Next Great Western franchise could be Pacer-less

[whole diary]

[northwesterntrains]

A post on railforums is reporting that FGW^▸ (First Great Western) could lose their 143s to ATW^▸ (Arriva Trains Wales (former Train Operating Company)) in 2013, with ATW losing their 142s to Northern with cascaded 150s and 153s from the Northern area replacing Pacers.

[anthony215]

This is a bit of a surprise. I would like ATW^▸ (Arriva Trains Wales (former Train Operating Company)) to get new trains not more pacers

[brompton rail]

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^▸ (Passenger Transport Executive) 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^» (Department for Transport - about) 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!!

[fatcontroller]

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

[northwesterntrains]

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?

[northwesterntrains]

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^▸ (Passenger Transport Executive) staff.

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^» (Office of Rail and Road, formerly Office of Rail Regulation - about) also do limited counts while RUS^▸ (Route Utilisation Strategy)' are being prepared.

[super tm]

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

Are you sure.  I though they only owned some 43's (Thats HST^▸ (High Speed Train (Inter City class 43 125 units))'s)  Didnot know they actually owned any units outright.

[devon_metro]

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

Are you sure.  I though they only owned some 43's (Thats HST^▸ (High Speed Train (Inter City class 43 125 units))'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!

[JayMac]

The FGW^▸ (First Great Western) 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.

[eightf48544]

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^▸ (British Rail(ways)) 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.

[northwesterntrains]

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

The EMU^▸ (Electric Multiple Unit) cascade was supposed to be instead of 200 additional carriages for FGW^▸ (First Great Western), TPE^▸ (Trans Pennine Express) 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.

[smithy]

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

[fatcontroller]

The FGW^▸ (First Great Western) 143 fleet is owned by Porterbrook, except 143618 and 143619.

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

Please see my previous comment!

[JayMac]

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!

[SDS]

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