Search for cut-price InterCity 125 upgrade (Financial Times 30/08/2010)

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[super tm]

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^▸ (First Great Western) getting the SDO^▸ (Selective Door Opening) wrong.

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.

[Tim]

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^▸ (Selective Door Opening) and CDL^▸ (Central Door Locking).
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!). 

[willc]

the main reason 180 dwells were longer than necessary was because the doors were faulty

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^▸ (High Speed Train)), taking us back to the time taken for people to pass along the aisle inside the coach.

due to FGW^▸ (First Great Western) getting the SDO^▸ (Selective Door Opening) wrong

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^▸ (Central Door Locking) (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.

[IndustryInsider]

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^▸ (First Great Western) getting the SDO^▸ (Selective Door Opening) wrong.

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?

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^▸ (High Speed Train) 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^‡(resolve)'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.

[Btline]

The 180s were notorious for their external door problems.

By "FGW^▸ (First Great Western) getting the SDO^▸ (Selective Door Opening) 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.

[Chris from Nailsea]

Just to set the record straight that was 'btline' statement quoted above, not mine.

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

CfN.

[super tm]

The 180s were notorious for their external door problems.

By "FGW^▸ (First Great Western) getting the SDO^▸ (Selective Door Opening) 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.

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

[willc]

The 180s were notorious for their external door problems.

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...

[IndustryInsider]

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.

[inspector_blakey]

That was due to the guard having to give the driver permission to open the doors (a very strange ruling)[...]

Wasn't that due to the RMT^▸ (National Union of Rail, Maritime & Transport Workers) 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^▸ (First Great Western) over the door opening issue.

[Btline]

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

[JayMac]

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