What sort of timeframe are we looking at to hear weather it's been successful or not?
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Cross-country overcrowding: what could be done?
- Thread starter absolutelymilk
- Start date
What sort of timeframe are we looking at to hear weather it's been successful or not?
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The customer is a distant third while the Treasury and Unions fight over the comb.
Running full and standing with half the train locked up is just another bargaining chip, like when when they threaten to disrupt the Olympics or some other major sporting event unless they are bought off with a special payment. Meanwhile the spare 221s continue to accumulate rust.
In South London, trains run with 3 non-corridor units and just a driver in the front.
For the umpteenth time, the 222s are not 'sent' to ScotRail. ScotRail made a commercial offer on a fleet of trains that were coming off lease.
All those 'if only' posts about 222s reveal an unhealthy attitude that Scotland should be subordinate to English needs.
Although as I've previously said a mixed 80x fleet of 5 and 9 coach trains giving a circa 30% uplift in capacity whilst not actually needing any extra coaches over the current fleet size (let alone adding the in store 221's).
Trainman40083
Established Member
It is also a shame that Cross Country 220/221s can't work in multiple with 222s.
ValentaFan1974
Member
- Joined
- 8 Jul 2014
- Messages
- 393
Anything the DfT have to agree on can take an absolute age. I thought it would have been wrapped up by now, but it’s all gone quiet. I personally don’t see what the issue is. XC need rolling stock, said rolling stock is stored and ready to go (pending a spruce up)…
There's a change of PM underway, and no one is going to take ownership of a decision involving spending money until they know which way the politics will lie. Meanwhile, HM Treasury will continue to do what they always do, and procrastinate, procrastinate, procrastinate rather than commit to spending money.
Which is also, incidentally, why the 222s weren't able to stay with EMR until the 810s arrived.
At the risk of pouring petrol onto the fire, there is no point leasing extra units until they sort the problem of running pairs of units with one locked out of use. All that will happen is more units locked out of use. How is that helpful to anyone?
The language and tone are problematic
A DfT TOC (/operating unit, or whatever you call it) and ScotRail are equal players in a rule-based market. The only thing that should matter are who gets their house in order first.
Killingworth
Established Member
Almost certainly it's down to money.
It's certain to cost XC more to lease and run the extra units.
It's certain they won't immediately generate sufficient extra fare income to cover those costs.
Is the inevitable extra subsidy a priority for a cash strapped government? Is their a realistic prospect that increased income could be attracted to cover those costs in the foreseeable future?
Letting those units stand idle when they're badly needed seems nonsensical, until you start doing the sums! If pushed the DfT is very likely to be effectively instructed by HM Treasury to say NO. As it may for new trains for other operators.
Tetragon213
Member
Regarding staffing, if the problem is to do with not being able to get between the units, short term I see no reason why the middle coaches of the stored sets couldn't be cannibalised and added to the XC diagrams with the worst overcrowding, turning 4 coach units into 5 or 6 coach units to at least reduce some of the pressure on the passengers while still allowing staff to travel throughout the whole length of the train.
Thank you all.
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Technically a four car diagram could be retired and a five car one added in its place, this would shift the balance and be easy enough to implement. But obviously, practically, while that does make a difference, it's very small, and there are few four car diagrams that don't do any coupling anymore.
Trainman40083
Established Member
But would those longer units then fit in all the platforms they are required to? Say Reading where they use bay platforms. New Street where there may be a second train in the platform etc. Does a mini fleet then cause diagramming issues, meaning less flexibility?
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I see a solution would be a nice new fleet of bimode 8 car trains.. but the DfT won't do that. The DfT may indeed consider allowing XC to run more units. Like when the franchise is taken in house. Then they can claim an improvement, indeed one that they wouldn't allow XC to do earlier.
I agree, but it's my opinion that the 222 fleet would be of greater benefit overall to XC.
Going back to your original point, please highlight where the "unhealthy attitude that Scotland should be subordinate to English needs" is?
I'm sure XC could have used them, but ScotRail took the lease for a reason, too.
I'd still prefer a standard fleet of seven car 80x, which I feel is a better compromise between flexibility (platform usage) and capacity (still a boost over an 8 car 22x without the issues caused by pairing non-gangwayed units).
They don't use them for most of the day, even with diagrams that technically fit.
XC already sent plenty of 8/9 coach sets into New Street. I doubt that the remaining single diagrams being a coach longer would be an issue.
