Looking at today's live updates page on the FGW▸ website, there are at least three diagrams of two car 158s operating in place of three car 158s. Someone in the know please correct me if I'm wrong.
Several Hybrid 158s are currently missing centre cars, due to an unusual amount of engine related problems last wseek, including 2 total seizures!
why all of a sudden are the engines having problems? in your opinion is it poor workmanship from recon company or are they getting less preventative maintenance these days?
Combination of the two
IMO▸ .
No depot (or exam/maintenance regime for that matter!) is perfect , but
SPM▸ are pretty much 'on it' in terms of maintaining the west fleet, especially in areas of fault finding/repair and also 'Level 5' work such as engine/transmission/wheel set changes. All of the new staff who were recruited to do overnight B exams are settling in nicely and although there are still lots of irritating corporate/political hurdles to get over, the exams are being done and the fleet is being kept together. Issues and trends are being identified and action is constantly being taken to tackle repeat failures with fleet campaigns. We also did our first full 'in house' Bogie change the other week, which was a great success. There as been talk and planning towards bringing all West fleet C4/C6 overhaul work on the
DMUs▸ in house, but with the electrification announcement, plans and priorities may well have changed.
I look at it this way, when the Shed is empty in the morning with 1 or 2 units knocking around for As/FPXs or C4 work and we struggle to find jobs for the shift to do, we are doing our job properly. If the shed is packed to the rafters with units and people are running around like headless chickens trying to clear the backlog of jobs, something is very wrong! EX is also staying on top of its Donkey fleet (142/143) and since the allocation re-shuffle of units, ie. 143s swapped for the 150s and their
MPC▸ is staying High.
However, despite our relatively good availability of late, some still mange to slip through the net occasionally, often due to either an oversight or by the mounting pressure of maintaining fleet availability, causing referrals of non-safety critical work. Last week i carried out an engine Half-Life (250k Miles) exam on a 153, which was....50,000 miles overdue!!!!!! The poor thing was rough to say the least, and whilst not safety critical, the engine is obviously a vital component that can be costly in terms of fuel/oil/coolant consumption, plus keeping time and the increased potential for failure. After half a days
TLC▸ she was running sweat as a nut again, with a full top end/tappet set-up, brand new Injectors, Water Pump, Compressor Head etc, good for another 200K miles before its change-out time.
We do seem to go through 'duffy' batches of re-manufactured units that have suffer from the same problems. For example, the Cummins NT855 R1 (158) or R5 (153/150) engines are re-manufactured by LH Group, who are usually pretty spot on with workmanship but often seem to be let down by using what would appear to be inferior/badly manufactured aftermarket components. We have done employee exchange programmes with LH Group in the past, to show each companies employees what happens on the opposite end of the component life cycle and the work involved. Also, at the end of last year, a big Apprentice exchange program was being set up between FGW and LH although this has unfortunately been knocked on the head for the time being by LH due to the current financial pressures.
Over the past 6 months we have had a massive amount of top-end related running problems due to pitted camshafts. On examination, it would appear from a simple visual inspection of the failed camshafts that the failed shafts are all very similar in appearance caused by what looks like incorrect/insufficient processing of the metal during production. Whether this is because of scrimping is yet to be seen, but i suspect that it is.
Dependant on the circumstances surrounding the failure (after joint investigations), these defective parts are replaced as part of the product warranty from LH, especially if there is a known/recurring problem and repairs will be made by their (or LH approved) technicians, however you still have the initial failure and then the resulting downtime of the vehicle, plus the additional manpower/overheads/consumables etc and of course on the Ops side, the dreaded Impact minutes!!!!!!! It all gets reclaimed in one way or another financially through claims and counter claims, but that doesn't stop the public seeing the effects by a 2-car 158/9 rolling in as the 3rd car is stranded on depot waiting for LH to attend.
I would like to emphasise though that while i have used LH Group in this example, the same situation occurs with all the other over-haulers/suppliers, such as Wabtec/Voith/Cummins etc.
It is alot more complicated and engorsed than most people would think..........!
