absolutelymilk
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Will all future orders be for at least bi-modes, or will Northern/GWR/someone else order more DMUs? (I'm excluding locos from this question as they seem more likely to need diesel)
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Will the Class 197s be the last pure diesel unit to be ordered?
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LNW-GW Joint
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I can't remember the exact dates for the orders, but TfW ordered class 231 Flirt DMUs from Stadler at the same time as the CAF 197s.
There is the possibility of converting the 231s to bi-mode operation, which isn't the case for the CAF Civitys.
The PDFs aren't currently loading for me, but I don't think the Northern / Irish All-Island Strategic Rail Review recommended electrification to Larne or Portrush. As half of the NI rolling stock's older than twenty and none of the network's currently electrified, maybe there'd be more DMUs there in a decade or two?
Trainbike46
Established Member
If any more diesel-only passenger trains are ordered that would be a monumental failure. I am still of the opinion that the last diesel-only train should have entered service in 2015, and every order since then should at least have been a bimode.
Last I heard (which admittedly was a few years ago)Translink had no intention of ordering any new DMUs ever again. The class 3000 trains are from 2004/2005, but the class 4000 trains are from 2011/2012 for the original 3-car sets, with extra coaches built in the early 2020s added to expand capacity.
As NI isn't that big at all, even a very small amount of electrification would enable the use of BEMUs across the whole network. The only new stock in the plans currently is the new Enterprise stock, and that will be Trimode.
Topological
Established Member
Such is the development of battery technology that we should not be far off not needing to have any new diesel engines at all.
Whether we will see last mile type engines remains open.
Many 197 routes could be transferred if needed so the 197s can go to longer diesel routes. Same applies with the 196s and 195s. GBR should make some of these cascades more likely.
Whether we will see last mile type engines remains open.
Many 197 routes could be transferred if needed so the 197s can go to longer diesel routes. Same applies with the 196s and 195s. GBR should make some of these cascades more likely.
With the benefit of hindsight, I agree that no more diesel-only passenger units should have been built for the UK since 2015 (I think that would make the class 172s the last diesel-only units built).
tfw756rider
On Moderation
The 172s would've been the last for GB; the original build of NI C4Ks would've been the last for the UK.
Why 2015 specifically?
Trainbike46
Established Member
With 2015 and an average lifespan for DMUs of 35 years, there are no diesel only trains left in 2050, meaning it is possible to have a fossil-free railway without retiring any trains early.
That was my reasoning at least!
tfw756rider
On Moderation
Ah OK, thanks - gotcha.
brad465
Veteran Member
Could they end up becoming Scotrail's fleet for the Far North and Kyle of Lochalsh? These would be top contenders for the last pure diesel routes, but would need the special token system installed of course.
Not a good look when competing coach services are battery operated today.
hexagon789
Veteran Member
And fitted with highly polluting tyres...
Bevan Price
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I suspect that some routes will always be too long for battery operation (e.g. Inverness/Wick, Glasgow/Mallaig), but too quiet to justify electrification, and that some partly-diesel bimodal trains will always be needed.
I know that comparing the UK's railways negatively with Switzerland's in non-passenger fare aspects is shooting fish in a barrel, but given Switzerland has a completely electrified network, does it have any lines of significant length with less than an hourly service? (Admittedly I suspect the answer is no anyway due to the focus on Taktfahrpläne.)
Surely rapid charge - perhaps with short lengths of wires - solves that?
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Not muck of a problem outside urban areas, and over the medium term amenable to tech solutions. (And not as bad as wheel/brake pollution in underground railways!)
German ETA 150 battery railcars had a 400km range, using lead acid batteries without regen braking, in the 1980s. There is nowhere in Britain that battery trains couldn't be deployed with existing tech that would require more than just charging infrastructure at each or one terminal.
BR could run battery multiple unit on the Deeside railway in 1950s, with a ruling gradient of 1 in 70.
So for the question i don't think anymore pure diesel trains should be ordered, i don't think any new diesel, pure or bimode, trains are required to be ordered, even by NI railways, but that doesn't mean they wont be.
I am not saying electric coach is better, just that even with tyre wear, it is lower on emissions and likely air pollutants than an existing diesel train.
