WMR Class 196 Build and Implementation

[H&I]

Just not specified. They could have gone for Stadler Flirts but TfWM or whatever they are called have been pushing for end door units.

The decision not to specify level boarding for these trains means that wheelchair users may have to continue to rely on manual boarding ramps to use these trains for the next 40 years unless there are changes to standards for platform heights. Is it feasible to remedy this problem by modifying an existing coach in these units or adding an additional trailer coach, creating a specific "low-floor" accessible coach or area in the train where wheelchair users could board or alight from?

 

[Elecman]

I believe there are separate staff facilities being built at Bletchley for EWR.

They will be moving into some accomodation on the Bletchley LMD site

 

[childwallblues]

Can anybody inform me which 196 was working the Leamington Spa-Nuneaton line with 003 today please?

 

[bnsf734]

According to Part Time Spotter the other unit was 196009.

Nice to see the trains back on the line after buses last week (ASLEF overtime ban)

 

[SCDR_WMR]

Which was noticed yesterday at Great Malvern when I had to physically lift an old gent down from 196005.
The height gap was simply unsafe, and I'm 6'4" but still had to jump.

You should try getting off a 350 at Wolverton

 

[GWVillager]

Just not specified. They could have gone for Stadler Flirts but TfWM or whatever they are called have been pushing for end door units.

End door units? The 196s are anything but end door.

I completely agree though, the 196s are uniquely bad for accessibility, the awkward 2 part ramps aren't making anyone's lives easier and, anecdotally, I feel like the step up from the platform is much greater on them too.

 

[Energy]

End door units? The 196s are anything but end door.

Sorry, gangway doors!

 

[JonathanH]

Is five 4-car and eight 2-car diagrams pretty much the end game for introduction of these units until such time as there are services on the Camp Hill line, or some units head off to EWR?

 

[GalaxyDog]

With regard to disability access. Having been offduty and having seen my contact working one have to deal with this - it is extremely badly designed. The floor heights are much higher than any other WMR unit sofar and on curved platforms such as at New St and Telford, the gap is insane and has to be seen to be believed. The 196s have to have their own special ramps, so station ramps suitable for 170s, 172s, 350s etc are out of the question.


Worse still, amidst the piss poor implentation of the 196s onto the Shrewsbury and Hereford lines, station staff at Wolverhampton and Birmingham have not been / refuse to be trained on them meaning the conductor onboard has to do the ramps. Grab a coffee, it gets even worse.

The ramps will only work in one pair of doors each side of the train. So on a four car set with 2 doors each side, of the eight doors, only one door can have the disabled ramp fitted properly. They're usually at the end of the train. Which, on the longer-carriages-than-previous units, coupled up to the fact guards can only control the doors from the rear cab [no saloon panels!] means if the disabled carriage is at the driver's end, the guard has to walk all the way forward to nearly the driver's cab, get out the ramp from a tiny access cupboard situated right where the access toilet control buttons are, and then unload the ramp. Oh, and the "bridging plate" is in a separate cupboard, held in place by a very awkward ratchet strapping.

The time lost by having to do what should be a simple, but absolutely vital duty twice [on, then off] is mind numbing. It is as if WMR doesn't want disabled passengers travelling on its shiny new units.

 

[childwallblues]

According to Part Time Spotter the other unit was 196009.

Nice to see the trains back on the line after buses last week (ASLEF overtime ban)

Many thanks for your fast reply.

 

[SCDR_WMR]

With regard to disability access. Having been offduty and having seen my contact working one have to deal with this - it is extremely badly designed. The floor heights are much higher than any other WMR unit sofar and on curved platforms such as at New St and Telford, the gap is insane and has to be seen to be believed. The 196s have to have their own special ramps, so station ramps suitable for 170s, 172s, 350s etc are out of the question.


Worse still, amidst the piss poor implentation of the 196s onto the Shrewsbury and Hereford lines, station staff at Wolverhampton and Birmingham have not been / refuse to be trained on them meaning the conductor onboard has to do the ramps. Grab a coffee, it gets even worse.

