GWR Class 800

[jayah]

So by that logic, European countries should be completely de-electrifying their networks, right?

Nonsense.

They electrified up to 100 years ago when electric trains were competing with far slower and more expensive traction, including steam.

I can think of few more pointless ways to spend £bn of public money right now than rail electrification.

 

[D365]

Diesel is slower, dirtier, less reliable and more expensive. What are you suggesting we do to replace fossil fuel burners?

 

[TT-ONR-NRN]

Still, most electricity comes from non renewable ways anyway; although I agree with you - electrifying the railways is definitely for the best - but I’m glad the 800s are bi mode. Now they can reach non electrified destinations without running diesel under the wires.

 

[Dai Corner]

Still, most electricity comes from non renewable ways anyway; although I agree with you - electrifying the railways is definitely for the best - but I’m glad the 800s are bi mode. Now they can reach non electrified destinations without running diesel under the wires.

Network Rail's contract with EDF means trains are largely powered by nuclear-generated electricity (in so far as you can identify a particular power station powering a given section of track).

https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2013/jan/11/edf-3bn-network-rail-nuclear

 

[YorkshireBear]

Electrification is demonstrably throwing good money after bad. It is impossible to find any rational justification for the vast sums involved.

If we have a rolling stock shortage, what is wrong with more new or converted diesel stock? Much of the current shortage has arisen because government policy has trashed the leasing market for diesel stock, a correction is long overdue.

Rail passengers want safety, value for money, speed, capacity and a phone signal and spending £2bn on electric wires does not deliver any of the above.

It delivers all of them. Even with electrification at EGIP prices (ignoring the GWEP balls up) the running costs reduce. Electric trains are faster and can afford more capacity.

The problems we have encountered mean that we should as an industry be taking a look at ourselves and asking those difficult questions of ourselves, designers, contractors, the DfT and particularly the ORR and getting the costs down so we can provide these benefits.

Major enhancements with economic benefits that generate GDP should never be compared against social spending because quite simply, they are uncomparable. And if we did, morally, we would be forever just having a bigger population with a massive social bill and no jobs because all the infrastructure around the country is s**t.

 

[LNW-GW Joint]

Network Rail's contract with EDF means trains are largely powered by nuclear-generated electricity (in so far as you can identify a particular power station powering a given section of track).
https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2013/jan/11/edf-3bn-network-rail-nuclear

Buying electricity from EDF doesn't mean it's nuclear, NR will just get the local supply mix the grid delivers.
The UK nuclear content these days is about 25% I think, sometimes boosted by up to 10% from the French interconnector.
But wind/solar is increasing quickly, replacing coal and some gas.
I think the most likely situation is that the nuclear element will stay static, with new capacity replacing the old stations.

 

[jimm]

Sadly the DfT were spending too much time reading Modern Railways telling them that electric trains with great heavy diesel engines would never amount to much on electric let alone diesel and they had better aim low and find a cheap way to electrify almost ever nook west of Paddington instead.

The worst part is they had already asked XC to design the Class 802 prototype and then changed their minds, leaving us all with 4 car trains between Aberdeen and Penzance for the foreseeable.

You do like to rewrite history, don't you?

If only the electrification plans had included "every nook west of Paddington"... but if we simply hadn't bothered and just bought an HST2 instead, we would have been stuck with diesel traction until the middle of this century - and having to keep everything crossed that oil supplies were still available at a reasonable price until then as well.

The proposal to add 25kv capability to Voyagers came from Bombardier, not the the DfT (assuming that's who you mean by 'they') - and god help us if anything remotely resembling a Voyager had been a prototype for a new generation of long-distance trains.

Nonsense.

They electrified up to 100 years ago when electric trains were competing with far slower and more expensive traction, including steam.

I can think of few more pointless ways to spend £bn of public money right now than rail electrification.

The only nonsense is your apparent suggestion that there was some sort of comprehensive electrification on European networks up to 100 years ago. There was some electrification 100 years ago, but pretty much the first systematic programmes were in the likes of Switzerland and Sweden after the First World War, when they had struggled to get supplies of coal for steam locos because the British, French and Germans were using most of what they mined for their war efforts.

In Germany in the late 1930s there were all of 1,300 miles of electrified track, much of that on suburban services. And much of what had been installed by then, especially in Italy, was three-phase equipment, which was subsequently replaced by single-phase, never mind the need to replace kit destroyed during the course of the Second World War.

Nor was there some kind of big bang moment for electrification after the Second World War. Unlike stop-start Britain, most other countries have carried out electrification at a steady pace over the years, and according to you, we should just stop again.

