Thameslink/ Class 700 Progress

[A-driver]

Parts of the 700s can boarded off with doorways with fold out doors that lock. Once the lock is used the train automatically shuts of that part of the train.

Oh and the reason they have no handrails in the ceiling is all the equipment removed from coach ends to provide wide inner car spaces meaning the ceiling panels are on latches. So you can't put the handrails in the ceiling without interfering with this.

And for the record the issue of one fault unit and spilting down or boxing in the fault is a red herring. This means you get a late start which means the train had to run fast mixing out stops so there little difference between that and cancelling it for many standing on the platform. In a congested railway spilting one off is hugly disruptive and trying to box a fault in during peak is a fanasty move as even with two drivers it brings things to a stand. sorry but anyone who thinks you can easily fix things on today's railways had never seen the choas a move makes in peak.

I disagree with your last paragraph. We are constantly boxing in or splitting off due to faults on the GN and it rarely causes a late start. It's normally done in places like Cambridge, peterbourgh, welwyn or letchworth yards with more minor faults (cab air con or heating, windscreen wipers etc).

It means that they don't need to send an entire 8 car to Hornsey for repair, a driver can agree to continue their journey and get it boxed in rather than diverted.

Taking away the boxing in option during evening shunting and morning preps will significantly increase complete cancelations rather than short forms or unnoticed boxing in done in time before departure.

I appreciate the 700s will be newer so less prone to 'wear and tear' faults but it's very naive to think they won't suffer from any faults which are easily resolvable by boxing in.

Sorry but can't agree with you on this one.

 

[jopsuk]

Is the 700 contract one where the contract is to provide a certain number of units in service each day, rather than "build x number of units, maintain them"?

 

[edwin_m]

There may be an issue with running through the core with no access from end to end of the train, depending on whether the emergency evacuation procedures involve people walking through the train to evacuate through the first set of side doors. This may also be one reason why the trains are single units in the first place - I doubt it would be possible to have a wheelchair accessible gangway through a cab end within UK loading gauge. Even on the Continent I think only the IC3 and derivatives might achieve this, by means of a swing-back control desk.

While having longer units does mean more has to be taken out of service for a failure, it means fewer sets of cab equipment and also no couplers that are subject to regular use. So certain types of fault are less likely to happen.

 

[LBSCR Times]

As an operator with over 35 years experience, I just resign myself to whatever I have thrown at me and just get on and deal with it. I might not agree with a lot of what has happened / been done over the years, but I cannot change it, so adapt.
Yes, boxing in defective cabs is getting more difficult, especially on the TL route, but no doubt we will find ways around the difficulties.
I can foresee more southbound Wimbledon Loop services terminating short and running back empty to either Three Bridges (defect permitting) or Hornsey (drivers permitting), and replacement stock having to be provided.
Providing assistance will be more problematic but we will find a way, it's just unfortunate that in today's congested railway, a cancellation or two is now required.

 

[A-driver]

There may be an issue with running through the core with no access from end to end of the train, depending on whether the emergency evacuation procedures involve people walking through the train to evacuate through the first set of side doors. This may also be one reason why the trains are single units in the first place - I doubt it would be possible to have a wheelchair accessible gangway through a cab end within UK loading gauge. Even on the Continent I think only the IC3 and derivatives might achieve this, by means of a swing-back control desk.



While having longer units does mean more has to be taken out of service for a failure, it means fewer sets of cab equipment and also no couplers that are subject to regular use. So certain types of fault are less likely to happen.

That is true and I'm not complaining about it however I'm just staying tat the most common work around common faults is to box in, not possible with new stock.

 

[MCR247]

While having longer units does mean more has to be taken out of service for a failure, it means fewer sets of cab equipment and also no couplers that are subject to regular use. So certain types of fault are less likely to happen.

I could be argued that for a route like the TL core, getting rid of faults that will cause delays during the journey is worth the risk of having more cancellations at the start of diagrams due to cab faults

 

[AM9]

There may be an issue with running through the core with no access from end to end of the train, depending on whether the emergency evacuation procedures involve people walking through the train to evacuate through the first set of side doors. This may also be one reason why the trains are single units in the first place - I doubt it would be possible to have a wheelchair accessible gangway through a cab end within UK loading gauge. Even on the Continent I think only the IC3 and derivatives might achieve this, by means of a swing-back control desk.

