Class 230 units training/introduction on the Borderlands line: updates

[Pacef8]

Deeside industrial estate for the wools amongst us. Woodchurch for arrowe park hospital although its not near enough for most to walk.

 

[Xenophon PCDGS]

Deeside industrial estate for the wools amongst us. Woodchurch for arrowe park hospital although its not near enough for most to walk.

What opening dates are proposed for these two new stations?

 

[DLAYKEGER]

What opening dates are proposed for these two new stations?

Parcffordd Glannau Dyfrdwy (Deeside Parkway Station) is much more advanced - designs done, but funding via levelling up funding turned down, with resubmission expected. Woodchurch is aspirational from Merseytravel, reckon years off

 

[Krokodil]

would it be easier to do that then just adding a new terminating platform at Bidston to make the line independent to the level of the St Ives branch.
Even with going through to Birkenhead North then there's two sets of trains they could be delayed by

No one wants to go to Bidston. Merseyrail don't run Ellesmere Port trains as a shuttle just in case they might delay those from Chester when crossing the junction at Hooton, no they go through to Liverpool because that's where people want to go. The only reason that the Borderlands service was cut back to Bidston was that it allowed BR to use two units on the service instead of three (with proportionate cuts to traincrew diagrams too). Birkenhead North would need another unit but it would allow enough slack to be built into the schedule that junction conflicts wouldn't be a concern. The future though is 777s running through into the loop.

My point about the Networker doors was to illustrate that there were teething problems after those trains entered passenger service, but the teething problems could have been anything - doors, lights, seats or anything. They were not meant to be a direct comparison with the slow doors on the 230s.

Who can forget the first day of IET operation at GWR?

 

[Meerkat]

Testing of new stock doesn't take place with a train fully loaded with passengers, and faults often only become apparent after several weeks or months of regular use in service and during a variety of weather conditions and so on. You can't really recreate those conditions during testing, simple as that.

For example, testing of the Marston Vale Class 230s took place at night for mileage accumulation and in my personal experience suffered very few problems during testing, yet they weren't particularly reliable once they entered service, by all accounts.

Faults seem to be occurring immediately on contact with live service.
If its a door thing then you set up a rig to smash door button and opening cycles repeatedly and lean on/block/pull at the doors - like car companies do.
Then you drag some people in off the street and shuttle them up and down for a day to see how people do things differently from how the designers intend.

 

[Bertie the bus]

Seems pretty similar to the 484 introduction so far, significant issues with timekeeping and faults in the first few days but signs of promise too - we're already seeing proof that these *can* keep to time, and with more experience among traincrew timekeeping should only get better.

We're not really seeing that they can because they are not. Keeping to the timetable is black and white - it either can/does or it can't/doesn't. Running late but not as late as it did on its first day is still a failure.

 

[L401CJF]

We're not really seeing that they can because they are not. Keeping to the timetable is black and white - it either can/does or it can't/doesn't. Running late but not as late as it did on its first day is still a failure.

I've been using this line for over 20 years, during that time its been worked by 142s, 153s, 150s, and I can still count on one hand how many times its ran to time when ive used it. I used to commute from Neston for around a year, and every day without fail it was late, anything ranging from 2 to 15 minutes. It doesn't seem that long ago they were always turning back short at Shotton due to late running and skipping the wirral section.

Looking at the running yesterday it seemed to be following the usual pattern of lateness for this line rather than the excessive delays seen in the previous days.

Rather than blaming the 230s - which will still have cautious crew getting used to the units, a lot of the blame still lies with the timetable itself.

 

[12LDA28C]

Faults seem to be occurring immediately on contact with live service.
If its a door thing then you set up a rig to smash door button and opening cycles repeatedly and lean on/block/pull at the doors - like car companies do.
Then you drag some people in off the street and shuttle them up and down for a day to see how people do things differently from how the designers intend.

Really? 'Drag some people off the street'? How would that work exactly? And you think one day's trial would be sufficient?

