Hydrogen trains for Whitby ?!

[Starmill]

It would make much more sense economically to divert the line after Nunthorpe to Guisborough, mothball the section from the former junction to Battersby, and lease Battersby to Grosmont to the NYMR for tourist operation, and two platforms with some extended double track in Guisborough should enable 2 trains per hour to Middlesbrough.

Great Ayton to Nunthorpe would be served permanently by replacement bus from the town centre, with the current station mothballed if it cannot be sold, and a bus connecting Guisborough to Whitby express. Battery trains could then serve both Guisborough and Saltburn on the same diagrams if necessary.

This would be significantly more successful at attracting people to public transport and significantly cheaper. Of course for political reasons it's essentially impossible.

 

[The Ham]

I would like to see the calculations behind the claims. I find it very difficult to believe that Blue Hydrogen with 95% carbon capture (which is typical for the technology) results in greater greenhouse gas contribution than unabated natural gas (or diesel) combustion.

I for one am looking forward to seeing fleets of hydrogen fuel cell powered units out on the network.

It appears to be down to the amount of Methane emissions (which are much worse than carbon emissions).

More details can be found here:

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/ese3.956

(Link to full report, much too long to quote. However the news stories cover the general overview).

 

[yorksrob]

Looking at the last five years (for which data is available on Wikipedia), the average number of passengers at Whitby each year is around 135,000 (131,000 to 138,000 - but it seems to go up one year and down the next year - but 135,000 seems an average - i.e. I'm not taking one extreme figure)

So, 135,000pa is 67,500 departing passengers per annum, so 1,298 departing passengers per week, so 185 departing passengers per day, which is thirty one departing passengers per service (assuming six services a day, which I think was the pre-Covid frequency?)

I don't know if these figures include the North Yorkshire Moors journeys and I don't know if they include the school services (I know that there is a significant school flow - since that's what kept the line open - one school child would obviously be responsible for over a hundred single journeys a year if they were included in that 135,000)

But 185 passengers is roughly the number of people I'd expect to see on one two coach 156/158 DMU that was "full and standing"

So if you are "often" seeing Whitby DMUs that are "full and standing" then that suggests that either you're incredibly unlucky or that there area lot of the six services a day that must have passenger numbers in single figures (or that there's maybe a degree of exaggeration going on here?) - maybe one Saturday morning journey from Middlesbrough during the six weeks of school holidays (and teatime return from Whitby) need strengthening - which is an improvement I could justify - some journeys are obviously four coaches already - maybe there's a case for more on certain services (mainly to suit tourist/leisure market at the weekend?)

(there's obviously other stations on the line but none of the intermediate ones east of Nunthorpe get passenger numbers worth writing home about - and the passenger demand will be split between journeys for Whitby and Middlesbrough)

OK, well we seem to have this discussion everytime. It is what it is.

The reality is that the industry tends to run four carriages at certain times to serve the school children (typically 158/156) so they'd need to replicate that capacity somehow regardless of whether we believe in overcrowding on the route. Three carriage 321 type units wouldn't do so.

 

[daodao]

The reality is that the industry tends to run four carriages at certain times to serve the school children (typically 158/156) so they'd need to replicate that capacity somehow regardless of whether we believe in overcrowding on the route. Three carriage 321 type units wouldn't do so.

Presumably a few trains on the Whitby line are very busy, e.g. for schoolchildren and on sunny summer weekends, but most are essentially empty. The line was only reprieved from the Beeching closure programme by the difficulty in providing replacement transport on narrow roads in the Esk Valley. If this latter problem has been resolved, could/should the line be terminated at Nunthorpe, just retaining a truncated section as a Middlesbrough commuter service?

 

[yorksrob]

Presumably a few trains on the Whitby line are very busy, e.g. for schoolchildren and on sunny summer weekends, but most are essentially empty. The line was only reprieved from the Beeching closure programme by the difficulty in providing replacement transport on narrow roads in the Esk Valley. If this latter problem has been resolved, could/should the line be terminated at Nunthorpe, just retaining a truncated section as a Middlesbrough commuter service?

No, for three reasons.

