Transport for Wales Class 230

anthony263 said:

Not yet but if it works on 230001 I wouldn't be surprised to see 230006 equipped 1st to test it out on the Bidston line.

Click to expand...

Zontar said:

No, it's barely had the ink dry at gwrs report!

Click to expand...

I see. I think if TFW could get them working in their current state then they would avoid tinkering with them further in honesty.
Will definitely Be interesting to see what happens, at GWR too.

Since the 1948 "Big Four" scenario, has there been any other multiple-unit class that has fared as badly as the Class 230 units?

D365 said:

It's very much a 'live' project.

Click to expand...

Your such a bright spark aren't you .

In reality I doubt TfW would want to spend big money until the straight battery version is very much proved by GWR. In the meantime TfW might
stick with what they have if it is seen to be improving.

Of course it depends on the relative costs and timescales.

Converting the 230 units and line to straight battery only operation could conceivably cost enough to make ordering a few more 197s tempting (or just cheaper keeping some more 153s for use where 197s won't be missed much).
Waiting for 777s to be good enough might be the plan - a long term aspiration possibly.
In the meantime a possibly low(-sh) budget effort to keep the TfW 230s going better might be the aspiration.

Does anyone know how many passengers are left using the Borderlands line ?.

I still think the Alston Coradia Junipers surpass the 230s in abysmal reliability. The Class 230s were never designed to be high performance units, instead an interim measure for the shortfall of diesel stock in the North of England (in the mid 2010s). We all know this ambition did not occur and the majority of D Trains were only ordered by a minute minority of operators, even with such small orders Vivarail still managed to not keep to delivery schedules and when the units did eventually enter service, they were often to unreliable to operate a reliable service. Later though, Vivarail branded themselves as a ‘Green Technology Company’ to further persue battery trains and Fast Charging Equipment.
What I gathered from the D-Train project was that it was brilliant concept though from out of the box, Adrian Shooter was forward thinking to say the least, and did evoke a highly controversial outlook regarding his plans to up cycle clapped out Underground Trains in to modern units to reliably operate rural branch lines. As we all know this concept became quite eskew and ultimately became a fatecomple!. I admired Vivarail for their forward thinking and their enthusiastic ethic. They still continued to develop their Fast Charge technology even with major setbacks and growing finantuel burden. Even with their regrettable finantuel decline and eventually administration their technology and their influence on the British Railway scene was acknowledged and further developed by GWR, and is a testament to Adrian Shooters ambition.

RacsoMoquette said:

I still think the Alston Coradia Junipers surpass the 230s in abysmal reliability.

Click to expand...

I agree the 458s were bad on SWT and Gatwick Express, but then became ultra reliable when the hardware and software bugs were sorted.

Hopefully the risk of pollen clogging up the 230 diesel engines and hybrid operation with the control of battery charging will be better this year?

RacsoMoquette said:

I still think the Alston Coradia Junipers surpass the 230s in abysmal reliability. The Class 230s were never designed to be high performance units, instead an interim measure for the shortfall of diesel stock in the North of England (in the mid 2010s). We all know this ambition did not occur and the majority of D Trains were only ordered by a minute minority of operators, even with such small orders Vivarail still managed to not keep to delivery schedules and when the units did eventually enter service, they were often to unreliable to operate a reliable service. Later though, Vivarail branded themselves as a ‘Green Technology Company’ to further persue battery trains and Fast Charging Equipment.
What I gathered from the D-Train project was that it was brilliant concept though from out of the box, Adrian Shooter was forward thinking to say the least, and did evoke a highly controversial outlook regarding his plans to up cycle clapped out Underground Trains in to modern units to reliably operate rural branch lines. As we all know this concept became quite eskew and ultimately became a fatecomple!. I admired Vivarail for their forward thinking and their enthusiastic ethic. They still continued to develop their Fast Charge technology even with major setbacks and growing finantuel burden. Even with their regrettable finantuel decline and eventually administration their technology and their influence on the British Railway scene was acknowledged and further developed by GWR, and is a testament to Adrian Shooters ambition.

