IEP: 26 metres is too long

[ainsworth74]

From the 1930s until the last mark 1 stock was built, inter city passengers on the LM and E regions got six-seat compartments spaced 1.95 between partitions. That is 40% more space than typically now.

Though of course compartment stock comes with it's own disadvantages, such as, it's an enormous waste of space, it tends to not feel as safe for passengers and it increases loading times due to the narrow side corridor. I imagine if you surveyed most passengers they'd be just as happy to keep the modern open carriage design, though with a bit more legroom.

 

[jon0844]

They were definitely built for a different era. Can you imagine them today, being taken over by gangs and totally trashed - etched and sprayed to bits.

 

[tbtc]

They were definitely built for a different era. Can you imagine them today, being taken over by gangs and totally trashed - etched and sprayed to bits.

It'd be a nightmare in 2012 - they'd be "no go" areas on some services

A interesting point on this whole subject is the lower standards that everyone has got used to. From the 1930s until the last mark 1 stock was built, inter city passengers on the LM and E regions got six-seat compartments spaced 1.95 between partitions. That is 40% more space than typically now

That's nothing to do with train width - you could put 2+1 seats in all coaches today if you wanted - but you might need to extend each coach a little longer to fit as many seats in - maybe to 26m?

 

[jon0844]

It'd be a nightmare in 2012 - they'd be "no go" areas on some services

FCC already has areas for kids to take over, in the form of the FC compartments on 365s.. although I have to say that it's been some time since I've seen that actually happen, possibly on account of the far more high-profile ticket checks on trains.

 

[DXMachina]

From the 1930s until the last mark 1 stock was built, inter city passengers on the LM and E regions got six-seat compartments spaced 1.95 between partitions. That is 40% more space than typically now

First mk1 carriage - 1951
Last one, probably sometime in the 1970s as part of a SR EMU

But drawing a line between the 1930s origins you discuss and the mark one design, lets stop halfway in 1940

In 1940 the UK population was 48.2 million
Today the population is 63 million

The spread of income among the poorest percentiles of that population has increased detectably as a result of postwar social poverty and increased social mobility

This means far more people can afford to travel
Also the number of people who commute to work rather than working where they live has vastly increased due to decline in local industries and farming and increase in retail, factory, mobile and office-based employment

[in short, more people who can travel and a greater proportion of them need to travel]

So again: Getting back to the hard topic of reality, and given that certain rules of size, physics, economics and safety restrict how many carriages can run down a line in a day, how large they can be, and how many people need to be on them.. how the hell is the amount of space railways could allow people 80 years ago relevant to this discussion?

 

[RobShipway]

First mk1 carriage - 1951
Last one, probably sometime in the 1970s as part of a SR EMU

But drawing a line between the 1930s origins you discuss and the mark one design, lets stop halfway in 1940

In 1940 the UK population was 48.2 million
Today the population is 63 million

The spread of income among the poorest percentiles of that population has increased detectably as a result of postwar social poverty and increased social mobility

This means far more people can afford to travel
Also the number of people who commute to work rather than working where they live has vastly increased due to decline in local industries and farming and increase in retail, factory, mobile and office-based employment

[in short, more people who can travel and a greater proportion of them need to travel]

So again: Getting back to the hard topic of reality, and given that certain rules of size, physics, economics and safety restrict how many carriages can run down a line in a day, how large they can be, and how many people need to be on them.. how the hell is the amount of space railways could allow people 80 years ago relevant to this discussion?

I agree that there needs to be more seats on modern traisn today than there was on traisn back in the 1930's/1940's due to the need to commute more, however for me personally some of the train carriages of the Modern trains do not have the same ambience as say, the Mk3 carriage did when first travelling in one back in 1977 within an HST set.

Maybe, it is the point of ambience within the carriage regardless of the length that RAGNARØKRmay have been referring too?

 

[Royston Vasey]

I agree that there needs to be more seats on modern traisn today than there was on traisn back in the 1930's/1940's due to the need to commute more, however for me personally some of the train carriages of the Modern trains do not have the same ambience as say, the Mk3 carriage did when first travelling in one back in 1977 within an HST set.

Maybe, it is the point of ambience within the carriage regardless of the length that RAGNARØKRmay have been referring too?

More of a quite valid infrastructure point, which turned into a subjective "coaches will have to be narrow and will be claustrophobic"

It is of course impossible to judge the ambience of a train that hasn't even been built! If they're anything like the Hitachi Class 395s, the "ambience" would be excellent.

