British Rail EMU/DMUs thin on the ground

[JonathanH]

Assuming you travel on them regularly, as you know them well enough to say they’re still adquate, then you must have noticed how they’re in a dire state.

I've never considered them to be in a 'dire state'. For example, I don't get a sense of them being in a worse condition than the 376s they operate alongside and the 376s are ten years younger. They operate on a part of the railway that is a bit unloved.

Frankly any rolling stock that is used in South East London will have its detractors even if it is three years old.

 

[fgwrich]

Does anyone know why West Coast removed the Dellner coupler from their class 57? Surely it would be more useful with it in place?

No use for it on the intended work they have for their class 57s (which is hauling the Northern Belle) so why go to the effort of maintaining it)?

It actually, and bizarrely, comes down to a question of ownership. The class 57 fleet were owned by Porterbrook, while the Dellner Coupling design belonged to Angel Trains (as are the 390s they were intended to haul), so the couplers were removed and returned to Angel at the point of sale. Of course, there is also the point that WCRC doesn’t need them too, so their removal therefore saves WCRC any additional costs of maintaining them.

 

[DanNCL]

Assuming you travel on them regularly, as you know them well enough to say they’re still adquate, then you must have noticed how they’re in a dire state.

All they need is a deep clean. Are they ideal? No, but there is much worse on the network that is in much more urgent need of replacement than Southeastern's Networkers.

If you want an example of stock that actually is in dire need of replacement, look at Northern's Sprinters (excluding class 158), or indeed the Bakerloo line.

I've never considered them to be in a 'dire state'. For example, I don't get a sense of them being in a worse condition than the 376s they operate alongside and the 376s are ten years younger. They operate on a part of the railway that is a bit unloved.

Frankly any rolling stock that is used in South East London will have its detractors even if it is three years old.

Indeed. One could argue that a large part of the problem with the stock on Southeastern's Metro routes is some of the clientelle, which is of course going to be an issue regardless what stock operates.

 

[py_megapixel]

I disagree with the SE comment. The Networkers work in London routes where thirty year old stock is absolutely unacceptable.

Not sure I see how 30-year-old electric stock is unacceptable for London commuter routes, but 35 to 40 year old diesel stock is fine for Leeds and Manchester.

My understanding is that electric stock is generally viable to be kept in service for longer anyway as there isn't an engine effectively vibrating the thing to pieces, plus with diesel there are emissions standards worry about, with electric that of course isn't an issue.

 

[Mikey C]

The Networkers just need some TLC. The short term franchise extensions have meant that they've been left to deteriorate

You can't just blame the locals for this, as it's not the "yoof" making the windows fog up or the panelling come loose

 

[Irascible]

Not sure I see how 30-year-old electric stock is unacceptable for London commuter routes, but 35 to 40 year old diesel stock is fine for Leeds and Manchester.

My understanding is that electric stock is generally viable to be kept in service for longer anyway as there isn't an engine effectively vibrating the thing to pieces, plus with diesel there are emissions standards worry about, with electric that of course isn't an issue.

I'm definitely not arguing about the first part - we're in the same state down here. However early 90s electric stock does have what is by now ancient, obsolete & quite possibly extremely expensive to repair electric control gear.

 

[Snow1964]

Not sure I see how 30-year-old electric stock is unacceptable for London commuter routes, but 35 to 40 year old diesel stock is fine for Leeds and Manchester.

My understanding is that electric stock is generally viable to be kept in service for longer anyway as there isn't an engine effectively vibrating the thing to pieces, plus with diesel there are emissions standards worry about, with electric that of course isn't an issue.

This is more a financing question than physical condition.

Prior to pandemic (was it really 2 years ago this week, first lockdown imposed) London commuting was seen as strong and this allowed 2 massive new electric fleets to be easily financed (Anglia class 720 and 745, and South West class 701)

To best of my knowledge, no one up North has ever offered to introduce 700+ vehicles, and therefore will not be as attractive to a financing company as someone wanting a few dozen vehicles. It takes about the same amount of legal, administrative, contract negotiations etc regardless of size of fleet.

It seemed as though the financing returns on the jumbo sized fleets caused a step change in the economics, where standardisation and energy efficiency and attractiveness killed off any alternatives of refurbishing, patching up, updating older trains.

Of course a logical outcome is the 30 year old cast offs could have been used to replace the older trains for another decade, what used to be known as cascading. But there is a lack of suitable electrified lines for them to be used (and could argue a lack of joined up thinking in fragmented privatised railway), so have got silly situation where mid 1980s 15x diesel units are staying longer than previous DMU generation did.

But this is not 100% new, the 1987 asbestos deadline resulted in newer trains departing before older ones. If you intend to keep a 25-30 year old train in service for another 10-15 years, you need to spend serious money upgrading (which is a capital investmen), if you have a 35+ year old train you just patch it up (which is charged to routine maintenance) knowing it will probably get replaced in few years.

