Worst Improvement?

[MCR247]

Worst Improvement: Splitting the Central Trains franchise up

 

[The Planner]

A journey into New Street usually involves crawling from King's Norton all the way into New Street even if you are on time. It surprises me that they don't send the intercity services from Bristol in via Camp Hill to avoid this.

Can't path them all to do that.

 

[Welshman]

Taking a rather longer-term view, I suggest the worst "improvement" was the politically-motivated mad rush in the 1950s and 60s to withdraw steam engines, some of which were under 10 years old when consigned to the scrapheap, and replace them with untried diesel engines. Several classes of these were found unreliable and did not survive very long.
With the benefit of hindsight we should have gone straight to electrification. I suspect the money spent on dieselisation and its associated re-training and rebuilding of infrastructure, could have paid for most of the system to be electrified long before now.

 

[tbtc]

With the benefit of hindsight we should have gone straight to electrification. I suspect the money spent on dieselisation and its associated re-training and rebuilding of infrastructure, could have paid for most of the system to be electrified long before now.

I'd never even considered the possibility of that. Did any countries go straight from Steam to Electric?

 

[Welshman]

Switzerland did - and now I believe their network is fully electrified. But they do have a plentiful supply of hydro-electric power.

 

[sprinterguy]

OTOH in the days of realistic timings (and long distance trains always had some slack built in BTW) connections would be held, so it mattered less.


So a train (as opposed to a timetabled service) that is 'adequate' that replaces one that is 'a cut above' is most definitely not an improvement. I agree that compared with many trains Pendos are pretty good, but in the terms of this thread, they are not an improvement on what went before. Something as simple as Pendos having Voyager windows (but obviously not toilets.....) would make such a big difference.

There's pros and cons to Pendos. In relation to the joys of rail travel, the Pendolinos are a step back. For getting to where you want to be quickly and reliably, they're an improvement.

The worst "improvement" has got to be timekeeping.

Timetables have been "padded" out for many years for the benefit of statistics. This means that whilst most trains arrive on time - many do arrive early, with nowhere to go but to sit outside the station and await the timetabled vacant platform.

Agreed. Timetable padding destroys a lot of progress that has been made over the years improving line speeds and train performance. When HSTs were introduced on the Western Region, it was common practice for BR to round the schedules down where there was a fraction of a minute instead of up to keep drivers on their toes and encourage good time keeping.
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With the benefit of hindsight we should have gone straight to electrification. I suspect the money spent on dieselisation and its associated re-training and rebuilding of infrastructure, could have paid for most of the system to be electrified long before now.

I'd never even considered the possibility of that. Did any countries go straight from Steam to Electric?

I thought the London to Birmingham, Manchester and Liverpool section of the WCML went straight from steam to electric.

 

[PinzaC55]

Bi Directional signalling on the ECML between Darlington and Newcastle, also used as justification for closing the Leamside Line.
A few years after they did it Railtrack pretty much decided any engineering work demanded a full possession so just put everyone on buses!

 

[The Barlow Boy]

Taking a rather longer-term view, I suggest the worst "improvement" was the politically-motivated mad rush in the 1950s and 60s to withdraw steam engines, some of which were under 10 years old when consigned to the scrapheap, and replace them with untried diesel engines. Several classes of these were found unreliable and did not survive very long.
With the benefit of hindsight we should have gone straight to electrification. I suspect the money spent on dieselisation and its associated re-training and rebuilding of infrastructure, could have paid for most of the system to be electrified long before now.

You've beaten me to it with this one. The 1955 modernisation plan, like so many rail plans was not properly thought through and it became a retirement plan for so many locomotive manufacturers who had no previous experience of building diesel locomotives. In 1958 we were building and introducing classes 15, 17, 20, 24, 31, 40 and 44 diesel locomotives whilst at the same time building steam locomotives! In 1965 a journey by train from London to Birmingham saw you behind a modern class 86 loco and modern coaching stock. The same trip to Bournemouth saw you in Bulleid stock behind a steam locomotive!

