The Anonymous Widower

First Great Western’s Pragmatic Large And Little Solution To The Problems Of Great Western Electrification

The electrification of the Great Western Main Line from West of Airport Junction to Bristol, Cardiff and Swansea is proving to be a difficult project to deliver.

This article on the BBC web site talks about the problems and starts with these paragraphs.

Electrifying the Great Western line is “a top priority”, the transport secretary has said, as he announces a rethink of a £38bn programme to overhaul Britain’s railways.

Patrick McLoughlin said Network Rail’s five-year plan was being “reset” as it was “costing more and taking longer”.

In an ideal world, the whole of the Great Western Main Line and its branches to places like Worcester, Gloucester, Cheltenham, Exeter,Plymouth and Penzance would be electrified.

But it was never intended to electrify the major branches and for a time InterCity 125 diesel trains will be used on these lines.

Then in February 2014, the sea wall at Dalwish was breached in a storm and much of the track and Dawlish station was washed away. Although the line was rebuilt in a few months, it is only recently that the sea wall and the walk alongside the railway has been reinstated.

The force of the storm probably put an end to thoughts for many years of fully electrifying the line from Exeter to Plymouth and Penzance

The Large Class 800 Electro-Diesel Train

The trains that will work the Great Western Main Line to Bristol and Cardiff are the Hitachi Super Express, which comes in two variants.

• An electric-only Class 801
• An electro-diesel Class 800

The two trains are very similar, but the Class 800 has on-board diesel engines to generate electricity. Wikipedia says this.

The Class 800 units will be electro-diesel multiple units, able to draw power from electrified overhead lines where available and power themselves via underfloor diesel generators outside of the electrified network. The train specification requires that this changeover can occur at line speed. The trains are able to be converted to electric only operation by removal of the diesel engines

Current plans are for 21 9-car Class 801 and 36 5-car Class 800 to replace 60 InterCity 125.

With no prospect of electrification to Devon and Cornwall and because of the nature of the line with gradients, First Great Western have taken the pragmatic decision to order twenty-nine more trains, which will effectively be a variant of the Class 800, but with uprated diesel-engines and larger fuel tanks. It’s reported in this article in the Railway Gazette International.

So the total fleet will eventually be 47 9-car trains and 39 5-car trains of all new variants to replace 60 2+7 InterCity 125 and 5 5 car Class 180 trains.

So it would appear that about 490 x 23 metre cars will be replaced by 618 x 26 metre cars. On a crude calculation that is just over a forty percent increase in capacity, with a sixteen percent increase in the number of trains.

When everything is delivered towards the end of this decade, First Great Western would seem to have available a substantial increase in capacity, with a large proportion of the fleet having a go-anywhere capability because they are electro-diesel trains.

So it looks like some of these trains will be used to extend the network, as well as increase the frequency to Devon and Cornwall.

But there will be no need to need for any extra electrification. Although of course if there were, this would only be to the advantage of the electro-diesel trains, which would run on electric power for longer.

The Little Class 387 IPEMU

If the rumours about the Class 387 trains for First Great Western in this month’s Modern Railways are true, then some or all of the eight trains on order will be IPEMUs, with an on-board battery to power the train for up to sixty miles.

Modern Railways said this about their use.

Delivery as IPEMUs would allow EMUs to make use of as much wiring as is available (and batteries beyond) while electrification pushes ahead under the delayed scheme, and in the longer term would allow units to run on sections not yet authorised for electrification, such as Newbury to Bedwyn. The use of IPEMUs might also hasten the cascade of Class 16x units to the west of the franchise.

As Newbury to Bedwyn is probably less than twenty miles, a Class 387 IPEMU could easily do the trip out and back on a battery, charged whilst running from Paddington.

There is also a small problem highlighted in a section entitled Review after May 2015 general election in an article on Wikipedia describing the Great Western electrification.

This has led to speculation that the GW electrification scheme (although it remains “top priority”) could be cut back. On 27 May 2015, the website of Theresa May, MP for Maidenhead, contained the following: “… a recent report stated that it would not be ‘technically feasible’ for electrification to go ahead on the Marlow branch, raising questions about the future of the Henley branch as well”

The Marlow and Henley branches are 7.25 and 4.5 miles long respectively and mainly run a shuttle service to the main line with occasional services to Paddington.

So would it be more cost-effective to use a Class 387 IPEMU on these branches, as there would be no need to electrify the lines?

If a Class 387 IPEMU was good enough for these branches, what about the other branches on the Great Western Main Line to Greenford and Windsor and Eton Central?

The only work that would need to be done on these branches to accept the 4-car Class 387 IPEMU would be some platform lengthening and electrifying any bay platforms they use on the main line.

There may be other places on the Great Western Main Line, where electrification can be omitted by the use of the Class 387 IPEMU.

Class 387 IPEMU Or Aventra IPEMU?

This question has to be asked.

The Class 387 train on which the Class 387 IPEMU will be based is a member of the Electrostar family of trains, that have been produced by Bombardier since 1999,

The Electrostar is being superseded by the new Aventra family and the first orders have been placed for Crossrail and the London Overground.

The improvements in the Aventra design are summed up here in Wikipedia. This is said.

The multiple units have been designed to be lighter, more efficient, and have increased reliability. They will have lightweight all-welded bodies, wide gangways and doors to shorten boarding times in stations, and ERTMS. The design incorporates FlexxEco bogies which have been used in service on Voyagers, Meridians and newerTurbostars.