Given that side door evacuations via ramps are becoming a practical way and the fact that with the closure of the Moorgate Branch, there aren't any lengths of single bore tunnel in the core. Therefore, evacuation can be performed via the side doors using ramps to an alongside train, - hence the lack of end doors on the 700s. As the normal doors are wide enough for any wheelchair and the benefit of wide gangways between coaches, with local assistance, ramp evacuation would seem the best strategy anyway.
Any locked-out coaches would be opened up for the evacuation by staff during an emergency.

 

[edwin_m]

Given that side door evacuations via ramps are becoming a practical way and the fact that with the closure of the Moorgate Branch, there aren't any lengths of single bore tunnel in the core. Therefore, evacuation can be performed via the side doors using ramps to an alongside train, - hence the lack of end doors on the 700s. As the normal doors are wide enough for any wheelchair and the benefit of wide gangways between coaches, with local assistance, ramp evacuation would seem the best strategy anyway.
Any locked-out coaches would be opened up for the evacuation by staff during an emergency.

This seems sensible although it may not be possible in circumstances where trains can't move on the other track. However it does require extra staff to be further back down the train to unlock it, who may not necessarily be available if they are supervising the ramps. There is also the remote but possible circumstance of uncontrolled evacuation such as in a fire. Will the locks for out-of-use coaches have some sort of emergency release?

 

[Class377/5]

I disagree with your last paragraph. We are constantly boxing in or splitting off due to faults on the GN and it rarely causes a late start. It's normally done in places like Cambridge, peterbourgh, welwyn or letchworth yards with more minor faults (cab air con or heating, windscreen wipers etc).

It means that they don't need to send an entire 8 car to Hornsey for repair, a driver can agree to continue their journey and get it boxed in rather than diverted.

Taking away the boxing in option during evening shunting and morning preps will significantly increase complete cancelations rather than short forms or unnoticed boxing in done in time before departure.

I appreciate the 700s will be newer so less prone to 'wear and tear' faults but it's very naive to think they won't suffer from any faults which are easily resolvable by boxing in.

Sorry but can't agree with you on this one.

The difference is the GN isn't a congested railway like in Sussex, Kent or Midlands areas. Outside the GN, the future Thameslink network doesn't have nice big yards to shunt stock around bar Cricklewood or the two depot without destorying the timetable. Places like Bedford would struggle in the of peak at some points. Not that I believe there will be much spare capacity on the GN to do so in the future with the increase in services.

To put it in simply terms, recent boxing in of a fault off peak at Bedford with two drivers took 30mins due to the traffic levels and limited access to do the moves. As someone who has been a controller for both sides I can tell you the GN is a simple railway and nothing like the complex regions to the south. Or even West.

As for minor faults like windscreen wipers, if the 700s are designed to change DOO cameras in the platform, what makes you think such minor faults won't be fixable too?

As you mention driver agreeing to take train and box it in later, what's to stop a fresh units being arranged rather than boxing it in? Seems pretty comment to stay waste time boxing in is valid but stock swap isn't. One takes a lot more time and in the world of performance, which is where the passengers want improvements, ideas like boxing in just fall short of what the posting public want.

Is the 700 contract one where the contract is to provide a certain number of units in service each day, rather than "build x number of units, maintain them"?

Yes. Siemens are contacted to supply x amount of units daily.

There may be an issue with running through the core with no access from end to end of the train, depending on whether the emergency evacuation procedures involve people walking through the train to evacuate through the first set of side doors. This may also be one reason why the trains are single units in the first place - I doubt it would be possible to have a wheelchair accessible gangway through a cab end within UK loading gauge. Even on the Continent I think only the IC3 and derivatives might achieve this, by means of a swing-back control desk.

While having longer units does mean more has to be taken out of service for a failure, it means fewer sets of cab equipment and also no couplers that are subject to regular use. So certain types of fault are less likely to happen.

