My suggestions for the future for HSTs

[43096]

It isn't dodgy, as I understand it - it's a PAYG type arrangement. So it's cheaper to leave the HSTs idle and use a Voyager instead. But that just makes the point: if they were the perfect wonder-train then XC would be using them all the time. And if they weren't, the leasing ROSCO would be able to place them with another operator very easily.

It isn't PAYG.

The Voyager lease cost includes all maintenance by Bombardier, a deal inherited from VXC. The HSTs are on a dry lease, where the TOC is responsible for all maintenance including heavy work (power car E/F/G exams, trailer C4/C6 work). Such a lease is common and it was XC's choice to go for it. XC have minimised use to string out the time between overhauls and so reduce cost. Had they gone with a soggy lease the ROSCOs would have been responsible for heavy maintenance.

 

[najaB]

It isn't PAYG.

Thanks, I had them backwards.

 

[plastictaffy]

Which current DMU services would you put them on, given that they'd be slower getting up to line speed in some circumstances?

Bedford to Bletchley, obviously, and a single mk3 between two power cars will suffice for the Stourbridge town car service.

 

[yorksrob]

It isn't dodgy, as I understand it - it's a PAYG type arrangement. So it's cheaper to leave the HSTs idle and use a Voyager instead. But that just makes the point: if they were the perfect wonder-train then XC would be using them all the time. And if they weren't, the leasing ROSCO would be able to place them with another operator very easily.

I don't think you can make that assumption when XC have a whopping great financial disincentive to use them. I would suggest that that might be the aggravating factor.

 

[Wolfie]

With the present severe overcrowding on many parts of the network, and the oft repeated railway mantra that "no spare or additional stock is available" I can not support the scrapping of ANY serviceable HSTs.

In many cases, HSTs could replace short DMUs and thereby free those DMUs to lengthen other services.
On routes where the 125 MPH capability is not needed, it might be possible to utilise 2+9 HSTs thereby further improving capacity.

In view of the age of the HST fleet I doubt that any major and costly modifications could be justified, simply do the minimum and keep them "as is" to relieve overcrowding on some of the routes for which "no spare stock is available"

"As is" fails the 2019 Equality Act/DDA deadline....

Just get a derogation.

If anyone complains, blame economic uncertainty, the weak pound, recession, Brexit, sunspots, laylines, throw anything at it. Then say, it's a choice of either keeping the old trains a bit longer or overcrowding.

I'm all right jack, sod the disabled... what a vile attitude!

Frankly if that is a typical enthusiast speaking the sooner they are in a Gillette packet the better!

The 27 sets Scotrail is taking are hardly 'a few'. When it comes to Class 43s, to operate a fleet that size you will need 54 of them, plus an allowance for heavy maintenance given the age of the things, say half-a-dozen, so that's more than half of GWR's 118 GWR Class 43s accounted for already.

Add in the 11 2+4 sets GWR (again with a few spare Class 43s) is expected to retain for an undetermined interim period while electrification and the resulting stock transfers are completed and that's 80-odd Class 43s that will still have a use for the time being once they are removed from GWR express services.

Ah, ha, you say, that still leaves 25 or 30 of the GWR Class 43s to play with, but there is a fly in the ointment in that 29 GWR Class 43s are fitted with GEC traction motors, which have always required extra maintenance, and have all been allocated to Landore depot since 2002 precisely so that its staff can keep a close eye on them.

It seems unlikely that GWR or Scotrail will want anything to do with the GEC traction motors if they can help it (and I don't think it's a coincidence that when you subtract 29 from 118, you get 89, basically enough to cover the two TOCs' likely requirements for Class 43s), so why would anyone else?

Similarly, in terms of being 'non-standard', all the EMT sets are fitted with VP185 engines, rather than the MTUs that were used to re-engine all the other Class 43s, so that immediately makes EMT sets less attractive to any other potential operator.

Which leaves the East Coast and GC sets with the MTU engine/Brush traction motors package that might be attractive to someone else, but that's about 15 sets in total, so maybe enough to bail out XC, if the Government would agree that it could have them in the first place.

Factor in the running costs of trains that were built between 1976 and 1982 and the question of maintenance, with expertise only likely to be available in the long term at Craigentinny and Laira - no one is likely to want to tool up a depot and train staff to maintain HSTs from scratch at this stage in their lives - and the options for future use are frankly pretty limited, beyond what we already know about.

The Scotrail sets have no guaranteed future beyond 2025, when the current franchise ends, and the GWR 11 are still subject to confirmation and have been described as an interim solution on a number of occasions by GWR managers, hardly suggesting they are expected to remain in use for a long time if they can help it.

I have zero idea of the practicality of this but....