 

[PinzaC55]

" In 1958 we were building and introducing classes 15, 17, 20, 24, 31, 40 and 44 diesel locomotives "

To be fair, classes 20, 31 and to a lesser extent 40 were outstanding successes which is why you still have 20's and a few 31's around now.

Several of the diesel classes such as 52, 55 (of course ) 35 and 14 were perfectly good locos but some suffered from the "small class" syndrome or in the case of Class 14 the traffic they were designed for disappeared.

 

[LE Greys]

Other daft thing from 1958 was the redrawing of the regional boundaries. Hand over everything north of Oxford to the London Midland, and give them an excuse to run a former rival's line into the ground. Look what happened to Snow Hill and Wolves Low Level. With the Great Central, they succeeded. Combine LMS and LNER around Yorkshire, and watch as the mess created there leads to a patchwork of good routes and bad. Pass the South Western from Salisbury onwards to the Western, and watch that get run into the ground (currently, no train comes anywhere near ACE times). They swapped with the line from Yeovil to Weymouth, hardly the most successful in the world. Scotland just about made it work, but we still lost several lines where they crossed over (Forfar for instance). They should have waited for a decade or so (perhaps all the way to 1973 and the corporate image) before trying to sort out the regions, and the South Western ought to have stayed Southern all the way to Exeter. As for the Great Central, Eastern to Leicester, Western from there on. Maybe we'd still have it then.

 

[The Barlow Boy]

" In 1958 we were building and introducing classes 15, 17, 20, 24, 31, 40 and 44 diesel locomotives "

To be fair, classes 20, 31 and to a lesser extent 40 were outstanding successes which is why you still have 20's and a few 31's around now.

Er yes. That's because they were either designed and built and/or engined by English-Electric, a hugely experienced diesel locomotive builder. Companies like Clayton and North British had no experience of building big diesel locomotives and were given contracts to keep them afloat. The early A.C. electric locomotive builders were just as bad. AEI and Beyer Peacock being given contracts for the 81s and 82s to keep them going. Dunno about 74 class 52s and 101 class 35s being small numbers though.

Several of the diesel classes such as 52, 55 (of course ) 35 and 14 were perfectly good locos but some suffered from the "small class" syndrome or in the case of Class 14 the traffic they were designed for disappeared.

.....

 

[lyndhurst25]

Worst improvement? Closing Rotherham Masborough, building a single track Holmes Chord to a reopened Rotherham Central station. True, the new station is nearer to the town centre but the lack of capacity means that all that calls in the town now are the Sheffield to Doncaster / Leeds stoppers. No through services to Manchester / Cleethorpes / Hull and InterCity services anymore.

 

[DarloRich]

The problme on the ECML was it was done on the cheap! It isnt robust enougth but the money wasnt there to do anything else.

 

[tbtc]

Worst improvement? Closing Rotherham Masborough, building a single track Holmes Chord to a reopened Rotherham Central station. True, the new station is nearer to the town centre but the lack of capacity means that all that calls in the town now are the Sheffield to Doncaster / Leeds stoppers. No through services to Manchester / Cleethorpes / Hull and InterCity services anymore.

Good call

If they want a station for "Rotherham Town Centre" they should really build it at Parkgate anyway. The Holmes Chord is a real drag (northbound stoppers need to cross the southbound "fast" line twice, so at least six times per hour).

A proper Masbrough station would allow proper looping of services too.

 

[TheBigD]

...Despite a considerably more frequent service to Birmingham, Manchester and Glasgow offering many more seats per hour under the VHF timetable than there was a decade ago, many trains are full and standing, which goes some way to showing there has definitely been an increase in demand for the service...

Both Liverpool and the North West have seen a REDUCTION in standard seating since VHF. The old loco hauled sets used to have 370 standard seats and the pendolino's have just 294. The service has remained hourly on both routes.