Not sure you can really compare a small company with limited staff and finances like VivaRail with a car manufacturer with a huge R&D department backed up by thousands of staff and virtually unlimited funds.

 

[Meerkat]

Really? 'Drag some people off the street'? How would that work exactly? And you think one day's trial would be sufficient?

Not sure you can really compare a small company with limited staff and finances like VivaRail with a car manufacturer with a huge R&D department backed up by thousands of staff and virtually unlimited funds.

The Lizzie and DART both had days of public testing.
If the trains are falling over as soon as they meet the public then it seems likely that packing the train out and getting them all in and out at every stop would reveal some issues - especially of the 'oh, why are they doing that? We didn't design it for them to do that!' type
Are there regulatory issues to prevent them doing it on the various test tracks if there isn't space to do it during early testing? A lot of the public interaction stuff wouldn't even need to run - just have a train and a platform, and whilst you would need the whole train to test the doors in action you wouldn't need every coach to be full of people.

 

[zwk500]

The Lizzie and DART both had days of public testing.

On closed railways

If the trains are falling over as soon as they meet the public then it seems likely that packing the train out and getting them all in and out at every stop would reveal some issues - especially of the 'oh, why are they doing that? We didn't design it for them to do that!' type

You still haven't explained how you'd fund this.

Are there regulatory issues to prevent them doing it on the various test tracks if there isn't space to do it during early testing? A lot of the public interaction stuff wouldn't even need to run - just have a train and a platform, and whilst you would need the whole train to test the doors in action you wouldn't need every coach to be full of people.

I can't see any reason why it wouldn't be possible to invite 100 people up to Old Dalby or a rail-connected heritage railway and get them to simulate a number of round trips. However invited guests will likely be rail-interested people (who else would volunteer to test a train to breaking point?) and so not representative of full passenger service.

 

[CaergwrleKen]

Second compete failure of the week today, what a shambles.

 

[L401CJF]

Second compete failure of the week today, what a shambles.

A friend of mine was travelling on it. He said there was a dragging brake and they needed a line block to inspect the train. Declared a failure and everybody put on a bus.

 

[Chris125]

We're not really seeing that they can because they are not. Keeping to the timetable is black and white - it either can/does or it can't/doesn't. Running late but not as late as it did on its first day is still a failure.

They can because they have, at least once due to an instructor with more experience driving - the issue is consistency and reliability which should improve with time.

As for timekeeping being 'black or white' I couldn't disagree more - perfect performance is impossible and there are always tradeoffs with timetable padding, journey time, frequency etc. Clearly timekeeping needs to improve but it's never going to be brilliant with the current timetable and the 150s sometimes struggled too AIUI.

 

[Xenophon PCDGS]

Is it beyond the realms of knowledge of what this particular line has to allow for in order to produce a timetable that will allow for reality?

 

[zwk500]

Is it beyond the realms of knowledge of what this particular line has to allow for in order to produce a timetable that will allow for reality?

From what I can see on a WTT schedule you have an end-to-end time of 58 minutes: https://www.realtimetrains.co.uk/service/gb-nr:V15255/2023-04-07/detailed

All dwells are 30 seconds only apart from Wrexham General which is 90 seconds. There appears to be no engineering, pathing or performance allowance, so all the slack would be in the turnrounds and any padding in the SRTs which isn't normally much. The Working turnround at Bidston is booked for 3 minutes. At the moment the timings are still for a Sprinter type, but from what has been said upthread apparently this wasn't always a reliable timekeeper either.

In order to make the service a bit more reliable you need either to drop stops and increase the turnround time or increase linespeeds/acceleration to lower runtimes. Or, if you were prepared to accept another unit into the cycle, then lengthen some of the dwells and SRTs to give the train some breathing room.

 

[CaergwrleKen]

Is it beyond the realms of knowledge of what this particular line has to allow for in order to produce a timetable that will allow for reality?