Unlikely; the Scottish Government / ScotRail have a net zero target by 2045 so they'll need to eliminate diesel sooner than England (where, sadly, even the 2050 target seems likely to be delayed
). The Scottish rail decarbonisation plan however majors on electrification, with a note that "may include discontinuous – or intermittent – electrification". The really remote areas (eg. West Highland and Kyle lines) are earmarked for alternative traction (most-likely battery bi-modes I would guess, but hydrogen bi-modes could be an alternative). One of the maps in the Transport Scotland plan categorises routes as follows:- red (electrified already or planned to receive at-least discontinuous electrification by 2035)
- yellow (planned to operate using alternative traction as a transitional solution from 2035 with full electrification following by 2045) and
- green (alternative traction expected as a permanent solution)
Interestingly, even in those remote areas some electrification is expected eventually; the only place where green meets red on that Transport Scotland map appears to be in the Helensburgh area. Ie. although Kyle, Wick, Thurso, Fort William, Oban and Mallaig and Stranraer are all shown as requiring 'alternative traction' permanently, only the West Highland (from the Helensburgh area to both Oban and Mallaig) isn't expected to gain any more OHLE. The other three/four routes (ie. Wick/Thurso, Kyle and Stranraer) are shown as receiving partial electrification (eg. about half the distance between Ayr and Stranraer) between 2035 and 2045.
North of Inverness, it looks like the plannede extent of electrification is Inverness to Tain, but the scale of the map doesn't allow me to be sure. If they really are going to electrify the stretch between between Digwall and Tain (which must see, at most, 16 DMU carriages each way daily), it surprises me that they aren't also planning to wire between Glasgow and Crianlarich [CNR] (24 DMU carriges each way (12 each for Oban and Mallaig), plus the Fort William sleeper). Pantographs therefore appear mandatory, otherwise why spend money on (even if only 'discontinuous') electrification?
The train still needs traction motors, traction power cables and current collector devices (eg. pantographs and/or third-rail shoes). The class 19x DMUs have none of these things, as far as I know, and at least some of them would only be 25 years old in 2050.
Even in England and Wales, where Westminster's slightly lower ambition on (particuarly rail) decarbonisation probably makes diesel bi-modes politically easier in the interim, the lack of pantographs on the CAF Civity DMUs is a problem. Network Rail's study of decarbonised traction solutions for the GB network recommended widespread electrification - while I don't think Westminster has set a binding date for rail to complete decarbonisation, the rate of electrification (miles per year) needed if the UK as a whole is to hit net-zero by 2050 without relying on offseting diesel emissions is already pretty heroic, if we started today. One or of the following (all difficult or impossible, either politically or physically) appears necessary:
- completely failing to decarbonise rail by 2050, by not delivering vital electrification projects
- delivering electrification on some routes, only to run nothing but DMUs under the wires for many years until said DMUs are life-expired because of the low averge age of the CAF class 195-197 DMUs currently in service
- converting 195s, 196s and/or 197s to bi-mode
- scrapping 195s, 196s and/or 197s well before they are life-expired, to make way for new bi-mode traction
- scrapping a very large number of through services, forcing passengers to change in more places, to allow DMUs to be kept to the bits remaining unwired as electrification is extended and new EMUs introduced for the electrified bits
- doing nothing until December 2049, and then building a massive number of new EMUs (and alternative-traction bi-modes), and hugely extending electrification, almost overnight to replace the remaining DMUs all at once on 1/Jan/2050 (this is the physically impossible one, but what the lack of foresight of ordering the CAF Civity DMUs without bi-mode capability has left us with, and even then some of the 197s will only have seen around 25 years service)
Isn't the IEP Hitachi contract based on 27 years service? 35 years is more of a rule of thumb for life expectancy of a train than the basis of all business cases. The 195/196/197 procurements were probably based on a business case of running up to but not past 2049. The delays entering into service would shrink expectation of service of 27 to 32 years service for the 3 classes. Every order of new stock now has to have a pantogragh.
Compared to environmental issues, I'm relatively uninterested in the financial elements of business cases; but I think both sides can be rather inconvenient to the other at times. Financial waste is one thing, but I'm even more concerned about the wasted energy of producing materials for significant components (like bodyshells) only to scrap them more often than necessary.
Yes, IEP is (or at least was expected to be) a 27.5 year contract (or several). However, if I understand correctly those deals are not with Hitachi but with two consortiums (Agility Trains East for the ECML fleet and Agility Trains West for the GWML operations) and included a whole load of stuff such as maintainance (and possibly even financing) which would normally be handled by ROSCOs. I'm fairly sure that there have been new EMU contracts in the last 10-15 years or so 35-40 year lifespans and, in the early 1980s, BR were antincipating that hauled coaches and EMUs could last as long as 40 years. Some class 153s and mark 4 stock have been sold by the ROSCOs to TfW/WAG after the previous leases expired and I would expect something similar will happen when the 27.5 year IEP contracts end.
