-
Our new ticketing site is now live! Using either this or the original site (both powered by TrainSplit) helps support the running of the forum with every ticket purchase! Find out more and ask any questions/give us feedback in this thread!
Thameslink/ Class 700 Progress
- Thread starter fgwrich
- Start date
- Status
Sponsor Post - registered members do not see these adverts; click here to register, or click here to log in
R
RailUK Forums
Boarded a 700/1 at Luton this morning. Announcements on the train listing stations to destination Brighton which was the intended destination, but the display was showing the next station stop is Bedford. I began to wonder whether we were going to reverse back North again.
Seats are rock hard for any journey over 30 minutes. I like the upright, high seats far better than the 319 where your knees ended up higher than your chest, they were so low. But certainly not as comfortable as the 377 units. I actually pressed the seat cushion and there was nothing but thin fabric. Hardly any cushion at all.
Anybody know when Wifi is due to be retro-fitted ? Would be nice to have some entertainment on these dark mornings and evenings.
Seats are rock hard for any journey over 30 minutes. I like the upright, high seats far better than the 319 where your knees ended up higher than your chest, they were so low. But certainly not as comfortable as the 377 units. I actually pressed the seat cushion and there was nothing but thin fabric. Hardly any cushion at all.
Anybody know when Wifi is due to be retro-fitted ? Would be nice to have some entertainment on these dark mornings and evenings.
Peter Mugridge
Veteran Member
700 036 sat down at City yesterday morning with a Sevenoaks to West Hampstead but was fortunately able to proceed after five minute - I was on the one behind; platform man said it had needed to be rebooted when the switch to overheads didn't work. The fact that they got it going again that quickly suggests things are getting better.
That would upset a couple of regulars here.
Oh shock and surprise, another 700 fault. NONE of us get upset when a unit can be fixed quickly. Most of us hate it when things break, that really shouldn't. The main reason that it is being resolved quicker..... I'll let you figure that one out.
Crun
Member
New trains to link Peterborough with St Pancras and Gatwick and give live tube updates
http://www.peterboroughtoday.co.uk/...-gatwick-and-give-live-tube-updates-1-8228791
http://www.peterboroughtoday.co.uk/...-gatwick-and-give-live-tube-updates-1-8228791
Generally, when they break down with spurious software issues (often, but not always at the voltage change overs) there are two ways of fixing them. In simple terms:
1) a soft reboot, which takes about 5 minutes. This might be tried 2 or 3 times
2) a complete hard reboot, which takes about half an hour, and sometimes needs a fitter.
Usually (1) fixes it, and off we go. if it doesn't after around 3 tries, then it's the full monty. Taking into account the time to try (1) and perhaps get a fitter, it will be around an hour or so.
Personally I have been affected by one (2) and two (1)s. It seems to me that these software related failures come in spates, which may be related to software updates.
bramling
Veteran Member
Why on earth should a hard trip/reset take half an hour and potentially need a fitter? That seems like a ridiculously long amount of time.
I agree, but don't know.
Having said that, my phone took nearly a week to reboot, so compared to that half an hour is impressive.
I only know one way to reboot it. Are you thinking of a reset compared to a reboot ?
Not related to software updates that I'm aware of. There isn't that many software updates to have such an effect. The current update relates to doors.
I spoke with a Seimens tech a few days ago and he was telling me that the units are behaving very much as designed. There appears to be a conflict about how the unit is designed to operate and how we actually operate them. There is also an issue where delays are caused more by policy and procedures than what used to be resolved quite quickly. The operational constraints can be quite detrimental at times.
So you're not supposed to hit them with a hammer?
Update for those of you on GN:
As discussed 700s will definitely be introduced on Monday on the following services:
1P05 06:56 Peterborough to Kings Cross (fast)
1P49 07:33 Peterborough to Kings Cross (stopper)
1P66 17:42 Kings Cross to Peterborough (stopper)
1P68 18:12 Kings Cross to Peterborough (stopper)
First Class will be at both the front and the rear of the train. At present unless plans change at the last moment the rear First Class section will not be declassified.
