Third day 421 has entered service in the morning. Third day it has failed to last through to the end of the day. Do Northern forward all the delay repay claims direct to Porterbrook I wonder? Utterly comical, unless you have the misfortune to commute using the Wigan to Southport line.
Three 769's are already back from expensive C6 overhauls. Five still to go. Porterbrook simply would not be funding C6's unless they had guarantees of "lengthy" future leases being in the pipeline, surely? The best use for 421 and 452 would be as "christmas trees" to try and improve the reliability of the rest of the fleet. The "politics" of binning "hybrid" traction seems to overrule the need to provide a reliable service to passengers.
No 769's started the day from AN (normally 2 sets) so everything there must be demic. The 2 sets from AN today were 2 car 150's so 2 shortforms straightaway. 769434 started from SP and 769450 from NH, whilst 769456 appears to have started from Wigan Wallgate CS (not a normal start point).
And the issue of what you would replace them with.
How reliable are the 'ex GWR' sets?
Credit where it's due, there are no reported instances of those units ever failing in public service.
The HV (high voltage) subsystem on the /9s is far more complicated due to reinstating the dual voltage capability.
It's not High Voltage in spite of what AdTranz and BR think. The IEC define what high voltage is and the 319/769/768 only very really slightly sneaks into it at 1056V AC on the main rectifier when in AC mode and with 27.5kV on the OLE.
The Welsh 150s. Overhaul them instead of the 769s. I doubt they are any more rusty than the other 150s that are being overhauled, or the 769s.
but the ex-TfW 769s at Northern have had their pantographs refitted?
Im saying about the fact tfw never chose to keep the pantographs? Not about them being with northern
To be entirely correct the two ex TfW units should be replacing two NT 769s whilst away for overhaul, so Northern should have a full complement of eight 769/4s to diagram., presumably daily diagrams for six ?
There is only 1 unit booked to be away at once, 769458 being currently at Brodies.
Possibly not, but somehow the £100m+ that was managed to be spent on electrifying Lostock Junction to Wigan North Western has to be justified by using it! No sign as yet of a re-cast service using electric from Stalybridge-Wigan NW on the 6 day railway that we have from Northern in these parts, and no sign of what a re-jigged Southport service (half hourly at present) will look like. 769's in any event also don't bother on a Sunday.
Exactly the point, there hasn't been a train service from Bolton via Westhoughton to Wigan NW or Wallgate or beyond on a Sunday for many, many months since before last Christmas. The Southport service should be from Blackburn, but under the 'emergency timetable' from before last Christmas is reduced to 2 hourly from Manchester Vic (and even that is 'hit and miss' )dependant on conductors making themselves available. Little or no progress on this one, even TfGM have gone on radio silence. Wires simply not used on a Sunday.
Once these units are back there are plenty more to go for corrosion repairs/refurbishment though.
I’ve said before the 4 156s stored at Ely would have Been better than the 769s . Yeh it’s been said they are rust buckets but some of the 156s northern got from emr were stripped to shells and rebuilt so why can’t those at Ely .
They’re also owned by Angel not Porterbrook…
