The Anonymous Widower

Is The Cavalry Arriving?

I can’t understand this article on Global Rail News entitled Porterbrook buys more trains from Bombardier. This is said.

Rolling stock company (ROSCO) Porterbrook Leasing has announced that it will purchase an additional 80 Class 387 vehicles from Bombardier.

This deal is in addition to the 256 vehicles in this class already on order. Delivery from Bombardier’s Derby factory will take place between October 2016 and June 2017.

Now I’ve ridden in Class 387 trains many times and they are a very good 110 mph electric multiple unit. In a Future section of their Wikipedia entry this is said.

Once the 387/1s are released from Thameslink they will be cascaded to the Great Western Railway franchise. It will also receive eight new Class 387s, which will be built after the 387/2 order for Gatwick Express. They will replace Class 165 and 166 diesel multiple units on the newly electrified Great Western Main Line from London Paddington to Oxford and Bedwyn. This is scheduled for December 2016, however delays may defer this.

In November 2015, Porterbrook Leasing announced it had ordered a further a total of eighty additional Class 387 vehicles to act as a buffer stock of trains guarding against future demand for electric units, with a number of operators already expressing interest in obtaining the use of them.

At present, the trains are arranged in four-car sets and delivered or on order are 29 for Thameslink, which will be released as the Class 700 trains arrive, 8 for Great Western Railway and now 20 for Porterbrook. In addition there are also another 27 for the Gatwick Express, which can be ignored in this analysis.

So that means we have a total of fifty-seven four-car electric trains to accommodate on the UK rail network. There is one problem on the GWR, where 37 would have been used and that is that the electrification isn’t complete.

So they’ll be parked in sidings!

A couple of months ago, Modern Railways talked about rumours that the extra eight Class 387 trains for the GWR would be IPEMUs. I wrote about it in Rumours Of Battery Powered Trains.

In early 2014, I rode the prototype IPEMU, which was based on a Class 379 train between Manningtree and Harwich.

I was impressed and the prototype is now back in service as a regular Class 379 train.

So it would appear that converting Class 379 trains from standard to IPEMU is not an exercise that needs to completely rebuild the train. Incidentally, Bombardier have told me, that in the upcoming Aventra train, you just add and remove battery modules as required.

These facts lead me to speculate that a cunning plan is emerging.

Consider the following.

• Why would a professional company like Porterbrook buy trains on spec, just to have them sit in sidings? If that was their plan, then imagine the headlines in the Mirror and Mail!
• Changing production at Bombardier from Electrostar to Aventra will introduce a gap in the production of trains. Look at the gap, when Ford bring in a new Mondeo, for example.
• Bombardier has probably got the production of Electrostars down to a fine art, given the numbers of Class 375s, 377s, 378, 379s and 387s, they’ve produced in recent years. So if someone will order Electrostars, they’ll build them!
• Bombardier have proven that the concept of an IPEMU works.
• Everybody is getting fed-up with Network Rail’s performance, from David Cameron and George Osborne down to the passenger on the crowded Leeds-Manchester train.
• There is a need to get rid of a lot of tuly dreadful diesel trains.
• As the Class 700 trains arrive from Siemens, could the replaced Class 387 train be converted to an IPEMU immediately? This would enable the cascade of some diesel trains . It would just be an amusing game of musical trains!
• The new Hitachi factory is coming on stream to deliver Class 800/801 trains. Luckily they can be fitted with diesel engines, but we don’t need too many more high speed diesel trains. There have been rumours that Hitachi have been asked to dliver more electro-diesel version to Great Western.

If you look at all this together we end up with an oversupply of electric trains and a chronic shortage of quality diesel trains.

But suppose that Bombardier is building a virtually new production line for the very different Aventra.

Would it be economic for them to continue building Electrostars at a rate of several a month? You bet it will!

And would it be feasible to produce these trains as IPEMU variants as these could then be used to bridge the gaps in electrification on the TransPennine and Midland Main Lines. Using IPEMUs on these lines would probably release some quality Class 185 diesel trains.

They could also be used to release quality diesel units by running on routes like.

• Gospel Oak to Barking – Class 172 trains leased from Angel Trains
• Marshlink Line – Class 171 trains leased from Porterbrook
• Uckfield Line – Class 171 trains leased from Porterbrook

These three lines alone, would release eighteen two car and six four-car high quality diesel multiple units.

Note the following.

1. The leasing company for the Class 171 trains is Porterbrook.
2. Southern already operate Class 387 trains.
3. Southern gets an all-electric fleet if they replsce the Class 171 trains with Class 387 trains.

So will Porterbrook swap the trains here, to release the Class 171s to serve elsewhere? If it’s profitable of course they will.

It almost looks like you get a free quality diesel train with each new electric IPEMU, without having the expense and inconvenience of putting up the wires or laying more third rail.

Another article in Rail Magazine about the Porterbrook order says this about who might receive the trains.

A number of parties have already expressed an interest in leasing this new fleet, notably Rail for London but also established operators and prospective bidders of upcoming franchises

Rail for London is one of TfL’s operating companies.

Incidentally, I was at Upper Holloway station today and took this picture of a bridge that is being replaced by 2017.

Someone told me, that the bridge will take longer than that. You certainly couldn’t electrify it now!

So I can’t see conventional electric trains running on that line before 2019 at the earliest, thus delaying the cascade of the much-needed Class 172 trains.

But an IPEMU variant of a Class 387 train could run on that line much sooner than that.

Just replacing the Class 172 trains with Class 387 trains would solve one of the major problems on that line, which is a chronic lack of capacity.

There would probably need to be a few platform extensions, but surely the increase in passengers would compensate.

In some ways, the beauty of this approach, is that where you are using IPEMUs to bridge gaps in electrification, when you electrify the gap, you can either convert the IPEMUs to standard trains or replace them with something designed for the line and send the IPEMUs on to another line to work their magic there!

I suspect George Osborne will order the cavalry to charge in the Autumn Statement on November 25th.

 

November 3, 2015 - Posted by AnonW | Transport/Travel | Class 387 Train, Electrification, IPEMU, Trains, TransPennine Express