What will happen to Northern, ATW & GWR if the Class 769 "FLEX" fails?

[coppercapped]

Indeed, but perhaps DafT should get its act together and devise a sensible railway strategy, including workable stock developments.

Let the DfT do the strategy...

...let the TOCs and the ROSCOs do the stock developments without interference, with the proviso that the ROSCO hires a project manager who chews six inch nails for breakfast.

 

[tbtc]

I take no pleasure in being proved right, but back in December 2016 I posted in the other thread:

That prophecy really did not need a crystal ball!

Fair enough.

I wish it had worked - I instinctively don't like the stockpile of midlife EMUs that are going to be "spare" in a couple of years (even if you accept that the 314/315/317s are pretty much life expired there's about four hundred carriages of 321s without a future, potentially all of the 323s, the 350/2s etc).

But it's becoming evident that this is a lot harder in reality than it looks from the comfort of my armchair, so I've got to accept that the Renatus Project, the 769s, the accessible HSTs are becoming more trouble than they are worth.

Good idea on paper - but it looks like we can churn out brand new carriages easier than converting/ upgrading old ones - got to deal with the reality - despite the inevitable "My Idea For Future Uses For 1970/1980s Trains" threads.

Interesting someone mentioned Project Thor. They couldn't make bi-mode conversion work on a relatively new DMU with the Voyagers (from 2000). Makes you think how on earth would they made it work on EMU units from the 1980s with even more obsolete equipment.

The more days that pass the more it's not hard to think Porterbrook were just desperate to find a use for the 319s by whatever means possible - even if they knew they suspected bi-mode conversion would be unlikely. Grayling's perverse obsession with bi-mode trains simply to save money provided the perfected smokescreen.

The TOCs bought into it and I'm afraid it's the passengers who have suffered.

I mentioned Project Thor - something that seems obviously a good idea in hindsight but we never saw it tested (so can't be sure that it would have worked in practice).

Railway history seems littered with examples of things that we all agree now should and could have easily been done - the fourth carriages on the 185s is another example - but seemed too much trouble at the time. If the Forum exists in a decade there'll be some "new" members looking back at this period and asking "how hard could it have been to stick a diesel engine in a mid-life EMU, when there was a shortage of DMUs and up to a thousand EMU carriages coming off lease" but they just can't get it to work - very frustrating.

However, and I hate to be the guy defending Grayling, I think that the "obsession with bi-mode trains to save money" is a little unfair. If it hadn't been for the badly run GWML project (that cost twice as much to do have a job at double the initial price) then MML electrification wouldn't have been cancelled - I think any Transport Secretary would have had to take that Realpolitik decision (even if they were MP for an East Midlands seat).

Plenty of other electrification projects were cancelled/ deferred/ delayed - the Electric Spine, Transpennine, Chase Line, chunks of EGIP, Windermere - but for some reason bi-modes get the blame for electrification being cancelled.

I'm a rail enthusiast, I'm all in favour of electrification, but even I would be nervous pouring good money after bad (given the way that Network Rail/ DfT/ ORR handled the GWML electrification project) - I still believe that electrification is the future but I can't blame any politician for being reluctant to keep writing blank cheques until Network Rail proves that it can electrify lines to budgets/ deadlines.

I agree that Porterbrook have made a bad bet on 319 conversion - just as they have made a bad bet on the West Midlands franchise taking on all of the 323s.

 

[Mikey C]

The proposal timed out rather than being rejected.
The objective was to find work for Derby, and most of the Voyager work would have been abroad.
Then the 387 orders started popping up so Derby didn't need the Voyager work.
Had it been implemented, it would have been an extremely useful bi-mode project for XC and maybe VT and EMT too, and grown capacity into the bargain.
It was mushrooming into the unaffordable category though, when DFT/Bombardier lost interest.

Interestingly it was a bi-mode before the term had become used, and was the other way round from the recent projects which have all started from an EMU base!

 

[JamesT]

Interestingly it was a bi-mode before the term had become used, and was the other way round from the recent projects which have all started from an EMU base!

Though as the Voyagers are DEMUs, it’s still plugging a new power source into an electric traction system.

 

[LOL The Irony]

just as they have made a bad bet on the West Midlands franchise taking on all of the 323s.

Fortunately, Northern may yet keep some if not all of their 323's.

