Two car class 313?

[notverydeep]

On a thread about the Croxley Rail link in the London Underground sub-forum there was a link to the well known Disused Stations site about Watford West station.

One of the pages of photos linked from this page seems to show 313034 at Watford West in NSE livery running as a two car unit with apparently no centre / pantograph car:

http://www.disused-stations.org.uk/w/watford_west/index60.shtml

Can anyone advise how common this was, how many units operated this way, where and for how long?

Many thanks for any info...

 

[theblackwatch]

This was the only unit which ran as such. The centre car had been removed to be used for tests in a unit numbered '316999' which was also made up of some former Class 210 vehicles. I'm pretty sure 313034 operated as a 2-car for less than a year, possibly only a few months.

 

[zn1]

034 had its PTS removed for while during networker tests, the PTS was in the networker test unit 316999 which was based at Clacton emud for the testing duration.

 

[notverydeep]

Thanks for this info. I presume that 313s can run without their PTS with no or minimal reconfiguration, otherwise I guess the two outer cars of 313034 would simply have been stored during these tests? Perhaps also lucky that there was a suitable route for a two car train to Croxley Green!