The school travel issue hasn't been solved. I was on a rail replacement mini-bus that had to descend into one of the intermediate villages and it was like negotiating a bus through a Pyreneean valley. Fundamentally the route isn't suited for bus transport.

Secondly, there is already a good (for a bus service) double decker bus service from Middlesborough to Whitby. If bus was an alternative, it would already be being used. The reality is that people still cram onto the trains.

Thirdly the trains aren't empty outside of the school service and summer Saturdays. Anyone who says so clearly doesn't travel on the line and has an agenda.

 

[Harpers Tate]

On a route such as this, one can't take annual figures and calculate them down to get a meaningful per-train loading.
1: It's seasonal, with more users in summer than winter. And probably more at wekends than midweek.
2: It's directional, with more users coastbound in the morning and returning in the afternoon or evening. But trains (pretty much) have to work back, even if those runs are more lightly loaded.
Account for both these variances to get peak loadings.

 

[The Ham]

On a route such as this, one can't take annual figures and calculate them down to get a meaningful per-train loading.
1: It's seasonal, with more users in summer than winter. And probably more at wekends than midweek.
2: It's directional, with more users coastbound in the morning and returning in the afternoon or evening. But trains (pretty much) have to work back, even if those runs are more lightly loaded.
Account for both these variances to get peak loadings.

I typically assume 300 days a year for working out weekday flows (i.e. half rates for Saturday/Sunday/Bank Holidays).

Therefore if we assume something like 135 days (to allow for quiet winter days, although not to rule out school travel, it also makes the maths simple) then there's likely to be about 1,000 passengers each fairly busy day, which is about 500 in each direction. However they are likely to be spread over a few hours, let's say 4 (as that allows for some to be going against the flow) then that's fairly typically busy trains carrying 125 people, enough that a 2 coach 15x would have most of its seats full.

Even over a 3 hour window (and we've massively skewed the annual flows already) that's still only 134, so a 3 coach train would likely be enough.

Assuming that 1,000/Saturday over 12 weeks of the year would then mean that the remaining 123,000 would be about 400/day, if school children services (2/day) are needing more than 3 coaches (circa 200 on each) then the remaining services have an average of less than a total of 20 in each direction over the whole day.

Unless there's a lot of ticketless travel which don't show up in the annual numbers.

 

[Bletchleyite]

OK, well we seem to have this discussion everytime. It is what it is.

The reality is that the industry tends to run four carriages at certain times to serve the school children (typically 158/156) so they'd need to replicate that capacity somehow regardless of whether we believe in overcrowding on the route. Three carriage 321 type units wouldn't do so.

A standee type interior like e.g. the S stock, Crossrail or even the 700s would deal with that. Plenty of space to give everyone a seat most of the time, but cram in the standees for the school trains.

If you were talking 321s this could be very much commensurate with the scenic nature of the line too - bays of 4 aligned with the big picture windows and large stand backs against the door pockets (also useful for piling luggage in at other times).

 

[yorksrob]

A standee type interior like e.g. the S stock, Crossrail or even the 700s would deal with that. Plenty of space to give everyone a seat most of the time, but cram in the standees for the school trains.

If you were talking 321s this could be very much commensurate with the scenic nature of the line too - bays of 4 aligned with the big picture windows and large stand backs against the door pockets (also useful for piling luggage in at other times).

It could work to an extent if they actually got around to rearranging the seating in that way.

However even a four carriage version wouldn't have as much seating capacity as a 4 carriage 156/158 combo.

 

[DanNCL]

A standee type interior like e.g. the S stock, Crossrail or even the 700s would deal with that. Plenty of space to give everyone a seat most of the time, but cram in the standees for the school trains.

A standee type interior for a route where the majority of journeys last in excess of an hour? Don't be daft.

 

[Skipness]

Looking at the last five years (for which data is available on Wikipedia), the average number of passengers at Whitby each year is around 135,000 (131,000 to 138,000 - but it seems to go up one year and down the next year - but 135,000 seems an average - i.e. I'm not taking one extreme figure)

So, 135,000pa is 67,500 departing passengers per annum, so 1,298 departing passengers per week, so 185 departing passengers per day, which is thirty one departing passengers per service (assuming six services a day, which I think was the pre-Covid frequency?)

