New XC fleet by 2035 ?

[BrianW]

XC will be merged into GBR in 2027. There won't be a new XC fleet ordered before then, so GBR will be determining the future needs.
By then we will have solutions for the TPE and Northern requirements in the GBR era, with multiple bids from probably 5 bidders for modular electric/diesel/battery operation, some of it for 125mph on the ECML.
We will soon know which manufacturer(s) are preferred for these solutions, so best wait until those decisions are made (this year, seemingly).
XC should then piggy-back on those framework contracts - in the meantime it will be a Voyager world.
I would guess the tri-mode solution for TPE will likely suit XC as well.

This begs a lot of questions about the transition into GBR. Will there be a Supremo/ Fat Controller to distribute stock/order up new/ oversee the national picture ...
It's coming over the horizon. Lord Hendy is already over 70- not that I'm being ageist ...
Hopefuly GBR will not be inheriting a 'basket case' of backlogs.
At times BR managed a 'grand plan' failing for want of political will, finance and mind-changing. Learning from HS2 too?
I find the lack of words emanating from government disquieting. The next General Election's only a few years away; then ...?
The machinery grinds long and slow. Time for a bold decision, or several, Minister?

 

[FGWHST43009]

XC will be merged into GBR in 2027. There won't be a new XC fleet ordered before then, so GBR will be determining the future needs.
By then we will have solutions for the TPE and Northern requirements in the GBR era, with multiple bids from probably 5 bidders for modular electric/diesel/battery operation, some of it for 125mph on the ECML.
We will soon know which manufacturer(s) are preferred for these solutions, so best wait until those decisions are made (this year, seemingly).
XC should then piggy-back on those framework contracts - in the meantime it will be a Voyager world.
I would guess the tri-mode solution for TPE will likely suit XC as well.

Depending on what TPE order, XC could go for a souped-up version of that product or a souped-up 897. Would need 125mph capability off-wires. It'll be interesting to see what TPE order and how LNER's 897 performs, but the obvious caveat is that none of those fleets are likely to run 125mph non-electrified lines

 

[quantinghome]

XC will be merged into GBR in 2027. There won't be a new XC fleet ordered before then, so GBR will be determining the future needs.
By then we will have solutions for the TPE and Northern requirements in the GBR era, with multiple bids from probably 5 bidders for modular electric/diesel/battery operation, some of it for 125mph on the ECML.
We will soon know which manufacturer(s) are preferred for these solutions, so best wait until those decisions are made (this year, seemingly).
XC should then piggy-back on those framework contracts - in the meantime it will be a Voyager world.
I would guess the tri-mode solution for TPE will likely suit XC as well.

My thoughts too. Thinking about how well a TPE solution would suit XC, the latter would require significantly longer distances running off the wires, and at 125mph on some stretches. That means larger fuel tanks and larger engines. Either that or get serious about wiring up the XC core.

 

[brad465]

My thoughts too. Thinking about how well a TPE solution would suit XC, the latter would require significantly longer distances running off the wires, and at 125mph on some stretches. That means larger fuel tanks and larger engines. Either that or get serious about wiring up the XC core.

Birmingham-Derby is the only section of XC that is both 125mph and not electrified IIRC. Everywhere else 110mph would be enough, however larger engines maybe required for the Devon Banks and other steep gradients not electrified.

 

[Snow1964]

My thoughts too. Thinking about how well a TPE solution would suit XC, the latter would require significantly longer distances running off the wires, and at 125mph on some stretches. That means larger fuel tanks and larger engines. Either that or get serious about wiring up the XC core.

There are variations, involving potential cascades too, especially if GBR is looking at it on a national basis.
As an example Paddington to Oxford, or Bristol, or Cardiff might be better operated with a BEMU version of IET (or standard express successor to IET), releasing the current bimode versions to XC routes.

Thinking about it, if a battery EMU has a range of 60-70 miles (so they could comfortably be scheduled as 50 miles to allow reserve in winter), then they can do a 25 mile extension, out and back off the wires. If look at all the current IET routes, there are quite a few where bimodes currently do this, all of these are potential for new express trains with some batteries, but no diesel. There are potentially dozens of bimodes that would be released, and could take over partially electrified XC routes.

