Not quite, according to the boss!Hi Skie.
The 777's have to each complete 1500 miles of FFR
The first four units 1,500 miles of fault-free running, the next four 1,000 miles, and the remainder 500 miles.
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Merseyrail Class 777 introduction updates
- Thread starter OneThirtyEight
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The first four units 1,500 miles of fault-free running, the next four 1,000 miles, and the remainder 500 miles.
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R
RailUK Forums
Ahh. I didn't know that, so the rest will be faster
Grumpy Git
On Moderation
Nope, everyone is limited to 75mph.Ahh. I didn't know that, so the rest will be faster
I'll get my coat.
Ha ha ha
LNW-GW Joint
Veteran Member
The first class 777 train was handed over from Stadler to Liverpool City Region today (777 010).
It will be on display at Birkenhead North station on September 9 and 11, 1000-1400 each day.
First new Merseyrail train handed to Liverpool City Region - Liverpool Echo
I think the Welsh Government beat Liverpool in terms of train ownership with the Mk4 purchase, but the Merseyrail fleet is of course a lot bigger, and brand new.
"First to arrive" is an odd statement when units have been sitting around the Mersey area for many months, some of them working around the Merseyrail network in full public view.
There's no hint of Merseyrail training and operation here, so first public use could be months away yet.
It will be on display at Birkenhead North station on September 9 and 11, 1000-1400 each day.
First new Merseyrail train handed to Liverpool City Region - Liverpool Echo
I think the Welsh Government beat Liverpool in terms of train ownership with the Mk4 purchase, but the Merseyrail fleet is of course a lot bigger, and brand new.
"First to arrive" is an odd statement when units have been sitting around the Mersey area for many months, some of them working around the Merseyrail network in full public view.
There's no hint of Merseyrail training and operation here, so first public use could be months away yet.
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Gareth
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It's the Echo. They don't know what day it is, most of the time. Just that, as September is round the corner, we're do to be invaded by super-bitey mutant spiders.
CaergwrleKen
Member
One should have been on display at Rock Ferry this week apparently but this was cancelled due to lack of disabled access to the station platform…
bluegoblin7
Established Member
Transport for London/RfL/LUL have owned (some of) their new trains for years…
LNW-GW Joint
Veteran Member
I guess he meant that Merseyrail (under LCR control) is the first of the privatised BR operators to own their trains, as opposed to leasing them.
But contrariwise the LCR has contracted train depots and maintenance to Stadler, instead of doing it in-house.
The financial deal for Merseyrail is still somewhat mysterious until they have a deal with the unions to operate the trains.
TheSel
Member
According to Merseyrail's published info, Rock Ferry has "... a degree of step-free access to the platform ...", and is stated to have "Partial" Wheelchair Access.
Link below to Merseyrail's Station Accessibility map.
https://www.merseyrail.org/plan-your-journey/station-accessibility.aspx
It’s not. The private operator Merseyrail, half owned by the Dutch state, will not own the trains. They are still leased, but from the public body Merseytravel, a brand name of the Merseyside Passenger Transport Executive and a consortium of Merseyside councils since the abolition of the Merseyside County Council, as opposed to a private leasing company.
This means that rather than being leached out of the railway and lost to the coffers of a consortium of investment banks never to be seen again, 100% of the leasing fees paid by Merseyrail to Merseyrail will go towards improving public transport provision in the Liverpool City Region, including presumably to pay for a second batch of 777s in the future to facilitate network expansion or increased 8 car provision.
Maintenance of the 507/508 fleet was outsourced to Stadler on a temporary basis until their withdrawal, to allow Stadler to take over and modernise Kirkdale and Birkenhead North depots in anticipation of the arrival of the 777s. This allowed Stadler to deliver it’s product by simply transferring it to its own facility at Kirkdale, where it could be inspected, run in and handed over locally. No public money is spent on their purchase until handover. I was told a single 777 is £3.5m each.
