FT.com.  :-\

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/0282e9d4-b396-11df-81aa-00144feabdc0.html

Easy thing to do would be to install powered doors on the Mk3 carriages like those in ireland which Chiltern are looking at buying.

As for  the locomotives why not look at the chinese polaris  locomotives which if ordered the chinese have offered to open a factory in the uk which could be good as the new stock for crossrail could also be built.

Finally why not get bombardier to build some class 222 Bi-mode meridans for the London - Hereford/Cheltenham Spa services?

Finally if there is money spare from the crossrail project why not use it to electrify the great western?  I did read in a magazine that it would only cost ^250 million to electrify to Oxford/Exeter & Swansea

I've always believed it would involve fairly major alterations, comparison of a 442 vestibule and a Mk 3 certainly suggests so. Although there may be other methods of achieving the same end result...

Paul

I know chiltern  have said that the mk3  do not need much work done to upgrade them

Or just change the law to make the existing doors legal for another 25 years!

Any chance you could give us a citation for those particular comments, or are they just internet/messroom rumour at the moment?

Not sure FGW could afford to have a complete rake of Mk3's out of service for the months it would take to carry out the work, the set would be hampered until another set entered service because it would be unlikely you could run a mix of slam door and powered so swapping defective coaches out would cause the whole set to be OOS.  I am not convinced retro fitting powered external doors to coaches that are 25 to 30 years old would be best value for money.

If it were that cheap the current scheme would not be in limbo, a single National Grid supply point can cost ^50M plus

I would vote for near-anything that would run on 25kV overhead.

Ideally, our GW main line should be upgraded to LGV standards - relatively easy as alignment and clearances are mostly OK. This would mean TGV or ICE stock for 300+kph. Lower speed - 225kph (probably similar cost) would suit off the peg Javelins.

Returning from planet Zog, if we get wires, it may be on condition of re-stretching the Mk 3 fleet for the 4th time, for existing top speeds. This could be with re-engineered class 90's (3 phase inverter drive + re-gearing) with DVT's, West Coast style, or class 442 type, "Wessex" emu's. The motor car design exists as do variants of driving ends. The 442's were in fact rebuilds in the power area from the 438/492 Bournemouth (rebuilt!) stock they succeeded. Emu's have a lot in their favour.

There are quite a lot of Mk 3 bodies in the British Isles at the moment, so conversion might be a runner.
 
Fingers crossed for the October announcement.

OTC

The reason plug doors should be fitted to Mk3s is to reduce dwell times. I really don't think the safety angle should be taken too seriously. How millions of people travel in them every year and don't jump out the window, etc!!

If you want to reduce dwell times, then you want 1/3 and 2/3 doors in the coaches. 180s have plug doors and dwell times when FGW was using them were no different to HSTs because people leaving and boarding have to get along the aisles to and from the end of the coaches - that's what takes the time. Not whether the doors are powered.

Good point but what about the time taken for staff to run up and down the length of the train to shut the doors only to have another passenger suddenly get on then not closing the doors after them.

But such people are only likely to be boarding at specific points, near barriers, footbridges etc, which are predictable, so staff are usually on hand at such places at major stations. Would help at short unstaffed platforms but people's movements up and down the coaches are far more time-consuming. Just observe peak HSTs at the likes of Reading, Didcot, Oxford and Swindon if you don't believe me.

While discussing possible options for alternatives to IEP in this month's Modern Railways, Roger Ford specifically mentions this issue and suggests a candidate to replace many current FGW HSTs is a souped-up electric multiple unit more suitable for the services now operating on the GWML

I agree totally with Willc's point at the larger and busier stations, but HST's are a problem at unstaffed, quieter stations - Kingham, Malvern and so on - as even if the TM's pretty sure nobody has got off they still need to make sure that all doors are shut which can involve quite a walk (anything on the first catch facing away from you is very difficult to see unless you're up close) and thus takes up precious time.  Compare the dwell times on a trip from Oxford to Malvern with those of an Adelante with it's similar door locations and you can see why so many minutes have been added to the schedules since those days.

It doesn't reduce dwell times significantly. The time taken to get through the train is the limiting factor, this is why the 442s are not able to keep time on the Brighton - Gatwick - Victoria route compared to 1/3 2/3 doors on all the other EMUs on the route.

Paul

Precisely, the main reason 180 dwells were longer than necessary was because the doors were faulty. With a fault free 180, a despatch from WOF could be done in 3 minutes. With the HSTs, it's 4 if you're lucky, more likely 5. Why? Because on a 180, you needed a despatcher to stand in one place on the platform with the guard in the penultimate coach, they can see all doors and the guard closes them; on an HST, the guard and depatcher have to walk up and down opening (for the people unable to read) and closing (for the people who haven't twigged the doors won't close by themselves) doors. The guard is also positioned badly at the back of the train due to the SDO = poorer view = more walking. With the curves, a door on the catch is difficult to see. You also have the stupid situation where a pair of doors at the busiest part of the platform are platformed, but are not opened due to FGW getting the SDO wrong. The result is people try both doors - neither work = delay as they move down a carriage + delay as guard/ despatcher runs over to the doors, kicks them shut and walks back.

The whole procedure is a horrendous mess and an embarrassment to observe. Even at Shrub Hill, which is dead straight, long enough and not that busy, a dwell of less than 3 minutes is rare. Plug doors could see 5 - 10 mins taken out of the timetable straight away.

Sorry you have lost me there.  At WOF 5 coaches are on the platform.  The busiest part of the platform is by the station entrance.  Roughly in between coaches A/B and B/C.  All these doors are always opened.  Maybe you are getting confused with a different station?