Remove the Brush traction motors from the EMT examples and insert instead of the GEC ones into the 29 GWR examples or replace the VP185s in the EMT examples with MTUs taken from the 29 GWR examples...

If the stock is actually really needed either possibility surely isn't impossible..

 

[yorksrob]

I'm all right jack, sod the disabled... what a vile attitude!

Frankly if that is a typical enthusiast speaking the sooner they are in a Gillette packet the better!

So long as appropriate assistance is provided (which, will always be possible on an HST, given the number of staff required to operate and dispatch them) there's no reason why disabled people can't continue to enjoy travel on them, as they've been doing for the past goodness knows how many years.

Unless it would be better for them to remain stuck on the platform as the shiny new train is standing room only because the trains that could have soaked up the growth in passenger numbers have been arbitrarily scrapped.

 

[RobShipway]

"As is" fails the 2019 Equality Act/DDA deadline....

I'm all right jack, sod the disabled... what a vile attitude!

Frankly if that is a typical enthusiast speaking the sooner they are in a Gillette packet the better!

So long as appropriate assistance is provided (which, will always be possible on an HST, given the number of staff required to operate and dispatch them) there's no reason why disabled people can't continue to enjoy travel on them, as they've been doing for the past goodness knows how many years.

Unless it would be better for them to remain stuck on the platform as the shiny new train is standing room only because the trains that could have soaked up the growth in passenger numbers have been arbitrarily scrapped.

You need to also bear in mind that the HST coaches will need to have electronic operated doors like the Chiltern Mk3 coaches, which will make it a bit easier for the disabled to access the coaches. However, there will still be a need for station staff to provide a ramp to the carriage door as there is with any other type of rolling stock on the UK rail network, including more modern rolling stock such as class 377/387 etc......

 

[jimm]

I have zero idea of the practicality of this but....

Remove the Brush traction motors from the EMT examples and insert instead of the GEC ones into the 29 GWR examples or replace the VP185s in the EMT examples with MTUs taken from the 29 GWR examples...

If the stock is actually really needed either possibility surely isn't impossible..

Just because something might be technically possible doesn't mean it is cost-effective, especially when talking about equipment the age of Class 43s.

 

[Nym]

"As is" fails the 2019 Equality Act/DDA deadline....



I'm all right jack, sod the disabled... what a vile attitude!

Frankly if that is a typical enthusiast speaking the sooner they are in a Gillette packet the better!



I have zero idea of the practicality of this but....

Remove the Brush traction motors from the EMT examples and insert instead of the GEC ones into the 29 GWR examples or replace the VP185s in the EMT examples with MTUs taken from the 29 GWR examples...

If the stock is actually really needed either possibility surely isn't impossible..

Provided the sections of PRM-TSI for accessible lavatories and internal movments / facilities are satisfied, so long as you have a guard, what's wrong with Manual Boarding Ramps?

 

[43096]

Just because something might be technically possible doesn't mean it is cost-effective, especially when talking about equipment the age of Class 43s.

Swapping the traction motors can be done easily by swapping bogies (which gets done on E/F/G exams). There's nothing internal in a power car specific to either motor type. As for fitting MTUs to the VP fleet, forget it - the cost of conversion would be the same as Valenta to MTU.

 

[Wolfie]

So long as appropriate assistance is provided (which, will always be possible on an HST, given the number of staff required to operate and dispatch them) there's no reason why disabled people can't continue to enjoy travel on them, as they've been doing for the past goodness knows how many years.

Unless it would be better for them to remain stuck on the platform as the shiny new train is standing room only because the trains that could have soaked up the growth in passenger numbers have been arbitrarily scrapped.

Obviously the disabled don't need a toilet in this utopian paradise of yours.. (methinks the fact that Network Rail are actively looking at banning stock without retention toilets might screw you plan too)...

Provided the sections of PRM-TSI for accessible lavatories and internal movments / facilities are satisfied, so long as you have a guard, what's wrong with Manual Boarding Ramps?

Agreed actually..

You need to also bear in mind that the HST coaches will need to have electronic operated doors like the Chiltern Mk3 coaches, which will make it a bit easier for the disabled to access the coaches. However, there will still be a need for station staff to provide a ramp to the carriage door as there is with any other type of rolling stock on the UK rail network, including more modern rolling stock such as class 377/387 etc......

Not if you get a derogation...

Swapping the traction motors can be done easily by swapping bogies (which gets done on E/F/G exams). There's nothing internal in a power car specific to either motor type. As for fitting MTUs to the VP fleet, forget it - the cost of conversion would be the same as Valenta to MTU.

Looks like a way ahead if the power cars are required..

