10 five car trains wouldn't be needed to replace the HST' which is probably the priority. Three 3 cars could go to Exeter for Barnstaple and 2 2cars for Okehampton. That would leave 2 3 cars and 3 2 cars for use as required.
I feel as if it would be an odd decision to replace those with the 175s, they'd really be used to logically fix the IET issue on Penzance to Cardiff Central. This frees up the IETs for more important stuff such as Paddington to elsewhere, removing shortformed issues with 5 coach IETs. Also can be used to, of course, replace the rest of the HSTs.
It’d do just fine for replacing the bulk of IETs on Cardiff to Cornwall services, and that I think is their real priority, because they badly need them back on HSS.
One of the main issues is to free 158's to return to Cardiff Portsmouth and also free some 150's for the Cornwall metro, when you consider that then it makes sense.
Fair point. But I still feel as if the IETs would be of higher importance to GWR as they operate their major London services. Just me though.
There are service improvements in the pipeline which quite possibly cannot happen unless dmus are made available. While there are no doubt too many IETs trundling around on local services in the west (not all of which really require 5 cars), with no Bristols via Badminton (and IETs to Bedwyn) there is, in theory at least, a surplus of the things for what they were actually ordered for.
Cardiff Central to Penzance services still utilise the bimode capabilities unlike some strange IET local services within Cornwall. Those locals should be the ones replaced by 175s to help capacity, not the long distance IETs.
Though they may well be the same diagrams.
Okehampton you would think would be fine with a 3 car. That is probably of a similar length to a pair of 150’s anyway.
Although have to be aware that GWR passengers are travelling further (from data in ORR quarterly report thread, we know on average travel 26% further than 5 years ago pre-pandemic)
Okehampton has had 3 car 158s, 3 car turbos and 4 car combinations of 150/158 so 175s shouldn't be a problem. Okehampton could require 3 car trains if Okehampton Interchange gets off the ground. Okehampton itself would probably lose some passengers. Barnstaple could do with a longer train in the peaks but platform lengths could be a problem.
Platform lengths on the Barny are already a problem, we now have to local door at a couple of stations with a 4 car 150 (not including Newton St Cyres).
There are 27 Class 175s: 11 x 2-car, 16 x 3-car.
That might be true, but as someone who spends a lot of their time looking at diagrams, it’s impossible to avoid certain services being unnecessarily long. Sometimes the ratio of trains to services just doesn’t allow for this sort of thing not to happen.
Of course - exacerbated by the fact that at the moment 5car IETs are the only things available to run those diagrams. My point was really that not all of those diagrams would need to be 5 cars if there were shorter units available. If spare 158s or turbos were available for the Bristol area, I suspect some of those “local IET” diagrams could well be rejigged as they presumably currently have to be kept separate from anything that goes down the Westbury line.
You can still have units stable at Exeter and receive light servicing and rotate them through Laira. Same goes for Long Rock and at Phillips Marsh, but allocated and major exams at LA.
I suppose, even if the 5 car IET on locals was replaced with a 5 car 175 it would free that IET to make a 10 car to London where it would be better used, and making better use of its capability under the wires.
Indeed - or rather than replace 2 5-car IETS with 2 (2+3) car 175s, most loadings would probably permit replacement of 3 (carefully chosen) 5-car IET diagrams with 2 3-car and 1 (2+2) car - leaving more available to help plug the holes in the local fleet. (This is all in connection with the suggestion earlier in the thread that they are going to run as semi-permanently coupled 5-car sets - by which I understand only split to replace a failure). While it would be nice to future-proof capacity on diagrams currently running as IETs by replacing 5 cars with 5, ensuring that all Cardiff-Portsmouth (for example) run with a minimum of 3 is more important, and sourcing stock for Mid-Cornwall and Metro West improvements isn't going to happen by replacing IETs on locals.
Train Database 2024 shows a lot of mixed sets with different units' numbers.
I'm not sure which vehicles it was but i'm pretty sure it was 175008 that was reformed with 2 fire damaged driving vehicles from separate units prior to moving to Ilford by road.
Wouldn’t have thought so. The fire issues were an issue with the maintenance depot changing from Alstom to CAF and then the engine bay checks not getting completed, so very easy for GWR to keep in top of.
Might be worth looking at what they were running at prior to 2022 when the trouble started for what, when cared for they can achieve.
That, or use the 175s on Cardiff-Portsmouth in 5-car formations as the first step of a cascade which ultimately puts 158s onto Penzance-Cardiff in place of 80x.
Which would make the 158s better-suited for that route (with the 175s doing Cardiff-Portsmouth, which I assume would benefit from being 5-car throughout), since their unit-end-gangways are particularly helpful (and, in my view, should be mandatory) for services which divide on-route.
Locking out an entire unit for certain stations (meaning passengers are unable to alight from those coaches) is similar to portion working in that end-ganways really should be provided in my view (to ensure that passengers can move coaches to be able to alight at their destination) in such suituations.
There's certainly a surplus of 5-car 80x (and 80x driving vehicles) but not enough 9-car 80x (just 35 full-length InterCity trains now compared to over 50 IC125s before IEP I believe).
Since it's a very small proportion of the route, do GWR even bother to use electric mode on those services? At least they call at Patchway, which in theory allows them to run in electric mode between there and Cardiff (I'm guessing they can't raise/lower the pantograph on-the-move or, if they can, that it needs to be specially set up with balises etc. to tell the train when to do so and that this won't have been done given they don't really want to be using them on this route).
Other than the InterCity fleet there are no 5-car units either - you could always make a 6-car or 7-car train by coupling shorter units together, just as you can make a 5-car train by coupling a 2-car unit to a 3-car one. Just need to have enough units (and, where short platforms and/or portion working is involved, for those units to have end-gangways).
