Future for 165/166s?

[LE Greys]

I might be wrong but, I thought 170s didn't run into Liverpool Street anymore?

You're absolutely right, just checked the timetable (shows you how long it was since I last went east of Cambridge). Presumably, this allows them to increase services on the main line.

 

[jopsuk]

It's all about increasing carriages. Cambridge-Norwich is now almost all three-car 170, Cambridge-Ipswich two-car 170. The diesel paths on the GEML are now by EMU cascaded from elsewhere. The 156s.`53s replaced by 170s strengthen other services.

 

[lm321412]

It's all about increasing carriages. Cambridge-Norwich is now almost all three-car 170, Cambridge-Ipswich two-car 170. The diesel paths on the GEML are now by EMU cascaded from elsewhere. The 156s.'53s replaced by 170s strengthen other services.

Its a sensible move anyway, saves on Diesel-under-the-wires even if it loses direct services.

 

[Cherry_Picker]

About the problem of being short of 2 16xs to 170s - nick a couple of chilterns 165s and in return they get a new order of 172s

What will the people who travel between Aylesbury - Amersham - Marylebone have to say about that?

 

[Class172]

What will the people who travel between Aylesbury - Amersham - Marylebone have to say about that?

Why wouldn't they want new 172s?

 

[Cherry_Picker]

172s cant run on the met line. The tripcock mechanism doesn't fit onto the bogies.

 

[sprinterguy]

I would be all for 165s/166s being used on Birmingham regional services. Birmingham - Hereford/Shrewsbury is only similar to London - Oxford/Reading which they are already used to doing and they are not as uncomfortable as is being made out (they are hardly 142s).

I would like to see this happen:

21x Class 166 GW - LM upon electrification
05x Class 165 GW - LM upon electrification

Then:

09x Class 170/5 LM - EA
09x Class 156 EA - Northern
09x Class 142 Northern - Withdrawn

08x Class 170/5 LM - GW
06x Class 170/6 LM - GW
08x Class 143 GW - Withdrawn or Northern?
06x Class 150 GW - Northern
06x Class 142 Northern - Withdrawn

I would propose at looking at the centre coaches of the 170/6s being added into 170518 - 170523 of Cross Country (removed from 170630 - 170635) as then you are helping BHM - SSDs out.

I have also accounted for 26x Turbos to go to LM to account for growth and to prevent overcrowding and I think I may have overaccounted for them (annoyingly their are 21x 166s whilst LM have 23x 170s)

Of course, the Turbos would have to be able to be cleared for all these services:

Birmingham New Street - Hereford
Birmingham New Street - Rugeley Trent Valley
Birmingham New Street - Shrewsbury


Opinions on this of course welcome.

The 166s would be well suited to the Chase Line and Shrewsbury services, and wouldn't fare too badly on the Worcester and Hereford services either IMO: The distances and journey times involved for the longest Hereford services are little different to the work the Turbos currently perform on Oxford and Cotswolds services. I think twenty one 166s would be perfectly capable of replacing LMs' twenty three 170s with only marginally tighter fleet rostering, as I suspect that London Midland have a comfortable amount of slack in their 170 fleet considering how many of their units can be seen sitting at Tyseley outside of the peaks.

Using the three car 166s on the Chase Line would do away with the need for pairing units up with 153s to make three car trains, although the downside of this is that four car trains would no longer be possible on the Worcester and Hereford services, and I'm not sure all of the stations along that route could cope with six carriage formations. More than three carriages is definitely needed to cope with passenger numbers on the busiest trains.

170630-635 could then go to Crosscountry, giving XC the entirety of the 170/6 three car fleet, which would replace 170518-523 and leave the whole 170/5 fleet of 23 trains to go to a different operator: Great Western perhaps. This would leave 170111-117 as two car units with Crosscountry, which works out well as XC also have a requirement for some services formed of more than three coaches to cope with demand.