I don't know if these figures include the North Yorkshire Moors journeys and I don't know if they include the school services (I know that there is a significant school flow - since that's what kept the line open - one school child would obviously be responsible for over a hundred single journeys a year if they were included in that 135,000)

But 185 passengers is roughly the number of people I'd expect to see on one two coach 156/158 DMU that was "full and standing"

So if you are "often" seeing Whitby DMUs that are "full and standing" then that suggests that either you're incredibly unlucky or that there area lot of the six services a day that must have passenger numbers in single figures (or that there's maybe a degree of exaggeration going on here?) - maybe one Saturday morning journey from Middlesbrough during the six weeks of school holidays (and teatime return from Whitby) need strengthening - which is an improvement I could justify - some journeys are obviously four coaches already - maybe there's a case for more on certain services (mainly to suit tourist/leisure market at the weekend?)

(there's obviously other stations on the line but none of the intermediate ones east of Nunthorpe get passenger numbers worth writing home about - and the passenger demand will be split between journeys for Whitby and Middlesbrough)

I can confirm yorkrob’s comment about “full and standing” two car 156 units into Whitby on the lunchtime arrival every day of the week in summer. The only times that 4 cars are provided are the 8.30 arrival and 16.00 departure that carry the school children in term time, and continued out of term time as well.

 

[Pinus contorta]

OK, well we seem to have this discussion everytime. It is what it is.

The reality is that the industry tends to run four carriages at certain times to serve the school children (typically 158/156) so they'd need to replicate that capacity somehow regardless of whether we believe in overcrowding on the route. Three carriage 321 type units wouldn't do so.

I seem to remember reading on the forum on the pacer withdrawal discussion , the county council ( or who ever it is that pays a large sum of money for the provision of trains for the school children) specified the school trains had to be a 156 and that a 142 wouldn't do because there were issues. So I'm guessing they won't be happy with 321 units either.

 

[yorksrob]

I seem to remember reading on the forum on the pacer withdrawal discussion , the county council ( or who ever it is that pays a large sum of money for the provision of trains for the school children) specified the school trains had to be a 156 and that a 142 wouldn't do because there were issues. So I'm guessing they won't be happy with 321 units either.

Yes, I think they don't like the school children having to stand.

 

[tbtc]

A 2 carriage 158 or 156 unit on the Whitby line is often full and standing

The reality is that the industry tends to run four carriages at certain times to serve the school children (typically 158/156) so they'd need to replicate that capacity somehow regardless of whether we believe in overcrowding on the route

The reality is that people still cram onto the trains

Thirdly the trains aren't empty outside of the school service and summer Saturdays. Anyone who says so clearly doesn't travel on the line and has an agenda.

So, just to check, 'people still cram onto the trains" ("often full and standing"), and the services aren't "quiet" outside of the school services/ summer Saturdays?

Given that a "full and standing" service would have over 150 people (since that is a typical number of seats on a two coach DMU)... and the average daily passenger numbers are only 185... of which a significant number are presumably school kids using that particular service... the "reality" is that I'm struggling to get my head around the numbers...

If there are 185 passengers a day and there are apparently regularly 185 passengers crammed onto a single service, but none of the other trains are quiet then... there's maybe a flaw in your numbers or accurate assessments of just how busy trains typically are?

The Whitby branch is amazing - every service has above average passenger numbers!

I can confirm yorkrob’s comment about “full and standing” two car 156 units into Whitby on the lunchtime arrival every day of the week in summer. The only times that 4 cars are provided are the 8.30 arrival and 16.00 departure that carry the school children in term time, and continued out of term time as well.

Interesting - seems odd that they don't use the four coaches on the lunchtime arrival into Whitby during the summer holidays, given that seems to be the busy train?

 

[Skipness]

The passengers from the “full and standing” lunchtime arrival into Whitby return, depending on their state of inebriation at 16.00, 19.42 or 22.20. (Obviously I am referring to the day visitors, those coming for longer tend to return at 8.45 or midday.)