Some ‘new’ trains and raising the line speed would be a good start. Much has been said about this particular route over the years, if the people in charge of running it have not grasped this by now then there is no hope for it in the near future.

 

[zwk500]

Some ‘new’ trains and raising the line speed would be a good start.

It is worth noting the longest distance between any 2 stops on this service is 5 miles. Acceleration not top speed would serve you better. Also, given the number of stops and overall journey length Door speed really would be a massive factor here.

Much has been said about this particular route over the years, if the people in charge of running it have not grasped this by now then there is no hope for it in the near future.

Nationally there are bigger fish to fry, sorry to say.

 

[pokemonsuper9]

It's notable how the faster acceleration but slower doors are leading to somewhat similar performance to the sprinters, I would be interested to see how a 197 does doing this route.

 

[Xenophon PCDGS]

It's notable how the faster acceleration but slower doors are leading to somewhat similar performance to the sprinters, I would be interested to see how a 197 does doing this route.

As I have often remarked upon past threads, the door problem was encountered on the Vivarail units that once ran on the Marston Vale Line and this matter would have been known to Transport for Wales.

 

[D365]

As I have often remarked upon past threads, the door problem was encountered on the Vivarail units that once ran on the Marston Vale Line and this matter would have been known to Transport for Wales.

One can only assume that, for whatever reason, it was decided not to resolve this issue.

 

[Bertie the bus]

As for timekeeping being 'black or white' I couldn't disagree more - perfect performance is impossible and there are always tradeoffs with timetable padding, journey time, frequency etc. Clearly timekeeping needs to improve but it's never going to be brilliant with the current timetable and the 150s sometimes struggled too AIUI.

Disagree all you like but you are wrong. It is either on time or it isn't. It can either keep to time or it can't.

If it is never going to be brilliant with the current timetable then it is clearly an unsuitable train and should never have been ordered.

Some people's attempts at arguing that the train is great but everything else is wrong is bizarre.

 

[Dai Corner]

As I have often remarked upon past threads, the door problem was encountered on the Vivarail units that once ran on the Marston Vale Line and this matter would have been known to Transport for Wales.

I have a feeling the slow doors were one reason the Underground got rid of them well before they

 

[pwr]

Disagree all you like but you are wrong. It is either on time or it isn't. It can either keep to time or it can't.

There was an article in Railway Gazette yesterday which quoted 'industry insiders' as stating "timing runs on the Borderlands Line had shown that the Class 230s can keep to sectional running times". It went on to quote a TfW source ‘the torque from these sets is high and instant, acceleration is quite amazing, but the drivers need to be confident and allow the traction control to do its stuff. Most drivers have only been used to diesel sets, the Class 230s have diesel engines but they perform like an electric train and it will take time for the drivers to get used to driving in a different way.’

I think I would be more concerned about the various faults, 008 was withdrawn before it even got going, and now if 010 has some brake issue ... TfW have already said that they'll use 197s for a limited stop service on this route as the 230s aren't 'robust' enough to handle it, so I have to wonder what the point of the 230s is.

 

[Dstock7080]

I have a feeling the slow doors were one reason the Underground got rid of them well before they

The doors worked well in LU service, the trains were great for clearing crowds, much better than their predecessors. The door speed was certainly faster and the VivaRail modification removes the damper which prevented slamming.
Slow doors wasn’t the reason LU withdrew them after 37 years service.

 

[shredder1]

Are the 230s running on saturdays?

 

[pokemonsuper9]

Are the 230s running on saturdays?

It might not be up to date, but rtt shows a full train service, which may well be 230s

Realtime Trains | Departures from Bidston all day on 08/04/2023

Train information at Bidston all day on 08/04/2023. From Realtime Trains, an independent source of train running info for Great Britain.

www.realtimetrains.co.uk

 

[norbitonflyer]

The doors worked well in LU service, the trains were great for clearing crowds, much better than their predecessors. The door speed was certainly faster and the VivaRail modification removes the damper which prevented slamming.
Slow doors wasn’t the reason LU withdrew them after 37 years service.