I think people forget just how much a performance risk spilting and joining trains are. There's a good reason Southern and Southeastern are both currently looking at removing the twins doing this from their timetables to increase performance and lower jounery times.

 

[AM9]

This seems sensible although it may not be possible in circumstances where trains can't move on the other track. However it does require extra staff to be further back down the train to unlock it, who may not necessarily be available if they are supervising the ramps. There is also the remote but possible circumstance of uncontrolled evacuation such as in a fire. Will the locks for out-of-use coaches have some sort of emergency release?

If all trains in a double track tunnel are halted and evacuation is wanted then a track walk out is the most likely strategy. That would then need staff to help people down from open doors. The distances between the stations on Thameslink core are relatively small, even St Pancras to Farringdon so getting help to a stricken train should not be that difficult.
I would imagine that any temporary locked doors that shut off OOS coaches would have their locks overridden by a fire/emergency alarm or be under cab control. If they fail, then it would be glass bolt or equivalent and ultimately, a staff carried key.

 

[jopsuk]

St Pancras to Farringdon still has Kings Cross Thameslink as an emergency evacuation point, which could help.

 

[A-driver]

The difference is the GN isn't a congested railway like in Sussex, Kent or Midlands areas. Outside the GN, the future Thameslink network doesn't have nice big yards to shunt stock around bar Cricklewood or the two depot without destorying the timetable. Places like Bedford would struggle in the of peak at some points. Not that I believe there will be much spare capacity on the GN to do so in the future with the increase in services.



To put it in simply terms, recent boxing in of a fault off peak at Bedford with two drivers took 30mins due to the traffic levels and limited access to do the moves. As someone who has been a controller for both sides I can tell you the GN is a simple railway and nothing like the complex regions to the south. Or even West.



As for minor faults like windscreen wipers, if the 700s are designed to change DOO cameras in the platform, what makes you think such minor faults won't be fixable too?



As you mention driver agreeing to take train and box it in later, what's to stop a fresh units being arranged rather than boxing it in? Seems pretty comment to stay waste time boxing in is valid but stock swap isn't. One takes a lot more time and in the world of performance, which is where the passengers want improvements, ideas like boxing in just fall short of what the posting public want.







Yes. Siemens are contacted to supply x amount of units daily.







I think people forget just how much a performance risk spilting and joining trains are. There's a good reason Southern and Southeastern are both currently looking at removing the twins doing this from their timetables to increase performance and lower jounery times.

I'm not referring to boxing in 'in service' but in stabling points during preps.

Driver preps train overnight or early morning, finds fault in lead cab which fails unit. Driver boxes in cab or splits unit, train can run without any delay or with possible short form. This is done within the yard at a quiet time so congestion is irrelevant.

This kind of common scenario won't be possible with 700s at yards outside Hornsey and bridges.

 

[Class377/5]

I'm not referring to boxing in 'in service' but in stabling points during preps.

Driver preps train overnight or early morning, finds fault in lead cab which fails unit. Driver boxes in cab or splits unit, train can run without any delay or with possible short form. This is done within the yard at a quiet time so congestion is irrelevant.

This kind of common scenario won't be possible with 700s at yards outside Hornsey and bridges.

You've completely ignored what I've put. You can't box in without disrupting services outside the GN. You claim that congestion doesn't exist at quiet times, do you not understand my point when I've clearly stated this is not the case on Midlands, Sussex and Kent? For example the only quiet time on the MML is between 0200-0400. Hardly useful for when units are getting prepped. Not that many preps have time to shunt units around on Thameslink so you example is worthless when compared to the current Thameslink situation.

The simple fact the unit will know when a fault occurs means it won't be down to the driver to discover it. Soon as something faults you get the depot alerted and fitters dealing with. Of course the unit could fall during prep but there little you can do as an operator on they case.

And it's worth mentioning that both First and Govia were offering fixed formation 6 car units for the Moorgate services showing that the industry as while is seeing fixed formation on commuter routes can be the most sensible approach.

