Replacement 20m DMUs - do we really need them and if so how many?

[AlastairFraser]

The best solution is to improve the roads/buses, rather than throw money at a special edition tram train for a rural branch! There can't be "a lot of" traffic on a line that doesn't even have double figures trips a day, in a 150 - between them the two stations don't get 50,000 passengers a year.
Bere Alston is only a mile away if they opened the viaduct to walking and cycling (it would probably attract more tourists as a walkway than a railway!)

The Caernarfon bypass was £22 million a mile to build.
Any single carriageway A road that you'd need to improve journey times in the area is min. £15 million a mile.
You'd need around 5 miles of new A road to bring journey times to ones comparable to the train for Calstock and the Gunnislake villages.
And there is a National Trust property west of Calstock to avoid.
That's £75 million, plus you would have to upgrade the A388 too to deal with the increased AADT/traffic volume on that road.

Whereas, a Stadler Citylink costs around £7 million per unit, adjusted for inflation and that's the dual diesel/electric version - https://www.railjournal.com/fleet/mav-start-receives-first-stadler-citylink-tram-trains/.
6 units would be a generous allocation for this branch and that would cost you £42 million, plus a new maintenance shed and contract, about £60 million all in.

It makes no sense to close any part of it, indeed you might induce more railheading at Bere Alston from Tavistock and help the business case for reopening to Okehampton in stages.

 

[Meerkat]

The Caernarfon bypass was £22 million a mile to build.
Any single carriageway A road that you'd need to improve journey times in the area is min. £15 million a mile.
You'd need around 5 miles of new A road to bring journey times to ones comparable to the train for Calstock and the Gunnislake villages.
And there is a National Trust property west of Calstock to avoid.
That's £75 million, plus you would have to upgrade the A388 too to deal with the increased AADT/traffic volume on that road.

Whereas, a Stadler Citylink costs around £7 million per unit, adjusted for inflation and that's the dual diesel/electric version - https://www.railjournal.com/fleet/mav-start-receives-first-stadler-citylink-tram-trains/.
6 units would be a generous allocation for this branch and that would cost you £42 million, plus a new maintenance shed and contract, about £60 million all in.

It makes no sense to close any part of it, indeed you might induce more railheading at Bere Alston from Tavistock and help the business case for reopening to Okehampton in stages.

Who said anything about A road? Gunnislake is already on an A-road!
Calstock can bike it over the viaduct to Bere Alston.
Extend to Tavistock and the case to close Gunnislake rather than throw money at it grows even more.
Keep these lines open and ambling along, but as soon as new stock or other large expense comes due then its time to take a really good look at the value. If it can be served on the marginal cost of a fleet you are buying anyway that improves the retention case, but buying a specialist fleet for one very minor line is a waste of taxpayers money.

 

[Trainbike46]

Who said anything about A road? Gunnislake is already on an A-road!
Calstock can bike it over the viaduct to Bere Alston.
Extend to Tavistock and the case to close Gunnislake rather than throw money at it grows even more.
Keep these lines open and ambling along, but as soon as new stock or other large expense comes due then its time to take a really good look at the value. If it can be served on the marginal cost of a fleet you are buying anyway that improves the retention case, but buying a specialist fleet for one very minor line is a waste of taxpayers money.

it really isn't.

For starters it wouldn't necessarily have to be a specialist fleet to begin with, fleets that would fit over this line have in fact been bought for use on lines that have no such restriction, suggesting the premium is negligible. For example, the 755s replaced 170s, 156s, 153s and MarkII+37s.

I think GWR should prepare for a tender to replace the branch line fleet across the franchise and ask for BEMUs/bimodes that fit the most restrictive branch lines with level boarding, probably including both 2 and 4 car variants, possibly with 3-coach ones if there are lines where a 4-car wouldn't fit but a 3-car would. I suspect it wouldn't end up being more expensive than a tender with all the same requirements, but asking for 23m/24m cars

 

[Doctor Fegg]

The best solution is to improve the roads/buses, rather than throw money at a special edition tram train for a rural branch!

Ah, this is one of those irregular verbs. I improve; you throw money at; he has been hauled in front of the Public Accounts Committee.

 

[Meerkat]

it really isn't.

