Potential cascade options for Voyagers on leaving XC?

[EYFanatic]

I was talking about the Class 165 since the seats are unbearable. If the railway believes their ticket need to be expensive. Then they better damn right give the customer a proper train with proper seating.

They did have trains with proper seating

They were called Pacers

 

[MargaretNoodle]

TfW is a sensible deployment.

I think they are too heavy for Cardiff-Portsmouth and the door-arrangement isn’t great. Again, Liverpool-Norwich they are too heavy to use Sprinter speed differentials so would slow the service down, and again the door arrangement isn’t optimal for dwells at Manchester stations in particular.

This is an interesting point re sprinter differentials east of Nottingham that I was looking into recently, and I wonder if other forum members would be able to confirm?

I was looking at a sectional appendix recently for the area east of Ely and noticed all speed limits on that section were listed as MU (multiple unit that the 22x can normally use). I wasn't sure if this was correct but street view footage at Lakenheath seems to confirm that the SP differential was replaced with MU sometime after March 2021.

Does this now technically mean that a 22x would be able to now run without losing time on this route or are there some other details that I'm not aware of?

 

[Mgameing123]

They did have trains with proper seating

They were called Pacers

Seriously bus seating is what you call proper seating?

 

[Iskra]

Seriously bus seating is what you call proper seating?

I’m assuming he’s referring to class 143’s, which didn’t have bus seating.

 

[EYFanatic]

I’m assuming he’s referring to class 143’s, which didn’t have bus seating.

I was indeed

 

[sprinterguy]

I’m assuming he’s referring to class 143’s, which didn’t have bus seating.

They did for the first decade plus of their lives, same as the rest, so I originally inferred that the reference was tongue in cheek!

 

[EYFanatic]

They did for the first decade plus of their lives, same as the rest, so I originally inferred that the reference was tongue in cheek!

Also true...

 

[43074]

I was talking about the Class 165 since the seats are unbearable. If the railway believes their ticket need to be expensive. Then they better damn right give the customer a proper train with proper seating.

Using Voyagers on Cardiff to Portsmouth would make the tickets even more expensive as Voyagers are much more costly to run than a 158/16x, and with many fewer seats.

 

[Clarence Yard]

Cost of running has no bearing on setting fares on a route - the two are not linked.

Using Voyagers on services that don’t run at high speed but do have frequent stops will not work at all well. They need to stick to routes that have a degree of fast running between stops and also stopping at locations which best suit their door cycle.

Routes like Cardiff-Portsmouth and Liverpool-Norwich both need their own bespoke 5 car unit that can fit 400 punters into it in 2+2 seating, some airline, some tables and with a decent amount of easily accessible luggage space.

That isn’t a Voyager.

 

[Bletchleyite]

Routes like Cardiff-Portsmouth and Liverpool-Norwich both need their own bespoke 5 car unit that can fit 400 punters into it in 2+2 seating, some airline, some tables and with a decent amount of easily accessible luggage space.

400 in a 5 car is a cattle wagon. Lumo only just manage that with a serious lack of luggage space. 350 is probably a better aim.

A pathetic 246 in a 5 car Voyager though.

 

[Bevan Price]

The 220/221s will probably continue on their current routes until they become life-expired, or it becomes impossible to obtain enough spare perts to keep them running. So perhaps another 10 years or so. Then they will be replaced, hopefully by something bigger and better. Probably a bi-mode or tri-mode successor of current 8xx trains.

 

[FGWHST43009]

Voyagers might do 40 years, depending on A) their condition when they're replaced, B) demand for high-perfomance DMUs when replaced and C) the pace of electrification. They might be run them down until fully replaced then be scrapped. If cascaded, they could run Cardiff-Plymouth/Portsmouth, Liverpool to Norwich, Paddington-Bedwyn and EWR services or open access needing diesel trains. But it's hard to see passengers on those routes accepting 35 year old castoffs that have spent their working lives running from one end of the country to the other. Correct me if I'm wrong but aren't the Voyagers one on the hardest worked fleets in the country?

 

[quantinghome]

Why though? What actual demand is there for Nottingham to Carlisle passengers?

Maybe the real demand is the stops we made along the way...

 

[JonathanH]

400 in a 5 car is a cattle wagon. Lumo only just manage that with a serious lack of luggage space. 350 is probably a better aim.

A 730/2 apparently seats 406 in five coaches without being a cattle wagon, the interior of which seems entirely reasonable for journeys on regional services. Way better to go in that direction than using Voyagers on the routes we are discussing.

