GWR Intercity EMU?

[Meerkat]

I don't get the door position prejudice thing.

As is obvious from using the word ‘prejudice’!
intercity should be better quality, not have the droughts and noise and chaos of station stops inside the seating area. And it looks better quality as It is simpler inside.
But my main point was about Welsh opinions - giving them commuter trains for their link to London is not going to go down well in prestige terms.

 

[Irascible]

Is not the main point of end doors that you can insert more seats ( and maybe some luggage racks ), vs standing room for 1/3ds vestibules with double doors which is going to be wasted space most of the time? rather less about looks. I guess you could do some creative interior arrangement with some of the 1/3ds vestibule space & only have one door per vestibule, but that's already a second type of bodyshell anyway.

 

[Rhydgaled]

Give the RSSB some teeth & you're halfway there, it's their job to set standards

Which bit of the ORR do you mean? The safety side/regulator or the other bit? And I don’t mean the roads bit either…

I know nothing about the structure of the ORR. Since it is (or rather was - I had forgotten the R stands for Road now) called a 'regulator', I meerly assumed that it would be sensible for 'regulation' to include enforcing standards. What 'other bit' were you refering to? Perhaps the RSSB could write the standards, but the ORR would enforce them (and thus is that the body that needs to be given some (more/sharper) teeth)?

Before BR? The Railway Clearing House had a role in setting some standards but it was done more on a collaborative and facilitating approach rather than by pure “top down” imposition.

Ah - a collaborative approach - no reason that couldn't be done today either. The Rail Delivery Group's Key Train Requirements document has some really sensible stuff in it - again it comes down to (the lack of) enforcement with teeth.

I don't get the door position prejudice thing.

As is obvious from using the word ‘prejudice’!

I've said it before and I've said it again - the defintion of prejudice is a "preconceived opinion that is not based on reason or actual experience". I've been accused of 'door position prejudice' many times, but my opinion is not prejudice because it is based on reason.

Doors at thirds mean boarding and alighting is quicker

Yes.

Trains like Class 185 are great for long distance - it's all about the seats. Which are better on those EMUs than the 80x in my view (and that of many others).

No, no and maybe. I don't agree that the 185s are great for long-distance. Seats are a very important issue and poor seats, despite my apparent obsession (not prejudice as noted above) with doors, are what is actually driving me away from the railway at the moment (and the class 185 seats are nicer than those on the class 80X, can't say the same for a class 195 though - an 800 would be the lesser of two evils there). However, it's not just about the seats.

One reason I go on so much about bodyshell designs (door layouts) is that they are fixed for the life of the train, the seats can be replaced in a refurbishment so not quite as crucial to get them right first time.

intercity should be better quality, not have the droughts and noise and chaos of station stops inside the seating area.

Agreed, as should regional express and most regional services in my view.

Is not the main point of end doors that you can insert more seats ( and maybe some luggage racks ), vs standing room for 1/3ds vestibules with double doors which is going to be wasted space most of the time?

Yay; someone else who gets it. Double width doors means larger vestibules which are going to be wasted space most of the time (unless the train is too short for the job and there are standees to accomodate, which shouldn't be the case on a long-distance services). Keep the doors on long-distance services relatively narrow like on a 444 or 175 so we can have more seats, more toilets, more table bays, more luggage racks and/or more legroom please.

I guess you could do some creative interior arrangement with some of the 1/3ds vestibule space & only have one door per vestibule, but that's already a second type of bodyshell anyway.

Not sure what you mean by 'only one door per vestibule' - like a Pacer where there is only a door on one side of the coach at one end? If it has been decided that 1300mm (which seems to be standard on 'doors-at-thirds' stock) is the minimum door width now then you could have only one door per side (and therefore only one vestibule, but this would still have two doors (one on each side)) on each coach to compensate for the space lost due to the double-width doors. The Anglian FLIRTs don't count because the coaches are shorter, so you are still losing space compared to something like a 158 because you have more 'door' on the FLIRT. You also need interior partition doors, so that there are always two doors between any saloon seat and a toilet and to stop the draughts Meerkat mentions. The internal doors themselves are entirely doable even with doors at thirds (I think the 185s have them for 1st class) but hardly ever actually provided for standard class passengers except on end-door stock.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 17 Sep 2023 ==

The way I would do it:
- Electrify Bristol both ways, Oxford and Swansea
- Order new 125 mph EMUs of 260m (10-car) for these services
- sublease the 5-car 80x this frees up to XC
- Bin any 22x that are spare at XC

That's ultimately not much different to my suggestion, except that I think having 125mph units that are less than about 161m long (7x23m vehicles) is rather silly so I'd modify the proposal in several respects such as lengthening the 80x going to XC and only bining driving vehicles from any spare 22x (the intermediate cars going into other sets to make longer Voyagers).