As discussed 700s will definitely be introduced on Monday on the following services:
1P05 06:56 Peterborough to Kings Cross (fast)
1P49 07:33 Peterborough to Kings Cross (stopper)
1P66 17:42 Kings Cross to Peterborough (stopper)
1P68 18:12 Kings Cross to Peterborough (stopper)
First Class will be at both the front and the rear of the train. At present unless plans change at the last moment the rear First Class section will not be declassified.
Last edited:
RUFJAN15
Member
- Joined
- 1 Jan 2015
- Messages
- 49
It appears that one of the FLU's that have been parked up in Horsham Field Sidings for the last few weeks has moved to Hornsey this afternoon (http://www.realtimetrains.co.uk/train/O41081/2017/11/04/advanced). Presumably this is to provide additional units for Monday morning.
For those that like to take the traction type reported on RTT literally, it appears that someone has bolted some diesel engines under a Class 700 (RTT reports that it is timed as a Diesel Electric MU).
There's two at Peterborough and two at Hornsey at present, one further unit will move to Peterborough before Monday and one will remain at Hornsey.
There's two further 700s stored at Peterborough but these are not for use in service on GN at present.
There's two further 700s stored at Peterborough but these are not for use in service on GN at present.
Alteran Ancient
Member
Thinking back to soft/hard reboots, I've been told that if you use the egress facility more than 10 times since the train was last booted-up, the computer will generate an unrecoverable fault condition, and requires a hard reboot to be performed.
Keep in mind that their nature as a "long snake" without separate carriages means having porter buttons/keys to lock-out individual carriages is somewhat pointless. Instead, the driver has to close the doors, and then have station staff board at the rear and round-up any stragglers, and then leave at the front. This has apparently been a point of contention between platform staff and drivers, afraid of "going over the limit" when using egress to terminate a train to take it out of passenger service.
The only reason I can think of why this might happen is that Siemens' software engineers didn't anticipate that staff might use these facilities in this way, and therefore wrote a "sanity check" condition into the train management software to consider such scenarios as a fault.
Keep in mind that their nature as a "long snake" without separate carriages means having porter buttons/keys to lock-out individual carriages is somewhat pointless. Instead, the driver has to close the doors, and then have station staff board at the rear and round-up any stragglers, and then leave at the front. This has apparently been a point of contention between platform staff and drivers, afraid of "going over the limit" when using egress to terminate a train to take it out of passenger service.
The only reason I can think of why this might happen is that Siemens' software engineers didn't anticipate that staff might use these facilities in this way, and therefore wrote a "sanity check" condition into the train management software to consider such scenarios as a fault.
Well they shouldn't be, they should be closing the doors at cab where the driver has just arrived, walking through and using the gop panel to let anyone out.
Wonder if there's some misinformation been put around, it's like the cab doors, you can't egress them like the 377 as that only has a certain amount of uses and it needs attention
Wonder if there's some misinformation been put around, it's like the cab doors, you can't egress them like the 377 as that only has a certain amount of uses and it needs attention
gop panel,what’s that? How are cab doors different on the 700?
SpacePhoenix
Established Member
- Joined
- 18 Mar 2014
- Messages
- 5,491
afaik a "GOP Panel" is the Guard's Panel. It's the panel that you see the guards use in the vestibule area of coaches to operate the doors, and I believe also the PA microphone is there as well
tsr
Established Member
The main problem with emergency egress handles (and manual cab egress handles) is the wear and tear on the cable mechanism. If that breaks, or the cable is stretched by overuse and does not happen to get seen to by a depot in sufficient time, then the door can potentially become unusable and may get stuck in a given position. This causes a number of delays each year to most operators of modern stock. (It's also why I dislike the Turbostars which don't have air-assisted cab doors, because if they are on busier routes and have to be worked from the rear or middle cabs by guards, the wear and tear on the cab door handles at each stop could be quite intense. This also applies to all the older Electrostars, to a degree.)
I would hazard a guess that the 700s count the number of times that the manual egress system is used, and they throw wobblies if the system is used too much. If these errors are related to the difficulties I've described above, this is for a very good reason.