 

[quantinghome]

We're not coming up with many obvious homes for these units are we? Is the West of England line (Waterloo-Exeter) out of the question? Maybe a Leeds-Glasgow service? They've got the grunt for the hills and the speed for the WCML north of Carlisle.

Given they are capacity-inefficient and expensive to operate their future may depend on how their depreciation is considered. If the ROSCO (I forget which) is happy to lease them at whatever price they can get for them then they may continue on for a while. But as other have said, they will probably stay at XC, hopefully supplemented by additional new trains, perhaps some of the inefficiency removed by reforming them into 6 or 7 cars.

Is it possible in theory to run them as triple units? A 12-car train would really help drive capacity at peak times.

 

[EYFanatic]

Maybe a Leeds-Glasgow service? They've got the grunt for the hills and the speed for the WCML north of Carlisle.

Leeds-Glasgow up the S&C would be perfect for them and they are already cleared for the line

I could see it being Leeds-Skipton-Settle-Carlisle-Glasgow

 

[HSTEd]

The problem with the 220s is they are four car units with the seating of 3 cars.
The 221s somewhat mitigate this issue, but I can't help but feel that we'd have been better off overall if they'd just bought more Turbostars instead. They'd certainly have far greater residual value,.

But we are where we are now.

 

[Bletchleyite]

A 730/2 apparently seats 406 in five coaches without being a cattle wagon, the interior of which seems entirely reasonable for journeys on regional services. Way better to go in that direction than using Voyagers on the routes we are discussing.

There is very little floor level luggage space in a 730/2. There's some, but not enough for longer distance regional services. Also the seats in the middle section are very tight.

Though the reason to use Voyagers is that they already exist.

I think it's telling that Lumo has gone 6 car on the WCML 222s, presumably that gets them about 400?

 

[61653 HTAFC]

I suppose you could take one to replace the New Measurement Train! The Even Newer Measurement Train.

That's one way of using up the spare driving cars if you were reforming the lot of them into 7/8-car units... Probably more comfortable for the technicians than a 153!

If the fleet was to be withdrawn earlier than expected, one possibility would be export. If the price was right they could be re-gauged for use in New Zealand, or kept as standard gauge and sent to Mexico to replace the HSTs (again!).

 

[321362]

Would they be able to take over Bristol/Birmingham-Stansted/Cambridge services and displace 170s elsewhere, or do they run into the same issues as Liverpool-Norwich where they're too heavy to run at the same speed as a Sprinter or Turbostar.

 

[tbtc]

They were perfectly decent trains when built, they've continued to do a reliable job on one of the toughest TOCs in the country

I think some people (conveniently?) forget how different the railway was back then

AFAICS it had been a decade since the last main line was electrified the last section of the ECML to Edinburgh, there was no prospect of any major expansions (the enormous WCRM project had only wired a short bit of line from Stoke to Crewe, there was the Heathrow Express with significant private funding, but apart from that...). Plus electrification had such a bad reputation that GNER were suggesting taking the wires down permanently because they were more trouble than they were worth

Operation Princess had the name because the Cross Country services had previously functioned with hand me down trains, whatever various main lines to London had grown out of (90s for key WCML services freed up 87s for shorter routes, meaning there were 86s spare that could go to Cross Country, ECML HSTs freed up by electrification)

In the same era, FGW was ordering five coach 180s for London to Cardiff, MML ordered two coach 170s for London to Nottingham/Derby (inc services to Barnsley, Burton, Matlock etc), the Transpennine service was in the hands of 158s

All this feels primitive now but it was only a few years earlier that BR was running 156s on some relatively long distance routes (Norwich-Liverpool), and before that it was 150s on e.g. Scarborough - Liverpool

So the Voyagers were a big step forward, a fairly guaranteed standard of service (compared to mixture of 47s/86s/158s and HSTs), a constant service week/year round, rather that the nationalized days when the flight of longer trains seemed designed around the leisure traffic heading south west on the morning and home in the afternoon

One huge difference with XC is that all of these other TOCs were allowed to expand further. The two coach 170s from St Pancras were replaced by three coach examples, then those by four coach 222s. FGW gained surplus HSTs, allowing them to run routes like Cardiff which cascaded 180s to places like Oxford, freeing up 166s for other corridors.

XC were never allowed to expand though. IAIUI the initial plans had been for subsequent Voyager carriages, but that wasn't permitted. The ambitious Project Thor (building more Voyager carriages, with bi -mode capability) didn't get the green light either.

