Future of 22x Units

[Andrew*Debbie]

I've read through this thread. I don't think anyone has mentioned how dirty the 221s are.

I'm going to miss Virgin on the WCML but not the pollution from the Voyagers. New bi-mode trains will be a lot cleaner, especially on Euston to Crewe.

 

[Andrew*Debbie]

I've read the 221's use more fuel per seat-mile than most other diesels.

I just realised that in part might be due to the shop using seating space....

 

[Jozhua]

I've read through this thread. I don't think anyone has mentioned how dirty the 221s are.

Are we talking about the outsides or insides here?

I mean they sure are, but got to be better than the HSTs. Not sure XC will have much choice in regards to new rolling stock!

 

[Bletchleyite]

I just realised that in part might be due to the shop using seating space....

It doesn't really. It takes up the space of a disabled bog.

It's Pendolinos that have the big (1/3 coach) shop.

 

[Andrew*Debbie]

I mean they sure are, but got to be better than the HSTs.

I was surprised to find out they emit more pollution than the HSTs per seat mile. I can google the link if you can't find it.

EDIT: That might just be CO2. I'll have to go back and re-read the research paper. Been a while.

 

[hwl]

I just realised that in part might be due to the shop using seating space....

The tilt also adds 6-8 tonnes per car vs 220s /222s

 

[Andrew*Debbie]

The tilt also adds 6-8 tonnes per car vs 220s /222s

Of course. That should have occurred to me.

RSSB produced an energy metrics report a few years ago. I'm not able to access it at the moment. Googling "traction energy metrics" finds a broken link.

I did find a student paper that cited the RSSB report. I wish I could find the RSSB report. I don't like quoting student papers.


In that paper a class 221 is ~120g CO2 per passenger km. 222 is ~90g and a class 43 HST is about 60g per passenger km. For diesel, CO2 emissions are directly related to fuel consumption. This implies HST uses about 1/2 the fuel of a 221 per passenger km. That is something any operator should to look at carefully before taking on a 221.


Railway diesels built before 2006 are exempt from emissions standards. I remember reading that 221s are surprisingly high emitters of pollution but can't find a source now.


EDIT: Removed off topic sections.



Sources:
https://s3-eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/...rt-CO2-emissions-by-modal-shift-ETI-Comms.pdf
https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/10/9/094012
https://www.railwaygazette.com/news...renitalia-awarded-west-coast-partnership.html

 

[The Ham]

Of course. That should have occurred to me.

RSSB produced an energy metrics report a few years ago. I'm not able to access it at the moment. Googling "traction energy metrics" finds a broken link.

I did find a student paper that cited the RSSB report. I wish I could find the RSSB report. I don't like quoting student papers.


In that paper a class 221 is ~120g CO2 per passenger km. 222 is ~90g and a class 43 HST is about 60g per passenger km. For diesel, CO2 emissions are directly related to fuel consumption. This implies HST uses about 1/2 the fuel of a 221 per passenger km. That is something any operator should to look at carefully before taking on a 221.


Railway diesels built before 2006 are exempt from emissions standards. I remember reading that 221s are surprisingly high emitters of pollution but can't find a source now.


EDIT: Removed off topic sections.



Sources:
https://s3-eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/...rt-CO2-emissions-by-modal-shift-ETI-Comms.pdf
https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/10/9/094012
https://www.railwaygazette.com/news...renitalia-awarded-west-coast-partnership.html

The summary graphic can be found in the DfT white paper "Delivering a Sustainable Railway"

https://www.railwaysarchive.co.uk/documents/HoCTSC_SustainableRailway2008.pdf

Although not the source document it is at least a second reliable source which references it.

 

[squizzler]

Allow me to expand on speculation made on another Voyager speculation thread:

Problems with the Voyagers include their cramped tilt profile, large ares of dead space for the crash regs of the time, heavy construction and multiple huge (but smelly) toilets.

Given that everything below the sole bar seems to work well but the cabin would need to be stripped and knocked about anyway, why not create a new body shell which can accept voyager underfloor parts and use the old fleets as donor vehicles? Further new pantograph and trailer cars can be built to lengthen the trains and give bi-mode capability (a-la Project Thor). Re-shelling means you would not be restrained by the mix of middle and end cars of the existing fleet.

My suggestion emulates the approach taken to create the mighty Class 442 EMU which used motors and control gear from a previous class 432. Now I have thought about this a little further and see a few stars aligning to favour this approach. Namely Hitachi and Bombardier collaborating on the Italian ETR1000 and putting in a joint bid for the HS2 stock.