 

[Bertie the bus]

Did they actually try with the Voyagers? I thought it was rejected at the proposal stage by the DfT as overly expensive.

Indeed. Project Thor was originally a concept pushed by Bombardier but then resurrected during the political fallout after Derby lost out to Siemens for the Thameslink project, and was purely political. The idea was give Derby some work to keep it going but it turned out Derby is set up to construct aluminium bodied trains and not steel.

The whole farce eventually ended when Derby won several significant orders.

 

[superkev]

Could it be the 769 project is bogged down in paperwork and the UK's prolification of 'can't do that' people rather than engineering matters.
K

 

[Cardiff123]

Is all still quiet on the 769 front? Wasn't testing supposed to happen be underway by the end of July?

Another missed deadline...what a surprise!

RAIL claimed a month ago that mainline testing on 769s was "imminent", after they were blown away by the static 319 with 'FLEX' stuck on the front that they saw at RAIL live. Unless testing has been carried out in secret, we're yet to hear the results of that testing.

 

[LOL The Irony]

RAIL claimed a month ago that mainline testing on 769s was "imminent", after they were blown away by the static 319 with 'FLEX' stuck on the front that they saw at RAIL live. Unless testing has been carried out in secret, we're yet to hear the results of that testing.

My personal opinion is RAIL was given a back-hander by Porterbrook. Just my view of it.

 

[Greybeard33]

Did they actually try with the Voyagers? I thought it was rejected at the proposal stage by the DfT as overly expensive.

Older trains might actually be easier to convert, if they have less complicated electronics involved that need changing.

319-era electronics is likely to be extremely difficult to modify or integrate with modern systems, due to its use of obsolete hardware components and legacy software languages/programming techniques alien to today's engineers.

However, I do not know if this issue has in fact contributed to the delay in the 769 programme. AFAIK the only problem that has been publicly reported was the discovery last year that corrosion has weakened the 319 carriage underframes, to which the diesel generator rafts were to be attached.

 

[driver_m]

I can't believe the papers haven't took this up yet. Given that they love to have a dig at any aspect of the railway (witness the daily heil having a look at our wages today, and getting some untrue 'facts' in there at the same time) you would think that a lot of late to arrive trains would get them drooling....

 

[AlexNL]

I can't believe the papers haven't took this up yet. Given that they love to have a dig at any aspect of the railway (witness the daily heil having a look at our wages today, and getting some untrue 'facts' in there at the same time) you would think that a lot of late to arrive trains would get them drooling....

Could the "not for London" aspect play a role here?

 

[AM9]

Could the "not for London" aspect play a role here?

Only in the minds of some posters.

 

[The Ham]

Could the "not for London" aspect play a role here?

Maybe at the moment, however GWR could be impacted soon and that would impact London and the South East (including Heathrow). This could make it a fairly interesting news story for them, especially as it could also impact Wales extending the area impacted therefore the numbers of people who would be interested.

 

[Domh245]

Could it be the 769 project is bogged down in paperwork and the UK's prolification of 'can't do that' people rather than engineering matters.
K

I very much doubt it - certification issues wouldn't prevent them from (at the very least) running around in the yard at Loughborough or making it onto the GCR. The lack of any of those means it had to be a technical reason - potentially still the load balancing issue that they had at one point

 

[YorkshireBear]

Could the "not for London" aspect play a role here?

Considering Northern Rail are top of the BBC news page today i'd say an emphatic no!

Its probably because they do not know or understand.

 

[northwichcat]

I can't believe the papers haven't took this up yet. Given that they love to have a dig at any aspect of the railway (witness the daily heil having a look at our wages today, and getting some untrue 'facts' in there at the same time) you would think that a lot of late to arrive trains would get them drooling....

I think some one (or better still multiple people) from Greater Manchester needs to drop an email to Andy Burnham reminding him what 769s are, that the 769s were proposed due to delays in electrification to Wigan-Bolton, Stalybridge-Manchester and Windermere-Oxenholme and that they weren't delivered by May 2018 as scheduled and there still hasn't been a single unit produced. If Burnham raises the issue the media will be all over it.

 

[Bletchleyite]

I wish it had worked - I instinctively don't like the stockpile of midlife EMUs that are going to be "spare" in a couple of years (even if you accept that the 314/315/317s are pretty much life expired there's about four hundred carriages of 321s without a future, potentially all of the 323s, the 350/2s etc).