In comparison, look at the Transpennine route that I mentioned earlier. It had gone from a trains like 150s to 158s. AFAICR the stand alone TPE franchise planned for 60x four coach 185s but this was watered down to 51x three coach examples, plus 9x two coach 170s. However, TPE has strong regional government support, both Labour and Cameron governments seemed understanding/sensitive regarding it's needs (or at least the demands of mancunian politicians). It gained three fleets of brand new trains, plus got to retain the full fleet of 185s, which meant quite a capacity increase. And there's more new trains on the way for TPE, politicians will listen to the likes of Burnham

Nobody seems to be successfully beating the drum for XC though. It's too big to easily tweak, too thinly spread for any regional authority to treat as a priority, the Voyagers are second fiddle on pretty much every significant bit of track it runs over (other than New Street to Derby line)

The franchise feels like it's been in a coma for at least fifteen years, no government has dared grasp the nettle

So most of the Voyager hate feels a little misplaced (and I say that as someone who's ridden them from Aberdeen to Truro, and used to commute daily on them)

The main problems are:
1. Various opportunities to extend them or expand the fleet size were missed (too late now, of course)
2. The franchise has been ignored since about 2011 (i.e. when the plans should have been formulated for what happened at the end of Arriva's operation ended in 2016, rather than short term extension followed by short term extension)
3. In hindsight XC shouldn't have had 125mph trains in the first place. Controversial but the short sections of 125mph running weren't worth the loss of capacity caused by crumple zones and the fact that only 125mph stock could keep up with Voyager paths meant XC were never able to bid for the various 100mph trains that subsequently came to the second hand market
3. Given this, any sensible railway would have focused any other 125mph DMUs on XC d and when they were freed up. But instead we are seeing younger six coach 222s going to an Open Access Stirling service with various five coach 180s trundling around Yorkshire on a different OAO, taking an hour and a half to get from Doncaster to Bradford, plus some of the five coach 221s freed up at Avanti either still in storage or with Grand Central. Those routes shouldn't take priority over the XC core IMHO

The future for Voyagers? It's probably got to the stage where I'd keep them on their existing routes but throw the full fleet of 222s into the mix and things will be better. Plus, ideally, reduce the strain on XC's diesel fleet by focusing electrified trains on electrified routes, which I've discussed before

 

[Chester1]

Leeds-Glasgow up the S&C would be perfect for them and they are already cleared for the line

I could see it being Leeds-Skipton-Settle-Carlisle-Glasgow

Can you honestly say you would be suggesting this if there hadn't been a service in the 60s? What real world problem based on modern demand and infrastructure does this fix?

 

[NER1621]

But it's hard to see passengers on those routes accepting 35 year old castoffs

When have passengers ever been given the option of accepting or rejecting the types of trains allocated to our lines?? It’s always like it or lump it.

 

[FGWHST43009]

When have passengers ever been given the option of accepting or rejecting the types of trains allocated to our lines?? It’s always like it or lump it.

Fair enough, the Voyagers are currently unpopular which can't easily change at the moment. I mean it probably won't be politically acceptable anymore to dump 35-year old trains on a secondary route

 

[Bletchleyite]

Fair enough, the Voyagers are currently unpopular which can't easily change at the moment. I mean it probably won't be politically acceptable anymore to dump 35-year old trains on a secondary route

Even if it was, they're incredibly fuel inefficient (both in terms of fuel burn and in terms of needing a longer train for the same number of seats). Regional diesel operators would be clamouring for any 168s or 170s that come up (they're close to being the perfect regional DMU), but rather less so Voyagers.

 

[Sir Felix Pole]

They were perfectly decent trains when built, they've continued to do a reliable job on one of the toughest TOCs in the country

I think some people (conveniently?) forget how different the railway was back then

AFAICS it had been a decade since the last main line was electrified the last section of the ECML to Edinburgh, there was no prospect of any major expansions (the enormous WCRM project had only wired a short bit of line from Stoke to Crewe, there was the Heathrow Express with significant private funding, but apart from that...). Plus electrification had such a bad reputation that GNER were suggesting taking the wires down permanently because they were more trouble than they were worth

Operation Princess had the name because the Cross Country services had previously functioned with hand me down trains, whatever various main lines to London had grown out of (90s for key WCML services freed up 87s for shorter routes, meaning there were 86s spare that could go to Cross Country, ECML HSTs freed up by electrification)

In the same era, FGW was ordering five coach 180s for London to Cardiff, MML ordered two coach 170s for London to Nottingham/Derby (inc services to Barnsley, Burton, Matlock etc), the Transpennine service was in the hands of 158s