Wikipedia suggests otherwise in the case of the 195s, claiming that "The units were designed with a projected lifespan of 35 years and it was planned they will operate beyond 2050 with maintenance and refurbishment". If Wiki at least has the dates correct, then delivery in 2017 + 35 years would be 2052. Had the DMU portion of Northern's Civity order been smaller it might not have been much of a concern for a 2050 target, but 55 units unable to make any use of electrification... ouch.
The class 196 fleet was a more-sensible size (26 units) for a DMU order given what should have been a rapidlly reducing pool of work for such and (if Wiki is correct) the order being placed in 2017.
Everything (should have) changed in February 2018 when then Minister, Jo Johnson, announced the ambition to remove diesel-only trains by 2040. (by the way, does anyone know if there has been any update on the planned electric/battery hybrid trail on the Windermere branch, which Jo Johnson announced in the same speech)?
Instead, again if Wikipedia is correct, Northern ordered an additional 3x 3-car 195s in November 2018. No excuses there - meeting the 2040 ambition would have given those units barely 20 years service. Similarly, the TfW franchise wasn't awarded until May 2018, so they should have known about the 2040 ambition, giving the units about 15 years use.
It generally seems to be expected that new trains will all have a pantograph (or be easy to retro-fit), but has the Government actually introduced a law to ban procurement of new stock without them? TfW have been rumoured to be looking to obtain additonal stock and I hope that won't mean ordering more 197s.
Well the obvious excuse is that it was much cheaper, faster and more useful to order more of the same, rather than 3 one-off units. We'd be in even more of a mess without the additional units given the state of the fleet.
Surely they could have added electric/battery hybrid 331s instead of additional 195s?
Ordering 19X class earlier would have just meant retiring some older stock earlier than they were. That would be preferable to passengers of pacers but it doesn't make that much of a difference to the environment if a class is retired in 2015 earlier than necessary or if its successor is in 2049. I wouldn't rely on wikipedia! The 2040 Jo Johnson target has never been a serious target because of the difficulty in decarbonising rural routes. There are enough rural routes to run 19X on until they are life expired. Decarbonising the Cambrian Coast, Settle and Far North lines by X date is driven by ideological purity rather than a meaningful environmental impact on diesel running very rural lines. There isn’t a legal ban on new DMUs but there might as well be because no government minister in the UK will sign off on procuring them. There needed to be another model of DMUs following the Turbostars to bridge the gap to decarbonising most lines and to run rural services in the 2040s (and probably into 250s).
stevieinselby
Established Member
That depends if CAF were in a position to offer a battery hybrid with sufficient range in 2018, which seems unlikely.
Even if CAF was prepared to make them, why would Northern want 3 non standard units? Your views are coming across as being driven by ideological purity over a decarbonisation target. There needed to be a new DMU type ordered in the 2010s to have enough trains to run many secondary routes until they can be decarbonised. The exact size and timing of the orders makes almost no difference to carbon emissions. From now on the new trains will be bi mode, battery or ordinary EMUs.
renegademaster
Established Member
The premise of Chiltern going for push pull trains was that if electrification came they could swap the locos out for electric ones without having to throw away all the coaches. That logic never really caught on elsewhere
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The particulates of a modern diesel engine would be far less than one from the 90s. It's a much more immediate concern to health to people that have to live near them that the no new diesels brigade seem to forget
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They weren't on offer. The options were essentially order the additional 3 195s, or nothing.
Not to mention the fact that as an additional order (possibly even from an option), they could presumably be ordered without tender , whereas any variation as major as passive provision for bi-mode would have required a full tender process (probably with no bids) and an undesirable micro-fleet.
Trainbike46
Established Member
They could, and in my view should, have ordered bimodes or trimodes (e.g. 755s, 756s, or even 231s) to replace the retiring like diesel units - these have a long-term future, and were ordered around the same time as the 19x.
tfw756rider
On Moderation
Could they have done? Wouldn't a 756/0 (or even a theoretical "3-car" 231) have been more expensive than even a "197113-126" 197?
The secondary role of 19X will inevitably be run on rural lines towards the end of their life and Northern ordered the 195s largely to indirectly replace pacers, with cost being critical. There was no budget bi mode option for Northern or WMR. The 231 wasn't available to order nearly 10 years ago. TfW could have ordered more 231s but why order them for lines that have no prospect of electrification for at least half the units life. If necessary they can be cascaded mid life and be replaced by tri mode units.
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