Could 'dual-purpose' trains work?

[Bertie the bus]

What we actually need are containerised passengers, then they can hitch a ride between Wentloog and Daventry or similar destinations.

But only if it departs at about 01:00 and arrives around 05:30 because that is apparently when everybody wants to travel.

 

[zwk500]

But only if it departs at about 01:00 and arrives around 05:30 because that is apparently when everybody wants to travel.

It also has to go specifically to Manchester, and I wonder if this users next thread will be about whether a station should be built at 17 Maple Aveneue, Manchester.

 

[ExRes]

The closest I could see to your idea ever happening would be to couple a 4-car EMU to a 8-car 325 set. It can board at Wembley Central or Finsbury Park at god knows what o'clock, and drop the passenger unit off at a convenient major station like Crewe or York for first trains to Liverpool/Manchester/Leeds/etc.

Unless there's been big changes there are no EMUs that can be coupled to a 325

 

[zwk500]

Unless there's been big changes there are no EMUs that can be coupled to a 325

The while thread was hypothetical, fitting a swing able dellner to a 325 would not be the hardest mod ever.

 

[D365]

There’s a thought - a mixed-use Class 321 consist (Renatus + Swift).

 

[Philip]

As with a lot of potential enhancements to the railway service, it comes down to cost and how much tolerance the railway is prepared to give to projects which may not be cost effective. You could argue that because the railway is a public service, the priority shouldn't be about a project being cost effective (within reason) but that if the infrastructure is in place to provide something which could help people - go for it! And people can only speculate at this point - it could be the case that the overnight rail travel market would boom if there was the option of a service to use.

If overnight travel in this example is not worthwhile, why do coach companies bother to put on a coach to cater for this purpose? TPE have also in the past operated services through the night between Blackpool-Manchester-York throughout the week.

 

[zwk500]

it comes down to cost and how much tolerance the railway is prepared to give to projects which may not be cost effective.

We have the answer to this - not a lot.

And people can only speculate at this point - it could be the case that the overnight rail travel market would boom if there was the option of a service to use.

No, the size of the overnight markets is well understood. That's why there is a sleeper service to Scotland but no longer one to Liverpool or Manchester.

If overnight travel in this example is not worthwhile, why do coach companies bother to put on a coach to cater for this purpose?

Because the market is small enough for a coach, with its much lower costs, but not big enough for rail.

TPE have also in the past operated services through the night between Blackpool-Manchester-York throughout the week.

That's a completely different question about a 24 hour railway, not mixed traffic trains.

 

[tbtc]

You could argue that because the railway is a public service, the priority shouldn't be about a project being cost effective (within reason) but that if the infrastructure is in place to provide something which could help people - go for it!

The argument that “railways are a public service therefore …” seems to be used on here increasingly to justify all sorts of unviable proposals

I mean my local library is a public service but I don’t expect it to open twenty four hours a day

And people can only speculate at this point - it could be the case that the overnight rail travel market would boom if there was the option of a service to use

Sure, but where?

If the Caledonian Sleeper needs huge sums of subsidy thrown at it (despite London to Glasgow/ Edinburgh obviously being huge markets with daytime trains that are both frequent and profitable… and the journey time in the Sleeper being broadly commensurate with a good night’s sleep) then what other markets are there?

Would people really want to arrive somewhere at three in the morning?

How are you going to cope with overnight engineering?

What about the inevitable antisocial behaviour? (Given that the late night service from Newcastle to York etc had to be abandoned given the repercussions of a few drunks)

Do you keep a massive station open overnight for the sake of this token service? Or do you use smaller stations that’d be cheaper to staff?

Are you giving up on the “freight” idea?

The further we get into this, the more it looks like “I Want X” + “Railways Are A Public Service” = “This Niche Thing Needs To Happen Because Railways Should Be A Public Service And Not Just Focus On Large/Medium Flows…And If They Don’t Start This Strange Service Then I’ll Ask Why They Hate Passengers”

If overnight travel in this example is not worthwhile, why do coach companies bother to put on a coach to cater for this purpose? TPE have also in the past operated services through the night between Blackpool-Manchester-York throughout the week.

