In-cab CCTV for DOO dispatch.
They were binned because the DfT was looking for big cuts in leasing costs, and a fleet that wasn’t yet in service where the lease expired was an obvious candidate.
But surely the opposite to most customers.
FirstGroup keeping to deadlines or promises is a rarity.
Exactly what deadline or promise have they missed?
It was said the same for when the 230 concept first floated a decade ago, look where it got us...
701s entering service, 458s going on the Pompey lines, 769s entering service, 442s being refurbed and re-entering service...
And the 701s have been sitting around for how long?
They are presumably in warm store being looked after. I suspect the D stock isn’t.
I meant what deadline in respect of any introduction to public service of the Class 230.
Not so sure. I can't imagine those stored at Marchwood or Long Marston were hooked up to any juice.
Opposite of what?
When those units were at Reading they were moved every fortnight or so to allow for track inspections. But they're at Long Marston now and as I understand it have been stripped of some parts to help keep the TfW units going.
OTCM = On Train Camera Monitors, it's the CCTV cameras on the bodyside which monitor the doors, commonly known as DCO (Driver Controlled Operation) or DOO (Driver Only Operation). There is a subtle difference between DCO and DOO but I'm not sure what that is! So yes it's got human factors implications, that's right. It's a necessity on the Greenford branch because the 230 is longer than the 165, so the 230 (drivers) can't use the platform-mounted look-back mirrors for despatching trains when operating in DOO mode.
"Relatively ready to run" being the phrase. The ex-WMT units are now stored in the compound near Long Marston (International Cable and Metal Recycling), alongside the remaining D78s, they are very much in 'cold storage' and they are already in quite a dilapidated state. Their diesel gensets have been stripped off and they are currently still at Reading, but they will soon follow the WMT units into storage at IMR. For reasons known only to the DfT, they have not allowed GWR to sell the gensets to TfW to help keep the TfW 230s going, even though GWR suggested it and TfW were keen on the idea. Perhaps the clever people at DfT see a future where GWR will operate the WMT 230s as diesel. Meanwhile, in the real world, absolutely nobody in GWR ever sees that happening. The resources required to make that happen would be enormous. It could have happened immediately after Vivarail went bust, when the knowledge and expertise still existed at Bletchley, but that has now been scattered to the four winds and you won't get it back. The ex-Vivarail team now at GWR had very little to do with the diesel genset side of things. My prediction is that further battery 230s is all in the 'too difficult' pile for DfT and that sadly, everything now at IMR will eventually be scrapped.
The GWR trial has actually got very little to do with First Group, other than First Group being the owning company for GWR. In practice, First Group have very little involvement.
The London taxis are now electric battery powered, but still have small Volvo engines as "range extenders" in case the batteries get low. Perhaps that might be the idea for future battery 230s?
That's basically what the TfW 230s do, but nobody other than TfW is going to put diesel engines and 230s in the same sentence ever again
Oh dear. That isn t very promising. I was under the impression the project was DfT led and was actually quite promising. I also thought the ex WMR 230s moved to Reading depot. If they did presumably they have been low-loadered to Long Marston.
The great irony is that the fast charge trial with 230001 is going very well. Everybody and their dog has been to see it, pose next to it, use it in their presentations as the poster boy of rail decarbonisation in the UK. The DfT themselves speak highly of it. But the sad thing is that with all the uncertainty in the rail industry at the moment, budgets under intense pressure, and with GWR to be consumed under GBR within the not too distant future, no decisions are being made. About anything. So I can see the whole thing just fading away, not because it's technically difficult, but because of a lack of decision making. I think the GWR fast charge trial will end up being one of those 'flash in a pan' things, a nice end to the troubled Vivarail legacy but didn't really go anywhere because of political stasis. I may be wrong, but that's how things are looking at the moment.
Thank you for taking the time to write so usefully - much appreciated.
The other issue is most Of these services needing short trains, so battery conversions of EMUs (say piggybacking on the SWR 450 work) isn’t relevant. And DMUs are knackered or in short supply.
Fast charge doesn't need to be retrofitted on a D stock, or indeed anything else. Like other demonstrators (such as the 614 and 799 Hydrogen trains), a redundant unit is just a test bed. A production series could be new build.
Retrofitting older EMU/DMUs with batteries and fast charge is certainly very possible from a technical perspective and the engineers are keen to get on with it. The average person can appreciate that the upcycling element is also a 'good thing' from an environmental perspective, reducing waste in materials etc. The big problem you have is that, however you cut it, it'll cost quite a few million to retrofit batteries etc to older EMU or DMUs. Most of them are close to the end of their 'book life' and therefore the accountants who run the leasing companies say that it's not worth it, because they'll never recover their investment through the monthly rental that the TOCs (and hence DfT) are willing to pay, and it ends up being 'cheaper' to build new. Plus the lobbyists at Alstom, Siemens, Hitachi, CAF and Stadler are very keen for you to buy new trains thank you very much, they've all got hungry factories to feed, so that is yet another factor working against repurposing of older stock. Therefore you see very good units such as 321 going for scrap, and money talks again....
It is the fast charge technology that is the important bit. It can be used in any suitable converted unit OR new build.
Nothing to say new build will not be what is used.
No problem
