"until the new trains ordered by DfT» work reliably"
Do I surmise from the above quote that the new trains are NOT working reliably ? I thought that the general view was that they are splendid and that only a few naysayers and old dinosaurs like me dared to express doubts about reliability.
Yes, I did.
Can not find the post in order to quote it, but I said something like "Diesel engines and electric drives are mature technologies and should hopefully work reasonably reliably. The problems IMHO▸ are likely to be with computers and software. Unlike mechanical components, software is NEVER a mature technology, "if it works it must be obsolete"
The new DMUs▸ are likely to contain a large number of computer systems, all of which have to work together, first time every time"
In other posts I also expressed doubts as to electrification being completed on time, and about the reliability of the electrification equipment. I specifically forecast that a single pigeon could cause widespread disruption.
A couple of points are worth mentioning I think.
Overall, the reliability of the new electrification equipment has been pretty good in my opinion. I can't recall any major 'wires down' incidents that would no doubt have crippled the service a couple of times by now if we had the cheap system as installed on the
ECML▸ . The pigeon incident occurred at West Ealing, so that's on the part of the route that has been electrified for 20 years and could have happened at any time since then. IIUI it was more to do with the poor condition of masonry on the underside of the bridge rather than anything else, and the increased clearances between wires and bridge that the newly electrified sections have should make it much less likely to happen there. Headspan wires are largely being removed where they were installed originally between Airport Junction and Paddington, however the low clearances under bridges will not be altered (the cost would be huge), so I guess there remains a risk on the old sections of electrification.
Regarding the new train reliability, I think by and large they are settling in quite well, if by no means perfectly. There have been too many
ADD▸ incidents, particularly with the 387s, but otherwise many of the delays can be attributed to staff familiarisation as much as anything else. Drivers who had driven Turbos or
HSTs▸ for decades knew how to remedy most faults quickly as they had experienced them many times before, but on the new trains there are new/different faults with new/different remedies so fault finding and resolution understandably takes longer.
Launch day embarrassment aside I can only think of one major incident involving an
IET▸ , which was the one at Hayes & Harlington on 21st December (which was indeed a big one!). Sure there's been plenty of more minor delays and cancellations, but I think it's right to point out that there's been two high-profile HST failures more recently - the one outside Paddington on Feb 8th as well as the massive disruption caused last Friday when the HST sat down near Westbury.
The new trains are likely to get more reliable over time, the old trains are likely to get less reliable.