The 1980s stock might as well get scrapped, it's heading towards 40 years old. The 323s look modern (they looked space-age futuristic when built!) but aren't that new either. The 350/2s are only spare because of some very poor financial decisions by the ROSCO that owned them, basically they seemingly wouldn't offer an even vaguely reasonable deal to WMT to retain them, when everything to me pointed towards the idea of all the remaining Desiros being concentrated on WMT making their WCML operation 100% Desiro (which, as they're going to be 110mph converted, if they replaced the seats to 2+2 to have a completely homogeneous fleet would be really easy to operate). But if they do stop doing so and offer a reasonable price, I'd suggest Northern (replacing 319s) as being an obvious destination for them, particularly as Siemens have depot facilities around there which could be expanded to look after them.

 

[Bletchleyite]

319-era electronics is likely to be extremely difficult to modify or integrate with modern systems, due to its use of obsolete hardware components and legacy software languages/programming techniques alien to today's engineers.

However, I do not know if this issue has in fact contributed to the delay in the 769 programme. AFAIK the only problem that has been publicly reported was the discovery last year that corrosion has weakened the 319 carriage underframes, to which the diesel generator rafts were to be attached.

There is not much in the way of "electronics" in a Class 319. All you need to do to turn one into a bi-mode is to produce two or three "black boxes" per unit containing a diesel engine, a fuel tank, a generator and a rectifier which can produce 750VDC at the specification it is designed to receive, sling them under the unpowered coaches, remove the shoes, get in the cab and switch to third rail. It's not beyond the wit of man to have generators that power themselves up when there is demand for power.

The problem, as your latter paragraph states, lies in the strength of the bodywork needed to sling them under the coaches, whether it's viable to even do that with the level of corrosion in a unit heading towards 40 years old, and whether they're all built differently like HSTs are requiring lots of messing about to get mountings to fit properly. It's that that could kill the project, not the building of 750VDC generation equipment which is simple and proven technology.

 

[DarloRich]

I can't believe the papers haven't took this up yet.

Its probably because they do not know or understand.

Exactly - they don't know to look - not that I am convinced there is much to look at yet.

 

[Domh245]

There is not much in the way of "electronics" in a Class 319. All you need to do to turn one into a bi-mode is to produce two or three "black boxes" per unit containing a diesel engine, a fuel tank, a generator and a rectifier which can produce 750VDC at the specification it is designed to receive, sling them under the unpowered coaches, remove the shoes, get in the cab and switch to third rail. It's not beyond the wit of man to have generators that power themselves up when there is demand for power.

You make it sound awfully easy, but all the rumours I had head say otherwise. One of the main issues they've had (as announced at tth imeche talk earlier this year) is ensuring that the load is balanced between the gensets when feeding the power electronics. It's all well and good saying "just run them so that they produce 750v" but that isn't how it works.

Copying a post from a user on WNXX who seems to be involved in the project

OK so here goes with a (hopefully) simple example of a load sharing problem; hopefully understandable without any diagrams.

Assume we have two dc generators that we want to connect in parallel to feed a high current load. Picking some numbers that aren't that far away from a 319, let's say that the output voltage from the generators is 800 V each and their internal resistance is 10 milli-ohm (0.01 ohm) each. Let's say we have a pure resistor load of 0.8 ohm. The load current is V/R i.e. 800/(0.8 + 0.005) = 993.4 A which gives 790 kW power in the load. (the 0.005 is the two 0.01 ohm generator resistances in parallel). OK so far; the two generators must provide the same current, a bit less than 500 A each.

Now assume that for some reason the output voltage of one of the generators is 802 V instead of 800 V. Note this is only a 0.25% increase. Simple arithmetic (or Thevenin's theorem) tells us that this is equivalent to a voltage of 801 V with a 0.005 ohm internal resistance (note 801 V instead of 800 V previously). Now the load current is 801/(0.8 + 0.005) = 995 A which also looks OK, slightly higher than before due to the slightly higher voltage.

However we now need to work out the current output by each generator. The voltage across the load is 995 x 0.8 = 796 V. The current out of the 802 V generator is (802 - 796)/0.01 = 600 A; out of the 800 V generator it's (900 - 796)/0.01 = 400 A.