Hitachi are masters of the lightweight alloy body shell. They also have experience of intensive bi-modal operation. Bombardier for their part know their Voyagers and could act as system integrators. A win-win situation for both constructors and good practice for HS2. With over 100 Voyagers in use the design work can be amortised over a large number of trains. The opportunity can be taken to make the new trains fully homogenous rather than three separate fleets, one of which is incompatible with the others.

What would the operator get out of such a rebuild? The resulting trains ought to be cheaper than brand new ones would be. Also they would use the rugged (but non-compliant) Cummins engines from the Voyagers under grandfather rights. But not under the wires!

 

[MarkyT]

The tilt also adds 6-8 tonnes per car vs 220s /222s

Most of that is the much heavier outside frame bogies. Even once the tilt capability was removed, most of this dead weight remained on the XC cl.221s.

 

[apinnard]

Allow me to expand on speculation made on another Voyager speculation thread:

Problems with the Voyagers include their cramped tilt profile, large ares of dead space for the crash regs of the time, heavy construction and multiple huge (but smelly) toilets.

Given that everything below the sole bar seems to work well but the cabin would need to be stripped and knocked about anyway, why not create a new body shell which can accept voyager underfloor parts and use the old fleets as donor vehicles? Further new pantograph and trailer cars can be built to lengthen the trains (a-la Project Thor). Re-shelling means you would not be restrained by the mix of middle and end cars of the existing fleet.

My suggestion emulates the approach taken to create the mighty Class 442 EMU which used motors and control gear from a previous class 432. Now I have thought about this a little further and see a few stars aligning to favour this approach. Namely Hitachi and Bombardier collaborating on the Italian ETR1000 and putting in a joint bid for the HS2 stock.

Hitachi are masters of the lightweight alloy body shell. They also have experience of intensive bi-modal operation. Bombardier for their part know their Voyagers and could act as system integrators. A win-win situation for both constructors and good practice for HS2. With over 100 Voyagers in use the design work can be amortised over a large number of trains. The opportunity can be taken to make the new trains fully homogenous rather than three separate fleets, one of which is incompatible with the others.

What would the operator get out of such a rebuild? The resulting trains ought to be cheaper than brand new ones would be. Also they would use the rugged (but non-compliant) Cummins engines from the Voyagers under grandfather rights. But not under the wires!

The answer to "why not" is relatively simple. Brand new stock really IS cheaper than rehashing old stuff these days. I bet First and MTR are ruing the day that they signed the contracts for refurbishing the 442's vs buying new.

As we have seen, if you muck about too much to refurbishing old stuff it gets classed as new and has the difficult task of meeting all the current regs. For the hassle and expense, and the fact that new is cheaper, you may as well buy new.

 

[NotATrainspott]

The leasecos will do what is most profitable for them, not what's best for the system as a whole. They can always create shortages to keep their prices high. But that's another thread.



I'd like to see the figures on how cost-effective a 4x222 would be compared to a 2+4 HST set... heresy, I know!

Quite a few new financing entities have entered the rolling stock market, so the ability for ROSCOs to keep prices high has pretty much gone away. Long-term borrowing is cheap and there's plenty of manufacturing capacity available.

The answer to "why not" is relatively simple. Brand new stock really IS cheaper than rehashing old stuff these days. I bet First and MTR are ruing the day that they signed the contracts for refurbishing the 442's vs buying new.

As we have seen, if you muck about too much to refurbishing old stuff it gets classed as new and has the difficult task of meeting all the current regs. For the hassle and expense, and the fact that new is cheaper, you may as well buy new.

ROSCOs might be able to refinance their fleet if the alternative is nothing, but that'll only happen if it's actually possible to reduce the costs below competitors. The upfront capital cost of a train is only a small part of its lifetime cost now. It's possible that even if the 22x fleet were valued at nothing and could be leased (in the pure sense, not including maintenance etc) for nothing they'd still come out worse than a new fleet. The only way to change that would be to invest in them, but all these ideas like reforming them and scrapping the driving vehicles are quite likely to go very wrong and cost a lot of money.

 

[The Ham]

Quite a few new financing entities have entered the rolling stock market, so the ability for ROSCOs to keep prices high has pretty much gone away. Long-term borrowing is cheap and there's plenty of manufacturing capacity available.