I’ve used them in the past from Sheffield to Manchester Airport, but these were regular 185 operated trains, not some weird mash up of cement train with a few carriages tagged onto it

Airports make sense as a destination since they are one of the very few places where a significant enough number of people need to arrive/depart in the middle of the night

 

[Philip]

The argument that “railways are a public service therefore …” seems to be used on here increasingly to justify all sorts of unviable proposals

I mean my local library is a public service but I don’t expect it to open twenty four hours a day



Sure, but where?

If the Caledonian Sleeper needs huge sums of subsidy thrown at it (despite London to Glasgow/ Edinburgh obviously being huge markets with daytime trains that are both frequent and profitable… and the journey time in the Sleeper being broadly commensurate with a good night’s sleep) then what other markets are there?

Would people really want to arrive somewhere at three in the morning?

How are you going to cope with overnight engineering?

What about the inevitable antisocial behaviour? (Given that the late night service from Newcastle to York etc had to be abandoned given the repercussions of a few drunks)

Do you keep a massive station open overnight for the sake of this token service? Or do you use smaller stations that’d be cheaper to staff?

Are you giving up on the “freight” idea?

The further we get into this, the more it looks like “I Want X” + “Railways Are A Public Service” = “This Niche Thing Needs To Happen Because Railways Should Be A Public Service And Not Just Focus On Large/Medium Flows…And If They Don’t Start This Strange Service Then I’ll Ask Why They Hate Passengers”



I’ve used them in the past from Sheffield to Manchester Airport, but these were regular 185 operated trains, not some weird mash up of cement train with a few carriages tagged onto it

Airports make sense as a destination since they are one of the very few places where a significant enough number of people need to arrive/depart in the middle of the night

The mixed pasenger/freight use idea is really a way of justifying the idea of an early-hours service because it would be using an existing path and with coaching stock it wouldn't be utilizng a whole EMU/DMU, so on the face of it would seem to be less complicated to set up and more resourceful.

On a more general point, because the railway is a public service should the attitude not be more towards enhancing the service than it is to keeping costs down? Up until the 1950s the railway was the principal mode of transport in the UK because of speed, capacity and the vast number of places it served, then all the line and station closures happened and since then it has become a secondary option, with long distance the biggest draw, but even this is unattractive to many people because of the cost. Let's try and bring the railway back towards the service it once offered to many!

 

[Fleetmaster]

The only conceivable market is parcels. DPD etc. I thought this was even being trialed on a very small scale?

Doing it on a carriage load or more is surely an impossibility or prohibitively expensive due to multiple unit design and operation.

 

[zwk500]

The mixed pasenger/freight use idea is really a way of justifying the idea of an early-hours service because it would be using an existing path and with coaching stock it wouldn't be utilizng a whole EMU/DMU, so on the face of it would seem to be less complicated to set up and more resourceful.

What is the actual problem you are attempting to solve here?

On a more general point, because the railway is a public service should the attitude not be more towards enhancing the service than it is to keeping costs down? Up until the 1950s the railway was the principal mode of transport in the UK because of speed, capacity and the vast number of places it served, then all the line and station closures happened and since then it has become a secondary option with long distance the biggest draw but even this is unattractive to to many because of the cost. Let's try and bring the railway back towards the service it once offered to many!

We're not in the 1950s any more. People want different things from their travel and the technologies have changed travel.

 

[Royston Vasey]

The mixed pasenger/freight use idea is really a way of justifying the idea of an early-hours service because it would be using an existing path and with coaching stock it wouldn't be utilizng a whole EMU/DMU, so on the face of it would seem to be less complicated to set up and more resourceful.