 

[Yew]

More of a quite valid infrastructure point, which turned into a subjective "coaches will have to be narrow and will be claustrophobic"

It is of course impossible to judge the ambience of a train that hasn't even been built! If they're anything like the Hitachi Class 395s, the "ambience" would be excellent.

Its a shame they dont have a plywood mock up for us to try though

 

[tbtc]

It is of course impossible to judge the ambience of a train that hasn't even been built!

That's not stopped many people from finding things to complain about - it reminds me of the Onion story "Sci-Fi Fans Argue The Better Of Two As-Yet-Unreleased Films"

http://www.theonion.com/articles/scifi-fans-argue-the-better-of-two-asyetunreleased,3304/?ref=auto

 

[jon0844]

Its a shame they dont have a plywood mock up for us to try though

Did you not read the tender documents? The IEPs are being built from plywood!

 

[tbtc]

Did you not read the tender documents? The IEPs are being built from plywood!

In a special Japanese forest where all the trees are 26m tall?

 

[jon0844]

Yes, opposite the field of bonsai trees.

 

[RAGNARØKR]

Though of course compartment stock comes with it's own disadvantages, such as, it's an enormous waste of space, it tends to not feel as safe for passengers and it increases loading times due to the narrow side corridor. I imagine if you surveyed most passengers they'd be just as happy to keep the modern open carriage design, though with a bit more legroom.

You are missing the point I was making. I was referring to the reduction in space. The LMS also had a number of SO configured 2+1, some of it for marshalling adjacent to kitchen cars. I think there were also a few BR SO with 2+1.
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It'd be a nightmare in 2012 - they'd be "no go" areas on some services



That's nothing to do with train width - you could put 2+1 seats in all coaches today if you wanted - but you might need to extend each coach a little longer to fit as many seats in - maybe to 26m?

:roll: 2+2 seating just about works if the trains are built to the full width of the loading gauge but that means keeping the vehicles little more than 20 metres otherwise the kinematic envelope of the longer vehicle means that either the width has to be less or money must be spend on improving clearances, or a bit of both.
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First mk1 carriage - 1951
Last one, probably sometime in the 1970s as part of a SR EMU

But drawing a line between the 1930s origins you discuss and the mark one design, lets stop halfway in 1940

In 1940 the UK population was 48.2 million
Today the population is 63 million

The spread of income among the poorest percentiles of that population has increased detectably as a result of postwar social poverty and increased social mobility

This means far more people can afford to travel
Also the number of people who commute to work rather than working where they live has vastly increased due to decline in local industries and farming and increase in retail, factory, mobile and office-based employment

[in short, more people who can travel and a greater proportion of them need to travel]

So again: Getting back to the hard topic of reality, and given that certain rules of size, physics, economics and safety restrict how many carriages can run down a line in a day, how large they can be, and how many people need to be on them.. how the hell is the amount of space railways could allow people 80 years ago relevant to this discussion?

Nowadays most households have cars. And those railways that were not closed have more capacity than they did in 1940, when they were full up slow moving with coal trains, signalled by semaphores and 60 mph was a good start to stop journey speed. And as far as I can make out, apart from on the Southern the railways are full up with short trains.
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More of a quite valid infrastructure point, which turned into a subjective "coaches will have to be narrow and will be claustrophobic"

It is of course impossible to judge the ambience of a train that hasn't even been built! If they're anything like the Hitachi Class 395s, the "ambience" would be excellent.

:roll:The dimensions and diagrams give most of the important things way, to those that know how to read diagrams. The 395s are finished to a very high quality but there is the usual mismatch of seats and windows which makes the whole thing look as if the design was not thought through properly.
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Having travelled by train in and around Sweden, I can see that 3+2 is commonly used. With the extra width, it's comparable to 2+2 here.

But, we're never getting those trains here. At least until we build HS2 and a network that can take wider trains without ever needing to venture on to the older 'classic' lines.

IEP is for the existing network.

IEP is not for the existing network. How much is it going to cost to increase clearances?

 

[tbtc]

:roll: 2+2 seating just about works if the trains are built to the full width of the loading gauge but that means keeping the vehicles little more than 20 metres otherwise the kinematic envelope of the longer vehicle means that either the width has to be less or money must be spend on improving clearances, or a bit of both

You were talking about the compartments of six seats as a "good old days" thing. That meant three coaches wide, which is the same as 2_1, which any train has space for.