Edit note: quote marks amended, for clarity. CfN.

Two points I would make are:

1, even if the current stock is used for another 10, 20 or 30 years it will be replaced one day with new and that new stock will have electric doors

2, we are currently short of money spending money on converting coaches with only a decade of life left in them is not good value for money. 

The arguments that the current doors need replacing are either:

a, 'elf and safety which is nonsense with SDO and CDL.
b, station dwell times.  A valid arguement but at a time of little money I don't think it unreasonable for current timetables with extended dwell time to be around for a few years more if that means that money is then available for other priorities.
c, disabilities regulations.  I'm all for spending money on improving accessability, but we must get best value from very penny spent and it seems to me that if money is available to spend on improving accessibility it would be better to spend it on lifts and ramps at stations which will be in use indefinately rather than on upgrading stock that would be scrapped 10 years later.

Now ignoring a and c might involve a change in the law, but if so then the Governemnt ought to be able to change the law (if they can't change the law, then hy do we bother electing them!). 

And what fault would this be? Encountered perhaps one faulty door on a 180 in five years using them. Faults of other kinds - transmission, wheelslip, cooling system, etc - yes, doors no. Dwell time is because the two end coaches of a 180 only have one door for passengers (like coach A on an HST), taking us back to the time taken for people to pass along the aisle inside the coach.


Lost me too. This is a retro-fitted system, added over the top of another retro-fitted system (central door locking) on trains that were typically about 30 years old, and not expected to have more than half-a-dozen or so more years in service. So it was a compromise. Fitting a system to allow you to select all manner of door combinations from any point on the train just wasn't going to happen on cost grounds, never mind that you simply couldn't fit door operating panels everywhere, eg in kitchen-buffet cars, where the doors near the buffet counters have been sealed for years.

I'm really not sure I buy this stuff about dwell times on the Cotswold Line - adding of padding in timings and the problems posed by the single-line sections are far more of a problem.

The morning Cathedrals Express can still manage to shave several minutes off the 34 allowed Moreton-Oxford to recoup earlier losses. About the only place that seems to cause persistent problems with doors left open is Kingham, usually on Worcester-bound trains. And that was just the same before SDO or CDL (though obviously you didn't need to return to a specific door panel pre-SDO). At Moreton people seem pretty well drilled to shut doors, to the extent that most trains could easily leave after a minute - but more time is needed due to collecting the token, plus guards or customer hosts often walk up to give westbound HST drivers a drink from the buffet here anyway - and I don't imagine that refreshments will be cancelled post-redoubling, so that particular time penalty will remain.

Just to set the record straight that was 'btline' statement quoted above, not mine.  I'm not sure of what he's saying either - front five (for down trains) and rear five (for up trains) are always platformed at Foregate Street. That's regardless of whether the train is in reverse or not thanks to the viaduct at the west end of the station, so the only time it should become a bit of a nuisance is if the train is in reverse - even then, doors on the busy part of the station are open.

Just to follow up on Willc's comments about 180 vs HST dwell times - yes, to a large extent the passengers on the peak hour trains (i.e. the regulars) are well rehearsed in shutting doors behind them.  That is certainly not the case sometimes when you're dealing with an off-peak service, or on many of the weekend trains.  The dwell times for most services are now sufficient to allow for the odd problem here or there, but in the case of late running they prevent you from getting back on time so quickly and you could get the job done a hell of a lot quicker with a 180/Turbo than you can with a HST - and TM's didn't need to be issued with anywhere near as many shoes due to wear and tear!  Quite correct in that there's many other factors at play too though.


Edit note: quote marks amended, for clarity. CfN.

The 180s were notorious for their external door problems.

By "FGW getting the SDO wrong" I mean the positioning of the train, resulting in two doors, stopped alongside to the cafe (i.e. the busiest part of the platform) being platformed, but not opened. I think it was the door to A and one door to B. This may have been rectified, though - jugding by the comments here.

Fair comment, IndustryInsider: I've amended the quote marks in previous posts accordingly, in the interests of clarity.

CfN. :-X

I am afraid that your memory is faulty.  These two doors have always been opened at WOF under SDO.

Says who? Wikipedia?

There may well have been problems when they were introduced in 2001-2 - along with countless  other things when they arrived from Alstom - but I'm going by five years' travelling on them on the Cotswold Line from mid-2004, on what must have been 1,500-plus journeys, and doors were NEVER an issue. Wheelslip problems, transmissions that wouldn't change up, radiator hoses exploding leaving a station, yes, dodgy doors, no.

If the problems were "notorious", I think I might have noticed. Or maybe it was just all the other 180-operated services I wasn't using that were having the problems with doors...

The doors on a 180 were very rarely a problem as others have said.  Very rare to have a defective door - unless you're talking about the delay in unlocking all doors when arriving at stations on occasions?  That was due to the guard having to give the driver permission to open the doors (a very strange ruling), so if the guard was out of position on arrival at a station the driver just had to sit there waiting for him/her to get to a communications panel.

Wasn't that due to the RMT threatening to "blacklist" the trains and tell their guards not to work them unless they had control over the operation of the doors...? I seem to remember that the first ever Adelante service was operated very quietly with absolutely no ceremony just before some kind of regulatory deadline for them to be in service, and it was crewed by managers since at the time the RMT was still in dispute with FGW over the door opening issue.

Well, I've seen two doors platformed at WOF near the cafe and not opened. So whatever the procedure, it happens.

I think that should be 'it happened', Btline.