Great Western Coffee Shop

A post on railforums is reporting that FGW could lose their 143s to ATW in 2013, with ATW losing their 142s to Northern with cascaded 150s and 153s from the Northern area replacing Pacers.

This is a bit of a surprise. I would like ATW to get new trains not more pacers

I wouldn't place too much credence on a story involving an official looking person doing a passenger survey on a train! In my experience Northern's management are not employed to do passenger counts (the hourly rate might be a trifle expensive), indeed the only passenger counts I have come across are done by PTE staff. Also the original story includes reference to increased numbers of tram-train solutions. However the one trial between Sheffield Supertram and Rotherham Central has not been given the go-ahead (but is awaiting DfT approval) and therefore the concept has not yet been tested and therefore not evaluated ( mind you it isn't unknown for governments to jump from pilot schemes straight to full scale implementation). Therefore I think Nodding Donkeys will be found in the Exeter area for a few years yet, sorry!!

Especially as First own some of the 143's so are unlikely to give them to Arriva!

So if Arriva win the next Great Western franchise does that mean First will not give the 143s to the new franchise operator?

Northern staff don't do passenger counts.  Northern have automatic counters on some trains and use ticket selling data to count their passengers.

PTEs and rail users groups would be who normally carries out counts.  However, ORR also do limited counts while RUS' are being prepared.

Are you sure.  I though they only owned some 43's (Thats HST's)  Didnot know they actually owned any units outright.

I'd agree, especially since they were inherited from Wessex Trains days, where First Group was not in the market for owning units!

The FGW 143 fleet is owned by Porterbrook, except 143618 and 143619.

I cannot find any up to date information on who owns these two. The most recent info I've found is that they were owned by a company called Rail Assets Investments Ltd, a company that was wound up in late 2009. Rail Assets Investments Ltd had links with National Express Group as sister companies wound up at the same time were called National Express Quest Trustees Ltd and Prism Rail Share Scheme Trustees Ltd. Prism Rail was the first franchise holder (as Wales and West) to operate the 143s in the west following privatisation. They were taken over by NatEx in 2000.

So it is possible that First Group now own them, having purchased them from Rail Assets Investments Ltd. Equally Porterbrook could also have bought them - their online stock library for the Class 143 hasn't been updated since 06/2009. I've also checked Angel Trains and they've no mention of 143s in their fleet. Eversholt Rail (formerly HSBC Rail) do not have an active website as yet, so I couldn't check there.

Still investigating.... maybe one of our FGW staff forum members can shed some light on who owns 143618 and 143619.

What a mess we've got into with rolling stock. So nobody knows who owns 2 pacers how many other units are unaccounted for?

No matter how clever the diagram planners are and how the units are distributed between TOCS it does not get away from the fact we probably need overall for BR around 50 extra new 2 car units (or mixture with 3 or 4 cars)  units plus a complete replacement of  all the 14Xs on a unit  for unit (2 car) basis.

The extra units would enable more services to be run (eg hourly to Melksham) and also aliviateda a lot of overcrowding . The like for better replacement of the 14Xs would give more capacity on the trains they currently run and a faster better journey experience.

We should also start replacing the 150, although hopefully the electrification around Manchester will release units to replace them.

The EMU cascade was supposed to be instead of 200 additional carriages for FGW, TPE and Northern when people were critical about 200 divided between 3 operators not being enough.  There are 344 class 319 carriages.  Even if we assume 200 additional carriages is enough there's only 72 Pacers that can be written off as a result of the EMU cascade.  There's certainly going to be no 144s and 150s written off as a result of the 319 cascade.

first do indeed own some 143's 3 to be exact.

617,618 and 619 think they are registered to first group holdings or something similar

Please see my previous comment!

My apologies fatcontroller. Couldn't remember whether you were staff or not.  :-[

I was responding to super tm's query of your earlier post and I went investigating, to see who exactly owns what. Turns out that despite my best efforts I came up with out of date info. Having said that I did email Porterbrook and they replied saying they didn't own 618 or 619. They did however list 617 as one of the ones they owned!

Well I did reply, but it seems that someone has deleted my response.

I'm sure someone mentioned something before that the pacers had something to do with local councils who had paid for them so whoever takes on the franchise has to take them on. Not certain on this though so don't hold me to it. Would make sense though as none of the leasing companies have them on their books

Matt is correct. The units in question were purchased by Local Authorities. It is part of the franchise obligation to transfer 'ownership' to the current franchise holder.
It could however, be renegotiated in the future under the terms of a new franchise. Local Authorities could be pursuaded to do anything if there is a positive trade off elsewhere.

Seems that FGW intend to get rid of pacers on the severn beach line:


http://www.thisisbristol.co.uk/news/Newer-trains-seats-track-commuter-line/article-3137936-detail/article.html

  From what i have read in the article  i think  it is likely that some of the former london overground class 150's will be used.

Although this article claims newer larger trains.  150s aren't newer.

That'll be a neat trick Julian, as most of the 150's are spending their time between Portsmouth and Cardiff at the moment.

Perhaps spending some of the profit on 158 spares, (suggest toilets to begin with), and a few fitters to actually fit them wouldn't go amiss.

It is fairly obvious that he is talking about extra 150s coming from London Midland later in the year - the ex-London ones are all pretty busy already, aren't they? The intention is presumably to concentrate the 143s on workings around Exeter, so they can get expert attention at the depot there every night.

As for rolling stock owned by PTAs, West Yorkshire, which is among the biggest involved, is set to transfer all its stock to leasing companies, which probably makes sense in a lot of cases, such as three-car railbus sets where they own the centre coaches but the driving coaches belong to a leasing firm.

Yes I appreciate the cascade could mean a local shake up, but as I've mentioned elsewhere, 150's seem to be covering for a lack of servicable 158's, something that's seems to be happening on a more frequent basis recently. Whether this is a temporary problem or a symptom of more serious maintenance issues only time will tell.

With Bristol council funding of the extra 143 running out shortly and the 150 leasing costs being quite a bit more do the comments mean FGW will now fund the whole timetable?

Julian Crow is quoted as follows: "We are in negotiation with Bristol City Council to maintain the level of service and possible improvements to the evening service."

Doesn't sound like the council is pulling the plug, though it clearly wants to reduce its financial contribution but if there's more revenue coming in they might be able to. And the whole tone of his remarks is upbeat about the prospects for the line.

As for 158s, see the posts here http://www.firstgreatwestern.info/coffeeshop/index.php?topic=8320.0

Or, "First Group, the worlds largest bus operator, in bid to increase Bristol City contribution to running their train services".