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Great Western Livery

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Mollman

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LiftFan said:
I have no idea but the 165/166 fleet as a whole is in dire need of refurbishment. Living in the Westbury area, it was certainly irritating having our lovely newly refurbished 150s and 158s get sent away and being replaced with Reading's crusty Turbo fleet, none of which are pleasant to ride at all!
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I wonder if they are waiting to find out the outcome of the hybrid trail as this will influence future rolling stock strategy. If it is successful then the 166s will get refurbished at the same time as being hybridtised and have the extra network trailers added.
 
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Mitchell Hurd

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According to page 56 of Modern Railways (July 2021 which I got today), one sentence says...

'Assimilation of the Class 769s into traffic will help to ease pressures on the Class 165/166 fleet in the Thames Valley, where spare units will be required as the fleet has just begun a refresh programme at Wolverton works.'

So... green GWR interiors at last for all the Turbos not just 166205 it seems!
 
RPI

RPI

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I did hear that the turbo refresh had been delayed due to the cracking issues on the 80x sets
 
jackot

jackot

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LiftFan said:
I have no idea but the 165/166 fleet as a whole is in dire need of refurbishment. Living in the Westbury area, it was certainly irritating having our lovely newly refurbished 150s and 158s get sent away and being replaced with Reading's crusty Turbo fleet, none of which are pleasant to ride at all!
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I am afraid I can only agree. After travelling on the 165/166’s yesterday on both the North Downs line and the Portsmouth to Cardiff route, it became crystal clear to me that the turbos are in dire need of refurbishment, and are unsuitable for the many of the routes they serve. The interiors are falling to pieces, and in many ways the green carpet added to the 166 fleet makes the matter worse, as the already questionable colour scheme of blue, pink and purple is now clashing with GWR green carpets.

Although in a very sorry state, at least the fleet on the north downs will be displaced soon with 769’s. However, putting some of the most dated trains on the GWR network refurbishment wise on a service previously operated by refurbished 158’s seems ludicrous. After all, the 158’s were conceived and designed for routes like the Portsmouth to Cardiff - longer distance services with lower demand. And without gangways, there can’t be a trolley service either.

However, at least the ones left in service after the 769’s have arrived will be refurbished.
 
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RPI

RPI

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jackot said:
I am afraid I can only agree. After travelling on the 165/166’s yesterday on both the North Downs line and the Portsmouth to Cardiff route, it became crystal clear to me that the turbos are in Dior need of refurbishment, and are unsuitable for the many of the routes they serve. The interiors are falling to pieces, and in many ways the green carpet added to the 166 fleet makes the matter worse, as the already questionable colour scheme of blue, pink and purple is now clashing with GWR green carpets.

Although in a very sorry state, at least the fleet on the north downs will be displaced soon with 769’s. However, putting some of the most dated trains on the GWR network refurbishment wise on a service previously operated by refurbished 158’s seems ludicrous. After all, the 158’s were conceived and designed for routes like the Portsmouth to Cardiff - longer distance services with lower demand. And without gangways, there can’t be a trolley service either.
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I know the argument has been done to death elsewhere, but there aren't enough 158's to run mostly 5 cars on the Cardiff Portsmouth, so would you rather be rammed into a "comfortable" 3 car 158 or have a lot more space on a less comfortable turbo?
 
jackot

jackot

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RPI said:
I know the argument has been done to death elsewhere, but there aren't enough 158's to run mostly 5 cars on the Cardiff Portsmouth, so would you rather be rammed into a "comfortable" 3 car 158 or have a lot more space on a less comfortable turbo?
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Yes, I do see what you mean. My service yesterday was a 5 car, and was not too busy, but I can imagine at peak times that would be different, especially in a 3 car unit. Hopefully the Flex units can displace some 158’s as well on partly electrified routes, bringing them down onto this route.
 
DelW

DelW

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jackot said:
After travelling on the 165/166’s yesterday on both the North Downs line and the Portsmouth to Cardiff route, it became crystal clear to me that the turbos are in Dior need of refurbishment, and are unsuitable for the many of the routes they serve.
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I think that getting the refurbishment done by Dior might be somewhat too expensive.