The eight 143s should go to Arriva Trains Wales IMO, giving them the whole twenty five strong class 143 fleet to boost capacity on the Valley Lines and release some 150s for other services pending potential electrification of the Valley Lines. This would make withdrawal of the entire 143 fleet a very simple procedure upon electrification.

 

[Class172]

The 166s would be well suited to the Chase Line and Shrewsbury services, and wouldn't fare too badly on the Worcester and Hereford services either IMO: The distances and journey times involved for the longest Hereford services are little different to the work the Turbos currently perform on Oxford and Cotswolds services. I think twenty one 166s would be perfectly capable of replacing LMs' twenty three 170s with only marginally tighter fleet rostering, as I suspect that London Midland have a comfortable amount of slack in their 170 fleet considering how many of their units can be seen sitting at Tyseley outside of the peaks.

Using the three car 166s on the Chase Line would do away with the need for pairing units up with 153s to make three car trains, although the downside of this is that four car trains would no longer be possible on the Worcester and Hereford services, and I'm not sure all of the stations along that route could cope with six carriage formations. More than three carriages is definitely needed to cope with passenger numbers on the busiest trains..

The only station I know of that can take less than 6 carriages on the H'ford line is Bromsgrove (4 Down and 3 up) - I thought some 165s were 2 carriages, then you could couple two of them to make a 4 car set. I agree, the line needs at least 4/5 cars at peak times.

 

[sprinterguy]

The only station I know of that can take less than 6 carriages on the H'ford line is Bromsgrove (4 Down and 3 up) - I thought some 165s were 2 carriages, then you could couple two of them to make a 4 car set. I agree, the line needs at least 4/5 cars at peak times.

Yeah a number of the 165s are two car units, but as there's thirty seven of them it doesn't make for such a neat transfer in terms of numbers. I had a feeling that many of the platforms at stations on the Birmingham to Worcester/Hereford service would be ok to handle six carriages, as they used to witness fairly lengthy loco hauled formations on some of the Oxford and Paddington services right into the nineties, and of course HSTs still call at a select number of stations on the Malvern line. But I wasn't sure if thjings had changed in the last decade or so.

 

[Class172]

Loco-hauled??

 

[tbtc]

Yeah a number of the 165s are two car units, but as there's thirty seven of them it doesn't make for such a neat transfer in terms of numbers

Out of interest, are the two/three car units mixed around, or do one tend to stay on the Aylesbury routes with the other on the Wycombe routes?

 

[Cherry_Picker]

Mixed. They will run as 2, 3, 4, 5 & 6 car sets (6 cars will be made up of 2 x 3 or 3 x2) throughout the day. It's a very flexible system.

 

[Daimler]

Out of interest, are the two/three car units mixed around, or do one tend to stay on the Aylesbury routes with the other on the Wycombe routes?

They're very much mixed around, and combinations of units vary a lot too.

EDIT: More informative post above!

 

[tbtc]

Mixed. They will run as 2, 3, 4, 5 & 6 car sets (6 cars will be made up of 2 x 3 or 3 x2) throughout the day. It's a very flexible system.

Complicated!

Going off topic, but is the same the case for FGW?

 

[Cherry_Picker]

Complicated!

Not especially. Coupling and uncoupling multiple units is a very quick and easy thing to do. There will always be plenty of stock available at Aylesbury and in London so it's a simple case of matching your stock with how long you think each train should be. Yes, it might be a complicated thing to start from scratch, but a lot of these diagrams have been fine tuned over years and years.

 

[Metrailway]

The only station I know of that can take less than 6 carriages on the H'ford line is Bromsgrove (4 Down and 3 up) - I thought some 165s were 2 carriages, then you could couple two of them to make a 4 car set. I agree, the line needs at least 4/5 cars at peak times.

Isn't Bromsgrove about to be rebuilt? If so they could future proof it so the platforms could be large enough to take 6 cars. Although since this is logical, it won't happen :roll:

 

[Class172]

Isn't Bromsgrove about to be rebuilt? If so they could future proof it so the platforms could be large enough to take 6 cars. Although since this is logical, it won't happen :roll:

Correct - 4 platforms 6 cars long

 

[sprinterguy]

Loco-hauled??