The ramps will only work in one pair of doors each side of the train. So on a four car set with 2 doors each side, of the eight doors, only one door can have the disabled ramp fitted properly. They're usually at the end of the train. Which, on the longer-carriages-than-previous units, coupled up to the fact guards can only control the doors from the rear cab [no saloon panels!] means if the disabled carriage is at the driver's end, the guard has to walk all the way forward to nearly the driver's cab, get out the ramp from a tiny access cupboard situated right where the access toilet control buttons are, and then unload the ramp. Oh, and the "bridging plate" is in a separate cupboard, held in place by a very awkward ratchet strapping.

The time lost by having to do what should be a simple, but absolutely vital duty twice [on, then off] is mind numbing. It is as if WMR doesn't want disabled passengers travelling on its shiny new units.

Just so you know, at WMT all traction have their own ramps now and we are not allowed to use generic ramps so you will see at some stations a number of ramps. We also have to use ones with lugs now, and on certain traction (350 as well) can only be used on certain doors.

The 196 is the worst example of it, but this is how it is now.

 

[12LDA28C]

The ramps will only work in one pair of doors each side of the train. So on a four car set with 2 doors each side, of the eight doors, only one door can have the disabled ramp fitted properly. They're usually at the end of the train. Which, on the longer-carriages-than-previous units, coupled up to the fact guards can only control the doors from the rear cab [no saloon panels!] means if the disabled carriage is at the driver's end, the guard has to walk all the way forward to nearly the driver's cab, get out the ramp from a tiny access cupboard situated right where the access toilet control buttons are, and then unload the ramp. Oh, and the "bridging plate" is in a separate cupboard, held in place by a very awkward ratchet strapping.

I haven't seen these units in service but I assume there is only one disabled area with space for wheelchairs on the train, so it's entirely logical that only the associated set of doors will be compatible with fitting the disabled ramp.

 

[GWVillager]

With regard to disability access. Having been offduty and having seen my contact working one have to deal with this - it is extremely badly designed. The floor heights are much higher than any other WMR unit sofar and on curved platforms such as at New St and Telford, the gap is insane and has to be seen to be believed. The 196s have to have their own special ramps, so station ramps suitable for 170s, 172s, 350s etc are out of the question.


Worse still, amidst the piss poor implentation of the 196s onto the Shrewsbury and Hereford lines, station staff at Wolverhampton and Birmingham have not been / refuse to be trained on them meaning the conductor onboard has to do the ramps. Grab a coffee, it gets even worse.

The ramps will only work in one pair of doors each side of the train. So on a four car set with 2 doors each side, of the eight doors, only one door can have the disabled ramp fitted properly. They're usually at the end of the train. Which, on the longer-carriages-than-previous units, coupled up to the fact guards can only control the doors from the rear cab [no saloon panels!] means if the disabled carriage is at the driver's end, the guard has to walk all the way forward to nearly the driver's cab, get out the ramp from a tiny access cupboard situated right where the access toilet control buttons are, and then unload the ramp. Oh, and the "bridging plate" is in a separate cupboard, held in place by a very awkward ratchet strapping.

The time lost by having to do what should be a simple, but absolutely vital duty twice [on, then off] is mind numbing. It is as if WMR doesn't want disabled passengers travelling on its shiny new units.

I knew it was bad, but not that bad. I was fortunate/unfortunate enough to witness a ramp deployment on my first journey on a 196, the guard was clearly struggling and we were delayed by around 10 minutes as a result, made even worse by the fact this was blocking Sandwell & Dudley! I do think it's a bit rich of WMR to use the phrase "Greater Accessibility on every service" as part of their 196 publicity, this is quite misleading.

 

[AJDesiro]

I knew it was bad, but not that bad. I was fortunate/unfortunate enough to witness a ramp deployment on my first journey on a 196, the guard was clearly struggling and we were delayed by around 10 minutes as a result, made even worse by the fact this was blocking Sandwell & Dudley! I do think it's a bit rich of WMR to use the phrase "Greater Accessibility on every service" as part of their 196 publicity, this is quite misleading.

Interestingly, I spoke to a guard who said that control would be more lenient with delays caused as a result of the ramp, which presumably means they acknowledge the stupid design of the Civity platform in that regard.

 

[GalaxyDog]

I haven't seen these units in service but I assume there is only one disabled area with space for wheelchairs on the train, so it's entirely logical that only the associated set of doors will be compatible with fitting the disabled ramp.