In my view would be better than XC getting lots of new trains with vast numbers of underfloor diesel engines. When it could use many of the bimodes already in existence.
It is wasteful operating a full blown bimode for piddly off wire extensions where train is using mains electric majority of time, and diesels are mainly deadweight being hauled around.

 

[LNW-GW Joint]

How much over-110mph off-wire running does XC do?
I can only think of Water Orton-Derby and a bit beyond, maybe a bit round Oxford.

 

[FGWHST43009]

My thoughts too. Thinking about how well a TPE solution would suit XC, the latter would require significantly longer distances running off the wires, and at 125mph on some stretches. That means larger fuel tanks and larger engines. Either that or get serious about wiring up the XC core.

I'm quite doubtful whether batteries alone can get a train up to 125mph but happy to be corrected. All the core routes should electrified, at least Bristol to Edinburgh and Bournemouth to Manchester fully electrified. Ideally electrify to Penzance and eliminate diesels and batteries. Maybe add third rail for Bournemouth workings?

 

[brad465]

There are variations, involving potential cascades too, especially if GBR is looking at it on a national basis.
As an example Paddington to Oxford, or Bristol, or Cardiff might be better operated with a BEMU version of IET (or standard express successor to IET), releasing the current bimode versions to XC routes.

Thinking about it, if a battery EMU has a range of 60-70 miles (so they could comfortably be scheduled as 50 miles to allow reserve in winter), then they can do a 25 mile extension, out and back off the wires. If look at all the current IET routes, there are quite a few where bimodes currently do this, all of these are potential for new express trains with some batteries, but no diesel. There are potentially dozens of bimodes that would be released, and could take over partially electrified XC routes.

XC could manage this for pretty much their entire network except south-west of Bristol. There would have to be electrification of Taunton-Exeter and the Devon Banks to be sure of completing a return trip to Plymouth, then if they still want a few Penzance trips, electrification at Penzance and another island somewhere in between. Dundee/Aberdeen in theory needs more electrification for XC as well, however the Fife Circle plans would help this.

 

[Technologist]

I'm quite doubtful whether batteries alone can get a train up to 125mph but happy to be corrected. I think the aim should be to have most of the core routes electrified. I think Bristol to Edinburgh and Bournemouth to Manchester should be fully electrified. Ideally electrify through to Plymouth or even Penzance and eliminate the need for diesels or batteries. Maybe add third rail for Bournemouth workings?

A battery car can quite easily crack 125mph, why do you thing a train would struggle?

Battery trains will be able to comprehensively out perform an EMU as they are not limited in peak power by the OHL. A 5 car train 8xx style with a battery mass no greater than currently used for the diesels in a bi-mode could easily accommodate a battery capable of putting out 30,000bhp, the cost of putting a pair of performance EV motors on each axle is trivial as is the weight. The battery for a 5 car train would be about £400k so the economics are highly unlikely to favour electrifying new sections of track, you could put batteries in a whole fleet of trains for the cost of a few KM of electrified track.

I modelled the train going from Penzance to Leeds using IET energy usage on the ECML, it would need to charge from a short section of OHL while stationary at Exeter and Plymouth and would arrive at Bristol at 30% SoC. It gets down to 25% SoC before it hits the electrified tracks south of Brum and gets to Leeds at 24% SoC (unless I put some power in at Derby in which case it arrives at 37%).

My model is a little old and uses a Tesla Model 3 SR as the charge speed model, some of the newer Chinese EVs are now charging at rates more than twice that now so OHLE permitting it would take only a brief stretch of OHLE to top the battery off. This is a key point, EV technology is progressing at such a rate that something marginal today gets easy well within a planning cycle.

EV technology is definitely an example of a technology push, (where the technology occurs rather than being demanded from the customer) we can now make a train perform in a manner that no rolling stock designer, operator or network operator has previously considered feasible. It is quite possible to make a train accelerate at the limit of passenger comfort (1.3m/s) until it is doing 125mph+ meaning it can reach 125mph in only 1200m and 186mph in 3000m. It's quite possible a stopping service could outpace todays express services.