On a more general point, because the railway is a public service should the attitude not be more towards enhancing the service than it is to keeping costs down? Up until the 1950s the railway was the principal mode of transport in the UK because of speed, capacity and the vast number of places it served, then all the line and station closures happened and since then it has become a secondary option with long distance the biggest draw but even this is unattractive to to many because of the cost. Let's try and bring the railway back towards the service it once offered to many!

Are you going to run cold and dark coaches, or invest in some generator vans too?

 

[Philip]

What is the actual problem you are attempting to solve here?

It isn't really solving a problem, rather it's expanding the railway beyond it's current level of operation. I'm also not suggesting making it a 24 hour railway as this implies running a regular service through the night; it's the introduction of a number of token long distance services to help those people who would rather travel there and then (and sleep on the train if necessary) than wait until the next morning. As I've said TPE have done it before and the Caledonian Sleeper is not just there to provide an accomodation experience for passengers, it's there to provide overnight travel. Using and sharing existing freight train paths isn't the priority in this idea but seemed like a way to set up the service at less of a cost than setting up new paths, and less of an inconvenience to overnight engineering possessions.

 

[zwk500]

It isn't really solving a problem, rather it's expanding the railway beyond it's current level of operation.

But if there isn't a transport need that's not being met, why?

I'm also not suggesting making it a 24 hour railway as this implies running a regular service through the night; it's the introduction of a number of token long distance services to help those people who would rather travel there and then (and sleep on the train if necessary) than wait until the next morning.

You still have trains leaving Euston at 2/3am, so the station can only close for a maximum of about 2-3hours per day. And the signallers must man the desks for the full period, and an open route must be protected every night. Sounds an awful lot like a 24hour railway to me.

As I've said TPE have done it before and the Caledonian Sleeper is not just there to provide an accomodation experience for passengers, it's there to provide overnight travel.

Yes, it provides travel to a market that has been identified - London to Scotland. It is also a heavy political project and subsidised to an approximate level of 1:1. The need for overnight travel to cities less than 2.5hrs away is much reduced.

The be all and end all of this proposal any way you cut it is that it will cost a fortune for a negligible market.

 

[Western Lord]

Up until the 1950s the railway was the principal mode of transport in the UK because of speed, capacity and the vast number of places it served, then all the line and station closures happened and since then it has become a secondary option, with long distance the biggest draw, but even this is unattractive to many people because of the cost. Let's try and bring the railway back towards the service it once offered to many!

The railways didn't lose traffic due to line and station closures. The traffic had already gone which is why the lines and stations were closed. Through the 1950's increasing wealth and virtually full employment led to a boom in consumer spending of which one of the most popular buys was a car (not necessarily a new one). It is no surprise that having bought the thing they were going to use it in preference to dirty, slow and often inconvenient railways. At the same time suburban spread made railways uncompetitive compared to the old densely packed housing close to stations and favoured car and bus use.

 

[tbtc]

The mixed pasenger/freight use idea is really a way of justifying the idea of an early-hours service because it would be using an existing path and with coaching stock it wouldn't be utilizng a whole EMU/DMU, so on the face of it would seem to be less complicated to set up and more resourceful

Ah, so your plan is to (only?) do this on freight that is conveyed by DMU/ EMU?

Well that rules out a significant amount of freight for a start

So there’d only be a carriage or two of passenger accommodation, but needing a conductor for the handful of passengers?

In fact, so few seats that everyone could be accommodated on a coach on the motorway?

And bespoke stock since it’ll be divided into some carriages having seating and others being empty for pallets or whatever to be stacked in?

On a more general point, because the railway is a public service should the attitude not be more towards enhancing the service than it is to keeping costs down?

Again, this “public service” idea seems to be a wonderful excuse for an old idea…

And if people object then you can just claim that “public service” means that we should embrace any “ambitious” projects?

