XC fire at Doncaster earlier this afternoon (16/10)

[sufian123]

No problem, sorry for being pedantic.

nah. You ain’t being pedantic. It’s good to have someone correct us.

 

[221129]

Yeah I thought it was.

Is it likely that the Cabinet Explosion Coach could be swapped with a coach from the fire set to keep one going?

That set has been back in service for at least a week.

 

[Llama]

Re the explosion, wasn't there a similar incident about 10-15 years ago which was found to be a capacitor which wasn't happy and went pop?

 

[GoneSouth]

The Voyagers still have the same paint as in Virgin days, even the roofs are Virgin red under the dirt. The interiors are almost exactly how they were in Virgin days. It’s only really the dark red ends and pink doors that are different. Even the insides of the doors have the Virgin stripes

Definitely due a coat of non virgin coloured paint, new lighting and some clean seat covers!!! And as for those toilets...

This does show how strong the Virgin brand is though, who the hell will remember that Arriva ran cross country trains 12 years after they lose the franchise. It’s also kind of unfortunate for Virgin that Arriva just can’t be a**** to strengthen their brand. If people still think Virgin run the service today, it’s their brand which gets the negative comments when things go wrong.

 

[GoneSouth]

How much slack do XC have if they lose a unit to an incident like this? Capacity stretched at the best of times so there must have been some very cosy journeys following these problems.

 

[daveshah]

Re the explosion, wasn't there a similar incident about 10-15 years ago which was found to be a capacitor which wasn't happy and went pop?

Much more recent than that, it was the SWT 455 retractioning and it happened about two years ago. The report is at https://www.gov.uk/raib-reports/rep...ide-an-underframe-equipment-case-at-guildford

The explosion was caused by an accumulation of flammable gases within the traction equipment case under one of the coaches of the train. The gases had been generated following a failure within a large electrical capacitor located within the equipment case. The capacitor failure was caused by a manufacturing defect.

 

[Llama]

Cheers, yes I did read the report into that, but the incident I was referring to was definitely within a cubicle in the vestibule on a Voyager when they were relatively new, I seem to recall that that was attributed to a capacitor. It was a while ago now.

 

[daveshah]

You're right, it's even mentioned in the ORR response to said 455 report: https://orr.gov.uk/__data/assets/pdf_file/0017/40706/raib-guildford-station-2019-03-19.pdf (p4)

There have been 3 National Incident Reports raised against the Class 221 fleet following incidents involving capacitor related explosions. These are as follows:
• NIR 1635 was raised by Virgin CrossCountry following an incident on 11th August 2003 whereby a traction capacitor exploded causing damage to a number of traction case covers on vehicle 60756 (221106).
• NIR 2000 was raised by Virgin CrossCountry following an incident at Barton Hill depot on 29th May 2005, whereby a degrading filter capacitor resulted in an explosion that blew off one of the CVS cover plates and severely damaged the others on vehicle 60351 (221101). The CVS cubicle is mounted inside the vehicle at number 1 end.
• NIR 2624 was raised by Virgin West Coast following an incident at Polmadie depot on 17th June 2010. During investigation of a traction fault, it was discovered that the main traction case on vehicle 60363 (221113) had suffered an internal explosion causing damage internally and to exterior inspection panels.