In the 2005 summer timetable London - Preston had 18 services, offering 6660 standard seats.

Today it has 19 services, offering 5528 standard seats. The 1430 service is a super voyager.
2 extra services operate on a Friday giving a total of 6192 standard seats.

Birmingham and Manchester have seen increases in standard seating capacity though.

 

[tbtc]

Both Liverpool and the North West have seen a REDUCTION in standard seating since VHF. The old loco hauled sets used to have 370 standard seats and the pendolino's have just 294

This is one big problem with 390s - they are long enough, but there are too many First Class seats (therefore too few "standard").

Would be better once the extra coaches are introduced, of course, but a second Liverpool service each hour would be a good use of stock (better than Open Access to Blackpool anyhow!)

 

[sprinterguy]

I'd forgotten about the massive overprovision of first class seats on Pendos; 4 out of 9 carriages. It's unbelievable that that layout was ever specified.

 

[ainsworth74]

I've always thought that the over provision of first class is the one main failing of the 390s. On EC there are only 3 first class carriages and of course on some services 1 of those is used as the restaurant car! Things however will hopefully be improved on some of the sets when they receive the extra carriages, it's a shame however that they're not all be extended.

 

[GingerSte]

I definitely agree about there being too many first class carriages on Pendolinos.

Quick question: what class are the new carriages that will be delivered to strengthen the service (I would think that 2 standard class coaches would be best but the cynic in me expects 1 of each).

 

[The Planner]

2 standard

 

[Zoe]

On EC there are only 3 first class carriages and of course on some services 1 of those is used as the restaurant car!

East Coast don't have to provide a separate catering facilities for First Class though.

 

[12CSVT]

why do Pendolino's need small windows when ICE-Ts which also tilt don't?

Simple answer : they don't. The only reason for the unnecessary small windows is because a certain Mr Branson wanted the 390s to look like aircraft. After all the APT didn't need small windows.

 

[tbtc]

Simple answer : they don't. The only reason for the unnecessary small windows is because a certain Mr Branson wanted the 390s to look like aircraft. After all the APT didn't need small windows.

Do the Italian equivalents have small windows?

 

[MCR247]

Yes they do
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Simple answer : they don't. The only reason for the unnecessary small windows is because a certain Mr Branson wanted the 390s to look like aircraft. After all the APT didn't need small windows.

Can you smell that? Smells like bull****.

If you look, the italian pendolinos have small windows, it is part of the design.

 

[87015]

Birmingham and Manchester have seen increases in standard seating capacity though.

At huge expense to local service patterns in forcing through the third train all day, which runs around half empty off peak until Stoke/Cov.

The trains should have been built to a decent length and a proper spec for the know passenger flows to start with, not a make more money by forcing people into FC business plan, don't forget they were introduced as eight cars not nine aswell.

 

[4SRKT]

Yes they do
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Can you smell that? Smells like bull****.

If you look, the italian pendolinos have small windows, it is part of the design.

A very bad part of the design.

 

[tbtc]

A very bad part of the design.

Agreed, but not the fault of Virgin, nothing to do with Branson and not unique to the UK

 

[87015]

Agreed, but not the fault of Virgin, nothing to do with Branson and not unique to the UK

Seating layout is though, or at least the Norwegian and Slovenian ones I've nosed at are much better. ICEs are also a world apart in passenger comfort.

 

[4SRKT]

Agreed, but not the fault of Virgin, nothing to do with Branson and not unique to the UK

If Virgin bought them then it's 100% the fault of Virgin (and by extension Branson) that we have such a crap design running on the rails in this country.

If I were to buy a badly designed car it wouldn't be my fault the car was badly designed, but it'd be my fault that I owned it.

 

[Peter Mugridge]

The latest generation of Pendolinos introduced last year have larger windows don't they? Not sure how much larger though.