Up until the 1950s the railway was the principal mode of transport in the UK because of speed, capacity and the vast number of places it served, then all the line and station closures happened

You make it sound like this just randomly happened (rather than, say, the growth in cars/ lorries/ motorways and the decline in heavy industry meaning that heavy rail was increasingly inflexible and unfit for purpose in a large number of markets

Let's try and bring the railway back towards the service it once offered to many!

Sure, I think everyone on here would want the railway to grow if it can (the only difference is that some people will back any old reopening through empty countryside whilst others would rather we focused on services that would actually carry sufficient people)

But where/ what? What’s the market here? People wanting to arrive in various cities at three in the morning? A kind of Megabus operation where we focus on “budget conscious” people more focused on price than speed? Or just a vague “there should be more trains because I like trains”?

 

[MarkyT]

When steam ruled the rails, into the 1980s in some politically isolated countries in southern Africa, many freights had a long bogie brakevan with some seating compartments incorporated for public use. This worked because trains stopped regularly at stations en route to pass on single lines, take on water and fuel, etc. I can't see economically minded people from the west country making their way to Merehead to board a Mk1 brake attached behind stone trains to Acton behind a class 59, however attractive that might be for enthusiasts! On the other hand, there are companies hoping to repurpose secondhand EMUs for certain classes of higher-value cargo and there's an article in Modern Railways about efforts to use in-passenger-service trains flexibly in various innovative ways (I'll have to wait to read that as Dad has my copy currently!).

 

[YorksLad12]

The class 141s used to have lockable sections at the cab ends for carrying small goods, with folding seats. I don't think they were ever used as such, and the doors just slid all over the place anyway when you went round a curve! Plus, 'compartments' is not a good look on the modern railway. But in these days of Amazon lockets at stations (Morley has them on the platform), if the cabs were made a bit larger for the purpose of carrying small parcels (say by one row of seats) would that work?

 

[6Gman]

Because the market is small enough for a coach, with its much lower costs, but not big enough for rail.

And National Express don't have to pay for the M6 to be open at night.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 5 May 2023 ==

The mixed pasenger/freight use idea is really a way of justifying the idea of an early-hours service because it would be using an existing path and with coaching stock it wouldn't be utilizng a whole EMU/DMU, so on the face of it would seem to be less complicated to set up and more resourceful.

On a more general point, because the railway is a public service should the attitude not be more towards enhancing the service than it is to keeping costs down? Up until the 1950s the railway was the principal mode of transport in the UK because of speed, capacity and the vast number of places it served, then all the line and station closures happened and since then it has become a secondary option, with long distance the biggest draw, but even this is unattractive to many people because of the cost. Let's try and bring the railway back towards the service it once offered to many!

I suggest you look closely at old timetables if you think it would be a good thing to "bring the railway back towards the service it once offered to many" !

 

[Brubulus]

The class 141s used to have lockable sections at the cab ends for carrying small goods, with folding seats. I don't think they were ever used as such, and the doors just slid all over the place anyway when you went round a curve! Plus, 'compartments' is not a good look on the modern railway. But in these days of Amazon lockets at stations (Morley has them on the platform), if the cabs were made a bit larger for the purpose of carrying small parcels (say by one row of seats) would that work?

Using the cabs as lockable storage compartments for a Red-Star parcels style service for parcel delivery is a pretty good idea in my opinion. It seemed like a really useful service that was ahead of its time and would be extremely useful for small businesses today.

 

[CBlue]

The class 141s used to have lockable sections at the cab ends for carrying small goods, with folding seats. I don't think they were ever used as such, and the doors just slid all over the place anyway when you went round a curve! Plus, 'compartments' is not a good look on the modern railway. But in these days of Amazon lockets at stations (Morley has them on the platform), if the cabs were made a bit larger for the purpose of carrying small parcels (say by one row of seats) would that work?

Using the cabs as lockable storage compartments for a Red-Star parcels style service for parcel delivery is a pretty good idea in my opinion. It seemed like a really useful service that was ahead of its time and would be extremely useful for small businesses today.

