RAGNARØKR;1337231 said:
So the cost of providing a small facility at Oxford would be astronomical? But if this is the case, it begins to look as if London to Worcester and Hereford should continue to be operated in the same way that London to Plymouth will be for many years to come. Thus Oxford should be primarily the terminus for suburban services from London.
I do not need to do a Lance Armstrong and come clean until the figures have emerged, which could take some time. And even after that there will be costs as it becomes necessary to clear more of the system for the longer vehicles. It will take a decade for all the costs of this decision to surface. The depot upgrade is not trivial either.
If it was only a minor matter to improve the clearances for 26 metre vehicles why was this not done as part of the WCML upgrade? It would be surprising if nobody had considered it then.
Do you know how to stop digging yourself into a hole?
Sorry but any "small facility" at Oxford, and Swindon, or Gloucester, or Cheltenham, or Worcester, would need to be backed up by somewhere with heavy maintenance facilities, like those in London or Bristol, Plymouth and Swansea. To reach those sites diesel locos will have to run for miles under electric wires. So that's money for a mini-depot, for a mini-number of expensive, bespoke locos, and miles of light engine running on electrified routes - and this is better than the supposed evils of a bi-mode IEP?
HSTs have far too many seats for trains west of Oxford outside the peaks, even with continued growth off-peak, that will remain the case. FGW proved this in 2009-10 when HSTs initially replaced the 180s - and went back to the much cheaper to operate 166s sharpish.
Well, knock me down with a feather. We're back to the usual line of "well, there just ought to be a major infrastructure upgrade, because I say so". You were very clear that this was going to happen - despite failing utterly to provide any evidence - now it's "until the figures have emerged". Why haven't the figures emerged, when Network Rail is already carrying out all manner of clearance work on GWML structures for electrification, with which project the IEP is intimately connected.
If you're so worried about supposed wastes of money, why would NR not be doing your "major infrastructure upgrade" at the same time as all this other work to keep costs down. Perhaps because it isn't needed, which is why they have never said such a thing is required. Not even in that Western route business plan.
When WCML was upgraded, the DfT had not taken a decision to go to 26m coaches. Railtrack had many faults - should we now add lack of clairvoyant powers on the part of its staff to the list? Never mind that DfT wanted to use some IEPs on part of the route, suggesting, yet again, that should it ever happen, a "major infrastructure upgrade" is unlikely to be needed - especially when the 390 driving cars are 25m anyway, as other have noted.
Same problem as Cornwall. Carry on with the HSTs. Or loco haul all the way. Or change locos. The DfT screwed up by not coming up with a replacement, which was the original aim of the IEP project.
I've pointed out why HSTs don't make sense on many Cotswold Line trains. The original aim of the IEP project was overtaken by events - the decision to resume electrification of main lines.
There will be plenty of non-electrified routes in 35 years time.
Most of which are likely to be lightly-trafficked routes in sparsely-populated areas, which will never sustain loco-hauled passenger trains. And any loco designed for fast stop-start running on passenger trains is not going to be a huge lot of use on bulk freight.
Once IEP is in service, where is the business or any other case for extending electrification from, say, Oxford to Moreton in Marsh? IEP kills it stone dead.
Hang on a minute. Dragging diesel engines and fuel around on a bi-mode is a catastrophic waste of money, but there will never be a business case to extend electrification to end this wasteful practice? Am I missing something here?
But in the case of the Oxford-Worcester route, why not just use new EMUs between Oxford and London, probably something like a class 350, and give the 165/166s a thorough refurb for the through services to Worcester? They have nice spacious 23 metre x 2.82 bodyshells and the engine noise is not over-intrusive compared to Voyagers.
They have nice spacious bodies designed for suburban work with 1/3, 2/3 doors - just lovely for journeys lasting two or three hours (Hereford is that far from London) and evil underfloor engines - or are you now trying to graduate your hatred of underfloor engines? And FGW decided they were inadequate for the route back in 2004!
Without a major redesign of the engine coolant system, you can't actually make any changes to the seats (the header tanks sit under some of them) and once you've done that, you then need to modify the brakes due to changes in weight distribution - oh, and reassemble them into long formations able to handle the number of passengers on ever-busier trains, fit selective door operation and corridor connections due to the short platforms, provide catering facilities and fit air conditioning in 165 vehicles and put an engine underneath the floor that can handle the demand for power - 166s can just about cope with the new a/c system fitted in recent years but any further demands would start to affect the performance - this in a train that can only do 90mph now, so not a lot of use amidst lots of 110mph emus or 125mph IEPs. My advice would be to just build a new train... oh, silly me, that's what they're going to do anyway.
a little bit of diesel running under the wires is not wasteful.
A little bit? The Cotswold Line trains are a very large part of the express service between Oxford and London. On some of the diagrams, trains do journeys west of Oxford and others just to Oxford, in order to achieve the most efficient use of the stock available, so that would be even more diesel under wires. Not a "little bit" at all.
Sory but when these trains are expected to run for 40 years, the Diesel engines have no use if they are removed, they will wasted massive amounts of energy. Over 40 years how much energy do you think will be wasted by these trains? Cannot believe people are willing to condone this waste.
The diesel engines will have no use? Have you ever heard of standby generators. What do you think those are, if not diesel engines? Lots of engines out of scrapped BR locos have been sold on for further use in other applications. Preservationists have bought some back from industrial users for restoration projects.
And now, could you finally explain what's so great about your diesel locos needing local light maintenance facilities to be built at the places they would be working and what would be so great about them running for miles under wires, on diesel power, to get to a heavy maintenance depot? What about all the energy that will inevitably waste?
Dave1987 said:
Or just get rid of the loco and run the electric traction all the way then no need to precure yet more trains
We'd all love that to happen, but you can't electrify the entire network at one fell swoop, can you? Or do you have some cunning plan that hasn't occurred to anyone else, or a pot of gold at the end of some rainbow?
In the meantime, in the real world, you have to start somewhere and work outwards. Piling all the costs of wiring the Cotswold Line, Worcester and on to Hereford, plus associated resignalling and the capacity enhancements needed at Worcester on to the GW project makes no sense at all (never mind finding the manpower and equipment to deliver it), as you would still have LM using modern dmus out of Birmingham (the key rail destination from Worcester and, a major one from Hereford).
Wait until XC wires go up from Birmingham to Bristol, and you have a clear dmu cascade strategy in place to use LM's stock somewhere wires won't go up for a while longer, so that buying emus for Worcester and Hereford services stacks up and combine that work with wires on the Cotswold Line and it makes plenty of sense. Same factors of piggy-backing on an XC scheme apply to wiring from Swindon to Cheltenham and Gloucester (and Gloucester-Severn Tunnel Junction).
Honestly, the majority of us realise that although bi-mode has its disadvantages, it beats loco-haulage in regards to IEP.
