Interesting demonstration this morning of what a short formed 158 on the first Nottingham to Liverpool service is like - is not experienced it before and always had the feeling that the train never felt "that full" first thing... The drop from 4 to 2 cars obviously reduces seat numbers, unusual to see people standing on that first service, but perhaps more interesting for me was the dwell time at Stockport, Piccadilly and Oxford Road - with only 4 single person wide doors it was taking some time, especially with the high number of cyclists using this service - could be fun tonight if the formation stays the same.
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Short formed EMT - Nottingham to Liverpool
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Bletchleyite
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Just what it was like all the time until EMT took over then..
Bletchleyite
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Central Trains.
To be fair, Central Trains did in its later years use some of the displaced 3 car 170 turbo units off the Midland Main line on this route, making conditions slightly better, especially when you could sit in the de-classified first class!
edwin_m
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EMT had to hand over all their 3-car units (or just the centre cars in the case of the 158s) so nearly every working on this line was 2-car from 2008 until about 2011 when the Government coughed up some more money to institute the present arrangement. According to an article in Modern Railways at the time, EMT is penalised for each short-forming and as a reasonably frequent user of these services I can say a 2-car west of Nottingham is pretty rare.
I do recall one horrible Friday afternoon when the previous service was cancelled, the next one was a 2-car and it was quite literally jammed from Stockport to Sheffield, back cab included!
The strengthening unit is sometimes a 156 instead of 158, which would reduce the speed to 75mph but doesn't seem to affect the timings.
I do recall one horrible Friday afternoon when the previous service was cancelled, the next one was a 2-car and it was quite literally jammed from Stockport to Sheffield, back cab included!
The strengthening unit is sometimes a 156 instead of 158, which would reduce the speed to 75mph but doesn't seem to affect the timings.
First class
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I believe 13+ units are currently undergoing/waiting for critical repair.
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High Dyke
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That was reportedly the count this morning, and then 153321 failed with an oil leak. Add 153381 to the list with a gearbox fault...
It could be suggested that only carrying out reactive maintenance is a factor.
MCR247
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Is the 13 units just 158s or 13 15xs?
Boothby97
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Quite surprised a 158 worked one of the Lincoln to Grimsby services today then, a line usually confined to 153s and the occasional 156.
Bletchleyite
Veteran Member
Surprising for Stagecoach - that said, I do find that SWT's Desiros are rather muckier (particularly the aircon vents[1]) and squeakier than LM's, though that may well be caused by their use in more polluted areas of London with poorer quality track.
[1] Not cleaning aircon vents properly is sloppy and lazy, but far too many TOCs seem to fall into that trap. Today's SWT 450 had black filth hanging down from them along about 2 metres of the ceiling. Poor.
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That it did, but prior to that it was 2-car and heavily overcrowded all round. If travelling from Liverpool to Manchester it was best to take the xx22 TPE service instead of the xx49/52 CT one for the 3-car 158s (especially when they got refurbed to a very nice standard). How things change!
MichaelAMW
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That's sort of interesting. I today caught the Leicester - Lincoln that would have left Nottingham at 12.29 and it had a 158 attached to the front at Nottingham. Maybe going off to replace something knackered at Lincoln that would have done your Grimsby? I think I might also have seen the 12.47 Liverpool as only a 2 car - "might" as in a single 158 it left platform 7, from which the Liverpools generally leave, at about the right time.
First class
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I'm not sure where you got your information from but it was 13 units total from the 153/6/8 fleets at were stopped. Not 13 x 158s
northwichcat
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Really?
Around 3 years in to the Central franchise 3 car 170/6s were introduced on Liverpool-Norwich, alongside 158s. With 170s being released from MML services by the introduction of 222s and from Liverpool-Birmingham by the introduction of 350s, it meant by around 2005 the Liverpool-Norwich workings were usually 3 or 4 car workings, occasionally a 2 car 158 did make an appearance but then occasionally a 5 car 170 made an appearance.
In early 2007 Central started reallocating the fleet ahead of the East/West split that was due to happen. This meant most Liverpool-Norwich services became 3 and 4 car 158s and a regular 2 car 158 working appeared. However, after the EMT franchise was awarded DfT decided EMT should switch the 158 centre cars for 153s (as well as all the 170s going to XC and LM), which resulted in 2 car 158s making regular appearances once again.
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That would be the first unit of the day from Nottingham - today, I'm happy to report we are formed of four cars and everyone is smiling
Boothby97
Established Member
That sounds right, according to RTT the train you are referring to arrived into Lincoln at 1319 in Platform 4.
The next trains to use platform 4 were the 1337 back to Leicester and then the 1437 to Grimsby (which is the service I saw).
For the record the 158 involved was 158847 "Lincoln Castle Explorer" https://www.flickr.com/photos/sboothby/19715340405/ (shame it wasn't the SWT loan unit 158899
)First train to Liverpool is short formed again - annoyingly, the staff aren't being informed what's happening, so there's no information on which train coming home will be short formed - other than tracking the timetable between Liverpool and Nottingham, is there a more reliable method of checking which service is short formed on the return ?
Class 170101
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Wouldn't be guaranteed to be short all day. A unit may be fixed for strengthening on the next trip out from Nottingham.
Not sure of the point you are making here... Issue is that running a two carriage train first thing in the morning isn't an issue until the unit gets towards the end of the run (early peak), but running a short formed unit in the evening peak is downright unacceptable. Whilst I can accept that this particular service runs a massively long route for a 158, making reforming potentially difficult. As a customer, it feels that EMT could have done much better with some shuffling to ensure four car units are maintained in the peak for the busiest service legs, or could have worked with its ROSCO to ensure impacts where mitigated against or indeed, explained the logic of their formation choices and the rationale for the work.
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Qwerty133
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He's saying that just because a diagram is short at one point in a day, it may not be 12 hours later.
Agreed, chances are when a unit is available it would be stuck back out to work to avoid this.
Nice hypothesis - however the short formed morning service is a different one to the short formed one in the evening - the EMT Sheffield-Manchester service runs as far as Liverpool and Norwich - typically a unit doesn't do that many back and forth trips in a day
edwin_m
Veteran Member
The strengthening unit generally comes off at Nottingham and waits an hour and a bit to attach to the next but one Liverpool train. There is no attachment or detachment anywhere else. So if a Liverpool-bound train is short-formed at Manchester then the return working just over two hours later will also be short. It's a bit more complicated going the other way because Nottingham depot may find another unit in the meantime, and in principle they could even "step up" the strengthening unit to attach to the train an hour before the one it was scheduled to go with.
PHILIPE
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If 4 Cars are available, here will be 4 Cars. If not, there will only be 2 whatever time of day. Times of day can't always be picked and chosen.
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