Who unloads and loads these parcels at each station? Presumably the timetable would need rewriting also to account for the inevitabley longer dwell times.

 

[JonathanH]

And National Express don't have to pay for the M6 to be open at night.

Even when it isn't open they just take a parallel route.

 

[Mikey C]

GWR used their HSTs to transport fresh fish to London, do they still do this with the IETs, which lack the separate guard's van area?

Quoting myself, (modern) GWR had a nice sideline transporting fresh fish up from Cornwall in the guards van of HSTs, for London restaurants. A perfect high value product to transport. Does this still happen?

 

[YorksLad12]

Who unloads and loads these parcels at each station? Presumably the timetable would need rewriting also to account for the inevitabley longer dwell times.

Good points. I wasn't thinking of *every* station, or even every train.

But there may be some routes where carrying parcels by local train is more effective than by road. Let's say two trains per day, leaving a depot/main station at 9am and 1pm, met at stations along the way by a local delivery firm to do the last mile? Rural buses used to carry small parcels, even this century/millennium so it's not a strange concept. As for loading and unloading; in my example, parcels would be grouped by destination and crated or bagged accordingly, so the "last mile" person just needs the right crate/bag rather than a series of loose parcels.

I mean, if Scotrail can adapt 153s to convey cycles, then why not...?

 

[Bertie the bus]

I mean, if Scotrail can adapt 153s to convey cycles, then why not...?

Why not? Because parcels go to a distribution centre and are then loaded into a van and delivered. What you are suggesting is go to a distribution centre, load into a van, deliver to a railway station, load onto a train, take to another railway station, load into another van and then deliver.

How is your suggestion cheaper, quicker or more efficient than the existing process?

 

[zwk500]

Quoting myself, (modern) GWR had a nice sideline transporting fresh fish up from Cornwall in the guards van of HSTs, for London restaurants. A perfect high value product to transport. Does this still happen?

I don't believe so as there's no secure area to store it.

 

[Brubulus]

I don't believe so as there's no secure area to store it.

Lock them in the rear cab?

 

[12LDA28C]

In relation to the thread about early last services between London and the North West, in part to allow paths for freight trains up the WCML, I was wondering if the idea of dual-use freight-passenger trains has ever been floated and whether it could work now with the stock currently in use?

For example if a freight was being transported from the South Coast to Trafford Park overnight, the train could run into London Euston and couple up with some passenger coaching stock, before making it's way north and dropping the coaches at Manchester Picc before continuing with the wagons to the freight terminal.

Has this sort of thing been done before? I guess it wouldn't be practical during the day because the amount of shuffling around would be impractical against the timetable, but as a means to provide more overnight long distance services, could it work?

Who would run these trains? Whose safety case would they run on - passenger TOCs don't run freight trains and FOCs won't have a safety case to run passenger trains. What would the reporting codes be and how would the trains get regulated - as a freight or a passenger train?

How would the train be accommodated at a station platform with passenger and freight vehicles in the consist and how would they be dispatched? What speed would they run at?

I don't think you've really thought this through at all I'm afraid.

 

[zwk500]

Lock them in the rear cab?

not exactly spacious, and you wouldnt want a rough ride or heavy braking to spill fish all over the controls.

 

[Philip]

Who would run these trains? Whose safety case would they run on - passenger TOCs don't run freight trains and FOCs won't have a safety case to run passenger trains. What would the reporting codes be and how would the trains get regulated - as a freight or a passenger train?

How would the train be accommodated at a station platform with passenger and freight vehicles in the consist and how would they be dispatched? What speed would they run at?

I don't think you've really thought this through at all I'm afraid.

All of these questions are beyond the 'speculative/suggestion' stage and would have to be looked at if something like this was to be attempted. I'm sure you could have both the TOC and the freight company taking responsibility for the train if both sides cooperated. I think the speed would be determined by the speed which the freight train normally ran at.