 

[yorksrob]

So, just to check, 'people still cram onto the trains" ("often full and standing"), and the services aren't "quiet" outside of the school services/ summer Saturdays?

Given that a "full and standing" service would have over 150 people (since that is a typical number of seats on a two coach DMU)... and the average daily passenger numbers are only 185... of which a significant number are presumably school kids using that particular service... the "reality" is that I'm struggling to get my head around the numbers...

If there are 185 passengers a day and there are apparently regularly 185 passengers crammed onto a single service, but none of the other trains are quiet then... there's maybe a flaw in your numbers or accurate assessments of just how busy trains typically are?

The Whitby branch is amazing - every service has above average passenger numbers!



Interesting - seems odd that they don't use the four coaches on the lunchtime arrival into Whitby during the summer holidays, given that seems to be the busy train?

People are either standing because all of the seats are taken, or they aren't. And when I'm travelling they often are.

 

[The Ham]

So, just to check, 'people still cram onto the trains" ("often full and standing"), and the services aren't "quiet" outside of the school services/ summer Saturdays?

Given that a "full and standing" service would have over 150 people (since that is a typical number of seats on a two coach DMU)... and the average daily passenger numbers are only 185... of which a significant number are presumably school kids using that particular service... the "reality" is that I'm struggling to get my head around the numbers...

If there are 185 passengers a day and there are apparently regularly 185 passengers crammed onto a single service, but none of the other trains are quiet then... there's maybe a flaw in your numbers or accurate assessments of just how busy trains typically are?

The Whitby branch is amazing - every service has above average passenger numbers!



Interesting - seems odd that they don't use the four coaches on the lunchtime arrival into Whitby during the summer holidays, given that seems to be the busy train?

Even assuming seasonal demand increases the daily numbers it's only going to be 3 or 4 services a day which are seeing significant use (unless there's a lot of ticketless travel which doesn't show up in the numbers).

 

[xotGD]

Sadly a lot of discussion that has very little to do with the interesting prospect of hydrogen trains.

Presumably they will need to have a safety case approved prior to entry into service. I don't have a feel for how long that will take.

 

[507020]

Sadly a lot of discussion that has very little to do with the interesting prospect of hydrogen trains.

I know it is very unfortunate that more people are struggling in disbelief that hundreds of people might want to go on the train to Whitby than discussing the potential of the Hydrogen technology.

It would be interesting to see how many passengers there actually are on Whitby line services now. If 3 car hydrogen 321s are used then perhaps there will be some degree of 6 car operation and platform lengthening in future. I find that hydrogen technology is best treated as a slightly inefficient battery where Lithium is unsuited due to range issues and electrification is not a priority.

On an somewhat related note (to the discussion that is not about Hydrogen), I have noticed that the on the 44 and 49 bus services in Southport, Arriva have been running extremely short wheel base buses with a seating capacity of only about 30, which are totally unsuitable for the route. I don’t think a 2 car DMU is ever long enough for seaside destinations either. They should either have all been 3 car like the original prototypes, with 4 car units for when 4 car operation was desired, or the 2 car units should have only been used in pairs. I don’t know how anyone ever managed with a 1 car 153. Have some coastal routes on Greater Anglia not had to go straight from 1 car 153s to 3 and 4 car 755s due to extremely severe overcrowding throughout the day?

 

[yorksrob]

I know it is very unfortunate that more people are struggling in disbelief that hundreds of people might want to go on the train to Whitby than discussing the potential of the Hydrogen technology.

It would be interesting to see how many passengers there actually are on Whitby line services now. If 3 car hydrogen 321s are used then perhaps there will be some degree of 6 car operation and platform lengthening in future. I find that hydrogen technology is best treated as a slightly inefficient battery where Lithium is unsuited due to range issues and electrification is not a priority.

On an somewhat related note (to the discussion that is not about Hydrogen), I have noticed that the on the 44 and 49 bus services in Southport, Arriva have been running extremely short wheel base buses with a seating capacity of only about 30, which are totally unsuitable for the route. I don’t think a 2 car DMU is ever long enough for seaside destinations either. They should either have all been 3 car like the original prototypes, with 4 car units for when 4 car operation was desired, or the 2 car units should have only been used in pairs. I don’t know how anyone ever managed with a 1 car 153. Have some coastal routes on Greater Anglia not had to go straight from 1 car 153s to 3 and 4 car 755s due to extremely severe overcrowding throughout the day?