ROSCOs might be able to refinance their fleet if the alternative is nothing, but that'll only happen if it's actually possible to reduce the costs below competitors. The upfront capital cost of a train is only a small part of its lifetime cost now. It's possible that even if the 22x fleet were valued at nothing and could be leased (in the pure sense, not including maintenance etc) for nothing they'd still come out worse than a new fleet. The only way to change that would be to invest in them, but all these ideas like reforming them and scrapping the driving vehicles are quite likely to go very wrong and cost a lot of money.

In what way would ditching end coaches go wrong?

Before you answer maybe look at the case study related to the reforming of two units to form one and then back again. That was a single one off event and therefore if it were to be problematic it would have been so. Even based on the time from announcement to operations it was 5 months.

Presumably that included waiting for the unit in service to roll around to being out of service to remove the coach before being able to work on getting it working again with the rest of the original set.

Conversely the 222 fleet would be out of service and therefore could be done much more easily. With them being brought into service to allow other units to be taken to have work done to them.

 

[LOL The Irony]

In what way would ditching end coaches go wrong?

"If it ain't broke, don't fix it!"

 

[The Ham]

"If it ain't broke, don't fix it!"

What if keeping the end coaches results in none if you're trains being leased? That would be very much broken.

 

[LOL The Irony]

What if keeping the end coaches results in none if you're trains being leased? That would be very much broken.

I wouldn't want to lease a train that you can't drive. And you'd still have the 222 TMS issue.

 

[squizzler]

The answer to "why not" is relatively simple. Brand new stock really IS cheaper than rehashing old stuff these days. I bet First and MTR are ruing the day that they signed the contracts for refurbishing the 442's vs buying new.

As we have seen, if you muck about too much to refurbishing old stuff it gets classed as new and has the difficult task of meeting all the current regs. For the hassle and expense, and the fact that new is cheaper, you may as well buy new.

My proposal is effectively a brand new train; only one that happens to reuse the engines, generators, traction packages and bogies from the voyagers, whilst adding lots of usable passenger space and bi-mode capability. In my fantasy Bombardier/Hitachi collaboration the replacement body shell might be derived from the AT300, or perhaps the speculative Aventra bi-mode if Bombardier went it alone.

Modern railways and other frequently lament that the 'value added' components of UK trains: basically all the stuff I listed - is no longer made in the UK. Precisely because it is this stuff that costs the money, and a lot of fine kit might soon be stranded in sub-optimal Voyager sets. Does anybody know what proportion of the overall cost of a new rail vehicle the technical parts represent?

 

[The Ham]

I wouldn't want to lease a train that you can't drive. And you'd still have the 222 TMS issue.

There would still be end coaches, but rather than a fleet of shorter units there would be fewer but longer trains.

As a very basic example (not that I'm suggesting this):
4*4 coach 222's
4*5 coach 222's
Reformed to:
4*7 coach 222's

Yes you lose 8 end coaches, but given that the 7 coach units would be comparable to a 4+4, even if they permanently ran as 4+5 the extra capacity (~44 seats) is unlikely to justify the extra leasing and staffing costs.

I assume the 222 TMS issue your refering to is that it can't talk with the TMS of the 220/221's. The reforming of the 222's I've suggested has either been so that they are too long to work in pairs and/or has been to create a separate fleet (i.e. running services currently run by 170's) within the franchise.

 

[krus_aragon]

I wouldn't want to lease a train that you can't drive. And you'd still have the 222 TMS issue.

With the 222s, if you were to scrap some end coaches in order to lengthen other units, you could lengthen them enough (say 7 coaches or more) that you don't need to couple them to another unit. In that case, the TMS flavor would be irrelevant.

 

[Nym]

Are we talking about the outsides or insides here?

I mean they sure are, but got to be better than the HSTs. Not sure XC will have much choice in regards to new rolling stock!

According to a report I was reading some time ago regarding electrification, the HSTs are actually quite a lot cleaner in terms of emissions.

 

[Jozhua]

According to a report I was reading some time ago regarding electrification, the HSTs are actually quite a lot cleaner in terms of emissions.

Oh right, yes makes sense!

Many HSTs got re-engined in the 2000's so probably have newer engines that the 220/1/2's! Less power to weight ratio, which does mean slower acceleration but also less fuel...

Also I thought I'd do a quick comparison on specs, bit like comparing apples and oranges with loco-hauled and MU but I thought it'd be interesting. Comparing them both as "7-car" sets to make it comparable and because XC run 7-car HSTs.
7 coach HST is roughly 370 tonnes.
7 coaches of 221 is roughly 385 tonnes.