I don't suppose many on here read the report Interfleet did on justifying fixed formation units and the sheer weight of positives outweighed the negatives such as a cab defects. The fact the train builders have gone to major lengths to avoid failures while making them quicker to fix reducing downtime all adds up to a more reliable service.

 

[A-driver]

You've completely ignored what I've put. You can't box in without disrupting services outside the GN. You claim that congestion doesn't exist at quiet times, do you not understand my point when I've clearly stated this is not the case on Midlands, Sussex and Kent? For example the only quiet time on the MML is between 0200-0400. Hardly useful for when units are getting prepped. Not that many preps have time to shunt units around on Thameslink so you example is worthless when compared to the current Thameslink situation.

The simple fact the unit will know when a fault occurs means it won't be down to the driver to discover it. Soon as something faults you get the depot alerted and fitters dealing with. Of course the unit could fall during prep but there little you can do as an operator on they case.

And it's worth mentioning that both First and Govia were offering fixed formation 6 car units for the Moorgate services showing that the industry as while is seeing fixed formation on commuter routes can be the most sensible approach.

I don't suppose many on here read the report Interfleet did on justifying fixed formation units and the sheer weight of positives outweighed the negatives such as a cab defects. The fact the train builders have gone to major lengths to avoid failures while making them quicker to fix reducing downtime all adds up to a more reliable service.

I'm not arguing against fixed formation trains, just pointing out one possible issue.

And Thameslink still Has yards where shunting an happen without disruption services. You don't need to run into the mainline to shunt in many TL yards which see units stabled.

You do seem to get very defensive when anyone dares to criticise the TLP or class 700s! I know you are very excited about it all and I know they are a good bit of kit (I've read the paperwork from company council visits to Germany and as a rep get a lot of the emails about them) but you fit need to be quite so defensive when anyone pints out a potential problem...!

 

[Class377/5]

I'm not arguing against fixed formation trains, just pointing out one possible issue.

And Thameslink still Has yards where shunting an happen without disruption services. You don't need to run into the mainline to shunt in many TL yards which see units stabled.

This simply isn't true. Thameslink's three yards are Bedford, Cricklewood and Brighton. Bedford you need to shunt via the station, Brighton requires two drivers and that only if the yard is empty., Cricklewood is currently half closed with limited access to and from the yard currently, so you can shunt if you get the right point only or you'll delay trains that operate in and out of the yard.

You do seem to get very defensive when anyone dares to criticise the TLP or class 700s! I know you are very excited about it all and I know they are a good bit of kit (I've read the paperwork from company council visits to Germany and as a rep get a lot of the emails about them) but you fit need to be quite so defensive when anyone pints out a potential problem...!

Don't confuse my view that boxing in faults is anything to do with the 700s, is to do with the fact that on Thameslink today that just doesn't work with any of our stock. Is simply takes to long on our side within the available time frame to be useful. GN is different, very different.

 

[A-driver]

This simply isn't true. Thameslink's three yards are Bedford, Cricklewood and Brighton. Bedford you need to shunt via the station, Brighton requires two drivers and that only if the yard is empty., Cricklewood is currently half closed with limited access to and from the yard currently, so you can shunt if you get the right point only or you'll delay trains that operate in and out of the yard.







Don't confuse my view that boxing in faults is anything to do with the 700s, is to do with the fact that on Thameslink today that just doesn't work with any of our stock. Is simply takes to long on our side within the available time frame to be useful. GN is different, very different.

And the gn will still be very different as with the exception of peterborgh none of our yards require running onto the mainline to shunt. So fixed Thameslink and Moorgate units may see an increase in complete cancelations.

 

[Class377/5]

And the gn will still be very different as with the exception of peterborgh none of our yards require running onto the mainline to shunt. So fixed Thameslink and Moorgate units may see an increase in complete cancelations.

May is personal opinion but I can see your logic. However with units that should be more reliable generally means less cancelations as a whole. (With a proper propose built train there is no reason to think this won't be true but time will tell).

However you could argue that having multiple units is actually going to increase as there is more to go wrong.

And of course with a single control merged with Sussex, the GN will be a different railway in a few years once the changes have time to bed in.