I'll see myself out.
 
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Rhydgaled

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RPI said:
I know the argument has been done to death elsewhere, but there aren't enough 158's to run mostly 5 cars on the Cardiff Portsmouth, so would you rather be rammed into a "comfortable" 3 car 158 or have a lot more space on a less comfortable turbo?
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Neither of those options are acceptable really; people should be encouraged to use rail not put off by unsuitable trains.

That said, are those the only options available? Correct me if I'm wrong, but it looks like Cardiff-Portsmouth requires 8 diagrams and GWR currently have 21 class 158s (one of which is the 3-car 158798 and the other 20 are 20-car units, 9 of which are currently running as six 3-car sets). I'm not sure what level of availability you'd expect to get out of the fleet, but having 16 units in service (ie. putting a 4-car 158 on all 8 Cardiff-Portsmouth diagrams) would, I think, be around 76% availability which sounds like it should be acheivable. Doing it that way (ie. not diagraming 158798 for use on a normal day) means that you occasionally would get a 5-car diagram (rather than having to short-form on the days 158798 is unavailable if it was diagramed for use).

Alternatively, leaving the 158s formed as they are currently would give you two 4-car formations and seven 5-car formations, a total of nine sets. This requires closer to 90% availability, but again if you have six 5-car and two 4-car diagrams booked you shouldn't have to short form.

So, while you cannot run Cardiff-Portsmouth with a 5-car 158 on every diagram, 4-car 158s would in theory be possible and you may even be able to run a mix of 5-car and 4-car formations. Furthermore, the SWR 'figure of six' (Salisbury-Romsey) ties up a small number of 158s. The option of six 5-car 158s and two 4-car 158s is so close to being able to put a 5-car 158 on every diagram that I reckon transfering the 'figure of six' to GWR and having GWR put 165s or 166s on it would release enough 158s for the whole Cardiff-Portsmouth service to be formed of 5-car 158s.
 
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Mike Machin

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As a user of the Portsmouth-Cardiff route, the provision of suitable stock has been a concern for quite some time, the 158s providing the required ‘suitable quality’ but with capacity issue, and now we have the 165/66 units providing an uplift in capacity but with a woeful travelling experience.

This route has really become the UK’s Cinderella regional express route, linking no fewer than seven important cities, with tired high-density stock designed for relatively short-distance commuter journeys.

With no suitable stock available for transfer from other areas, a further batch of two and three car class 197s should be considered, to provide a much-needed uplift in quality and allowing for the knackered clapped-out NSE era units to be scrapped. Spending further money on upgrading such tired nearly life-expired stock, which is completely unsuitable having never designed for this type of service, is just a case of throwing good money after bad.
 
CR165022

CR165022

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i know its probably been mentioned already but are the remaining blue 150s & 166s due for a repaint any time soon? id imagine that the 166s will be done alongside their interiors though
 
Melancholia

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pdeaves said:
As reported elsewhere on railforums, the (ex-)c2c units with GWR are getting GWR branding on the c2c white base. 387302 has been treated so far.
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387301 got done yesterday too

Although amusingly, some still have Trenitalia logos along with the GWR logo. So I don't know if I missed some memo about Trenitalia taking over the company :D
 
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387star

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CR165022 said:
i know its probably been mentioned already but are the remaining blue 150s & 166s due for a repaint any time soon? id imagine that the 166s will be done alongside their interiors though
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166s will be done when refurbished
150238 and 150219 were supposed to be done during this direct award
 
fgwrich

fgwrich

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Melancholia said:
387301 got done yesterday too

Although amusingly, some still have Trenitalia logos along with the GWR logo. So I don't know if I missed some memo about Trenitalia taking over the company :D
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Well, Avanti is a joint First / Trenitalia company, and South Western is a joint First / MTR Company so who knows :lol:

Presumably, once the C2C Aventra's (if Alstom hasn't forgotten about them) come on stream, the other 3 will return and transfer over to Reading too.
 
RPI

RPI

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219 and 238 both been running as a four car together yesterday and today (all blue)
 
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