Click to expand...

My bold. They were certainly not clapped out underground trains. They reason LU got rid of them early was because they wanted a standard fleet for the subsurface lines which meant they were withdrawn prematurely at the same time as other older trains. The D-trains had ten years before received upgrades - new bogies and traction equipment iirc. I think the aluminium bodies were another attraction for Vivarail as not expected to rust of course.

Invincible said:

I agree the 458s were bad on SWT and Gatwick Express, but then became ultra reliable when the hardware and software bugs were sorted.

Hopefully the risk of pollen clogging up the 230 diesel engines and hybrid operation with the control of battery charging will be better this year?

Click to expand...

I heard that the Junipers (334, 458 and 460s) suffered from a lack of after sales support. Possibly it was because Alstom had too much on their plate (390s and I bet Virgin knew how to keep Alstom focussed) or I did hear that maybe it was because the French culture was that the owners of the creations had to deal with it ?.

The Pollen clogging issue with the TfW 230s should have been a routine fix / improvement. Surely it affects all diesel trains ?. Although the engine raft is rather compact so airflow is a challenge.

Wyrleybart said:

By "fast charge" do you mean the TfW 230s are losing their diesel engines and becoming BEMUs with shore based fast charging ? In other words modified like 230001 ?
Does that mean charging infrastructure at Wrexham and Bidston ?
Who pays ?

Click to expand...

Who mentioned fast charging? The new batteries will have adequate cooling, and will still be charged by the diesel engines.

Dan G said:

Who mentioned fast charging? The new batteries will have adequate cooling, and will still be charged by the diesel engines.

Click to expand...

#502 did. But I think we’ve established that it was just the poster’s view, rather than any firm information that TfW plans to adopt the GWR scheme currently being piloted. (Though I would imagine TfW are watching that trial very closely in the light of the difficulties they’ve had with their units to date.)

Peter Sarf said:

The Pollen clogging issue with the TfW 230s should have been a routine fix / improvement. Surely it affects all diesel trains ?. Although the engine raft is rather compact so airflow is a challenge.

Click to expand...

Cars, vans and trucks don't suffer from their radiators being blocked with pollen either.

On all the DMUs I can think of, the radiator is a standalone unit mounted on one side of the underframe, with a belt-driven mechanical or electric fan behind it. There is a clear route for airflow through the radiator.. Cooling is also helped by the engine being mounted to the underframe and exposed to the airflow when the vehicle is moving (image of a Heljan O scale Class 153 model, but it shows the principle:


On the class 230 DEMUs, the engine and generator modules are mounted in steel box 'rafts' that are bolted transversely across the underframe. Motor cars have the batteries mounted in similar rafts., The trailer car has 4 genset rafts and a common fuel tank raft. Here is what a genset raft looks like (this is the updated design after the fire on 230001, as they originally had plastic oil and coolant tanks, and were using hydraulic hose for the fuel lines and plastic automotive fuel filters, all of which melted in the fire and added fuel to it):

The radiator is just out of shot in the bottom left corner.
The boost hoses being made up of off-the shelf silicone hose sections joined together with umpteen jubilee clips (each of which is an opportunity for a leak) rather than formed alloy pipes isn't a good look, in my opinion.

Looking at how that is laid out, the first question that comes to mind is 'How does the air thats drawn through the radiator into the box get out?' When the 3.2 Duratorq engine is used in Transits and Rangers, air comes into the grille through the radiator, past the engine and is sucked out under the vehicle due to the lower air pressure. As the radiator is front-mounted it is also exposed to increasing airflow as the vehicle speed increases, but they fitted with a belt-driven cooling fan which the ECU activates via a clutch if it feels the need.

Being side-mounted, the radiator on the raft is not directly exposed to the airflow and so a fan will be required to run constantly to draw air through it (this is the same as the 153, but that riadiator is open at the back and hasn't got an engine sitting right behind it either). The only place for the radiator exhaust air to exit is between the top of the raft and the firewall steel plate mounted under the floor of the car, and there is not much (if any) pressure differential there to help extract it either. The engine is also sitting enclosed in a box filled with the hot air that has been drawn through the radiator, not out in the airflow like on the 153.