I know, I'm not saying the reason for ScotRail taking them is wrong, my point is that if XC had taken them, the benefits would be felt across the whole of mainland UK, not just Scotland.
stevieinselby
Established Member
If we're only talking about cannibalising sets that currently run as twin units to remove the middle power cars and reform them from 4+4 into a 6-car set then there won't be any problems with the formations being too long because they'll be shorter than the formations that are already running. There aren't enough sets in the fleet to have them all as 6/7-car sets and still run the full timetable (even without the Newcastle to Reading services), many would still be 4/5-car sets. At Reading, the majority of services use the through platforms that can accommodate full length trains, it's only a minority that use platform 3 and I don't know how much that is because they need to and how much it's just because it's a convenient place to dump a terminating 4/5-car set and it's better to keep as many through platforms free as possible – if XCountry were running 6+-car sets on all services, would that actually put too much pressure on the through platforms at Reading, or would they cope just fine? There are 9 through platforms, to accommodate 11tph GWR services in each direction, which shouldn't usually need more than 4 platforms, Elizabeth Line, which needs 1 platform off-peak and 2 in the peaks, plus whatever XCountry are running.
I read somewhere on this forum that GWR have a surplus of 5-car 800/0 trains. Six out of thirty five would be very useful to relieve overcrowding on Edinburgh-Bristol or Manchester-Bristol where they could run on OHLE for half of the time replacing six 220/221 units for strengthening other XC services
Moorthorpe-Sheffield/Doncaster-Swinton electrification is a priority for SYCA for Leeds-Sheffield fast and Adwick-Sheffield stoppers to covert to electric units. This would allow XC to operate on electric as far south as Sheffield using 800s.
If MML electrification was to restart southwards from Sheffield to Derby then Edinburgh-Bristol services could run as far south as Derby on electric. That would allow two MML and two XC services each way per hour between Sheffield and Derby operating on electric.
West Midlands intends to electrify all lines Kings Norton to Barnt Green so this will allow Manchester-Bristol services to operate on electric between Manchester and Bromsgrove.
Moorthorpe-Sheffield/Doncaster-Swinton electrification is a priority for SYCA for Leeds-Sheffield fast and Adwick-Sheffield stoppers to covert to electric units. This would allow XC to operate on electric as far south as Sheffield using 800s.
If MML electrification was to restart southwards from Sheffield to Derby then Edinburgh-Bristol services could run as far south as Derby on electric. That would allow two MML and two XC services each way per hour between Sheffield and Derby operating on electric.
West Midlands intends to electrify all lines Kings Norton to Barnt Green so this will allow Manchester-Bristol services to operate on electric between Manchester and Bromsgrove.
Iskra
Established Member
Wouldn’t it be better if any GWR units were used, that they just do Bristol to the South West as shuttles to reduce operational complexity. This could release some Voyagers for strengthening. Doing that along with XC picking up the spare Voyager Units would probably solve most problems on the Voyager routes. To take it a step further spare 350’s could run Birmingham-Manchester shuttles and/or York-Edinburgh/Glasgow shuttles to allow capacity improvements on the Turbostar routes too.
Not pretty, not ideal but it would solve most issues with extant resources.
To create a universal 7 coach fleet would require 363 coaches (52 units to run 44 diagrams) vs 312 coaches in the current fleet:
The other thing to note is that I didn't rule out the possibility of converting to a universal 7 coach fleet, in fact I said that there should be an option with enough additional coaches in that order to facilitate that.
The following is the number of in service seats (allowing 85% of sets in service for the new fleet and 10% for the existing fleet):
13,024 - current 22x fleet
14,331 - current 22x fleet + the spares
17,630 - original 5/9 coach option
19,528 - upgraded 5/9 coach option
20,856+ - universal 7 coach option*
* there maybe a few extra seats per set if the 1st class seating wasn't a full coach, but the above gives a good enough comparison.
As such there's a significant increase in capacity across the fleet.
It's also worth noting that not all 5 coach sets are created equal:
Class 221 has 246 seats
Class 800 has 302 (LNER) or 326 (GWR)
802 has 326 (GWR) 327 (Hull Trains) or 342 seats (TPE)
As such even a LNER set replacing a 221 in service would provide an uplift in capacity of 22.76% (although would more likely be being used to replace single 220 workings which would be a 50% uplift in capacity).