Yes: RES 47/4s (Presumably some of the NSE liveried 47/4s or 47/7s as well at some point) and Network South East liveried mark 1s or pressure ventilated mark 2s.

 

[Class172]

Well I knew 166s were used on London-Worcester-Stourbridge-Birmingham services - I thought the last loco hauled trains (excluding XC line) were in the 1980s

 

[sprinterguy]

Well I knew 166s were used on London-Worcester-Stourbridge-Birmingham services - I thought the last loco hauled trains (excluding XC line) were in the 1980s

Nope: Here's a very hastily scanned shot from the 1993 Platform 5 Combined Volume (I was much too young to be photographing trains myself at this point in time) of 47582 at Ledbury on the 13:40 Paddington to Hereford on September 8th 1991:

Out of curisosity on a similar note, can anyone remember when the Paddington-Oxford-Hereford loco hauled turns ceased, and for that matter what the last First Great Western loco hauled diagrams were at the turn of the millenium?

 

[The Planner]

Correct - 4 platforms 6 cars long

Ummm don't be so sure about that.... last I saw was the two existing with a bay. Not four platforms.

 

[lm321412]

Yes: RES 47/4s (Presumably some of the NSE liveried 47/4s or 47/7s as well at some point) and Network South East liveried mark 1s or pressure ventilated mark 2s.

Until the early 90s it was also quite common to get Class 50s working London Paddington - Hereford. The end of loco haulage sort of occurred around the time of the Turbos.

 

[sprinterguy]

Until the early 90s it was also quite common to get Class 50s working London Paddington - Hereford. The end of loco haulage sort of occurred around the time of the Turbos.

I had a feeling that introduction of the Turbos would have seen the demise of loco haulage over the route, but I have a suspicion that it went on for a couple of years after their introduction (Maybe up to about 95/96?), though I may well be wrong.

 

[LE Greys]

I had a feeling that introduction of the Turbos would have seen the demise of loco haulage over the route, but I have a suspicion that it went on for a couple of years after their introduction (Maybe up to about 95/96?), though I may well be wrong.

Possibly a bit of delay after introduction to allow the new units to bed in and get the timetable right. I often wish I'd done more travelling on the Western back then, missed out on an awful lot, but the family tended to stick to cars at the time.

 

[thefab444]

Out of curisosity on a similar note, can anyone remember when the Paddington-Oxford-Hereford loco hauled turns ceased, and for that matter what the last First Great Western loco hauled diagrams were at the turn of the millenium?

I don't have the exact diagrams, but they mainly worked Plymouth and Penzance services.

 

[LE Greys]

I don't have the exact diagrams, but they mainly worked Plymouth and Penzance services.

Last regular service one I saw, as opposed to Glastonbury specials, was leaving Bath towards Bristol in Winter 2000. That might have had something to do with the Hatfield delays, though. There was a bit of a flashover from the rear bogie, but it seemed to do no damage.

 

[sprinterguy]

I don't have the exact diagrams, but they mainly worked Plymouth and Penzance services.

Ah, cheers for the info.

 

[thefab444]

Last regular service one I saw, as opposed to Glastonbury specials, was leaving Bath towards Bristol in Winter 2000. That might have had something to do with the Hatfield delays, though. There was a bit of a flashover from the rear bogie, but it seemed to do no damage.

I think they were last used in regular service on West of England runs in roughly 2003 or maybe 2004 when they were fully displaced by Class 180s.

 

[tbtc]

Going further off topic here, but when did 50s cease and all "loco hauled" on Great Western services become just 47s?

 

[Class172]

Ummm don't be so sure about that.... last I saw was the two existing with a bay. Not four platforms.

What!? Have they changed? The last I saw was in the Bromsgrove Advertiser showing a plan with 4 platforms - to be honest that was a year ago so things could have changed since then