To really make these things work you need to vertically integrate, a rolling stock manufacturer can't innovate on tiny internal R&D budgets against rigid commercial contracts produced years ahead of time by an operator who doesn't understand the product, has no vision and limited control over the infrastructure. GBR need to get back into the train building business or at very least the train designing business.

 

[Snow1964]

XC could manage this for pretty much their entire network except south-west of Bristol. There would have to be electrification of Taunton-Exeter and the Devon Banks to be sure of completing a return trip to Plymouth, then if they still want a few Penzance trips, electrification at Penzance and another island somewhere in between. Dundee/Aberdeen in theory needs more electrification for XC as well, however the Fife Circle plans would help this.

Yes, think I heard battery EMUs could do all of XC (with exception of fringes to Aberdeen and Penzance with something like only 70 route miles of electrification. Of which few miles might be being done anyway.

There were some bits in Fife, Bristol area (Filton-Bedminster), Didcot-Oxford, Leeds-Sheffield that are being considered as part of other projects

Then also needed (from memory)
Birmingham-Water Orton (where HS2 has rebuilt over bridges)
A few miles near Derby
A few miles south of Cheltenham (which would also allow some GWR and TfW services that are currently DMU to be BEMU)
A few miles near Tiverton Parkway
Teignmouth - Newton Abbot area
Melton Mowbray- Oakham area
Coventry - Kenilworth (which could be done cheaply just extending the old loco release wires which ran for first few hundred metres of the route)
Plymouth - Laira area

A have vague recollection was described (jokingly) as 8 bits of 8 miles. But that is actually probably fairly close to what is required to allow dual voltage BEMUs

 

[quantinghome]

A battery car can quite easily crack 125mph, why do you thing a train would struggle?

Battery trains will be able to comprehensively out perform an EMU as they are not limited in peak power by the OHL. A 5 car train 8xx style with a battery mass no greater than currently used for the diesels in a bi-mode could easily accommodate a battery capable of putting out 30,000bhp, the cost of putting a pair of performance EV motors on each axle is trivial as is the weight. The battery for a 5 car train would be about £400k so the economics are highly unlikely to favour electrifying new sections of track, you could put batteries in a whole fleet of trains for the cost of a few KM of electrified track.

I modelled the train going from Penzance to Leeds using IET energy usage on the ECML, it would need to charge from a short section of OHL while stationary at Exeter and Plymouth and would arrive at Bristol at 30% SoC. It gets down to 25% SoC before it hits the electrified tracks south of Brum and gets to Leeds at 24% SoC (unless I put some power in at Derby in which case it arrives at 37%).

My model is a little old and uses a Tesla Model 3 SR as the charge speed model, some of the newer Chinese EVs are now charging at rates more than twice that now so OHLE permitting it would take only a brief stretch of OHLE to top the battery off. This is a key point, EV technology is progressing at such a rate that something marginal today gets easy well within a planning cycle.

EV technology is definitely an example of a technology push, (where the technology occurs rather than being demanded from the customer) we can now make a train perform in a manner that no rolling stock designer, operator or network operator has previously considered feasible. It is quite possible to make a train accelerate at the limit of passenger comfort (1.3m/s) until it is doing 125mph+ meaning it can reach 125mph in only 1200m and 186mph in 3000m. It's quite possible a stopping service could outpace todays express services.

To really make these things work you need to vertically integrate, a rolling stock manufacturer can't innovate on tiny internal R&D budgets against rigid commercial contracts produced years ahead of time by an operator who doesn't understand the product, has no vision and limited control over the infrastructure. GBR need to get back into the train building business or at very least the train designing business.

What size battery would be needed for this? (From the look of it electric multiple units use approximately 20 kWh per mile).

 

[deltic08]

Depending on what TPE order, XC could go for a souped-up version of that product or a souped-up 897. Would need 125mph capability off-wires. It'll be interesting to see what TPE order and how LNER's 897 performs, but the obvious caveat is that none of those fleets are likely to run 125mph non-electrified lines

Would they need to be souped up? Yes 125mph capability under OHL, but 125mph on unelectrified line only available between Burton and Water Orton south of Church Fenton/Doncaster. to Penzance. 110mph would be sufficient until this line is electrified in the next 10-20 years when other EMUs can take advantage of wiring.