I don't think pollen is really the issue, I think they just overheat in hot weather (just like the battery rafts do) due to poor airflow design through the cooling system, and then shut down. The same issue was seen with the Marston Vale units in warm weather. I think that the change to Caterpillar engines Vivarail were looking at for the Mk4 genset raft (you can see the yellow Cat engine in the background of the picture above) wouldn't have made much difference, though they may have been more suited to driving a generator at least - the 3.2 Duratorq is not used in any other genset application.

The design of the genset rafts was subcontracted to a third party (according to Vivarail in their report on the 230001 fire), and it was subsequently redesigned in house afterwards. From the image above, the redesign seems to have been mainly for fireproofing -swapping the plastic tanks for stainless steel and using proper fuel-rated hoses. I suspect the main driver in the design brief to that third party was that the genset had to fit into the raft system, as being able to reconfigure units to battery-only at a later date (once the fast charge system was working) by swapping genset rafts for battery rafts was one of the benefits they were proposing to customers. All other considerations (such as cooling) therefore had to be compromised.

Thanks for those visual images and for your excellent summation.

Prime586 said:

Cars, vans and trucks don't suffer from their radiators being blocked with pollen either.

On all the DMUs I can think of, the radiator is a standalone unit mounted on one side of the underframe, with a belt-driven mechanical or electric fan behind it. There is a clear route for airflow through the radiator.. Cooling is also helped by the engine being mounted to the underframe and exposed to the airflow when the vehicle is moving (image of a Heljan O scale Class 153 model, but it shows the principle:

On the class 230 DEMUs, the engine and generator modules are mounted in steel box 'rafts' that are bolted transversely across the underframe. Motor cars have the batteries mounted in similar rafts., The trailer car has 4 genset rafts and a common fuel tank raft. Here is what a genset raft looks like (this is the updated design after the fire on 230001, as they originally had plastic oil and coolant tanks, and were using hydraulic hose for the fuel lines and plastic automotive fuel filters, all of which melted in the fire and added fuel to it):

The radiator is just out of shot in the bottom left corner.
The boost hoses being made up of off-the shelf silicone hose sections joined together with umpteen jubilee clips (each of which is an opportunity for a leak) rather than formed alloy pipes isn't a good look, in my opinion.

Looking at how that is laid out, the first question that comes to mind is 'How does the air thats drawn through the radiator into the box get out?' When the 3.2 Duratorq engine is used in Transits and Rangers, air comes into the grille through the radiator, past the engine and is sucked out under the vehicle due to the lower air pressure. As the radiator is front-mounted it is also exposed to increasing airflow as the vehicle speed increases, but they fitted with a belt-driven cooling fan which the ECU activates via a clutch if it feels the need.

Being side-mounted, the radiator on the raft is not directly exposed to the airflow and so a fan will be required to run constantly to draw air through it (this is the same as the 153, but that riadiator is open at the back and hasn't got an engine sitting right behind it either). The only place for the radiator exhaust air to exit is between the top of the raft and the firewall steel plate mounted under the floor of the car, and there is not much (if any) pressure differential there to help extract it either. The engine is also sitting enclosed in a box filled with the hot air that has been drawn through the radiator, not out in the airflow like on the 153.

I don't think pollen is really the issue, I think they just overheat in hot weather (just like the battery rafts do) due to poor airflow design through the cooling system, and then shut down. The same issue was seen with the Marston Vale units in warm weather. I think that the change to Caterpillar engines Vivarail were looking at for the Mk4 genset raft (you can see the yellow Cat engine in the background of the picture above) wouldn't have made much difference, though they may have been more suited to driving a generator at least - the 3.2 Duratorq is not used in any other genset application.