 

[py_megapixel]

I'm definitely not arguing about the first part - we're in the same state down here. However early 90s electric stock does have what is by now ancient, obsolete & quite possibly extremely expensive to repair electric control gear.

The BREL-built Networkers have had such equipment replaced with modern stuff from Hitachi anyway.

This is more a financing question than physical condition.

Prior to pandemic (was it really 2 years ago this week, first lockdown imposed) London commuting was seen as strong and this allowed 2 massive new electric fleets to be easily financed (Anglia class 720 and 745, and South West class 701)

To best of my knowledge, no one up North has ever offered to introduce 700+ vehicles, and therefore will not be as attractive to a financing company as someone wanting a few dozen vehicles. It takes about the same amount of legal, administrative, contract negotiations etc regardless of size of fleet.

It seemed as though the financing returns on the jumbo sized fleets caused a step change in the economics, where standardisation and energy efficiency and attractiveness killed off any alternatives of refurbishing, patching up, updating older trains.

For Northern, an order for a like-for-like replacement of the Sprinters and the Turbostars (as they are a microfleet of units which there is plenty of demand for at other TOCs so no reason to keep them unnecessarily) would be approaching 330 vehicles. Is that really too small to be financially viable?

Of course a logical outcome is the 30 year old cast offs could have been used to replace the older trains for another decade, what used to be known as cascading. But there is a lack of suitable electrified lines for them to be used (and could argue a lack of joined up thinking in fragmented privatised railway), so have got silly situation where mid 1980s 15x diesel units are staying longer than previous DMU generation did.

I am a bit confused about what you mean here. There aren't any 30 year old cast-offs that I can think of that would be suitable for Northern even if all their lines magically gained wires tomorrow.

 

[43096]

I am a bit confused about what you mean here. There aren't any 30 year old cast-offs that I can think of that would be suitable for Northern even if all their lines magically gained wires tomorrow.

Class 321/322 from Anglia are the obvious ones.

 

[Mikey C]

But this is not 100% new, the 1987 asbestos deadline resulted in newer trains departing before older ones. If you intend to keep a 25-30 year old train in service for another 10-15 years, you need to spend serious money upgrading (which is a capital investmen), if you have a 35+ year old train you just patch it up (which is charged to routine maintenance) knowing it will probably get replaced in few years.

The "banning" of slam door trains meant that classes like the 312 had a shortened life also

 

[nw1]

How is it unacceptable to have thirty year old stock? There are some strong views against Networkers here but they still do their job well. They still feel sufficiently modern. Their predecessors didn't when they were retired.

And they aren't even 30 yet, I don't think. I remember seeing a 1993 documentary on NSE on YouTube (I think) which showed the SE suburban routes still dominated by EPBs, so clearly many Networkers were introduced after that.

EPBs lasted in some cases from 1951-1995. So Networkers are not past their sell-by date yet. It's wasteful to replace trains before their time.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 20 Mar 2022 ==

The "banning" of slam door trains meant that classes like the 312 had a shortened life also

Yes, indeed - remember the 312 was actually only marginally older than the 313, and the newest 312s newer than the oldest 313s. If slam-doors had continued to be allowed, the 312s would have certainly lasted well into the 2010s.

 

[Snow1964]

For Northern, an order for a like-for-like replacement of the Sprinters and the Turbostars (as they are a microfleet of units which there is plenty of demand for at other TOCs so no reason to keep them unnecessarily) would be approaching 330 vehicles. Is that really too small to be financially viable?

With 500-800 vehicles you have all the big banks interested in lending, and are prepared to be very competitive and even share the financing (as in part of a consortium of lenders)

330 vehicles should get somewhere, but is not one big fleet so might not attract as much competitive lending enthusiasm, and the total value is unlikely to interest a consortium of lenders, which means stuck with a single financier (and one company effectively takes all the residual risk which reduces its attractiveness)

Might sound tough, but that’s the way commercial funding operates, no one wants potential bad debts or residual risk, so deal has to stack up and look better than lending to something else.

With the mega fleets there is (or was before pandemic) negligible residual risk, as very unlikely someone (and that includes future operators in next few years) will just send back the fleet and replace it. It is simply too big and would leave a giant hole in services if anyone attempted it. Nearer 300 vehicles and that risk is much higher, especially if a proportion might become surplus due to an electrification scheme within next 5-20 years. If you think about it let’s say Northern ordered 165 diesel and 165 electric vehicles (for your 330), risk that in 5-15 years a fair chunk of the diesels might be returned and replaced by electric trains. Basically deal is not future proof over its lifetime.

So stuck with the situation that financing a replacement for the 15x fleet is harder than replacing big fleets like 321 or 455s. Now if GBR led a consortium of Operators to replace all the sprinter fleet as one deal you move the financing goalposts, but without a critical volume you don’t get the step change into low risk financing.