I did read the original operating instructions to platform staff, though I don't have my own copy to hand, and I'm sure the details were that the train doors should be locked out of use but with one panel active (the GOP, or guard's operating panel, which on 700 stock is able to control its own local door, all other doors and indeed the PA system). Passengers remaining on the train were then to be detrained by walking them down to the local door by the GOP. At the end of the process, this would be the final door to be locked out, and then the train could proceed empty to depot.
Unfortunately, there are some locations where the station staff who lock out trains are not safety-critical, which does seem to apply mainly to the Southeastern network. Where this is the case, I can't imagine they'd be given access to the GOP train door controls. On the other hand, emergency egresses are designed for anyone to use in emergency, so they could have come to the conclusion that those are to be used instead. This bit is just speculation, but it may be what's happened.
I can't comment about "software" based emergency egresses, where the doors can't be automatically released and a different method is needed for the driver to manually select the way the doors are to open. There is certainly a function to do this on the likes of the 377s, and from experience this operation can be carried out from the Mitrac computer many times without the system locking up, although there are nuances to the system which take some getting used to.
I would hazard a guess that the 700s count the number of times that the manual egress system is used, and they throw wobblies if the system is used too much. If these errors are related to the difficulties I've described above, this is for a very good reason.
I did read the original operating instructions to platform staff, though I don't have my own copy to hand, and I'm sure the details were that the train doors should be locked out of use but with one panel active (the GOP, or guard's operating panel, which on 700 stock is able to control its own local door, all other doors and indeed the PA system). Passengers remaining on the train were then to be detrained by walking them down to the local door by the GOP. At the end of the process, this would be the final door to be locked out, and then the train could proceed empty to depot.
Unfortunately, there are some locations where the station staff who lock out trains are not safety-critical, which does seem to apply mainly to the Southeastern network. Where this is the case, I can't imagine they'd be given access to the GOP train door controls. On the other hand, emergency egresses are designed for anyone to use in emergency, so they could have come to the conclusion that those are to be used instead. This bit is just speculation, but it may be what's happened.
I can't comment about "software" based emergency egresses, where the doors can't be automatically released and a different method is needed for the driver to manually select the way the doors are to open. There is certainly a function to do this on the likes of the 377s, and from experience this operation can be carried out from the Mitrac computer many times without the system locking up, although there are nuances to the system which take some getting used to.
I've experienced 3 different methods of 'locking out' a 700. There is no consistency between SE and GTR that's for sure. The problem is more down to company procedure. Both sides are locking the units out as per their instructions.
I'm not sure what safety critical has to do with it but I'm almost certain that all our platform staff who work with the trains are considered safety critical.
We have dispatch staff and general platform staff.
Everyone who touches the units have been trained and certified to do so. Even our cleaners operate door panels.
All our units can be egressed in an out with no impact on the unit. 700's are overly complex at the best of times but so far egressing them has had no impact that I am aware of. We have been egressing them since day 1.
Communication between Siemens/GTR/SE has been dire at best. We just got a new procedure for Auxing the unit off which is different from the manual issued by GTR. There is still a long way to go with the procedures, policies etc around these units. Until then, everyone is still learning and adapting.
As said its the guard panel, it has a local door release on it.
The cab doors can only be egressed about 3 times (apparently) before the mechanism has to be replaced so we always use the buttons on the back panel to open and close the door
Oh,did t know that,thanks
Alteran Ancient
Member
Yep. These were highlighted a few times after Grayling made his claim that it was a waste of time to fit buttons to new trains all for the sake of allowing a Guard to open/close the doors. He was either mis-informed about the spec of the 700s, or he was mis-leading the public to further his rhetoric, because the 700s already had the buttons fitted as new.
To prevent the egress issue, I don't see why the driver can't just co-ordinate with the platform staff to close the doors with a member of staff on board, allow the staff to tip-out the pax using the GOPs where necessary, and then just disembark via the driver's cab, thus completely avoiding the need to use any egress handles.
- Status