A battery car can quite easily crack 125mph, why do you thing a train would struggle?

Battery trains will be able to comprehensively out perform an EMU as they are not limited in peak power by the OHL. A 5 car train 8xx style with a battery mass no greater than currently used for the diesels in a bi-mode could easily accommodate a battery capable of putting out 30,000bhp, the cost of putting a pair of performance EV motors on each axle is trivial as is the weight. The battery for a 5 car train would be about £400k so the economics are highly unlikely to favour electrifying new sections of track, you could put batteries in a whole fleet of trains for the cost of a few KM of electrified track.

I modelled the train going from Penzance to Leeds using IET energy usage on the ECML, it would need to charge from a short section of OHL while stationary at Exeter and Plymouth and would arrive at Bristol at 30% SoC. It gets down to 25% SoC before it hits the electrified tracks south of Brum and gets to Leeds at 24% SoC (unless I put some power in at Derby in which case it arrives at 37%).

Is a three minute stop at Plymouth and Exeter long enough to top up batteries? This is assuming the train leaves Penzance fully charged. How bomb proof is this? If the failure rate of electric buses introduced only three years ago on the Ripon-Leeds service is anything to go by then multiple diesel rescue locos will need to be provided at every station or more electrification. Failure rate appears to be getting worse as the batteries get older

 

[Technologist]

What size battery would be needed for this? (From the look of it electric multiple units use approximately 20 kWh per mile).

I used the IET energy usage specs:

4600KWh for a 5 car train between Newcastle and Kings Cross. The journey takes 162 min and stops 7 times.

That is 18.77 KWh/mile, also this is the spec for the IET not what the class 800 actually achieves. It can also be pointed out that a class 800 is hardly the most aero optimised train that has ever been built and there is still plenty of scope beyond the state of the art to improve the aerodynamics of trains.



No train in service (even an Shinkansen) is as clean as a civil airliner for example and on an optimised battery train you’d probably stow the pantograph like an airliner stows it’s undercarriage.

https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/5a79b82e40f0b63d72fc7f58/tts-redacted.pdf

The incentives have never forced designers to fully aero optimise a UK train, the need to go long distances between wires at high speed will force designers to clean up the designs and better integrate equipment with the mould line of the train.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 5 Mar 2026 ==

Is a three minute stop at Plymouth and Exeter long enough to top up batteries? This is assuming the train leaves Penzance fully charged. How bomb proof is this? If the failure rate of electric buses introduced only three years ago on the Ripon-Leeds service is anything to go by then multiple diesel rescue locos will need to be provided at every station or more electrification. Failure rate appears to be getting worse as the batteries get older

The failure rate of some buses in Rippon is not something to go by. Technology choices should not be based on anecdotes.

There is massive amounts of counter evidence of electric vehicles operating with superior reliability than ICE vehicles. And in the case of rail vehicles we have lot’s of existing charging standards (electrification standards).

My model worked out state of charge as the train was moving between stations and had a charging curve from a Tesla Model 3 SR to model recharging. As the vehicle is only about 50% discharged when it reaches Exeter it doesn’t charge at max rate.

The 3 minute charge puts about 10% more range into the battery.

 

[quantinghome]

4600KWh for a 5 car train between Newcastle and Kings Cross. The journey takes 162 min and stops 7 times.

That is 18.77 KWh/mile

So assuming a battery mass of 5.5 kg / kWh you're looking at 25 tonnes of battery. Chunky. You may be able to knock 20-30% of that weight off for future batteries.

 

[Technologist]

So assuming a battery mass of 5.5 kg / kWh you're looking at 25 tonnes of battery. Chunky. You may be able to knock 20-30% of that weight off for future batteries.

My model train swaps the mass of the diesel engine and fuel of a bi mode 800 train for a degraded LFP battery pack scaled from a CATL one. I have also credited the pack as a structural member and then put the mass saved into more battery.

The energy density of LFP is fine, rail is famously efficient and there are many different ways to charge on the move. The advances are more likely to come in terms of purchase cost and durability.