Tyne & Wear Metro: Fleet Refurbishment List

[142094]

Drainage work at Regent Centre is the main one, possibly other work along the full length of the line.

Airport trains are running as normal from South Hylton to South Gosforth then are diverted to Monkseaton.

 

[Leviathan]

Apologies if not strictly a refurbishment post - I am looking for 4055 (last one) and wonder if anyone can advise whether it has been out and about recently? I am in Newcastle on Wednesday (24th) and would love to track it down.

Any assistance greatly received.

Thanks

 

[142094]

It has been out recently but I can find out more tomorrow.

 

[Leviathan]

It has been out recently but I can find out more tomorrow.

That would be appreciated. Thanks

 

[142094]

4055 is out all day on Airport - South Hylton services. As there is a lack of spare sets it is just about guaranteed to be out tomorrow.

 

[Leviathan]

4055 is out all day on Airport - South Hylton services. As there is a lack of spare sets it is just about guaranteed to be out tomorrow.

That's brilliant. Should be relatively easy to get then. Thanks again.

 

[Paul_10]

4055 is out all day on Airport - South Hylton services. As there is a lack of spare sets it is just about guaranteed to be out tomorrow.

More units are out of service long term I guess then?

It appears from reading on here 4083 is due to return to service sometime soon, any timeframe on this?

 

[MetroCar4058]

Thank you for the information!

55 is coupled to 71 and is running to Airport today. (Just noticed this has been answered - oops!)

 

[142094]

More units are out of service long term I guess then?

It appears from reading on here 4083 is due to return to service sometime soon, any timeframe on this?

Think it is more a case of a few units out short term (i.e. 2-3 days) causing a lack of stock with a high number out long term. Recently there has been enough cars to fulfil the 39 sets needed for peak hour service, although normally at least job per day is cancelled off the depot. Unfortunately there must have been a couple of failures over the weekend and on Monday so two trains did not leave the depot this morning, a situation which was made worse by the fact that a couple of Coast trains failed early on this morning.

As far as I can tell 4083 is ready to go back into passenger service, although it might need a brake test run up to the Airport. However, as 4001 and 4040 as coupled together and working reasonably well it might be the case that 4083 doesn't come back into service until one of 01 or 40 requires an exam.

 

[Leviathan]

4055 is out all day on Airport - South Hylton services. As there is a lack of spare sets it is just about guaranteed to be out tomorrow.

I don't have too much knowledge of the Metro but assume there are only two routes - Airport - South Hylton and South Shields - St James. I assume there may be some shorter workings in the peaks.

I'm pushing my luck now I know but if anyone is in a position to confirm what route 4055 will be working tomorrow it would be a great help. I don't know whether it is likely to replicate today or swap to South Shields, not sure how it works.

Cheers

 

[Tramfan]

although normally at least job per day is cancelled off the depot.

Quite often 116 in the evening peaks as this is the last set out, and only works to Pelaw then Monkseaton, although one day last week the set due to work 135seemed to be declared a failure before it even left the depot - I think this one did get reported on the social media pages, as 135 works the first journey from Tynemouth to South Shields.
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I don't have too much knowledge of the Metro but assume there are only two routes - Airport - South Hylton and South Shields - St James. I assume there may be some shorter workings in the peaks.

I'm pushing my luck now I know but if anyone is in a position to confirm what route 4055 will be working tomorrow it would be a great help. I don't know whether it is likely to replicate today or swap to South Shields, not sure how it works.

Cheers

That's correct, 12 sets work Airport - South Hylton, 15 sets work St James - South Shields, and 12 sets work peak extra workings between Pelaw and Regent Centre/Monkseaton.

I'm not sure how sets are allocated, but I don't think there's any pattern as to which line a unit will work, although I've noticed sometimes if a unit has recently undergone heavy maintenance it is kept to the peak-time workings.

If anyone can confirm if there is any particular method to allocating sets to the running boards, I'd be interested to know.

