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And a huge pain in the backside, time consuming and often dangerous to deploy / un-deploy. The best thing we did to those units was change the nose end gangways.
Strawberry Hill, the rest at Wimbledon.
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Very well said. I’ve had Wimbledon depot completely full on a night shift in the past and you’re snookered. You can’t move anything.
The risk is that the signaller could inadvertently route them via the slow lines at Clapham in times of disruption, where they have gauging restrictions. It was agreed with NR that they wouldn’t be used in passenger service on the main line to remove that risk.
The inclusion of the main lines for passenger service were removed from the vehicle change proposal at the insistence of Network Rail, to avoid any possibility of the units being inadvertently routed via the slow lines at Clapham during perturbation.
Hindsight is a great thing. They weren’t intended to be ran on their current routes, hence the 100mph gearing. When we carried out traction testing post conversion they still managed 85mph uphill with 1 x traction deliberately isolated.
There’s a gauging restriction between the down fast and down slow lines at Pirbright, which necessitates all 458/4 Wimbledon to Bournemouth moves running as an ‘X’ headcode (exceptional load). This doesn’t apply to the up lines, so the return moves can use the usual pathway.
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