For starters it wouldn't necessarily have to be a specialist fleet to begin with, fleets that would fit over this line have in fact been bought for use on lines that have no such restriction, suggesting the premium is negligible. For example, the 755s replaced 170s, 156s, 153s and MarkII+37s.

I think GWR should prepare for a tender to replace the branch line fleet across the franchise and ask for BEMUs/bimodes that fit the most restrictive branch lines with level boarding, probably including both 2 and 4 car variants, possibly with 3-coach ones if there are lines where a 4-car wouldn't fit but a 3-car would. I suspect it wouldn't end up being more expensive than a tender with all the same requirements, but asking for 23m/24m cars

Your alternative to a specialised fleet is to corrupt the spec for the whole region to suit an outlier.
Fair enough if the cost and compromises are very minimal, but if they aren't then its a poor use of taxpayer funds.
This being why I am interested in whether anywhere else needs 20m units, and how large the advantages of longer stock are.

 

[AlastairFraser]

Who said anything about A road? Gunnislake is already on an A-road!
Calstock can bike it over the viaduct to Bere Alston.
Extend to Tavistock and the case to close Gunnislake rather than throw money at it grows even more.
Keep these lines open and ambling along, but as soon as new stock or other large expense comes due then its time to take a really good look at the value. If it can be served on the marginal cost of a fleet you are buying anyway that improves the retention case, but buying a specialist fleet for one very minor line is a waste of taxpayers money.

A rubbish quality A road that wasn't considered satisfactory to run bus services on by the 60s closure committees.
You'd need a bypass of some description to make it acceptable.
Calstock has significant tourist traffic to Cotehele and the Arts Centre- a large percentage of visitors are unlikely to be able to walk or cycle to Bere Alston, given the demographic breakdown of visitors to these attractions.

Extending to Tavistock would cost more than buying the 6 Citylinks and a new maintenance shed.
Plus you get the option with the Citylinks to extend cheaply to a terminus at Marsh Mills to serve eastern Plymouth if you wanted.
There's no reason for it to be a micro fleet anyway - Looe and St Ives would be more suitably served by these vehicles too.

 

[Bletchleyite]

Your alternative to a specialised fleet is to corrupt the spec for the whole region to suit an outlier.
Fair enough if the cost and compromises are very minimal, but if they aren't then its a poor use of taxpayer funds.
This being why I am interested in whether anywhere else needs 20m units, and how large the advantages of longer stock are.

Aren't we talking about one line here (where SDO would work fine) i.e. Looe? I'm not convinced it's impossible to make a 24m unit that can get round the Calstock curve, it just requires thought on the bogie centres and the length and taper of the body and coupling/gangway.

I would agree that moving the line to serve Tavistock instead would bring more value, though.

 

[Trainbike46]

Your alternative to a specialised fleet is to corrupt the spec for the whole region to suit an outlier.
Fair enough if the cost and compromises are very minimal, but if they aren't then its a poor use of taxpayer funds.
This being why I am interested in whether anywhere else needs 20m units, and how large the advantages of longer stock are.

My understanding is that longer (23/24/26m) stock is that it is slightly higher capacity.

The existence of recently procured shorter car stock on lines that don't strictly require it, proves that the trade-off isn't massive.

Recently procured examples are the classes 231/755/756 for self-powered units and class 745 for EMUs, which run on lines that either currently or recently had 23/24m stock (in particular, the 720s and the the 156s and 170s).

Aren't we talking about one line here (where SDO would work fine) i.e. Looe? I'm not convinced it's impossible to make a 24m unit that can get round the Calstock curve, it just requires thought on the bogie centres and the length and taper of the body and coupling/gangway.

that is also an option, if it can be made to work for an acceptable cost

 

[Bletchleyite]

that is also an option, if it can be made to work for an acceptable cost

It's worth looking at what was done to get 26m vehicles to work on UK lines with the 80x. Bogie centres much closer together than standard RIC 26.4m vehicles to prevent the middle whacking curved platforms, and heavily tapered ends (compared to the completely square ends of the CAF 24m units) and long gangways/couplings to make the longer throw less of an issue.

