Given that both those fleets are Coradia family trains, I wonder if in the post-IEP world, the 180s could be downrated to 175s? A little bit of set reforming would convert the fleet into 17 four-car trains and 24 three-car ones. That would eliminate a largely superfluous tiny fleet of 125mph express DMUs (which could be replaced as necessary with a few more bi-modal 5-car IEPs) and instead give us a larger and more flexible fleet of desperately needed 100mph inter-regional DMUs.
The 2-car 175s are certainly rather hard to find suitable jobs for. Routes that only need 2 coaches don't often need top speeds above 75mph. I didn't think of using the 180s (I assume it would be too difficult to convert the 180 driving vehicles into anything else) but taking the cabs off some 175 driving vehicles and reforming them into 4-car and 3-car sets (instead of 2-car and 3-car currently) would make them more useful.
If it could be done then that would be a good thing - there are a number of services/ lines suited to a four coach 100mph DMU (Portsmouth to Bristol/ Cardiff, Liverpool to Nottingham/ Norwich, Manchester Airport to Doncaster/ Cleethorpes, Aberdeen to Glasgow/ Edinburgh, Manchester to Cardiff/ Milford Haven etc).
Indeed, I agree with 4-car 175s for any of those.
You would have to have crashworthy cabs though if you were to fit a new one, so it may be make more sense to retain the existing cabs.
the Class 180s Driving cars have a much smaller passenger saloon, so it wouldn't just be a new cab that would be needed but a rebuild of the outer end to extend the saloon.
We are going to have too many 125mph DMUs in a few years (with electrification of the gaps between Manchester and Bournemouth and replacement of the Voyagers running Birmingham - Glasgow/Edinburgh), and have a number of routes where a four coach 100mph DMU would work...
Could you convert the class 180 driving vehicles to intermediate cars? Assuming you could release all 14 180s from their current duties you would then get 70 intermediate cars for 175s.
Actually, maybe it would be better to work the other way:
- 22 intermediate cars would lengthen the 11 2-car 175s to 4-car sets.
- 16 intermediate cars would lengthen the 16 3-car 175s to 4-car sets.
- Total: 38 additional intermediate cars required
With three intermeidate cars in each 180, you have 42 coaches. So you wouldn't actually need to convert the driving cars after all. You'd have 4 spare intermediate trailers left. If you fit cabs to two of these you could create a 28th 4-car 175 set.
Of course the driving cars would go to waste, but they have a smaller passenger saloon anyway so you don't lose so many seats. The same is true of the 22x series units, in my opinion they seriously need to lengthen the sets to make them more useful. Taking the intermediate coaches from some sets to lengthen other sets and storing the driving cars seems the best way forward unless you can turn the driving cars into intermediate vehicles.
Going back to the 28 class 180 driving vehicles, it strikes me that is only a few vehicles short of the 31 mrk4 DVTs. If my information is correct there are only 26 IC225 diagrams, so perhaps you could swap the DVTs for class 180 driving trailers (with the engine removed, TDM fitted to talk to the 91s and ETRMS fitted). There are two possible problems with that though, would a class 180 driving trailer be good for 140mph (the rest of the IC225 should be) and what would a class 180 driving trailer look like coupled to a mrk4?
I'd pondered about formations. I guess there may be better alternatives. My other thought was instead of forming 24 3-car trains, you could form 12 2-cars and 12 more 4-cars. You'd then have a fleet of 29 4-car trains (some 180s, some 175s) and a fleet of 12 2-car trains. Of course, the actual formations would be best decided based on what services they end up providing.
2-car isn't really useful if it doesn't have corridor connections on the ends for portion working (that's why 158s are so great and 175s are a bit silly in my opinion).
somewhere like the Highland main line
...
would seem a perfectly reasonable place to use a 180, providing a far more suitable train for the route than a 170 and with the potential to cut those rather long journey times between Inverness and Edinburgh/Glasgow as well.
That idea also sounds like a good one.
And it frees up 100mph 170s to do other things - without spending lots of money.
Ah, but 170s to me are like Voyagers: a mistake. With Voyagers, they are designed for intercity work but are much too short for that purpose. With 170s, they reportedly have sluggish acceleration for services with long distances between stops (regional express work) but an outer-suburban door arrangment that is only suitable for stoppers or possibly short-distance services like the Crewe-Chester shuttle.
Any chance the acceleration of 170s can be improved to make them suitable for stopping services (in which case you can give them to Northern or Great Western to replace Pacers and 150/1s)? I imagine fixing the acceleration would be easier than fixing the door layout.
ATW could then get (say) forty of the Scotrail 180s which would have more coaches (80) than the 175s (70), which would give them a single class of DMU for running all long distance routes.
I think you mean ATW would get 40 158s from Scotrail, not 40 180s.
Don't forget that tilting provision requires more than cascading a few Super Voyagers to a line. TASS would need to be installed along the line as well, that may just push the cost outside the realms of feasibility.
Isn't TASS only required if tilt would put the coaches out of loading guage in places? Do the 221s tilt as far as Pendolinos, if not you might find it's alright? Or you could check if there are any structures which a tiliting 221 would hit on the route you want to use them on and if it's clear just confine 221s to that route.
I think that the 175s on the Manchester - West Wales and Manchester - North Wales services are one o the few examples of rolling stock entirely suitable for the route
Not really. If they were longer, they would be ideal, but 2-car just isn't long enough.
