Southern - AirCon turned off?

[atomlad]

Morning all

Travelling to/from Victoria every day week and in the afternoons the carriages were quite warm. The outside temps werent that high, however the aircon appeared to be turned off and it quite stuffy with a full carriage and passengers needing to fan themselves etc. Even on Friday evening with a not so full carriage leaving London it definately was warmer than usual.

During the heatwave in June the Southern trains were very nice and cool.

Is there a policy about turning the air con off? Curious that its not automatic based on a set temp!

 

[rmHawk765]

Occasionally 387s on Great Northern (Southern also has these, and they're very similar to 377s) just do not have the aircon switched on. Technically a train shouldn't be let out of the depot with non-functional aircon but I think it's debatable to what extent this is actually followed.

Mind you, I have taken trains in the south of France several times where it seemingly is deemed acceptable to forget about aircon despite the relatively high temperatures there throughout the year...

 

[DaveTM]

377s and 387s have two Auxilliary Converter Modules, one at each end of the train, which convert line voltage down to voltages suitable for train equipment. In each carriage there are two air conditioning units, one powered by each ACM. So if an ACM fails, each carriage will have a warm end and a cool end.

As for turning the air con off during a journey, we drivers can do that, but it would only normally be done in the event of a fire on the train to avoid moving smoke around. When we key off at the end of a journey, there is a delay of a few minutes before the saloon lights and air con turn off to save electricity, and when we key on to start a journey, they come back on without our having to do anything. So a train may be hot and stuffy for a few minutes at the start of a journey if it had a significant layover between trips.