The doors may have bveen faster, but being single doors in 3/4 width apertures, they took longer to close than the old double doors because they had further to go. And because the apertures were smaller, it took longer for boarding and alighting.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 6 Apr 2023 ==

From what I can see on a WTT schedule you have an end-to-end time of 58 minutes: https://www.realtimetrains.co.uk/service/gb-nr:V15255/2023-04-07/detailed

It may be almost self contained (the only potential conflict with another passenger service is at Bidston), but 58 minutes end to end with a scheduled 2-hour round trip makes for layovers of just two minutes at each end - barely enough time to walk from one cab to the other (these are 3-car units!), let alone shut down one cab and set up the other, deal with any issues that have developed en route, or attend to any personal needs. Recovery time? Forget it.

Stepping back would need an extra driver (two if it's done at both ends) and a lot of standing around.
But TfW have ordered five units. A hourly schedule could be maintained using three of them, with a 32 minute layover at each end - now, you can't have a unit occupying the platform at Bidston for half the time, but there is a bay at Birkenhead North, only 2 or 3 minutes away, and you would still have a layover of 20 minutes or so.

Five units would be enough to run a half-hourly service with a 13 minute layover at Birkenhead North and Wrexham Central (as long as something was available to provide maintenance cover - (there are three units sitting at Bletchley doing nothing.......)

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 6 Apr 2023 ==

Are the 230s running on saturdays?

At tghe moment it seems they're not running on weekdays - at least not very far into the afternoon

 

[shredder1]

It might not be up to date, but rtt shows a full train service, which may well be 230s

Realtime Trains | Departures from Bidston all day on 08/04/2023

Train information at Bidston all day on 08/04/2023. From Realtime Trains, an independent source of train running info for Great Britain.

www.realtimetrains.co.uk

Thank you very much

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 6 Apr 2023 ==

The doors may have bveen faster, but being single doors in 3/4 width apertures, they took longer to close than the old double doors because they had further to go. And because the apertures were smaller, it took longer for boarding and alighting.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 6 Apr 2023 ==


It may be almost self contained (the only potential conflict with another passenger service is at Bidston), but 58 minutes end to end with a scheduled 2-hour round trip makes for layovers of just two minutes at each end - barely enough time to walk from one cab to the other (these are 3-car units!), let alone shut down one cab and set up the other, deal with any issues that have developed en route, or attend to any personal needs. Recovery time? Forget it.

Stepping back would need an extra driver (two if it's done at both ends) and a lot of standing around.
But TfW have ordered five units. A hourly schedule could be maintained using three of them, with a 32 minute layover at each end - now, you can't have a unit occupying the platform at Bidston for half the time, but there is a bay at Birkenhead North, only 2 or 3 minutes away, and you would still have a layover of 20 minutes or so.

Five units would be enough to run a half-hourly service with a 13 minute layover at Birkenhead North and Wrexham Central (as long as something was available to provide maintenance cover - (there are three units sitting at Bletchley doing nothing.......)

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 6 Apr 2023 ==


At tghe moment it seems they're not running on weekdays - at least not very far into the afternoon

OK thank you.

 

[6Gtraincrew]

All cancelled for tomorrow

 

[Chris125]

Disagree all you like but you are wrong. It is either on time or it isn't. It can either keep to time or it can't.

I've already said it can - and has - run to time at least once when driven by someone with more experience!

https://www.realtimetrains.co.uk/service/gb-nr:V15260/2023-04-04/detailed#allox_id=0

If it is never going to be brilliant with the current timetable then it is clearly an unsuitable train and should never have been ordered.

I gather timekeeping wasn't brilliant with the 150s either and 197s will have to skip stops, so let's keep things in perspective - it should improve as traincrews gain experience and will hopefully prove sufficient.

Some people's attempts at arguing that the train is great but everything else is wrong is bizarre.

Some people just think, after four days in passenger service, it's too early to say.