The design features a gangway design that allows maximum use of the interior space and ease of movement throughout the train.

As the Aventra is a new train, that has been designed since the successful IPEMU trial with a Class 379 in 2014, I do wonder if it has been designed with the ability to be fitted with an on-board battery to make it an Aventra IPEMU! In this article on Global Rail News this is said.

AVENTRA can run on both 25kV AC and 750V DC power – the high-efficiency transformers being another area where a heavier component was chosen because, in the long term, it’s cheaper to run. Pairs of cars will run off a common power bus with a converter on one car powering both. The other car can be fitted with power storage devices such as super-capacitors or Lithium-Iron batteries if required. The intention is that every car will be powered although trailer cars will be available.

So every Aventra can be converted to an Aventra IPEMU! And as that article was written in 2011, it increasingly looks like the IPEMU trial was a test of one of the new systems for an Aventra.

It would surely be a big advantage to a train operator running a fleet of Aventras, if they could add and remove battery packs as their schedules required.

But surely, because of the fact that an Aventra is lighter and more efficient than a Class 387, I wouldn’t be surprised that the range of an Aventra IPEMU is greater than the sixty miles quoted for the prototype.

Every extra mile, that the train can complete on batteries would open up new routes.

I suspect too that the Aventra IPEMU will have more customer appeal than a Class 387 IPEMU.

No-one will believe that a train running on batteries could possibly be a viable proposition, so at least if it looks like one of the new Crossrail Class 345 trains, passengers would at least think the train was modern.

So I wouldn’t be surprised if the order for Class 387 IPEMU was delivered as Aventra IPEMUs.

Oxford

To say that Oxford station has had planning problems in the last few years would be a massive understatement. I talked about them in Network Rail’s Problems In Oxford.

According to this article on the BBC, planning permission has at last been given to extend platforms at the station, so that Chiltern Trains can run services to the city.

But there is no mention of a new platform on the South side of the station, as is mentioned in Future Expansion in the station’s Wikipedia entry.

Or any mention of electrification either!

So will Network Rail postpone the new platform and the electrification to Oxford?

If they do, then First Great Western can serve the city by Class 800 trains going along the Cotswold Line to and from Evesham and Worcester.

First Great Western could also still use the current Class 165/6 trains, but they would like to cascade them to other places on their network.

Now here’s a thing!

Didcot to Oxford  is probably less than thirty miles, so once Didcot is electrified, Oxford could be easily reached by an IPEMU.

If this happened Oxford would get new 110 mph 4-car electric trains to replace 90 mph 2-car and 3-car diesel trains.

The electrification needed for the East-West Rail Link would be done later, when Oxford decided to join the twentieth century.

Rolling Stock Cascade

At present First Great Western has a fleet of diesel multiple units that work the Thames Valley Services.

• Sixteen 3-car Class 165 trains
• Twenty 2-car Class 165 trains
• Twenty-one 3-car Class 166 trains

These will be replaced by twenty-one 4-car Class 365 trains from Great Northern and twenty-nine 4-car Class 387 trains cascaded from Thameslink as the new Class 700 trains arrive.

Another order for eight 4-car Class 387 trains has been placed and it is this order that Modern Railways said could be for IPEMUs.

In terms of carriages 151 diesel carriages are being replaced by 232 electric ones.

According to this document on the ATOC web site, this will happen to the Class 165 and Class 166 trains.

Some will be displaced by electrification (and the resulting cascade) on Great Western. One option is that they remain in service, to accommodate growth and to provide a cascade of Class 15x vehicles, subject to necessary modifications and PRM-TSI.

So it looks like they will be used to replace the outdated Class 15x trains.

Cardiff to Portsmouth

Cardiff to Portsmouth is a route run by First Great Western. When I went from East London To Yeovil By The Long Way, I used a First Great Western Class 158 train from Fratton to Salisbury. I said this in the related post about the journey.

I think this journey shows up our trains in a reasonable light. The journey times are slow not because of slow trains, but because of the frequent stops and complicated route. The journey took three hours seventeen minutes from Littlehampton to Yeovil, but there was only thirty-three minutes wasted in connections.

Although some trains date from the 1980s, there wasn’t anything as bad as the dreaded Pacers that inhabit the North. The services were pretty well-used and except for the short leg from Littlehampton to Fratton, there was a catering trolley on all trains.

I do think though, that perhaps this journey might be better done in something like a 4-car Class 800. Although, there isn’t much electrification to make use of until you get to Bristol, once you’ve left Southampton.

An IPEMU wouldn’t be much help, as it’s a long way between Cardiff and Portsmouth.

So is there a need for a 4-car Class 800 train, optimised for long cross-country routes, where there is not much electrification or high-speed running?

Conclusion

The Large and Little approach by First Great Western seems to be a pragmatic way around the problems of the Great Western electrification.

The new Class 800 trains and their closely-related siblings will enable services to be expanded at the extremities of their network, without any need for full electrification.

If all or some of that future order for eight Class 387 trains, was for the IPEMU variant or were even Aventras, so long as electrification reached Newbury and Didcot, new Class 387 IPEMUs could run to Marlow, Henley, Windsor, Oxford and Bedwyn.

One side effect would be the release of Class 165/6 trains, currently used on the routes out of Paddington and the branch lines, for other services on their network.

 

 

 

 

August 29, 2015 - Posted by AnonW | Transport/Travel | Class 800 Train, East-West Rail, Electrification, First Great Western Trains, IPEMU, Oxford Station, Trains