GWR and DfT’s Commitment To The Night Riviera
The May 2020 Edition of Modern Railways has an article, which is entitled West Of England Improvements In GWR Deal.
Under a heading of Sleeper Planning, this is said about plans for the Night Riviera.
Whilst GWR is already developing plans for the short term future of the ‘Night Riviera’ sleeper service, including the provision of additional capacity at times of high demand using Mk. 3 vehicles withdrawn from the Caledonian Sleeper fleet, it is understood the company has been asked to develop a long-term plan for the replacement of the current Mk. 3 fleet of coaches, constructed between 1981 and 1984, as well as the Class 57/6 locomotives, which were rebuilt in 2002-03 from Class 47 locomotives constructed in the early 1960s.
This must show commitment from both GWR and the Department for Transport, that the Night Riviera has a future.
These are a few of my thoughts on the future of the service.
The Coaches
I would suspect that GWR will opt for the same Mark 5 coaches, built by CAF, as are used on the Caledonian Sleeper.
I took these pictures on a trip from Euston to Glasgow.
The coaches don’t seem to have any problems and appear to be performing well.
The facilities are comprehensive and include full en-suite plumbing, a selection of beds including doubles and a lounge car. There are also berths for disabled passengers.
The Locomotives
The Class 57 locomotives have a power output around 2 MW and I would suspect a similar-sized locomotive would be used.
Possible locomotives could include.
- Class 67 – Used by Chiltern on passenger services – 2.4 kW
- Class 68 – Used by Chiltern, TransPennine Express and others on passenger services – 2.8 MW
- Class 88 – A dual-mode locomotive might be powerful enough on diesel – 700 kW
I wouldn’t be surprised to see Stadler come up with a customised version of their Euro Dual dual-mode locomotives.
Ricky Gervais And David Bowie
Ricky Gervais just told this tale on Radio 5.
He was playing a gig with David Bowie, so he asked, why he still did gigs like this.
I thought Bowie’s reply was classic.
To stave off the boredom before death!
I suspect that applies to lots of people.
Shuffling The Class 165 Trains
The May 2020 Edition of Modern Railways has an article, which is entitled West Of England Improvements In GWR Deal.
The sub-title is the following.
EMU Trailers Could Be Inserted Into Turbo DMUs
GWR‘s Turbo DMUs are.
- Class 165 trains of which there are fifteen three-car trains and twenty two-car trains.
- Class 166 trains of which there are twenty-one three-car trains.
The article says, they will be internally-refreshed with interiors better suited for long-distance services.
It also looks that they might get hybrid transmissions, if a trial with a Chiltern Class 165 train is successful. In Class 165 Trains To Go Hybrid, I wrote about this trial.
The article says this about the retractioned units.
The additional power available from the new hybrid units would allow the sets to be lengthened with trailers released from withdrawn Class 365 or 465 EMUs, lengtheing two-car Turbos by one vehicle and the three-car sets to five carriages. The EMU vehicles are 20 metres long, rather than the 23 metres of the DMU design, but it is thought integration into the diesel sets would be relatively simple.
This sounds like a cunning plan, from BREL’s book of Cut-And-Paste With Trains.
At the time of writing there are nineteen Class 365 trains in storage, which could release 38 trailer cars. However, Varamis Rail may need some of these trains for their proposed parcel business, that I wrote about in Varamis Plans Electric Freight To Carry Light Goods.
If all the fifty-six trains were to be lengthened, this would need ninety-two trailer cars. So I suspect, that GWR will be awaiting the retirement of some of the 147 Class 465 trains, which are currently in service with Southeastern.
A sister company to GWR, South Western Railway is transferring thirty Class 707 trains to Southeastern. I wrote about the transfer in Southeastern Signs Deal To Lease Unwanted Class 707s. As each pair of Class 707 trains, could release two Class 465 trains containing four trailer cars, this could be the source of sufficient trailer cars to lengthen the Turbos.
This would mean that the following suitable trailer cars would be available.
- Thirty-eight from stored Class 365 trains.
- Sixty from Class 465 trains displaced by Class 707 trains at Southeastern.
It’s a close-run thing.
But there may be trouble ahead, as Chiltern have twenty-eight two-car and eleven three-car Class 165 trains, which would need another fifty trailer cars, if Chiltern decided to lengthen their trains in the same way as GWR.
- There appear to be twenty-one trains or forty-two trailer cars in service with Great Northern.
- Six trailer cars should be available from the previous swaps.
So it looks like they are one train or two trailer cars short, if they want to do a full conversion.
Unless the thirty Class 707 trains going to Southeastern, with their faster operating speed can scoot route the network faster and do the work of more than thirty Class 465 trains.
The Anonymous Widower 