 

[Philip Phlopp]

Provided the sections of PRM-TSI for accessible lavatories and internal movments / facilities are satisfied, so long as you have a guard, what's wrong with Manual Boarding Ramps?

Persons of Reduced Mobility isn't just persons in wheelchairs, it covers the entire range of mobility issues, from being hard of hearing, blindness, learning difficulties, memory loss, arthritis, artificial limbs and on and on.

That's why accessible toilets have buttons in Braille, why buttons are accompanies by buzzers and beeps, why a visual display is needed in each passenger saloon, why announcements are repeated more than once, why garish colour schemes are used and why there are so many warning labels now.

The fitting of power doors isn't just for passengers in wheelchairs, they're also for people who can't lean out of a window, who don't have the use of their hand to grasp the handle, who can't see what they're doing or indeed any of the millions of passengers who remain easily confused by the whole process and rack up delay minutes or end up being over carried because it's confusing in the world of push to open or automatically opening train doors.

 

[randyrippley]

That really wouldn't be so much of an issue if there was extra capacity between Yeovil Jn and Salisbury so we could run extra trains during the peak. HSTs running between Waterloo and Exeter is tantalising prospect of having rolling designed for long distances on what should be a trunk mainline route. However the line speeds are too low to make any use of the trains high speed and I'm not sure how the power cars would cope with the constant stopping and starting west of Salisbury. In NSE days the 50s and 47s were thoroughly knackered on the route because of it.

In short, massive infrastructure improvements would be required to make full use of the trains on the WoE ML.

If you go back to BR's original cascade plans, part of the originally envisaged future for the HSTs once they were replaced by electrification was on Waterloo-Exeter. They would have run as 4+1 push-pull half sets, capable of being paired up as 8+2. Modern Railways (at some date in the late 70's early 80's) had quite a detailed analysis of the intended cascade. Sectorisation scuppered the plans

 

[edwin_m]

As usual it's a question of proportionality. People have been using HSTs for several decades and there have been accessibility improvements including accessible toilets (though probably not to the latest standards).

Accessibility enhancement range from things that cost nothing if done at the same time as particular maintenance activities, such as contrasting colour doors, through to the likes of power doors which involve major engineering and cost money both directly and indirectly by taking the train out of service.

The question is do we spend taxpayers' money on some of the more costly mods to meet an arbitrary deadline, for a the train that will be scrapped within a few years anyway? The answer depends on factors such as how much it will cost, how many will remain in service for how long, and how many of the potential users actually need the facility. For example on the MML the HSTs are mostly used on the Nottingham fast service, and an alternative is available every hour which is slightly slower but uses fully accessible stock. So you could argue (but I'm not taking sides myself) that a reasonable alternative is available for the relatively few people for whom the lack of power doors or fully accessible toilets makes it impossible to use a particular train.

Retention toilets are a slightly different case, because the benefit accrues to everyone (and especially railway workers), not just to a proportion of the passengers.

 

[Philip Phlopp]

As usual it's a question of proportionality. People have been using HSTs for several decades and there have been accessibility improvements including accessible toilets (though probably not to the latest standards).

Accessibility enhancement range from things that cost nothing if done at the same time as particular maintenance activities, such as contrasting colour doors, through to the likes of power doors and retention toilets which involve major engineering and cost money both directly and indirectly by taking the train out of service. The question is do we spend taxpayers' money on some of the more costly mods to meet an arbitrary deadline, for a the train that will be scrapped within a few years anyway?

It's difficult to argue with any of that.

The majority of trains that are non compliant now do benefit from having more staff - train manager, catering staff etc aboard, they have enough staff aboard to help passengers who have mobility issues. Derogations for those trains wouldn't be too much of a problem for a short period, whilst new stock is built, electrification work completed, cascades finalised etc.

 

[yorksrob]

Obviously the disabled don't need a toilet in this utopian paradise of yours.. (methinks the fact that Network Rail are actively looking at banning stock without retention toilets might screw you plan too)...
.

I'm not sure about a "utopian paradise" but I am sure that all HST's in service already come with an accessible toilet. (what's more, it's less likely to lock itself out of use due to the poo tank being full).
--- old post above --- --- new post below ---

Not if you get a derogation....

If assistance has to be sought to provide a ramp, why is it so much worse for that assistance to assist with the door as well ?

 

[Wolfie]

Persons of Reduced Mobility isn't just persons in wheelchairs, it covers the entire range of mobility issues, from being hard of hearing, blindness, learning difficulties, memory loss, arthritis, artificial limbs and on and on.

That's why accessible toilets have buttons in Braille, why buttons are accompanies by buzzers and beeps, why a visual display is needed in each passenger saloon, why announcements are repeated more than once, why garish colour schemes are used and why there are so many warning labels now.