Yes, there is only one disabled area - in a rake of four carriages which in itself can cause issues if there's enough buggies and power scooter/wheelchair passengers.

In a way I agree, but I'm used to older units where a)the prongs or lugs could be slit into all steps or b)the older lug free ramps could be used. It meant versatility. If I had a passenger boarding a 170 doing only a couple of stops, they were happy to be loaded into the doorway vestibules, as one remarked to me, "why arse us about having to go all the way down there? I wanna get there on time!" So for short travels, this versatility, simply by having the lug holes in all the steps, could save us a ton of time. [Note: if a passenger was going longer distances, I would and did endeavour to place them in the disabled area for comfort, access to toilet and out of the way of the footfall.] Now a wheelchair/power scooter passenger is a guaranteed delay, which then also incurs more "customer service" time lost having to write an email to the Delays desk explaining the delay. Another bullet-in-foot maneouvre for WMR.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 16 Aug 2023 ==

Interestingly, I spoke to a guard who said that control would be more lenient with delays caused as a result of the ramp, which presumably means they acknowledge the stupid design of the Civity platform in that regard.

Not sure what they meant by being more lenient - guards are almost never ever disciplined or spoken to about delays. We contact delays desk at control, tell them whats happened and thats the end of it. The only fallout is sometimes when delays desk don't file the delay correctly so it ends up going to BUGLE and then a manager contacts us a few days later asking "what was the cause of the delay on [headcode, date]?" Cue the frustration back then, explaining that we had actually done our job on the spot and having to do it again. These days now policy is to email and cc manager in instead of phoning.

 

[GWVillager]

Yes, there is only one disabled area - in a rake of four carriages which in itself can cause issues if there's enough buggies and power scooter/wheelchair passengers.

In a way I agree, but I'm used to older units where a)the prongs or lugs could be slit into all steps or b)the older lug free ramps could be used. It meant versatility. If I had a passenger boarding a 170 doing only a couple of stops, they were happy to be loaded into the doorway vestibules, as one remarked to me, "why arse us about having to go all the way down there? I wanna get there on time!" So for short travels, this versatility, simply by having the lug holes in all the steps, could save us a ton of time. [Note: if a passenger was going longer distances, I would and did endeavour to place them in the disabled area for comfort, access to toilet and out of the way of the footfall.] Now a wheelchair/power scooter passenger is a guaranteed delay, which then also incurs more "customer service" time lost having to write an email to the Delays desk explaining the delay. Another bullet-in-foot maneouvre for WMR.

And they sometimes see use for very heavy luggage. One does think that they could have at least positioned the wheelchair space in the middle of the train, if they had to only have one ramp compatible door.

 

[Class172]

And they sometimes see use for very heavy luggage. One does think that they could have at least positioned the wheelchair space in the middle of the train, if they had to only have one ramp compatible door.

I am inclined to think the underlying reason could be cost. The wheelchair space needs to be co-located with the accessible toilet, which means three designs of carriage are required (DMS/MS/DMSL), since the two centre cars can otherwise be identical. If you moved the wheelchair facilities to a central carriage on the 4-car sets, you would still need them in an end carriage for the 2-car sets, which would necessitate an extra design of carriage (DMS/MS/MSL/DMSL)—this has a cost associated with it. I could be completely wrong but that would be my working theory; of course if you threw enough money at the specification you could have whatever configuration you pleased, but budgets can only go so far.

 

[RailWonderer]

You should try getting off a 350 at Wolverton

Long Buckby would be another one. The amount of track cant I think is the most angled on the network to have platforms by it.

 

[GWVillager]

I am inclined to think the underlying reason could be cost. The wheelchair space needs to be co-located with the accessible toilet, which means three designs of carriage are required (DMS/MS/DMSL), since the two centre cars can otherwise be identical. If you moved the wheelchair facilities to a central carriage on the 4-car sets, you would still need them in an end carriage for the 2-car sets, which would necessitate an extra design of carriage (DMS/MS/MSL/DMSL)—this has a cost associated with it. I could be completely wrong but that would be my working theory; of course if you threw enough money at the specification you could have whatever configuration you pleased, but budgets can only go so far.