The design of the genset rafts was subcontracted to a third party (according to Vivarail in their report on the 230001 fire), and it was subsequently redesigned in house afterwards. From the image above, the redesign seems to have been mainly for fireproofing -swapping the plastic tanks for stainless steel and using proper fuel-rated hoses. I suspect the main driver in the design brief to that third party was that the genset had to fit into the raft system, as being able to reconfigure units to battery-only at a later date (once the fast charge system was working) by swapping genset rafts for battery rafts was one of the benefits they were proposing to customers. All other considerations (such as cooling) therefore had to be compromised.

Click to expand...

Yes, thanks for sharing all this. Fascinating to see "under the bonnet", so to speak.

Prime586 said:

I suspect the main driver in the design brief to that third party was that the genset had to fit into the raft system, as being able to reconfigure units to battery-only at a later date (once the fast charge system was working) by swapping genset rafts for battery rafts was one of the benefits they were proposing to customers. All other considerations (such as cooling) therefore had to be compromised.

Click to expand...

A feature emphasised in early Vivarail marketing was the ability to swap out genset rafts in a siding using only a forklift, thereby reducing the frequency of depot visits for units based on a branch line.

I believe the original D-train concept was limited to diesel-electric units like the Marston Vale 230s. Vivarail only started developing battery and hybrid units later, after the success of the Class 379 IPEMU trial in 2015 (in which Vivarail was not involved).

From that picture it does look like airflow would be a challenge. I recall a selling point was that the engine rafts were supposed to be easy to swap out at a siding with a forklift so not needing full depot facilities. The idea of compatible fit rafts for batteries came later. Other changes for the unit to manage the hybrid mode would have been required.

The side facing the bottom right of the picture looks solid. I was wondering why it was not just a mesh BUT then I realised in some positions that raft would be right next to another raft !. I can guess the only exit route for the air drawn in through the radiator is downwards ?. Possibly out the other end - so opposite side of the undercarriage. But then it could be drawn in by an adjacent raft as I would assume an adjacent engine raft would be arranged with its engine on the other side of the undercarriage to balance the weight out.

Greybeard33 said:

A feature emphasised in early Vivarail marketing was the ability to swap out genset rafts in a siding using only a forklift, thereby reducing the frequency of depot visits for units based on a branch line.

I believe the original D-train concept was limited to diesel-electric units like the Marston Vale 230s. Vivarail only started developing battery and hybrid units later, after the success of the Class 379 IPEMU trial in 2015 (in which Vivarail was not involved).

Click to expand...

Indeed, the good old days when Class 230 had a chance of self-immolation, which did actually occur. The Vivarail hoped-for the one year West Midlands running contract trials went up in flames also at the same time.

Peter Sarf said:

From that picture it does look like airflow would be a challenge. I recall a selling point was that the engine rafts were supposed to be easy to swap out at a siding with a forklift so not needing full depot facilities. The idea of compatible fit rafts for batteries came later. Other changes for the unit to manage the hybrid mode would have been required.

The side facing the bottom right of the picture looks solid. I was wondering why it was not just a mesh BUT then I realised in some positions that raft would be right next to another raft !. I can guess the only exit route for the air drawn in through the radiator is downwards ?. Possibly out the other end - so opposite side of the undercarriage. But then it could be drawn in by an adjacent raft as I would assume an adjacent engine raft would be arranged with its engine on the other side of the undercarriage to balance the weight out.

Click to expand...

The report on the Mk1 genset raft fire on 230001 suggests that the genset raft walls and floors are all solid apart from some drain holes in the floor plate (the only place they could fire the handheld extinguisher through was the radiator) There is a picture of the damaged genset being removed with a forklift which shows it also has a lid as well, which is also mentioned in the text and that the aluminium intercooler melted onto the top of the engine Added together, it looks like the exhaust air from the radiator exits the raft through an aperture in the lid, passing through the intercooler as it does so. This is why all the other sides of the raft apart from the radiator end have to be solid, otherwise there would be insufficient airflow to cool the inlet charge air for the engine (later on in the report, it states that the gas from the raft's fire suppession system failed to put out the fire because it was mostly blown straight out through the lid by the radiator fans).

