Does this mean that from tomorrow Monday 3 June 2024 South Western Railway mainline drivers will be trained to drive class 701 trains and having completed the training will start driving class 701 trains for South Western Railway metro services? I am not clear what "trialled" means.
It's a 2 week trial of the course, then feedback, and then approval. Afterwards drivers will start to be trained
It's probably more of case of some people never wanting the trains to enter service, but at the same time having no answers for SWR's capacity issues.
and its had full DOO ie no guard or 2nd person for 30 years on the metro services
Not sure about that the main line is still pretty good and the 455's might be old but internally they did a very good job with the refurb with plenty of space, comfy seats with good seat pitch and the retractioning bought them the extra decade. Shame they didn't do a Renatus on them and fit air con as we wouldn't be nearly ten thousands posts in talking about the 701s!
The suburban network has had frequencies slashed and gone from a mainly 10-car railway to an 8-car railway.
I was referencing the white light or green flag into a DOO monitor, can't remember the last time I saw that method used
Not sure of the relevance though, well documented at this point that the guards are not holding anything up
Thanks for this clarification. I hope the course is approved and mainline driver training starts shortly after the end of the two week trial. Five months have passed since the first trial runs, I would not want a further similar wait for the start of mainline driver training when the introduction of these ninety new Class 701 trains is already four years behind the original schedule causing a shortage of electric rolling stock everywhere on the South Western Railway electrified network.
"First group are proud to announce the introduction of additional ventilation for the drivers of our long-standing fleet"Recently...
Can already imagine a press release, "... and we're naming it Air-ero"
Only on empty stock workings, is it not?
Has this not been done yet? I find that rather surprising!
Only on DOO ECS and all current 701 work. Guarded ECS is guard dispatch at Waterloo usually
This is not a benefit; ask a wheelchair user or some lone female travellers. It also, categorically, will not be introduced on the 701s; nobody is destaffing trains in this day and age (thankfully).
Rare to get ECS dispatch with a guard now. Might be only one or two a day.
Perhaps someone should fix the issue with the cameras then, I noticed the Avanti IETs appear to have different style cameras, are they still no good ?
It has, it's just some stations have failed. The PTI test runs are focusing on those stations which currently require guard dispatch.
And that would explain the odd stopping pattern of that service from a few days ago
They’ll be designed for DOO dispatch, why else would they exist , so are they approved ? Whether Avanti choose to seek an agreement to use them or or not is irrelevant
Off-topic, but, they're being used in addition to the existing dispatch arrangement, not as a replacement for the guard. Whether that'll change in the future, is anybody's guess.
Ok thanks for the information
www.realtimetrains.co.uk