 

[Dai Corner]

Buying electricity from EDF doesn't mean it's nuclear, NR will just get the local supply mix the grid delivers.

I know; hence the disclaimer in brackets. My post was somewhat tongue in cheek.

An interesting site showing real-time info on generation here. About half is gas at the time of writing.
http://www.gridwatch.templar.co.uk/

Apologies for going off-topic. Back to Cl 800s

 

[Master29]

The worst part is they had already asked XC to design the Class 802 prototype and then changed their minds, leaving us all with 4 car trains between Aberdeen and Penzance for the foreseeable.

Really. I thought it was Hitachi who designed the class 802. I can`t remember 4 car iep`s or Crosscountry ever using them unless of course you know something we don`t

 

[Railperf]

When are Virgin Trains East Coast introducing their first IET's into service? Is it December this year..or next?

 

[CardiffKid]

Towards the end of next year, can't remember the precise date.

 

[Sirgerbil]

When are Virgin Trains East Coast introducing their first IET's into service? Is it December this year..or next?

Late November/Early December is scheduled for the first to enter passenger service.

 

[Railperf]

Late November/Early December is scheduled for the first to enter passenger service.

2018??

 

[ainsworth74]

2018??

Yes late 2018 for VTECs units to enter service.

 

[reddragon]

Ok, I took my 1st ride out of PAD on one today.
It ran out next to a class 387 which it ran alongside to Acton. The 800 accelerated quickly up to each speed limit at the same rate as the 387 with virtually no difference (i was next to the same coach throughout!), but then of course the 387 stayed at 90 whilst the 800 went up to 125 quite quickly.
Due to a broken down HST of the down main at West Drayton, we had to switch over to the reliefs at Hayes & back to the mains at Slough.
So I am on a late running 800 with a clear run. We only got up to 110 for the Maidenhead switch to diesel, but on diesel it would not go over 113mph. After a TSR to 90, it got back up to 115mph quickly but went no faster.

That does indicate power management rather than pure engine power.

I had the coach to myself, everything worked well, pretty impressed but not sure about the seats for over 30 mins!

 

[jadmor]

Test train at Waverley today

 

[coppercapped]

I have read that a 5 car electric IET is rated at 2712Kw or 3641 Hp. The 9 car units are said to be 4520KW or 6070HP. So around 14hp/ton.
A 5 car unit has 3 diesel engines rated at a maximum of 700 KW or 940hp each. That is 2100Kw or 2820Hp,

The 9 car units have 5 diesel engines - so a toal of 3500Kw or 4700 Hp.

Of course the diesel engines have to supply power to the trains computer and control systems, air conditioning, power doors, lighting and auxiliary systems. So the power to rail is going to be less than this. An HST only delivers 78% of its installed diesel engine output to the rail, 3540 hp rather than the 4500Hp quoted. So it is fair to say that an IET would probably at maximum offer a similar percentage to the rail. Based on a 78% diesel output to the rails, that would be 2200 HP for a 5-car and 3666 HP for a 9-car IEt. Despite the fact that newer trains have more efficient traction packages, and LED lighting, i would imagine that chemical retention toilets, passenger information systems, and the vast computer control systems balance things out - possibly even consuming more than the basic auxiliary systems aboard HST power cars and Mk3 coaches. I'm sure the real information is way too commercially sensitive to be revealed here.

I think you are rather over-egging the situation...

A simple sanity check will give an idea of the orders of magnitude the various systems use.

Locomotives have an ETH (Electric Train Heating) Index to allow easy calculation of the length of train the locomotive can heat or cool. 1 ETH unit equates to 5kW. A Class 92 has an ETH Index of 108 which is compatible with the 16 coach long Anglo-Scottish sleepers. This translates to a total ETH power supply of some 540kW which, divided by 16, gives a consumption of 33.75kW per coach.

The power required for heating and cooling an IET coach will be about the same, the extra 3 metres in the coach's lengths will not make much difference and modern air conditioning plant is probably slightly more efficient than the Mark 3 coach's nearly 50 year old design. In the IET's favour the gangways seal better than the Pullman-style gangways used on earlier stock so the power draw may be less.

However, if we assume an ETH load for the IET as being 35kW per coach this gives a total of 175kW for a 5 coach train. This is just over 8% of the total diesel power available with the engines at their 700kW rating. It might be a bit more or a bit less, but whatever the actual value is it won't be greatly different.

The major losses between the engine's power measured at the flywheel and the road wheels are the losses in the main alternator, losses in the power conditioning circuits and the drive motors and gearboxes. Also to be subtracted from the nominal output power, in addition to the train heating supply, is the power drawn by the radiator fans, air compressors and battery chargers. Not all of these thing run at the same time, but 80% of the nominal diesel engine output power available at the wheel rims is par for the course.

