A massive increase. But its needed IMO especially seeing how busy some services are recently and reading some of the comments on twitter. Passengers deserve a far better service than currently.
id expect to see at least 3/4 cars on the other services ie 2 2 car or 1 3 car minimum on that route hopefully
The plan is (or at least was) for all Swansea to Manchester to be five car, with the two car unit continuing on into West Wales
It is indeed more than wishful thinking, but certain posters seem to get a kick out of complaining even before these sets have entered service.
Looking at the numbers on this thread, it looks to be some of the originals and some of the more recent acquisitions.
I'm wondering about if it's going to be a literal "every third service" or an average of 1 in 3. It's not like there's only one busy service in the peaks after all.
In which case some services could see a reduction from 3 to 2 cars. A good proportion of the time a 3 car 175 ends up going to Milford Haven. Unless they are planning to increase the overall amount of services to 2 per hour between Swansea and Carmarthen which could balance things out. Pre Covid the service was 1.5 tph. To be fair whenever Ive caught a train West of Swansea its rarely been busy and certainly never full and standing like it is many times between Swansea and Cardiff. Even as a 2 car (not counting peak Summer trips to Tenby or when there are events on in Cardiff) the west of Swansea trains seem to cope mostly fine.
Arriva Crewe only do the 153 maintenance currently due to lack of capacity for Canton to do it. Under the new fleet Canton won't be maintaining the Caf Tram fleets as that will be done at Taffs Well, which effectively takes away all of the current 150 maintenance requirements done at Canton currently.
My (utterly uninformed) expectation is that they'll aim to do a morning, lunch, and evening service each way, like Cardiff-Holyhead, with 197s operating the rest. After all, the key plus that the MkIVs offer above a 3+2 197 is the kitchen for improved catering.
I've no doubt they'll be allocated to Canton, at least on paper. I'm just not sure of how often they'll need to actually visit the place.
Surely at least part of the reason for 153 maintenance in Crewe is that they need to go on a depot every few days anyway and that most of them end up spending several days in the North of the network? It's likely in the future they'll still be visiting Crewe regularly, but in the South they may well not have any booked work that takes them any closer to Cardiff than Swansea.
There's currently 12 departures a day from Manchester to Swansea (plus 3 to Cardiff and a final 2 to Shrewsbury, one of which has an onwards connection to Cardiff). A 3 times daily service doesn't add up to the "1 in 3" that's being quoted, or match up to the level of traincrew training that's being undertaken to support this service.
Three-hourly would probably end up covering those three mealtime catering opportunities. Counting three-hourly (at some intermediate station) from 8am, 11am, 2pm, and 5pm, you'd be hitting three mealtimes right off the bat.
Fair point regarding the 3 hourly - and it does work nicely with a 9 hour return trip. I wasn't thinking about stepping back sets however - more that there might be 2 sets following each other an hour apart followed by a 3rd (and possibly 4th if they're brave enough to diagram 6 from 7 every day) 4 or 5 hours later.
The problem is, with the vast majority of the 158s captive to the Cambrian lines, there is very limited scope for using them anywhere else. I do believe we may well see some long standing unit allocations on other routes change as the impact of the 197s starts to be felt, I just think it's more likely to be other units rather than 158s that end up getting shuffled.
I'd have thought that putting 197s on the Pwllheli line initially would be the easiest way to introduce them on ERTMS routes. Only three units required and a good chunk of the trains are covered by Pwllheli crew. The pairs of 158s would then continue to Aberystwyth as four car trains. As more 197s become available you switch pairs of 158s to pairs of 197s. The only fly in the ointment is that trains up from Aber switch to a down Holyhead at Birmingham. And they split/join at Shrewsbury. Clearly there will be several diagram re-writes during the transition period.
Regarding Pwllheli, I only meant during the transition period until everything is 197s. The only option is to switch the whole operation from 158s to 197s over a weekend.
Probably not - as discussed earlier it's believed that no 197s have made it to or from Cardiff yet.
Thanks for that, in further investigation it looks like it could be a 175 having to transfer from Canton up to form the 1631 Manchester to Milford Haven due to a rolling stock shortage.
Possibly - assuming either of those has the capacity to take on extra work, and the time can be found to train TFW drivers on those depots.
That is one of the great mysteries at the moment - presumably there's some kind of plan in place for the interworking (which is why units some posters I'm not worried about their not being enough ERTMS fitted units for the Cambrian) but it hasn't been revealed yet.
Almost - it's the unit from 1W60 1100 Carmarthen - Manchester Piccadilly. It ran ECS between Cardiff and Crewe owing to no guard being available.
Great thanks for that.
www.railforums.co.uk
As I understand it its an infrastructure issue that needs to be resolved down the Pwllheli line somewhere that needs to be resolved before 197s enter service rather than simplifying diagrams or training. If there is much of a delay in introduction it could even render the split redundant before it starts if the issue is sorted (iirc it's a level crossing but not sure where or what) before the units enter service
No plans have been announced yet so it's all speculation.
There's going to be 21 X 2 car 197s ERTMS equipped units for the cambrian services out of the fleet of 77 x 197s, the remaining 197s will have the wiring to fit ERTMS in the future I've been told. The plan is to make them future proof for future ertms expansion, this woukd ensble TFW to increase the cambrian fleet in the future.
Could it be the conversion of the TMO's at Barmouth and Portmadoc?
Its ashame the 158s couldnt do heart of wales, they are good
The 158s are better suited to limited stop intercity type services, the 197s seem to be a jack of all trades type units. Tfw plan to run to run 197s on inter City and both rural services!
I wonder what differences there are, if any for the installation of the Cambrian ERTMS hardware, and that being fitted into other cabs for the rollout of ETCS. AIUI The Great Northern as far as Peterborough is the first big ETCS installation, so presume 8xx, 717 and 387 were built with it.