HST has about 4500hp
221 would have 5250hp if a 7-car variant existed!

~45 first and 313 standard in 7 cars of 221
~80 first and 375 standard in 7 cars of HST

HST per seat weight ~ 0.81 tonnes
HST power to weight ~ 12.2 hp per ton
221 per seat weight ~ 1.23 tonnes
221 power to weight ~ 13.6 hp per ton

Even with my terrible napkin maths, the inefficiency of 221's seems quite apparent! The power to weight calculation probably doesn't tell the whole story acceleration-wise though, distributed traction stands out as a big gain for the 221. With engines of similar ages though, not surprising HSTs are the more efficient and less polluting.

Despite the HSTs now clearly being much better in my eyes, the 221's will definitely fit in well with XC's operations and the flexibility and inter-working they will be able to do on so many of their services will benefit them much.

 

[LOL The Irony]

221 would have 5250hp if a 7-car variant existed!

I think you need to look at your profile picture.

 

[Jozhua]

I think you need to look at your profile picture.

It is a 222 , pretty sure you can't see past the third car anyway, so who knows!

In regards to power output, they're identical, but the 221's are heavier!

 

[Nym]

It is a 222 , pretty sure you can't see past the third car anyway, so who knows!

It's a 5 car.

 

[LNW-GW Joint]

I've read the 221's use more fuel per seat-mile than most other diesels. I have no idea about maintenance and repair costs.
Does anyone know if it would cost more to lease and run ex-Virgin 221s compared to other options?

22x series trains use the same engine (Cummins QSK19) as the Alstom 180 and the Siemens 185 (albeit that one limited to 100mph).
So they will be in the same ballpark for fuel consumption.

For the first time, we can see a future with a surplus of pretty much go-anywhere 125mph trains, some with tilt capability.
Potential open access operators ought to be very interested.
It's a pity it's just too late to avoid the expensive GWR/Scotrail HST conversions.

 

[Andrew*Debbie]

According to a report I was reading some time ago regarding electrification, the HSTs are actually quite a lot cleaner in terms of emissions.

Electric traction is cleaner now. 10 years ago about 30% of our electricity came from coal. Now it is more like 3% and still falling. Roughly 20% of our electricity now comes from wind and solar.




https://www.ofgem.gov.uk/data-portal/electricity-generation-mix-quarter-and-fuel-source-gb

 

[Andrew*Debbie]

HST per seat weight ~ 0.81 tonnes
HST power to weight ~ 12.2 hp per ton
221 per seat weight ~ 1.23 tonnes
221 power to weight ~ 13.6 hp per ton

Even with my terrible napkin maths, the inefficiency of 221's seems quite apparent!

For the first time, we can see a future with a surplus of pretty much go-anywhere 125mph trains, some with tilt capability.

A train with a very low lease cost but a high fuel cost is a good fit for occasional use. I'm thinking rail tours, charters, and shopping excursions.
Any sort of schedule where the train stands for hours at a time could work.

How much life do the 221s have left in them before needing expensive renovation? I was chatting with the train manager a few months ago and he told me the Voyagers were completely worn out.

I'm all for preserving a few complete sets as part of the UK's rail heritage. The rest need a good business case.

 

[krus_aragon]

I was chatting with the train manager a few months ago and he told me the Voyagers were completely worn out.

Was this train manager on West Coast or Cross Country? I believe the former have spend more on general upkeep of their fleet than the latter.

 

[Andrew*Debbie]

Was this train manager on West Coast or Cross Country? I believe the former have spend more on general upkeep of their fleet than the latter.

It was Virgin West Coast. I have no idea if he was correct.

 

[Mitchell Hurd]

Given that most passengers on XC's Twitter page have made negative comments, I bet XC will take on the Virgin Trains (soon to be First) 221's if they have to.

As much as I much prefer HST's over Voyagers and that I have my positive view on the shorter trains, I have to disagree that they are completely worn out - on recent XC journeys, I've literally had 0 reasons to complain to XC about my journeys with them since late 2017 - except for the 19:04 from Birmingham New Street to Oxford when the trolley didn't serve Coach A on Wednesday 5th December nearly a year ago.

For journeys over 2 hours or more, backwards journeys on Voyagers tend to be ok (although I've never done longer than Oxford to Manchester Piccadilly backwards). HST's are no problem.

Personally I'd be happy with extra Voyagers if it means extra capacity on the Voyager diagrams!


Backwards journeys seem to be ok