Under the terms of Brexit, we were allowed to perpetuate existing trade deals which the EU has with other countries on the same terms. This includes Switzerland, so the activities of Stadler and the Merseyrail fleet replacement remain totally unaffected. Once the first 777s enter service, there will be a huge influx of money to Merseyside’s public transport budget. Rightfully, the only ones who will lose out are Angel Trains shareholders.
Going forward, maintenance of the highest quality will be undertaken by Stadler. Note that Greater Anglia once attempted to maintain Class 360s in house with no assistance from Siemens and reliability suffered. I don’t know if the maintenance will be paid for with public money by Merseytravel, or if it will be the responsibility of the private operator to pay Stadler. The latter is probably preferable.
I am slightly alarmed by the lack of spare platforms on the Northern Line that are abundant on the Wirral having served various purposes over the years. Southport is the only place on the Northern Line where a 777 could be displayed like this. Surely additional platforms could be provided at Aintree, Kirkdale, Bank Hall and Bootle stations relatively easily.
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The shortsighted mothballing of the ‘spare’ platforms on the Northern line does remove many options for degraded working that the Wirral line enjoys.
The two Bootle stations still have platform faces but have been left to go completely wild. They could be restored in a fashion, but then at considerable cost to re-instate the line to actually use them. Given their proximity I doubt it’s a sensible option to do it as a passing loop to enable semi-fasts.
AGH
Member
I know the 4 car units are of similar length to the 3 car 507/8 so 8 cars are theoretically possible but did I read they have bought less than being scrapped. Internally are they "bigger" with a better configuration. No inter carriage doors presumably? Thanks in advance. I being a local who has seen these delivered through Earlestown was also confused by the Echo comments.
They bought fewer as the journey times will be reduced through the 777s having much higher acceleration than the existing trains. They simply don’t need the same size fleet to run the same 15 minute service. 8 car usage will be pretty similar to the normal usage of 6 cars too: peak time services.
James James
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The money to buy trains nevertheless has to come from somewhere - and indeed, at least one Merseyside council is paying others to get access to money.
They’ve had this money stockpiled due to the years of delays. There’s some spare for Hydrogen buses as well now.
Bletchleyite
Veteran Member
Is there much cause for doing that? On the Ormskirk line you can turn back at Maghull, while the Kirkby and Hunts Cross lines are way too short for there to be any benefit of doing so (but you can at South Parkway I believe). I'm sure I've seen short workings on the Southport line, is there a crossover half way up like Formby or similar? It does mean you can't dump a failed unit out of the way, but the 507/508s are pretty reliable in terms of not completely sitting down (even if they have to go out of service due to e.g. a door interlock fault), so it's very, very rare to need to.
LNW-GW Joint
Veteran Member
Rail this week has a piece which says that Liverpool City Region (ie Steve Rotheram) wants to take on infrastructure for Merseyrail, including all the land assets.
The aim would be to sell/develop the land for the benefit of the rail operation, and to fund network expansion with battery trains.
Apparently it's on the table in talks with the DfT and Network Rail.
Merseytravel did of course try and take on infrastructure a decade or so ago, and abandoned the plan when they saw the costs incurred by NR to maintain the railway.
This was just before the "fit and forget" slab track in the tunnels on the Loop line had to be replaced.
I guess this would look a bit like the South Wales Metro solution.
The aim would be to sell/develop the land for the benefit of the rail operation, and to fund network expansion with battery trains.
Apparently it's on the table in talks with the DfT and Network Rail.
Merseytravel did of course try and take on infrastructure a decade or so ago, and abandoned the plan when they saw the costs incurred by NR to maintain the railway.
This was just before the "fit and forget" slab track in the tunnels on the Loop line had to be replaced.
I guess this would look a bit like the South Wales Metro solution.