Remember that the intercity lines that these 26m IEPs are going to be concentrated on are generally those fairly straight lines with the best clearances at the moment anyway, so the cost of improving clearance isn't going to be as significant as some suggest.

 

[ainsworth74]

You are missing the point I was making. I was referring to the reduction in space.

Oh okay. So seeing as we don't know the final interior layout of the IEP I'm not sure how we can draw any conclusions over a reduction in space.

 

[tbtc]

Oh okay. So seeing as we don't know the final interior layout of the IEP I'm not sure how we can draw any conclusions over a reduction in space.

But IEP must be bad because the seats don't line up with the windows, unlike all stock built in the past thirty years which... oh, wait!

 

[jon0844]

IEP is not for the existing network. How much is it going to cost to increase clearances?

They aren't? Where are they going then?

 

[starrymarkb]

:roll: 2+2 seating just about works if the trains are built to the full width of the loading gauge but that means keeping the vehicles little more than 20 metres otherwise the kinematic envelope of the longer vehicle means that either the width has to be less or money must be spend on improving clearances, or a bit of both.

FGW's HSTs have the exact same seats as the Austrian Railjets - the only difference is a slightly wider aisle! - A Mk3 is all of 16cm narrower then a TGV. IEP is proposed to be the same width as a Mk3 from the plans, but with tapered ends. Cunningly the toilets and equipment cabinets are going in this narrow area keeping the full width area for passenger seating

Also remember that clearances allow 23m 2.85m stock on most of the Great Western with out the need for major work, and widebody 323s operate in the Midlands and Manchester using tapered ends to stay in gauge (with the rest of the coach full width

 

[Trog]

British trains are the narrowest standard gauge trains in Europe. This is probably because greedy nineteenth century landowners would only sell a strip of land of minimum width to build the railways on.

Not that the first railways were intended mainly for freight, which was then transported in very small wagons indeed?

So when the normal size for a British railway line loading gauge was set, the governing factor was the size of the locomotives. I seem to remember reading somewhere that the height of the steam age standard gauge loading gauge, was set by the funnel length of an early Stephenson/Hackworth locomotive called Royal George.

 

[Royston Vasey]

:roll:The dimensions and diagrams give most of the important things way, to those that know how to read diagrams. The 395s are finished to a very high quality but there is the usual mismatch of seats and windows which makes the whole thing look as if the design was not thought through properly.

Setting aside your patronising first sentence, my point was that anything can and may change right until the first panel is pressed and monocoque is extruded.

As a reference, here are the pre-order images of the Pendolino from the Railway Centre:

 

[jon0844]

Wow, almost exactly what they look like now.

 

[Royston Vasey]

Wow, almost exactly what they look like now.

Can you imagine the moaning if they had really been built with big pillars!!

 

[RAGNARØKR]

Setting aside your patronising first sentence, my point was that anything can and may change right until the first panel is pressed and monocoque is extruded.

Interesting photographs but you can still see the thing was going to be cramped. No amount of decor change can alter that. It was in fact inevitable given the cost of the trains that as many seats as possible would have to be crammed in. The GW mark 3 stock now suffers from the same problem.
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They aren't? Where are they going then?

On the existing network after a fortune has been spent to accommodate them.
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But IEP must be bad because the seats don't line up with the windows, unlike all stock built in the past thirty years which... oh, wait!

It remains a sore point when passengers have reserved a window seat only to find that it is not. Some train operators publish seating plans which enables passengers to get round the problem but they have to know the system.
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Oh okay. So seeing as we don't know the final interior layout of the IEP I'm not sure how we can draw any conclusions over a reduction in space.

Yes you can, if it is longer than 20 metres it must be narrower than 2.82 metres unless the stock is confined to routes cleared for classes 165/166. There is nothing more anyone needs to know.
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You were talking about the compartments of six seats as a "good old days" thing. That meant three coaches wide, which is the same as 2_1, which any train has space for.

Remember that the intercity lines that these 26m IEPs are going to be concentrated on are generally those fairly straight lines with the best clearances at the moment anyway, so the cost of improving clearance isn't going to be as significant as some suggest.

I was saying that space standards have gone down whilst people have got bigger.

There is an actual figure for the clearance works. The scope of the works is described here. If I recall it is about 25% of the total cost of £4.5 billion, which includes whole life maintenance. The trains come out at around £2.7 million per vehicle.