Feels like rather stingy cost cutting though, the difference surely couldn't be that great. It just seems like some unusual priorities.

 

[Bevan Price]

Long Bucky would be another one. The amount of track cant I think is the most angled on the network to have platforms by it.

Earlestown (Platforms 4/5) are much worse. There are some almost dangerous gaps between platforms and train doors. (Used by 196's brothers, Classes 195 and 197).

 

[AJDesiro]

I am inclined to think the underlying reason could be cost. The wheelchair space needs to be co-located with the accessible toilet, which means three designs of carriage are required (DMS/MS/DMSL), since the two centre cars can otherwise be identical. If you moved the wheelchair facilities to a central carriage on the 4-car sets, you would still need them in an end carriage for the 2-car sets, which would necessitate an extra design of carriage (DMS/MS/MSL/DMSL)—this has a cost associated with it. I could be completely wrong but that would be my working theory; of course if you threw enough money at the specification you could have whatever configuration you pleased, but budgets can only go so far.

The 196/1s have a MSL (or similar name) already, though it’s for a smaller space saving toilet, presumably they could have plonked the wheelchair space and accessible loo there should they have wanted to.

 

[SCDR_WMR]

Yes, there is only one disabled area - in a rake of four carriages which in itself can cause issues if there's enough buggies and power scooter/wheelchair passengers.]

Not sure what they meant by being more lenient - guards are almost never ever disciplined or spoken to about delays. We contact delays desk at control, tell them whats happened and thats the end of it.

Buggies and pushchairs can go in any vestibule area, and they don't require ramps to boards. Do any trains have more than one dedicated wheelchair accessible area on them (single set only)?

196s were built cheaply to a poor spec. But they are not unworkable, just not ideal.

 

[GalaxyDog]

Feels like rather stingy cost cutting though, the difference surely couldn't be that great. It just seems like some unusual priorities.

The only priorities WMR had when they ordered these was to eliminate the guard and to replace the 170s as cheaply as possible.

 

[L401CJF]

Buggies and pushchairs can go in any vestibule area, and they don't require ramps to boards. Do any trains have more than one dedicated wheelchair accessible area on them (single set only)?

196s were built cheaply to a poor spec. But they are not unworkable, just not ideal.

Merseyrails 507/508 fleet (of all things!) have 2 designated wheelchair accessible areas per unit, 1 at each end of the train aswell as 2 designated bike areas per unit (1 in each end).

Reading the comments regarding ramps on the 196s, are they the same as the 197 where a "bridging plate" mini ramp has to be used aswell as the main ramp?

 

[AJDesiro]

Merseyrails 507/508 fleet (of all things!) have 2 designated wheelchair accessible areas per unit, 1 at each end of the train aswell as 2 designated bike areas per unit (1 in each end).

Reading the comments regarding ramps on the 196s, are they the same as the 197 where a "bridging plate" mini ramp has to be used aswell as the main ramp?

Yes, see attached

 

[L401CJF]

Yes, see attached

Thanks for sharing. Awful design!

 

[GWVillager]

Buggies and pushchairs can go in any vestibule area, and they don't require ramps to boards. Do any trains have more than one dedicated wheelchair accessible area on them (single set only)?

Oh yes, quite a few do, but granted most of them are Intercity.



Does anyone know why the bridging plate is needed, surely they could have had a fold down floor section like on the 80Xs at lesser cost overall?

 

[SuperLuke2334]

Oh yes, quite a few do, but granted most of them are Intercity.



Does anyone know why the bridging plate is needed, surely they could have had a fold down floor section like on the 80Xs at lesser cost overall?

The main ramp leans on the step I believe, and there is then a small ridge up to the main floor (definitely not deeper than 1cm), which needs bridging. Apparently it doesn't have to be used, but it works better if it is.

 

[william.martin]

Is five 4-car and eight 2-car diagrams pretty much the end game for introduction of these units until such time as there are services on the Camp Hill line, or some units head off to EWR?

5 of the units are yet to enter service so as soon as they are running, that will be it for the time being.

 

[newtownmgr]

The only priorities WMR had when they ordered these was to eliminate the guard and to replace the 170s as cheaply as possible.

I think you will find the dft/RDG had more to do with both of those decisions.