Bletchleyite
Veteran Member
Interesting - doesn't strike me that there is a lot of developable land in and around Merseyrail, other than Central which could perhaps get a two-island rebuild paid for by allowing commercial development on top of it (it's still just a car park with a semi-temporary Network Rail shed on it - in a way there was no real need to have bothered putting the lid back on* it when it was redone in the 1970s, but presumably there was the intention to develop it at some point).
* Part of its length was opened out and re-covered during the 70s rebuild, though not I think all of it. You can see which bits have the old brick arches and which bits have newer concrete if you look up
On the Southport line there is a crossover just north of Formby. There are others at Bootle Junction, Seaforth & Litherland, just south of Hillside and at Hall Road where there is one surviving siding. The crossovers are used when parts of the line are closed for engineering work.
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chiltern trev
Member
Image of walk through between carriages
Sounds like an asset stripping hedge fund manager.
Sounds like an asset stripping hedge fund manager.
100%?! I would have thought almost all the money will go to paying back the money borrowed to buy the trains. Just as it would for Angel
So his plan is to rip off the UK taxpayer?!
It’s still 100% of the leasing fees going to where it benefits the travelling public, even after the trains have been fully paid off. Angel make a profit once the trains are paid for and that won’t benefit anyone but their shareholders.
It isn’t, the bulk of it is going to pay off the borrowing.
Hope to make a profit, profit isn’t evil, and the evil shareholders will include our pensions etc.
Didnt TfW find leasing was actually cheaper than buying??
krus_aragon
Established Member
For the franchise's new-build stock, apparently so. The exact funding arrangements have been rather opaque, though.
They have since been buying additional MkIV rakes outright, however.
Not surprising. Everyone(*) leases rather than buys if given the chance. Stagecoach lease buses, Ryainair lease planes, even Tesco has sold some of it's supermarkets and leased them back. The Angel Trains thing is also just a nonsense I'm afraid. As has been pointed out, they've invested by buying the train. Their profit is the return on the money their shareholders have invested. Ban them from investing, and they won't - their shareholders will either put the money in a savings account, or just spend it. Meaning less money to go round,
If you buy out of your own funds - which I'd be surprised if Liverpool City Region actually have done, because it would be mindblowingly crazy for them to do so (although the economic wherewithal of some of the Liverpool politicians involved probably means we shouldn't rule it out) - you use the money in full here and now. If it's e.g. £10,000 then that £10,000 is lost. That's £10,000 you can not now use for anything else.
If you lease it, even if it's over 30 years paying £500 per year (so a total spend of £15,000 giving £5,000 profit to the evil capitalists) you've got £9,500 left which you can use on other stuff. And if your operation (whether that be a railway, an airline, a manufacturer of exhaust pipes, or anything else really) can generate positive economic benefits, then it follows you'll be able to afford paying £500 next year (funded by the revenue, or in a public sector body the tax or some other funding stream generated by or offset by the economic benefit) and the £9,500 you have left can be put to better use and generate even more positive economic benefit. You could, for example, lease more trains to run more services and get more farebox revenue. Of build more stations to encourage economic growth and get more tax revenue. Or if you manufacture widgets, you can make more and sell more. Or pay for advertising. Or any number of other things.
In my made up example, giving £5,000 to evil shareholders is well worth the money, and it's money well spent. You've had trains for 30 years and been able to build 10 new stations, reduce ticket prices, and extend your network. If you were savvy about it, you'd put break clauses in the lease agreement so that when something unexpected happens and new trains are needed in 15 years time, you can switch to the newfangled nuclear powered trains instead of having to stick to the ones you've got. The alternative of buying the trains outright, just ties up the money in a depreciating asset that's going to need to be overhauled and then (most likely) scrapped. It will win votes amongst the trendy young crowd and the ageing Trots though. But not much else.