The presumed source of fuel for the fire in the report was a fuel leak on the union connecting a high pressure fuel pipe to one of the injectors. When the other gensets were examined, similar leaks were found on almost all of them. after having had engine work or fuel system work done. Vivarail had been told by the genset supplier that the high pressure pipes could be reused if they were not damaged, but they had since checked the Ford workshop manual while doing in-house routine maintenance which had said any pipes had to be replaced if they were disturbed during work on the engine;

Anybody who has worked on modern diesel engines (and even petrol engines with high pressure direct injection) would know that the manufacturer's instructions always state that fuel injector hard lines are single use only items, as they seal by being deformed when they are tightened (the fact that they had to keep tightening the injector unions as they kept coming loose and leaking is evidence of this). Vivarail taking the genset supplier's (who were presumably trying to save a few quid by reusing them) word on this issue and then having to look it up is another thing, like the silicone boost pipe arrangement in my previous post, which should not have inspired confidence in their engineering expertise.

Looking on realtimetrains, it seems that only one Borderlands diagram is run by the 230s every day. Is this correct, and why?

I'm planning a trip to Wales in April and the service on the Borderlands line I originally looked at has been operated by a Class 197 all week, I'm assuming that this is expected to continue, or might things change?

tram21 said:

Looking on realtimetrains, it seems that only one Borderlands diagram is run by the 230s every day. Is this correct, and why?

I'm planning a trip to Wales in April and the service on the Borderlands line I originally looked at has been operated by a Class 197 all week, I'm assuming that this is expected to continue, or might things change?

Click to expand...

Yep just 1 diagram covered by a 230, with a swap of unit on that diagram around halfway through the day.

Lurcheroo said:

Yep just 1 diagram covered by a 230, with a swap of unit on that diagram around halfway through the day.

Click to expand...

Here is me thinking that only humans took advantage of half-day working. Are the Class 230 units the only units that work to a similar time schedule in Britain?

Xenophon PCDGS said:

Here is me thinking that only humans took advantage of half-day working. Are the Class 230 units the only units that work to a similar time schedule in Britain?

Click to expand...

Well, the whole of the brand-new and large Class 701 fleet is managing two round trips per day between Waterloo and Windsor in passenger service, a total of approximately 100 miles. I think that must be a much lower average usage even than the 230s.

DelW said:

Well, the whole of the brand-new and large Class 701 fleet is managing two round trips per day between Waterloo and Windsor in passenger service, a total of approximately 100 miles. I think that must be a much lower average usage even than the 230s.

Click to expand...

Does that mean like the 230s that they can "knock off for the day" at dinnertime..

Xenophon PCDGS said:

Does that mean like the 230s that they can "knock off for the day" at dinnertime..

Click to expand...

Not quite, but on the most recent schedule it starts in service at around 10:30 and knocks off for the day at about 15:00. It's not an arduous working day.

DelW said:

Not quite, but on the most recent schedule it starts in service at around 10:30 and knocks off for the day at about 15:00. It's not an arduous working day.

Click to expand...

But such a service as that is in no way comparable to the Borderlands line timetabled service.

An article by TFW about the serious improvement in reliability of services on the Wrexham - Bidston line.
Still only 1 out of 3 diagrams is running as a 230 though.

Interestingly they state lower down in the article that engineers have been working to improve the class 230’s reliability and there is a funded plan in place to make changes which are expected to improve reliability further later this year.

Maybe we will see a consistent 30 minute service worked only by class 230’s, Maybe we won’t. I suppose only time will tell.

Funding their move to Newport perhaps
They have improved greatly, but until one can last a day I'm not convinced

Northerngirl said:

Funding their move to Newport perhaps
They have improved greatly, but until one can last a day I'm not convinced

Click to expand...

Haha! You never know ! Well yes there’s still quite a way to go before they’re operating a full timetable in their own it seems.

Personally, I’d take them on the Cambrian coast if they worked reliably. Slotting them between the long distance services to create an hourly service between Mach and Pwllheli during the summer time.

Lurcheroo said:

Haha! You never know ! Well yes there’s still quite a way to go before they’re operating a full timetable in their own it seems.