The other consumers pale by comparison. Power drawn by the power doors is irrelevant - normally the doors are only operated when the train is stationary... A powerful desktop computer draws 450 to 500 watts, say that there is one in each coach and there is also a WiFi router in each coach which draws the same, thats 1 kW per coach or 5 kW for a 5 coach train - about 0.25% of the nominal engine power. Power drawn by the electronic displays is negligible - if it wasn't your laptop would run flat in an hour or so. The toilets run for a few seconds every five minutes - and that is if the passengers have been drinking...

 

[Sirgerbil]

2018??

Yeah 2018, But you'll start seeing them around the ECML more from Jan as they enter platform validation tests and driver training from the summer.

 

[Dave1987]

Electrification is demonstrably throwing good money after bad. It is impossible to find any rational justification for the vast sums involved.

If we have a rolling stock shortage, what is wrong with more new or converted diesel stock? Much of the current shortage has arisen because government policy has trashed the leasing market for diesel stock, a correction is long overdue.

Rail passengers want safety, value for money, speed, capacity and a phone signal and spending £2bn on electric wires does not deliver any of the above.

Well in that one sentence I can say I will not being paying much attention to your posts in future. Diesel trains are far more expensive to maintain. They are far heavier so therefore require more energy to move them (remember the laws of physics?). In the long term electrification is the most cost effective solution end of. Bi-modes are simply an excuse for not getting electrification done. Having diesel engines idling under the wires will reduce the thermal cycles on the engines BUT will wear components and you are totally defeating the point of electrification. Diesel engines are inefficient on low idle, they like to operate at a constant rpm at high power. There is just no justification for discontinuous electrification. Get the wires up. Long term it is the best and cheapest solution.

 

[D365]

I’ll do my best to ensure that my ongoing battery hybrid research doesn’t leave my capable hands

 

[jayah]

It delivers all of them. Even with electrification at EGIP prices (ignoring the GWEP balls up) the running costs reduce. Electric trains are faster and can afford more capacity.

The problems we have encountered mean that we should as an industry be taking a look at ourselves and asking those difficult questions of ourselves, designers, contractors, the DfT and particularly the ORR and getting the costs down so we can provide these benefits.

Major enhancements with economic benefits that generate GDP should never be compared against social spending because quite simply, they are uncomparable. And if we did, morally, we would be forever just having a bigger population with a massive social bill and no jobs because all the infrastructure around the country is s**t.

Can you prove any of this?

The GWEP business case was dubious at 2012 prices and certainly wouldn't stack up now. You need a lot of savings to pay for the huge amount of £bn it is going to cost even descoped. The main benefit was being able to put seats in what is the HST power car.

The GDP benefit of road schemes is many times that of rail and was in that case.

Not exactly relevant when comparing Class 802 and Class 800 which along with many other trains disproves any speed benefit under 125mph.

 

[jayah]

Network Rail's contract with EDF means trains are largely powered by nuclear-generated electricity (in so far as you can identify a particular power station powering a given section of track).

https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2013/jan/11/edf-3bn-network-rail-nuclear

They use exactly the same electricity generated by exactly the same fuels as everyone else.

 

[jayah]

Well in that one sentence I can say I will not being paying much attention to your posts in future. Diesel trains are far more expensive to maintain. They are far heavier so therefore require more energy to move them (remember the laws of physics?). In the long term electrification is the most cost effective solution end of. Bi-modes are simply an excuse for not getting electrification done. Having diesel engines idling under the wires will reduce the thermal cycles on the engines BUT will wear components and you are totally defeating the point of electrification. Diesel engines are inefficient on low idle, they like to operate at a constant rpm at high power. There is just no justification for discontinuous electrification. Get the wires up. Long term it is the best and cheapest solution.

It is operationally more efficient but certainly not worth the colossal expenditure needed to realise these gains.

Don't forget it is all paid for by debt and servicing debt costs serious money even at current interest rates.

If you choose to ignore facts because you simply don't like them, that is your business.

 

[Dai Corner]

They use exactly the same electricity generated by exactly the same fuels as everyone else.

Yes I know. Hence the bit in brackets as I explained in my next post. It's best to read the whole thread before starting to reply to posts.

 

[jayah]

You do like to rewrite history, don't you?

If only the electrification plans had included "every nook west of Paddington"... but if we simply hadn't bothered and just bought an HST2 instead, we would have been stuck with diesel traction until the middle of this century - and having to keep everything crossed that oil supplies were still available at a reasonable price until then as well.