 

[whoosh]

A couple of things:

As someone has pointed out, having less cabs actually means less maintenance is required - maintenance time can be better dedicated to the equipment in the fewer cabs on these trains.

London Underground has no intermediate cabs in the last few groups of stock it's obtained, and the old stock previously ran in it's latter days in a formation with a 'declassified cab' if you like - certain cabs were always run in the centre of trains which meant that things like train radio didn't need to be fitted to them, and some had no red fronts.
It seemed to work okay for them.

I've heard a figure of £80,000 that Siemens will pay if a train is cancelled due to a defect, but whether this is 'per timetabled service' or 'per train less than the x-number of trains that should be provided each day', I don't know.
There is, apparently, quite a bit of redundancy built into the systems on the class 700s.

 

[Paynetrain]

http://youtu.be/6MijkQqhF7I

Caught a snip of one on the move arbiet it being towed!

Enjoy...

 

[jon0844]

They're being short formed already?

 

[AM9]

They're being short formed already?

Ah but they are LHCS. That'll please some on here.

 

[SpacePhoenix]

Would that "half set" be on its way to the channel tunnel?

btw, anyone else finding that when viewing any youtube video on FF that FF seems to nearly hang? I've had to install a plugin to make it load the flash versions of the videos as the HTML versions don't work at all, they just make FF hang and memory consumption goes through the roof! (ended task in task manager when FF memory consumption reach about 2GB! - didn't want to risk windows crashing through lack of memory!

 

[Class377/5]

Would that "half set" be on its way to the channel tunnel?

Nope, first one in the UK is still planned for August and 8 cars will be coming over whole. Don't know that the 12 cars are coming over whole but believe so.

The four carriages you see are the four that went to InnoTranz last year. Somehow tho one of the carriages was lost before going on display.

 

[The Box Photter]

That's a sensible feature. In the life of the 700s it will probably be a serious H & S offence to allow passengers to travel in a coach that doesn't have fully operational exits, which may not include the gangways to the next coach.
Passengers desperate for seats or space always have the option to alight and catch a later train.

This happens all the time at the moment with the 377s. The automatic doors at the end of many carriages do not work.

If splitting units causes so much hassle, why do we have to put up with EMUs/DMUs instead of proper locomotives and carriages? I thought one of the operational flexibilities of EMUs/DMUs was that they can be split en-route to serve two (or more) different destinations.

 

[AM9]

This happens all the time at the moment with the 377s. The automatic doors at the end of many carriages do not work.

If splitting units causes so much hassle, why do we have to put up with EMUs/DMUs instead of proper locomotives and carriages? I thought one of the operational flexibilities of EMUs/DMUs was that they can be split en-route to serve two (or more) different destinations.

The conversation was about the ability of closing off part of a class 700 by doors that block the wide through gangways. I said, "In the life of the 700s...." meaning in the future. That could be up to 40 years from now.
The point that I was making was that it will probably be disallowed under H&S rules to carry passengers in vehicles without adequate egress provision, e.g. as would be required in case of a fire. So we are not talking about 'splitting' as 700s could not be operated that way.
The reasons for EMUs rather than locos and basic coaches on a commuter railway have been discussed to death so many times on this forum it doesn't need repeating yet again, especially as it would be off-topic in a thread about the class 700s.

 

[jon0844]

The four carriages you see are the four that went to InnoTranz last year. Somehow tho one of the carriages was lost before going on display.

Don't you just hate it when you lose a train carriage?

 

[airbus]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pbAr0BR1eFs

New video from SIEMENS posted a few days ago. Can't wait to drive that beast!

 

[Fincra5]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pbAr0BR1eFs

New video from SIEMENS posted a few days ago. Can't wait to drive that beast!

No wonder the stock is taking ages to build... they've got about 10 people working on them

 

[Aictos]

Don't you just hate it when you lose a train carriage?

How do you lose a train carriage though?

Am looking forward to seeing them on the Hertford Loop though

 

[jon0844]

How do you lose a train carriage though?

Falls down the back of a very large sofa?