Personally, I’d take them on the Cambrian coast if they worked reliably. Slotting them between the long distance services to create an hourly service between Mach and Pwllheli during the summer time.

Click to expand...

What is the safe maximum distance that could reasonably be expected of a Class 230 on a journey on the Cambrian Coast line?

Lurcheroo said:

Service improvements on the Wrexham - Bidston line

Targeted improvements on a north Wales railway line have been reaping huge benefits for rail customers.

news.tfw.wales

An article by TFW about the serious improvement in reliability of services on the Wrexham - Bidston line.
Still only 1 out of 3 diagrams is running as a 230 though.

Interestingly they state lower down in the article that engineers have been working to improve the class 230’s reliability and there is a funded plan in place to make changes which are expected to improve reliability further later this year.

Maybe we will see a consistent 30 minute service worked only by class 230’s, Maybe we won’t. I suppose only time will tell.

Click to expand...

They do know summer is coming, along with its heat and pollen, don't they ?.

I suspect/hope that improvements to address the summer are what is happening.

Lurcheroo said:

Service improvements on the Wrexham - Bidston line

Targeted improvements on a north Wales railway line have been reaping huge benefits for rail customers.

news.tfw.wales

An article by TFW about the serious improvement in reliability of services on the Wrexham - Bidston line.
Still only 1 out of 3 diagrams is running as a 230 though.

Interestingly they state lower down in the article that engineers have been working to improve the class 230’s reliability and there is a funded plan in place to make changes which are expected to improve reliability further later this year.

Maybe we will see a consistent 30 minute service worked only by class 230’s, Maybe we won’t. I suppose only time will tell.

Click to expand...

I can understand TfW pitching this as a positive story, but the statistic that for most months of 2023, less than half of trains arrived on or within three minutes of right time, is a pretty awful one. So while 80% is a big improvement it's still well short of satisfactory.

But I hope that TfW's engineers can get on top of the problems and get the 230s up to decent reliability. They  ought to be a good solution for lines like this, and it's a shame that they've been so badly compromised by what looks like some rather botched engineering.

Xenophon PCDGS said:

What is the safe maximum distance that could reasonably be expected of a Class 230 on a journey on the Cambrian Coast line?

Click to expand...

In what regard ?

Peter Sarf said:

They do know summer is coming, along with its heat and pollen, don't they ?.

I suspect/hope that improvements to address the summer are what is happening.

Click to expand...

Haha, will Certainly be a test! But as they’re currently only running half a day I wouldn’t be too surprised if nothings goes too badly wrong this year.

Yes I would assume the same.

DelW said:

I can understand TfW pitching this as a positive story, but the statistic that for most months of 2023, less than half of trains arrived on or within three minutes of right time, is a pretty awful one. So while 80% is a big improvement it's still well short of satisfactory.

But I hope that TfW's engineers can get on top of the problems and get the 230s up to decent reliability. They  ought to be a good solution for lines like this, and it's a shame that they've been so badly compromised by what looks like some rather botched engineering.

Click to expand...

I knew someone would eventually come along and say it haha! But yes I totally agree, this should really never have been an issue in the first place so this article would never need exist. But it happened so there we are I suppose. I think the point is to showcase that they realise they messed up and have put serious resources and effort into fixing it and just want to show that what they’re doing is working and hopefully draw back some of (even if just a little bit) the lost custom.

If they can get them up to where they should be then yes they would be a great addition and its a shame they’d not had more success and more orders.
From the pictures seen, the engineering does look pretty botched

Lurcheroo said:

Haha! You never know ! Well yes there’s still quite a way to go before they’re operating a full timetable in their own it seems.

Personally, I’d take them on the Cambrian coast if they worked reliably. Slotting them between the long distance services to create an hourly service between Mach and Pwllheli during the summer time.

Click to expand...

That would be truly awesome wouldn’t it! High capacity for short hops & frequent stops just what they are made for!(well originally ) You never know the sea breeze might just be what’s needed to stop them overheating
Meanwhile back in reality let’s hope these fixes work to releases the 197 back to the mainlines.