So for a 0.25% change in the voltage output by one of the two generators, one generator current has increased by 100 A (+20%), the other generator current has reduced by 100 A (-20%). Clearly the circuit is very sensitive to generator output voltage changes; it's an impractical circuit as it stands.

Reducing the generator resistance makes things worse, not better; at 0.001 ohm resistance you end up with about 750 A in one generator and 50 A in the other. Useless.

Increasing the generator resistance makes the loadsharing better: at 0.1 ohm the current mismatch is down to around 10 A but the power loss in that 0.1 ohm is awful, around 16 kW of waste heat to get rid of.

Note that the above assumes a perfect generator with constant output voltage that's only reduced by the loadcurrent. That's rather impracticable in itself but it serves as an example. Also I've effectively lumped any cable resistance in with the generators.

It'd be interesting to see how it is done on the 230s as I understand that they have 2 gensets per motored vehicle so will have presumably had to overcome a similar problem. I certainly don't think that corrosion issues with have been responsible for this long delay.

 

[driver_m]

Only in the minds of some posters.

Time and a place for this old chestnut, even I don't think there's a North vs South issue here. Plus if GWR are meant to be using them in the Home Counties, then it's even more baffling it's not been picked up on. Maybe the RMT should put out a missive about them, shoehorn some issue into it, and then watch the media then go for it.

 

[driver_m]

Exactly - they don't know to look - not that I am convinced there is much to look at yet.

Only going to take another overcrowding/cancelled trains story for one of the TOC's to blab that the 769's haven't turned up.

 

[northwichcat]

Time and a place for this old chestnut, even I don't think there's a North vs South issue here. Plus if GWR are meant to be using them in the Home Counties, then it's even more baffling it's not been picked up on. Maybe the RMT should put out a missive about them, shoehorn some issue into it, and then watch the media then go for it.

GWR don't need 769s in service until the December 2019 change. Northern's are definitely late as their non-delivery hampered the May 2018 timetable recast. If Porterbrook produce 32 x 769s by the end of next year the only news for GWR will be different trains being introduced on schedule.

 

[DarloRich]

Only going to take another overcrowding/cancelled trains story for one of the TOC's to blab that the 769's haven't turned up.

then you have a new trains are late story - that is hardly new! In Northern land the story will be why oh why are we getting 30 year old cast offs?

 

[Bletchleyite]

It'd be interesting to see how it is done on the 230s as I understand that they have 2 gensets per motored vehicle so will have presumably had to overcome a similar problem. I certainly don't think that corrosion issues with have been responsible for this long delay.

A very interesting post - but surely generator load sharing technology is again well-established and they aren't going to need to design something new and specific for this project?

 

[delticdave]

You make it sound awfully easy, but all the rumours I had head say otherwise. One of the main issues they've had (as announced at tth imeche talk earlier this year) is ensuring that the load is balanced between the gensets when feeding the power electronics. It's all well and good saying "just run them so that they produce 750v" but that isn't how it works.

Copying a post from a user on WNXX who seems to be involved in the project



It'd be interesting to see how it is done on the 230s as I understand that they have 2 gensets per motored vehicle so will have presumably had to overcome a similar problem. I certainly don't think that corrosion issues with have been responsible for this long delay.

I "think" that each 230 genset supplies only the adjacent motor bogie so load sharing isn't a problem, but I might be wrong.....

 

[Rail Blues]

My personal opinion is RAIL was given a back-hander by Porterbrook. Just my view of it.

I find that unlikely, but Rail certainly should be asking more searching and critical questions about this project.

 

[northwichcat]

I find that unlikely, but Rail certainly should be asking more searching and critical questions about this project.

I can't think of this name but is the former Porterbrook man who wrote an article calling the idea of using D78s for mainline services a late April Fools but then wrote an article saying how 4 car PRM compliant Pacers could be created from the 143s and 144s, someone who works for Modern Railways?

 

[Cardiff123]

I find that unlikely, but Rail certainly should be asking more searching and critical questions about this project.

RAIL or Modern Railways magazines doing critical articles about a private ROSCO like Porterbrook?

In the latest issue of MR there's a lengthy article about GW modernisation where the multiple benefits that 769s are going to produce for GWR are talked up, even though they acknowledge that GWR are at the back of the queue for them and there's only a 'slight delay' in getting 769s into service.