I can't see any reason that wouldn't work for a Westcountry 24m unit which could take the same curves as a 20m unit, and it wouldn't harm its utility elsewhere other than maybe meaning you'd lose a couple of seats to the narrow end bit.

 

[Trainbike46]

It's worth looking at what was done to get 26m vehicles to work on UK lines with the 80x. Bogie centres much closer together than standard RIC 26.4m vehicles to prevent the middle whacking curved platforms, and heavily tapered ends (compared to the completely square ends of the CAF 24m units) and long gangways/couplings to make the longer throw less of an issue.

I can't see any reason that wouldn't work for a Westcountry 24m unit which could take the same curves as a 20m unit, and it wouldn't harm its utility elsewhere other than maybe meaning you'd lose a couple of seats to the narrow end bit.

yes, as a general rule I would try writing the spec as general as possible, so put in the requirements for fitting the most restrictive route, and leave it up to the manufacturers whether they meet it with 20ish metre stock, or with an adapted shape as you describe above (even if only to avoid accidentally writing something that could only be made by one or two manufacturers!)

you'd probably put the toilet in the end bit anyway, and even if you lose say 4 seats per car relative to other 23/24m stock that isn't really a problem

 

[Meerkat]

A rubbish quality A road that wasn't considered satisfactory to run bus services on by the 60s closure committees.
You'd need a bypass of some description to make it acceptable.
Calstock has significant tourist traffic to Cotehele and the Arts Centre- a large percentage of visitors are unlikely to be able to walk or cycle to Bere Alston, given the demographic breakdown of visitors to these attractions.

The A road has a Tavistock to Callington bus service along it.
How do they get to Cotehele from the station if they can't walk? I reckon walking over the viaduct from Bere to Calstock would bring in more tourists than the train.

 

[dgl]

Going from another forum if the Greenford battery trial is a success then there is the potential for some of the other GWR branches to get trains with the same tech (not necessarily D78's) as GWR now own the charging tech used in the battery 230, so it would seem that is the current short DMU solution, can't be having new regional/local DMU's down south anytime soon.

 

[Meerkat]

Going from another forum if the Greenford battery trial is a success then there is the potential for some of the other GWR branches to get trains with the same tech (not necessarily D78's) as GWR now own the charging tech used in the battery 230, so it would seem that is the current short DMU solution, can't be having new regional/local DMU's down south anytime soon.

That still comes back to the question of whether enough lines absolutely need 20m units or GWR could have a consistent fleet of longer units.

 

[Bletchleyite]

That still comes back to the question of whether enough lines absolutely need 20m units or GWR could have a consistent fleet of longer units.

The 230 is a technology trial, not a plan to build more 230s. If successful it'll be fitted to new units I'd think.

 

[dgl]

The 230 is a technology trial, not a plan to build more 230s. If successful it'll be fitted to new units I'd think.

New units in the South West?, it'll probably be spare EMU's noting that 350's are 20M.

 

[AlastairFraser]

The A road has a Tavistock to Callington bus service along it.
How do they get to Cotehele from the station if they can't walk? I reckon walking over the viaduct from Bere to Calstock would bring in more tourists than the train.

The bus takes 50 mins just to do the 13 miles between Tavistock and Callington via the villages. At best you're looking at around that or even more the whole way into Plymouth from Calstock/Gunnislake.
It's not viable.
It's 1.5 miles in a taxi, as opposed to 3 or 4 each way from Callington.
There's loads of disused viaducts nearby, so no chance.

 

[Meerkat]

The bus takes 50 mins just to do the 13 miles between Tavistock and Callington via the villages. At best you're looking at around that or even more the whole way into Plymouth from Calstock/Gunnislake.
It's not viable.
It's 1.5 miles in a taxi, as opposed to 3 or 4 each way from Callington.
There's loads of disused viaducts nearby, so no chance.

Google has 69mins from Gunnislake into Plymouth. That's viable, more viable than bending a railway's stock policy around one little part of a branch line (IF it came to that, IF Gunnislake was the outlier, the only one that needed 20m units)
There are vast numbers of villages the size of Calstock that have no public transport - what is so special about this one?
I just want money spent on the railway on what railways are good at - bulk freight, trunk intermodal, large scale passenger and metro systems.