Since there is already a surplus of class 80X cabs (driving vehicles) I would not order any more 125mph driving cars so the new EMU order would only be intermediate vehicles and the new EMUs would use the existing class 80X driving vehicles (and I'm assuming there isn't the need for 10-car capacity on GWR given the IEP process did have options for 10-car trains if I recall correctly).

 

[Irascible]

Not sure what you mean by 'only one door per vestibule'

You're staring at this bodyshell with double doors at 1/3ds, thinking "nobody's going to use all this space in these vestibules except ... maybe they'll put suitcases in there" -

* Install luggage racks in half the vestibule

"OK, that's better" you think, but then "but now we've blocked off a door each side of the vestibule. Better lock those out of use"

* Lock door out of use

"But ... now we have an entire door that nobody is ever going to use. Maybe we should take all the complex mechanism out & fix it in place. Also, is this door that's left really going to be big enough?"

* Fix door in place, remove all opening mechanisms. Be a little worried about accessibility.

"Great, that saved some maintenance - but we still have to maintain all these seals, why don't we just weld it in place, maybe make the other door a little bigger?" - and suddenly you realise you've created a second type of bodyshell anyway because welding a plug in is going to need a whole bunch of tests, and it might as well have been built as one in the optimal shape from the start.

--

Are centre vestibules allowed here? I can see the safety implications of only having one exit.

 

[Annetts key]

I know nothing about the structure of the ORR. Since it is (or rather was - I had forgotten the R stands for Road now) called a 'regulator', I meerly assumed that it would be sensible for 'regulation' to include enforcing standards. What 'other bit' were you refering to? Perhaps the RSSB could write the standards, but the ORR would enforce them (and thus is that the body that needs to be given some (more/sharper) teeth)?

The ORR acts as a regulator of Network Rail. Each Control Period it determines the funding requirements for the five years covered by this Control Period. This includes the access charges and priorities for investment.

The ORR is also the health and safety regulator for all railways and railway companies in mainland U.K. including Network Rail, London Underground, light rail, trams and the heritage sector.

It is also the competition authority for the railways and enforces consumer protection law in relation to the railways.

It’s also involved with HS1.

Plus, as mentioned, it has a Roads/Highways function.

Ahh, standards. Nearly every organisation involved with the railways determines some standards. Even some contractors…

Network Rail has its own standards (it creates, modifies, maintains and removes its own standards), some of which are derived from former BR standards, some of which are derived from former Railtrack standards, and some of which are derived from former contractor or supplier standards.

And some lines/infrastructure/property is privately owned, whereby the relevant company may have its own standards.

I believe it may be a similar situation on the traction/rolling stock side, but this is outside my area of knowledge. As well as the TOCs and FOCs, there are also the leasing companies and you also have private ownership of some vehicles (mainly freight).

Then there is the RSSB, the ORR and DaFT.

Oh, and European Railway standards.

Have you heard the line about standards? If there is a problem with a standard, we will invest time and money creating a new standard. But keep the old ones, so adding yet more choice on which standard you use…

To be frank, the structure of the mainland U.K. railways are a mess mostly due to privatisation and all the subsequent alterations since then.

I had hoped that just maybe, GBR may have helped, but now I don’t think it will. GBR if it ever happens looks more and more like a repaint job.

 

[Rhydgaled]

suddenly you realise you've created a second type of bodyshell anyway because welding a plug in is going to need a whole bunch of tests, and it might as well have been built as one in the optimal shape from the start.

Indeed, as I wrote above:

One reason I go on so much about bodyshell designs (door layouts) is that they are fixed for the life of the train, the seats can be replaced in a refurbishment so not quite as crucial to get them right first time.

The fact (as you correctly imply Irascible) is that the 'suburban' bodyshell (with wide doors at thirds) is not-optimal for anything other than very busy short-distance services with lots of stops. Sure you can try to fudge it, like with the class 185s, but a 185 could easily be improved upon because the bodyshell isn't optimal for a long-distance train.

Are centre vestibules allowed here? I can see the safety implications of only having one exit.

I think the biggest issue would be stepping distances. Eurostars (both the real deal (class 373) and the new e320s (class 374) I think) have doors at one end of each coach only and the GA FLIRTs (as well as some vehicles on the TfW ones) have only one door per side on each coach as well (the FLIRTs having the door about 1/4 to 1/3 of the way in from one end of the vehicle). But a door further away from the bogies, right in the centre of the coach, could be quite a long way back from the platform on sharply curved track.

To be frank, the structure of the mainland U.K. railways are a mess mostly due to privatisation and all the subsequent alterations since then.

I had hoped that just maybe, GBR may have helped, but now I don’t think it will. GBR if it ever happens looks more and more like a repaint job.

Yes, somebody who actually wants the railways to succeed (which doesn't appear to be the DfT at the moment) needs to be put in charge and sort out the mess; so hopefully GBR will do that if it ever happens.