A lot of the services from Wigan to Southport are four carriage, which bears out your view.

One carriage 153's used to struggle on the Cumbrian Coast route in the past !

 

[yorkie]

Just a gentle reminder that if anyone has any concerns about any posts, and/or comments regarding whether posts are on topic or not, please do use the report system.

I have moved this thread into the Speculative Ideas section, as it was becoming speculative as well as covering more than just Traction & Rolling Stock matters.

Many thanks

 

[Starmill]

A lot of the services from Wigan to Southport are four carriage, which bears out your view

They're almost never close to capacity at the Southport end though. The key reason for the deployment of four cars is to provide adequate capacity for passengers between Wigan or Bolton and Manchester City Centre.

 

[tbtc]

People are either standing because all of the seats are taken, or they aren't. And when I'm travelling they often are.

Nobody is saying that there are never circumstances where all seats are taken/ passengers have to stand (the Saturday lunchtime arrival into Whitby during the summer holidays

But, with an average of only 185 passengers a day, if there are services where all 150+ seats on a two coach DMU are taken then I don't know why you're struggling to understand that there must therefore be a number of services where passenger numbers are rather paltry?

Why not have Hydrogen trains running 95% of services on the line, but with a four coach (Heaton based) 156/158 providing a summer Saturday morning service from Newcastle that arrives in Whitby at lunchtime (and teatime return)?

Personally, I think that 60m trains will be overkill, when Whitby has an average of only thirtysomething passengers per journey (an average that is skewed by busy Saturday services in the summertime, so that presumably means that the other 95% of departures are even quieter), but I guess we've got to test out the new technology somewhere, and a long branch line seems a safe place to do it (i.e. it's not interacting with many other services, if the technology is unreliable then it's not breaking down on a busy main line, it's nicely out of the way)

Sadly a lot of discussion that has very little to do with the interesting prospect of hydrogen trains

I know it is very unfortunate that more people are struggling in disbelief that hundreds of people might want to go on the train to Whitby than discussing the potential of the Hydrogen technology.

Apologies both.

But when the OP starts a thread with the assumption that a sixty metre train won't be able to cope with a line where current DMUs are "often full and standing" then I think it's worth questioning the maths behind his assumption... given that there are only 185 passengers a day at Whitby

I don’t think a 2 car DMU is ever long enough for seaside destinations either

I think that a two coach DMU should be long enough for the vast majority of journeys to a terminus with only 185 passengers a day (spread over around half a dozen services a day, pre-Covid?)

Certainly there are branch lines where we could look at cascading "urban" stock to the seaside during the summer holidays (e.g. could Northern loan some 150s to bolster the branch lines of Devon/ Cornwall for the school summer holidays?), I agree that the railway struggles to cope with service provision on lines with huge swings in demand (e.g. between quiet winters where the "local" population is pretty low and busy summers when thousands of tourists swamp seaside towns), but the Whitby branch seems suitable for the proposed sixty metre train IMHO

 

[Bletchleyite]

A standee type interior for a route where the majority of journeys last in excess of an hour? Don't be daft.

Ever been on the Metropolitan Line?

And schoolkids don't care about standing. We used to stand because it was fun even though the north end of the Merseyrail Ormskirk line is hardly busy northbound at 8:30am.

 

[yorksrob]

They're almost never close to capacity at the Southport end though. The key reason for the deployment of four cars is to provide adequate capacity for passengers between Wigan or Bolton and Manchester City Centre.

True, but I've been on a few 2 carriage ones that have been ram-packed from the Southport direction.

Nobody is saying that there are never circumstances where all seats are taken/ passengers have to stand (the Saturday lunchtime arrival into Whitby during the summer holidays

No, but it seems to happen often enough when I go there. The reason seems to be a good number of passengers joining between Middlesbrough and Battersby heading to Whitby.