 

[starrymarkb]

Yes you can, if it is longer than 20 metres it must be narrower than 2.82 metres unless the stock is confined to routes cleared for classes 165/166. There is nothing more anyone needs to know.

Class 323.... 23x2.80m (I'm not sure 2cm would make that much difference)

Secondly 165s might be able to go many more places then expected. After all given that they are NSE units which haven't strayed no-one has bothered to clear them. In any case in most areas it will be a paperwork issue with little physical work needed.

 

[sprinterguy]

On the existing network after a fortune has been spent to accommodate them.

Gauge clearance work as part of the introduction of a new train design is not an issue that is unique to the IEP. Extensive gauge clearance work was carried out when the HSTs were introduced on all the routes that they were destined to operate over (Primarily the GWML and the ECML; the self same routes that will now have work done to accept IEPs) to optimise the network for the new trains operating at higher speeds than anything that had gone before and with a new design of longer carriage. There was also a dramatic track rationalisation programme as part of the package of ECML electrification in the late eighties.

In fact, it is difficult to think of any upgrade to a major Intercity route where extensive infrastructure work has not taken place. Irrelevant of whatever new rolling stock policy had been chosen to replace the HSTs, you can expect that there would have been a programme of gauge clearance work to accomodate the new trains. Given that the GWML is being electrified at the same time, which would necessitate changes to clearances anyway, the work probably isn't adding a great deal of cost onto the project.

 

[RAGNARØKR]

Class 323.... 23x2.80m (I'm not sure 2cm would make that much difference)

Secondly 165s might be able to go many more places then expected. After all given that they are NSE units which haven't strayed no-one has bothered to clear them. In any case in most areas it will be a paperwork issue with little physical work needed.

RSSB has carried out a detailed survey of where all stock can operate. The results are here. and here. Classes 165/166 are heavily restricted, as the maps show.
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Given that the GWML is being electrified at the same time, which would necessitate changes to clearances anyway, the work probably isn't adding a great deal of cost onto the project.

Why not dig out the exact figure? It is out there somewhere. If I recall it is a nine-digit amount.

On the ECML there are tight curves in the York and Newcastle areas where the additional overthrow will have to be accommodated.

 

[HSTEd]

RSSB has carried out a detailed survey of where all stock can operate. The results are here. and here. Classes 165/166 are heavily restricted, as the maps show.

Now I have been looking for overall coach numbers for a long time.....

Now I can put an upper bound on ROSCO nationalisation costs.... since it coudl hardly cost more than ordering the equivalent number of Turbo/electrostar coaches to replace all existing 100mph or lower speed units.

 

[RAGNARØKR]

Not that the first railways were intended mainly for freight, which was then transported in very small wagons indeed?

So when the normal size for a British railway line loading gauge was set, the governing factor was the size of the locomotives. I seem to remember reading somewhere that the height of the steam age standard gauge loading gauge, was set by the funnel length of an early Stephenson/Hackworth locomotive called Royal George.

It was by the early 1830s that the standard gauge was recognised as being too narrow. It was only shortly after that when British contractors started to build railways abroad with standard gauge tracks spaced to wider clearances. Yet apart from the broad gauge GW, all British railways continued to be built to sub-standard clearances until the Great Central which opened in 1899.
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Remember that the intercity lines that these 26m IEPs are going to be concentrated on are generally those fairly straight lines with the best clearances at the moment anyway, so the cost of improving clearance isn't going to be as significant as some suggest.

The problems arise at places like Newcastle and York and elsewhere with adjacent sharply curved tracks.

 

[The Ham]

It was by the early 1830s that the standard gauge was recognised as being too narrow. It was only shortly after that when British contractors started to build railways abroad with standard gauge tracks spaced to wider clearances. Yet apart from the broad gauge GW, all British railways continued to be built to sub-standard clearances until the Great Central which opened in 1899.
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The problems arise at places like Newcastle and York and elsewhere with adjacent sharply curved tracks.

OK, so by building our network first we didn't build it as well as we could have done, problem is we are stuck with it so have to build trains that fit within our network that can cope with the number of passengers that our network carries, which is now more than it carried when there were many many more miles of track.