All this feels primitive now but it was only a few years earlier that BR was running 156s on some relatively long distance routes (Norwich-Liverpool), and before that it was 150s on e.g. Scarborough - Liverpool

So the Voyagers were a big step forward, a fairly guaranteed standard of service (compared to mixture of 47s/86s/158s and HSTs), a constant service week/year round, rather that the nationalized days when the flight of longer trains seemed designed around the leisure traffic heading south west on the morning and home in the afternoon

One huge difference with XC is that all of these other TOCs were allowed to expand further. The two coach 170s from St Pancras were replaced by three coach examples, then those by four coach 222s. FGW gained surplus HSTs, allowing them to run routes like Cardiff which cascaded 180s to places like Oxford, freeing up 166s for other corridors.

XC were never allowed to expand though. IAIUI the initial plans had been for subsequent Voyager carriages, but that wasn't permitted. The ambitious Project Thor (building more Voyager carriages, with bi -mode capability) didn't get the green light either.

In comparison, look at the Transpennine route that I mentioned earlier. It had gone from a trains like 150s to 158s. AFAICR the stand alone TPE franchise planned for 60x four coach 185s but this was watered down to 51x three coach examples, plus 9x two coach 170s. However, TPE has strong regional government support, both Labour and Cameron governments seemed understanding/sensitive regarding it's needs (or at least the demands of mancunian politicians). It gained three fleets of brand new trains, plus got to retain the full fleet of 185s, which meant quite a capacity increase. And there's more new trains on the way for TPE, politicians will listen to the likes of Burnham

Nobody seems to be successfully beating the drum for XC though. It's too big to easily tweak, too thinly spread for any regional authority to treat as a priority, the Voyagers are second fiddle on pretty much every significant bit of track it runs over (other than New Street to Derby line)

The franchise feels like it's been in a coma for at least fifteen years, no government has dared grasp the nettle

So most of the Voyager hate feels a little misplaced (and I say that as someone who's ridden them from Aberdeen to Truro, and used to commute daily on them)

The main problems are:
1. Various opportunities to extend them or expand the fleet size were missed (too late now, of course)
2. The franchise has been ignored since about 2011 (i.e. when the plans should have been formulated for what happened at the end of Arriva's operation ended in 2016, rather than short term extension followed by short term extension)
3. In hindsight XC shouldn't have had 125mph trains in the first place. Controversial but the short sections of 125mph running weren't worth the loss of capacity caused by crumple zones and the fact that only 125mph stock could keep up with Voyager paths meant XC were never able to bid for the various 100mph trains that subsequently came to the second hand market
3. Given this, any sensible railway would have focused any other 125mph DMUs on XC d and when they were freed up. But instead we are seeing younger six coach 222s going to an Open Access Stirling service with various five coach 180s trundling around Yorkshire on a different OAO, taking an hour and a half to get from Doncaster to Bradford, plus some of the five coach 221s freed up at Avanti either still in storage or with Grand Central. Those routes shouldn't take priority over the XC core IMHO

The future for Voyagers? It's probably got to the stage where I'd keep them on their existing routes but throw the full fleet of 222s into the mix and things will be better. Plus, ideally, reduce the strain on XC's diesel fleet by focusing electrified trains on electrified routes, which I've discussed before

BR did introduce new HSTs for XC (with just one First coach) - the DfT (or whatever title they had then) refused to authorise the full complement and some loco- hauled services had to soldier on. Operation Princess was an unmitigated disaster from the start - Virgin ignored seasoned railway hands as to what would happen and passengers have had to suffer ever since. And now we get that Manchester doesn't 'deserve' through XC services beyond Birmingham because the line to there is electrified - a suburban EMU will have to do.

 

[Chester1]

Even if it was, they're incredibly fuel inefficient (both in terms of fuel burn and in terms of needing a longer train for the same number of seats). Regional diesel operators would be clamouring for any 168s or 170s that come up (they're close to being the perfect regional DMU), but rather less so Voyagers.

That is second half of the problem. The first half is the low probability of XC receiving a large investment in rolling stock in the next few years. There was over a decade of overcrowdinging before 6 x 7 coach HSTs where replaced by 7 x 5 coach Voyagers. This was later increased to 12 sets. Maybe the best that can be hoped for before 2035 is the remaining 8 off lease Voyagers transferring to XC. That is plausible if the ROSCO has no alternative but scrapping them. 2035 would be a good time to start scrapping them.