The fitting of power doors isn't just for passengers in wheelchairs, they're also for people who can't lean out of a window, who don't have the use of their hand to grasp the handle, who can't see what they're doing or indeed any of the millions of passengers who remain easily confused by the whole process and rack up delay minutes or end up being over carried because it's confusing in the world of push to open or automatically opening train doors.

Well reminded - I should have thought that through far more given that my late father had serious sight issues...

As usual it's a question of proportionality. People have been using HSTs for several decades and there have been accessibility improvements including accessible toilets (though probably not to the latest standards).

Accessibility enhancement range from things that cost nothing if done at the same time as particular maintenance activities, such as contrasting colour doors, through to the likes of power doors which involve major engineering and cost money both directly and indirectly by taking the train out of service.

The question is do we spend taxpayers' money on some of the more costly mods to meet an arbitrary deadline, for a the train that will be scrapped within a few years anyway? The answer depends on factors such as how much it will cost, how many will remain in service for how long, and how many of the potential users actually need the facility. For example on the MML the HSTs are mostly used on the Nottingham fast service, and an alternative is available every hour which is slightly slower but uses fully accessible stock. So you could argue (but I'm not taking sides myself) that a reasonable alternative is available for the relatively few people for whom the lack of power doors or fully accessible toilets makes it impossible to use a particular train.

Retention toilets are a slightly different case, because the benefit accrues to everyone (and especially railway workers), not just to a proportion of the passengers.

In principle I agree but....

The concern is that once a derogation is granted further slippage could and likely would follow. I am afraid that the railway industry overall doesn't have, having had in excess of 20 years to prepare, a good story to tell in this area....

 

[BuryBlue]

Well reminded - I should have thought that through far more given that my late father had serious sight issues...



In principle I agree but....

The concern is that once a derogation is granted further slippage could and likely would follow. I am afraid that the railway industry overall doesn't have, having had in excess of 20 years to prepare, a good story to tell in this area....

Since the Greater Anglia fleet is getting completely replaced anyway, that releases a whole lot of units suitable for so many different jobs anyway. I think this may have just sealed the fate of the HST. Considering that even if LHCS is needed somewhere there's Mk4's becoming available. Booths will have a field day.

Can I ask, slightly off topic, why the Mk3 handles were fitted to the outside and not the inside (or rather, both sides?)

 

[adrock1976]

Since the Greater Anglia fleet is getting completely replaced anyway, that releases a whole lot of units suitable for so many different jobs anyway. I think this may have just sealed the fate of the HST. Considering that even if LHCS is needed somewhere there's Mk4's becoming available. Booths will have a field day.

Can I ask, slightly off topic, why the Mk3 handles were fitted to the outside and not the inside (or rather, both sides?)

I believe there were handles on the inside at one time, but they got removed as the door could be opened while the train was in motion at high speeds.

Furthermore, I believe they were removed in the days before the central door locking system was installed on Intercity coaching stock.

 

[Philip Phlopp]

I believe there were handles on the inside at one time, but they got removed as the door could be opened while the train was in motion at high speeds.

Furthermore, I believe they were removed in the days before the central door locking system was installed on Intercity coaching stock.

The central locking 'bolt' isn't enough to prevent the door being forced upon if there's an internal handle.

If memory serves (and this isn't my thing at all) the existing CDL was to be gutted, and the CDL function would be transferred into the door handle mechanism itself with a proving circuit. The door handles would only be active when CDL is unlocked/de-energised.

It was going to be a bit of a reliability challenge and certification was going to be a bit of an issue.

 

[edwin_m]

I believe there were handles on the inside at one time, but they got removed as the door could be opened while the train was in motion at high speeds.

Furthermore, I believe they were removed in the days before the central door locking system was installed on Intercity coaching stock.

I think they were removed very early in the history of the Mk3s. Certainly never seen any in my travelling from the mid-70s onwards.

 

[randyrippley]

Can I ask, slightly off topic, why the Mk3 handles were fitted to the outside and not the inside (or rather, both sides?)

I don't believe Mk3 stock ever had inside handles. A tradition which came down from express Mk2 and Mk1 coaches. It was simply to reduce the chances of a door being opened while in motion or while arriving at platforms. The door couldn't be opened by a child, or accidentally by leaning against the latch
Conversely commuter multiple unit stock usually WERE fitted with internal handles simply to improve dwell times at stations - speedier egress was deemed to outweigh the risk of falling out or of clouting someone standing on the platform with an open door.
I can't remember seeing any express coach with inside handles: just EMUs, some DMUs, and ancient non-corridor stock back in the 60's