It may well be that to regrade the tight bends to allow 26m long coaches may be cheaper than it is to lengthen all the stations along the route (which may include rebuilding bridges, redesigning junctions, replacing signals, etc.). As by being 26m long coaches a train can fit in more seats per train of a similar length by have less doors [18 on one side on a 9x26m coach train rather than 20 on a 10x23m coach train], toilets, walkways between cariages, etc. Likewise a train made up of 23m long coaches has more seats than a train of the same length made up of 20m long coaches. Therefore to have the same number of seats a train of 20m long coaches has to be longer than a train that has 23m long coaches which too is longer than a train made up of coaches of 26m long with the same number of seats.
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Interesting photographs but you can still see the thing was going to be cramped. No amount of decor change can alter that. It was in fact inevitable given the cost of the trains that as many seats as possible would have to be crammed in. The GW mark 3 stock now suffers from the same problem.
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On the existing network after a fortune has been spent to accommodate them.
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It remains a sore point when passengers have reserved a window seat only to find that it is not. Some train operators publish seating plans which enables passengers to get round the problem but they have to know the system.
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Yes you can, if it is longer than 20 metres it must be narrower than 2.82 metres unless the stock is confined to routes cleared for classes 165/166. There is nothing more anyone needs to know.
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I was saying that space standards have gone down whilst people have got bigger.

There is an actual figure for the clearance works. The scope of the works is described here. If I recall it is about 25% of the total cost of £4.5 billion, which includes whole life maintenance. The trains come out at around £2.7 million per vehicle.

Cramming seats in is to do with the fact that there are a lot of people that want to travel by train, see my comments above about number of seats per train of the same length with different coach lengths.

With regards to the costs of the IEP it depends on how you count what is required for IEP, as a lot of projects that are needed for it will be carried out anyway (e.g. do you count the electrification of the GWML or what about the new singalling to allow the IEP's to run at 140mph?). For example the document you linked to lists the W12 gauge clearance of the GWML sepratly, a lot of this work would be required for IEP. Also given that the dimensions of IEP are known the W12 clearance for GWML may include minor extra costs to enable the IEP's to run (i.e. if the track has to be realigned then the costs would almost be the same if the track is moved across be a distance within set ranges).

The document also (on page 12) lists the CP5 costs of IEP as £258million (about 6%), meaning that unless the remining £850 million plus has to be spent in the few years between the start of CP6 and the start of running of the IEP's the figure of 25% is a little off.
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A interesting point on this whole subject is the lower standards that everyone has got used to. From the 1930s until the last mark 1 stock was built, inter city passengers on the LM and E regions got six-seat compartments spaced 1.95 between partitions. That is 40% more space than typically now.

Once I make a point about the issue you raised (i.e. width of the trains) you shift your argument to the total amount of space in a train (but mostly length).

I'd love to have trains where it costs so little to run that it's paid for soley by our taxes but with 1+1 seats with their own table with loads of space, but it's never going to happen because to have seating that sparcly spaced would mean massive costs per seat, whilst low train fairs would mean massive demand for seats and therefore crampt seating.

A lot of your arguments are based on what would be nice to have, rather than what is likely to happen in the real world.

 

[tbtc]

As a reference, here are the pre-order images of the Pendolino from the Railway Centre:

Pink, purple and turquoise decor?

Does this mean First were destined to run the WCML franchise?

165s might be able to go many more places then expected. After all given that they are NSE units which haven't strayed no-one has bothered to clear them. In any case in most areas it will be a paperwork issue with little physical work needed.

If they can do the lines round Middlesbrough (which weren't build by Brunel!) then I'd imagine many lines could take them, but (as you say) why would anyone get clearance for them to work something like Edinburgh - Glasgow when they have always been based in NSE-land?

Interesting photographs but you can still see the thing was going to be cramped. No amount of decor change can alter that. It was in fact inevitable given the cost of the trains that as many seats as possible would have to be crammed in. The GW mark 3 stock now suffers from the same problem

if it is longer than 20 metres it must be narrower than 2.82 metres unless the stock is confined to routes cleared for classes 165/166. There is nothing more anyone needs to know

One advantage of IEP is that long coaches mean that on a 200 metre train you don't need so many doors/ toilets (etc), and by avoiding some of that duplication there's more room for seats.

Lets compare an eight coach IEP (8x 26m = 208m) with a ten coach 20m coach (10x 20m = 200m, so pretty comparable). Since we are talking new trains, we are talking large "universal" toilets and DDA-width doors, so this matters a lot more than thirty-something years ago when HSTs were being built.

The 20m coach train would need twenty doors on each side and ten toilets. The 26m coach train would need sixteen doors on each side and eight toilets, so have a lot more space for seats.

So, do you want shorter coaches if it means seats crammed together? You'd have a lot more legroom in IEP!