 

[DanNCL]

Ever been on the Metropolitan Line?

And schoolkids don't care about standing. We used to stand because it was fun even though the north end of the Merseyrail Ormskirk line is hardly busy northbound at 8:30am.

Yes, did Moorgate - Amersham just three weeks ago. Very few of the people on the train when it left Moorgate were still on it after Harrow. It's not the same setup at all. On the Whitby line the vast majority of people are doing the full journey between Middlesbrough and Whitby, and will want a seat. If standing for such journeys becomes the norm with the Class 600s, people will ditch them and switch to the car, Arriva's X93 bus, or Go North East's new X11 direct from Newcastle.

Have you ever used the Whitby line? It's usually full and standing even without the schoolkids, and is full and standing for the whole journey. An S8 style interior is not suitable for any trains on the Whitby branch, Hydrogen or not. The existing 158s are well suited to the demand base on the Whitby line, they just need to routinely operate as 4 car sets.

But when the OP starts a thread with the assumption that a sixty metre train won't be able to cope with a line where current DMUs are "often full and standing" then I think it's worth questioning the maths behind his assumption... given that there are only 185 passengers a day at Whitby

185 ticket sales per day for journeys to/from Whitby. The true number of journeys will be considerably higher as on the packed out trains there's no way of the guard getting through to check tickets, and the regulars are well aware of that and act accordingly.

 

[The Ham]

Have you ever used the Whitby line? It's usually full and standing even without the schoolkids, and is full and standing for the whole journey.

In which case there is a lot of ticketless travel or the data on tickets is poor, as the station usage data doesn't show that.

 

[DanNCL]

In which case there is a lot of ticketless travel or the data on tickets is poor, as the station usage data doesn't show that.

I would agree with that, not just for the Whitby line but many others in the North East. Cracking down on ticketless travel is up to Northern. Quite a lot of people would buy a ticket if someone came to sell them one on the train (which of course they can't do if it's packed out), having travelled from one of many of the unstaffed stations in the North East with card only machines. Simply having revenue staff waiting at Whitby for each arrival and selling tickets to those arriving without them would make a huge difference. Another station in the North East with offical usage figures sitting well below the likely true usage levels is Chester-le-Street which is in a very similar situation over people wanting to pay cash, nobody on the train coming to sell them a ticket, and then walking out of their destination station having not paid. Northern have no intention of doing anything about it as the current situation suits them well - low official usage figures makes it much easier to get the DFT to approve lower frequencies at the stations in question and shorter trains.

What possibly distorts the figures is that it's an average based on a 12 month period. Whitby trains are usually packed out during the school holidays and at weekends between March and October, but will apart from the school traffic be fresh air carriers during the winter.

 

[asdirective]

The Whitby school trains in the 1990s were 2x142s, then swapped to a 3 car 144. This freed up a unit, and the class 144 was left to run on the line all day. The 3+2 seating was ample, but when they were refurbished to 2+2, a number of seats were lost. North Yorks County Council insisted there was enough seats for every pupil. This was due to journey times. Some kids would catch a minibus to a valley station, and another bus from Whitby to the school, giving total journeys up to 2 hours each way. The plan hatched was that the Castleton and Danby kids would be bussed all the way to school, as the roads were less problematic from these villages. A 156 would be used for the kids further down the line, which also pleased the Esk Valley Railway Development company, who were eager to see the back of pacers on the line. Winners all round.

As for the statistics. Most of the school kids are given free passes by North Yorks CC, so I would guess these don't show up in the station data, unless the council is supplying details of how many passes it actually issues. If you've got 100 kids making a return journey every day, the stats aren't going to work.

I haven't been up that way for years, so not sure what the current situation is. But traffic on the route could vary from one day to the next, and not just seasonal. You'd be hard pressed to get a true average for a typical day.

Personally I think 321/600s are not really suited to the line. The suburban door layout is overkill, and a lack of tables and window views would make the line less appealing to travel on. Even with a pacer, at least you could see out of the window.

 

[Skipness]

Just for sake of completeness, here is the queue for the midday departure from Whitby. The arrival as usual for a Saturday we packed.