The proposal to add 25kv capability to Voyagers came from Bombardier, not the the DfT (assuming that's who you mean by 'they') - and god help us if anything remotely resembling a Voyager had been a prototype for a new generation of long-distance trains.



The only nonsense is your apparent suggestion that there was some sort of comprehensive electrification on European networks up to 100 years ago. There was some electrification 100 years ago, but pretty much the first systematic programmes were in the likes of Switzerland and Sweden after the First World War, when they had struggled to get supplies of coal for steam locos because the British, French and Germans were using most of what they mined for their war efforts.

In Germany in the late 1930s there were all of 1,300 miles of electrified track, much of that on suburban services. And much of what had been installed by then, especially in Italy, was three-phase equipment, which was subsequently replaced by single-phase, never mind the need to replace kit destroyed during the course of the Second World War.

Nor was there some kind of big bang moment for electrification after the Second World War. Unlike stop-start Britain, most other countries have carried out electrification at a steady pace over the years, and according to you, we should just stop again.

The proposal may have come from Bombardier, but it is the DfT that pay on this railway and decided they wouldn't.

I didn't ever say there was comprehensive electrification 100 years, do try to read before accusing me of rewriting history. You have to realise most main lines in Europe were electrified when Electric trains were much faster than any alternative and outside HS that isn't true today.

When you go to buy food or fly abroad you are relying on diesel and when that changes, it will change in the railway too. It is already happening with trams and buses, and trucks may not be that far behind. The difference is we shouldn't be solving a 21st century problem with a 20th century solution.

 

[jayah]

Really. I thought it was Hitachi who designed the class 802. I can`t remember 4 car iep`s or Crosscountry ever using them unless of course you know something we don`t

Sadly the 4 car Voyager with a 5th pantograph car that would easily have proved the BiMode concept didn't happen.

We shouldn't have a thread discussing why a Class 800 is slower than a HST because it has always been capable of being much faster, just the DfT didn't believe it and thought they needed to pay to wire to Swansea and extend the journey times to Inverness.

 

[jayah]

Yes I know. Hence the bit in brackets as I explained in my next post. It's best to read the whole thread before starting to reply to posts.

The bit in brackets is irrelevant because you can't.

 

[Dai Corner]

The bit in brackets is irrelevant because you can't.

That was my point!

(Can we get back to Cl 800s? I apologised for going off topic before and do so again but felt the need to explain to jayah)

 

[D365]

I’ve continued the discussion with jayah here.

 

[coppercapped]

Well in that one sentence I can say I will not being paying much attention to your posts in future. Diesel trains are far more expensive to maintain. They are far heavier so therefore require more energy to move them (remember the laws of physics?). In the long term electrification is the most cost effective solution end of. Bi-modes are simply an excuse for not getting electrification done. Having diesel engines idling under the wires will reduce the thermal cycles on the engines BUT will wear components and you are totally defeating the point of electrification. Diesel engines are inefficient on low idle, they like to operate at a constant rpm at high power. There is just no justification for discontinuous electrification. Get the wires up. Long term it is the best and cheapest solution.

Hmm...!
Diesel trains may be more expensive to maintain than electrics - but far more expensive? Compared to an electric train the only additional component needing maintenance is the diesel engine and its fuel and exhaust system. All other parts of the train remain the same - bodies, bogies, toilets, windscreen wipers, air compressors, door operating motors, air conditioning, passenger information displays and so on. The cost of the maintenance of these parts remains the same whether the train is diesel or electric powered.
So, some additional costs.
Diesels being heavier? Well, yes. But your grasp of physics is leaves room for improvement. All other things being equal the rolling resistance of trains does not vary greatly with axleload so the power required to overcome rolling resistance at any given speed is essentially constant. What does vary with speed, in fact with the square of the speed, is aerodynamic drag - and that depends on shape, not mass.

Where the extra mass does count against the diesel is in acceleration. Isaac Newton's 2nd Law of Motion states that the (vector) sum of the forces F on an object is equal to the mass m of that object multiplied by the acceleration a of the object which can be expressed as F = ma. So for any given applied force the acceleration along the line of the force will be lower if the mass is greater and greater if the mass is lower.

What many proponents of electrification often forget is that a system has to be built and maintained to supply the electrical energy to the trains. This system costs money and its costs have to be added to the cost of the electrical energy - such a system is not required for diesel traction. The equivalent for diesel are the fuel storage tanks and the hoses at the fuelling points.

There are good arguments for electric traction is some circumstances - but the argument presented is not the right one.