One option I looked at (which would reduce the number of new coaches) was to lengthen a lot of the 800's and 802's at GWR to 9 coach sets (giving GWR an increase in capacity) to then release 5 coach sets to XC without needing to increase the number of coaches leased by GWR.
I'd we need at least 28 sets of 22x units at XC they could be reformed to be 8 coaches by creating:
11 sets from the 220 fleet (with 2 spares coaches)
17 sets from the current XC 221 fleet (with 2 spare coaches)
Why 8 and not 9?
Well it's not possible to create a 9 coach fleet from the number of 22x's available unless some were 222's, as even if we used the entire 221 fleet (including the two at GC and the 220's that's only 27, although the 220 fleet could create a 7 coach set and IF the two spare coaches from the 221's could be used it could be possible to create the 28th unit).
Also a single unit with 8 coaches would have the same capacity as a 4+5 train. Meaning that they could directly substitute for most services and given the extra capacity across the rest of the fleet any small reduction where there's currently 5+5 trains wouldn't be significant.
It's worth noting, that even if with all the stored units and existing fleet were available end to end of end there's only enough units to run in pairs for 50% of diagrams (whilst more across the core could be possible that would require more 4 coach sets to run on their own beyond the core).
50% of the time would allow the 4 coach sets to run as 4+4 all the time, whilst leaving the rest of the diagrams to be a minimum of 5 coaches, although there's still 4 spare 5 coach sets to pair up on some core routes where capacity is needed.
We can all burn through umpteen sets of crayons on XC’s woes but it is caught viciously by the railway’s post-covid shift from TOC-led growth to DfT’s misguided penny pinching.
We can only hold our breath to see what Burnham does to DfT and the treasury’s remits.
We can only hold our breath to see what Burnham does to DfT and the treasury’s remits.
martin butler
Member
- Joined
- 9 Oct 2018
- Messages
- 849
At what point is XC due to be nationalised? might that, once it becomes part of the same nationwide organisation, change stock allocation, as then business needs might dictate what units get allocated to which branding, ?
Snow1964
Established Member
No date has been announced, but is likely to be last operator to be nationalised in mid October 2027 based on current contract which expires 15 October 2027
So effectively another 15 months before any stock cascades or swaps with other operators (or who operates the routes) could theoretically commence
Except this isn’t BR where swaps of any size could be done very rapidly. Every vehicle is owned and hired out by a fleet owner with contractual arrangements that often dictate the maintenance locations too. And DfT still controls the cash flow.
Snow1964
Established Member
Thats why I said theoretically could start. By October 2027 some operators will have been nationalised over 2 years, and DfT or DTFO or shadow GBR (whatever is the name of team doing the transition) will have had some lease contracts up for extension or renewal so will have had chance to add variations.
Personally I am in the camp of thinking best thing is to get a few 8xx bimodes to XC, and reform the voyager fleet by buying unleased sets and scrapping some end vehicles (which can provide lots of spares) and making some 4car sets into 6car sets. And if not going to use tilt would be inclined to scrap 221 end vehicles rather than 220s
but this thread is really about the shortage of capacity today and what can be done to alleviate it. New-build stock, even refurbishing the "same" stock from other operators - and possibly even re-forming Voyagers - will take years to implement, and I dread the consequences of another prolonged spell of driver training.
We need to ensure that all units in service are used for passenger capacity, which can be done with some basic level upgrading of the skills of the hospitality staff. Agree what needs to be agreed, pay what (relatively) little it will take and get the best use out of what is there.
Draft in any immediately-compatible sets and make the technical changes needed on almost-compatible sets (222s?), don't bother with re-liverying or changing interiors. These are low-cost initiatives and I am sure that income from relieving the suppressed demand will easily provide money to cover them.
If GWR (and maybe operators N of Newcastle) have the resources and can cover the outer ends I would reluctantly accept confining XC Voyagers to the core, but it would have to be with cross-platform interchanges and maybe a timetable tweak so that people didn't lose an hour by having to change.
Nicking the Voyagers running to Manchester would be good too, x-platform changes at Wolves, International or Coventry (subject to the same conditions) as 350's are available and one would hope that driver training (and LNR route knowledge) extension) would be relatively quick to implement.
Then look at a longer term new-train strategy...
Trainman40083
Established Member
There have been mentions of using 800 type IEP units. Are they guage compliant on the core section of Cross Country?