Of course there's a third option. Which is Liverpool City Region borrow the money instead of paying it. Which gives the same benefit of leasing and allows your political leaders to spout twaddle about capitalism and shareholders. But then they'll pay the financing costs (i.e. interest) and take the full risk of dealing with it if it goes wrong. (there are numerous examples of local authorities getting way out of their depth trying to do things they have no knowledge of, investing in Icelandic banks which went under, buying shopping centres and hotels and the like, and generally losing millions of pounds of other peoples' money). By the time you've priced everything into it, chances are it's no cheaper than leasing and could turn out more expensive. And of course, if nuclear powered trains turn up and change the world, you're stuck with the ones you bought and either have to try to sell them, cut them up and buy more, or just keep running them.
(* obviously I don't mean individual people in their own households, although they do for things like cars and many people rent their home or finance it by a mortgage).
It is always cheaper to outright buy and own a useful revenue generating asset than to lease it, as is the case with all insourcing and doing things in house. This practice of leasing will lead only to the eventual bankruptcy of both Stagecoach and Tesco, with the alternatives being the withdrawal of what are essential bus services due to lack of vehicles and the closure of what are essential Tesco stores as the leasing costs from the evil capitalist shareholders overwhelm the companies finances. Note that Thomas Cook did not own a single plane at the time of their insolvency. All were leased, in some feeble attempt to generate quick cash, but the burden of these leases was evidently too great from day 1, as is the case with all leasing. This also posed the problem that the administrators of Thomas Cook found that it had no assets with any value as such to pay off its debts.
In the case of the railway, the average 7 year rail franchisee is not affected by this situation, with most not surviving long enough to see the need for any fleet replacement and receiving an effectively unlimited subsidy, far greater than BR ever received, from the government to prevent them from becoming bankrupt in the first place. The only reason that rail privatisation specified that trains would be leased was in anticipation of the day when Virgin Trains would lose its franchise, so that Richard Branson could not say to Avanti West Coast “these are our trains get your own” and leave the WCML with no services until the procurement of the 805s and 807s from Hitachi, taking several years.
When money is directly spent on the construction and outright purchase of trains (or planes, or buses, or supermarkets), there is a large initial capital expenditure, and then not another penny to spend ever again for the whole life of the asset, which may be over 40 years, except any ongoing maintenance costs, which remember still have to be paid every year in addition to leasing costs under the leasing model. The asset should then theoretically be profitable, more than enough to cover the maintenance costs and generate significant revenue, but if this is not possible, then it is not a priority above using it to provide an essential public service, particularly if owned by a public authority. I believe it was with the procurement of the Class 323 EMU fleet in the 1990s when BR was forced to implement a leasing model, which it judged would waste millions of pounds a year, but then ceased to exist within a couple of years.
I am aware of several instances of incapable public authorities haemorrhaging other people’s money after purchasing the wrong, loss making assets, particularly when Sefton Council purchased the loss making Bootle New Strand shopping centre for a sum many orders of magnitude above its value, substantially with council tax revenue generated in Southport, whose residents are unable to use this facility, only for it to then lose millions of pounds a year, again out of council tax from Southport. This building should have remained a private venture and been allowed to go bust, be demolished and the site developed by a new private venture.
The purchase of brand new trains for the Liverpool City Region couldn’t be any more different from such a botched attempt at nationalisation which was of benefit to no one and to the detriment of 100000 people several miles to the north. Now that money will not be spent on leasing a train fleet, once any money borrowed has been paid back, which will occur decades before the end of their usable life, the trains will create a new source of income where it was not possible to generate revenue under the privatisation leasing system.
Local authorities can obtain loans at greatly reduced interest rates, with more favourable terms and for significantly longer than any business could hope for. In this case, the European Investment Bank and UK public works board (now the DMO) have provided a chunk of low cost loans and Merseytravel had also accrued a sizeable war chest over the years to add to the pot, too. Trying to equate government finances to household or business finances is a logical fallacy - they really don’t compare, unless you happen to have toll booths or powers of taxation 
Finance was part of the tender and none of the ROSCOs could offer a better deal, so it made perfect sense to go via this route.
Finance was part of the tender and none of the ROSCOs could offer a better deal, so it made perfect sense to go via this route.
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