 

[MetroCar4058]

Out of curiosity, how many sets are out of service and is there any likelihood of the backlog being cleared shortly?

I was reading a NECA report into the faults per KM for the MetroCar, and the reliability was described as very poor for EMUs; decreasing by more than half comparing the 2nd year of the concession to now.

 

[ModernRailways]

I don't have too much knowledge of the Metro but assume there are only two routes - Airport - South Hylton and South Shields - St James. I assume there may be some shorter workings in the peaks.

I'm pushing my luck now I know but if anyone is in a position to confirm what route 4055 will be working tomorrow it would be a great help. I don't know whether it is likely to replicate today or swap to South Shields, not sure how it works.

Cheers

Sets are allocated in the morning to their services. I'd take a punt that it will be on Airport-South Hylton but that can change at any time during the day should a train fail or other disruption (highly likely to happen too). If it's on South Hylton-Airport it will be on that all day though, it won't become a St James/South Shields train at all, and it's unlikely it will become a Pelaw/Monkseaton/Benton/Regent Centre short service unless there is disruption. Best option that I'd suggest may be if you have Twitter, send Metro a tweet in the morning at around 7am asking if they can find out for you. I believe the social media staff are based in the depot and so will likely be able to access that easier.

Out of curiosity, how many sets are out of service and is there any likelihood of the backlog being cleared shortly?

I was reading a NECA report into the faults per KM for the MetroCar, and the reliability was described as very poor for EMUs; decreasing by more than half comparing the 2nd year of the concession to now.

IIRC, there's around 6 units out of use on a more long term basis, with quite a lot of units being given quick and basic repairs just to keep some level of service available. The backlog will continue, once some of the longer term issues are fixed and those units are back out, other units will need to go in for heavy work and it will just keep coming back around. This isn't going to go away, and will only get progressively worse. It's not DB/Metro's fault, unfortunately though they've been given the bad end of the stick and are getting the blame. A lot of the blame for me should lie with Nexus. And we're going to be stuck with these trains past their use by date with a half assed refurbishment that looks like corners were cut all over the place.

Who specified the refurbishment spec? Nexus or?? And who would have altered the spec? Would that be Nexus too?

 

[142094]

55 is working 121 St James to South Shieldd today, unless things change with disruption.

At the minute there are 16 cars of out service as 141 and 149 are caped again. Sets are allocated by mileage, so ones which are due exams normally end up on peak hour trains which run shorter distances.

Nexus specified the refurbishment details.

 

[hacman]

Sets are allocated in the morning to their services. I'd take a punt that it will be on Airport-South Hylton but that can change at any time during the day should a train fail or other disruption (highly likely to happen too). If it's on South Hylton-Airport it will be on that all day though, it won't become a St James/South Shields train at all, and it's unlikely it will become a Pelaw/Monkseaton/Benton/Regent Centre short service unless there is disruption. Best option that I'd suggest may be if you have Twitter, send Metro a tweet in the morning at around 7am asking if they can find out for you. I believe the social media staff are based in the depot and so will likely be able to access that easier.







IIRC, there's around 6 units out of use on a more long term basis, with quite a lot of units being given quick and basic repairs just to keep some level of service available. The backlog will continue, once some of the longer term issues are fixed and those units are back out, other units will need to go in for heavy work and it will just keep coming back around. This isn't going to go away, and will only get progressively worse. It's not DB/Metro's fault, unfortunately though they've been given the bad end of the stick and are getting the blame. A lot of the blame for me should lie with Nexus. And we're going to be stuck with these trains past their use by date with a half assed refurbishment that looks like corners were cut all over the place.



Who specified the refurbishment spec? Nexus or?? And who would have altered the spec? Would that be Nexus too?

If we refer to designed lifetime, they're already beyond their use-by date.

The trains were built with a design life of 30 years. This doesn't take into account the fact that their duty cycle has been higher than designed for many years too, due to opening of the Sunderland line with no extra stock, and the fact that originally the region was meant to get a fleet of 120, not 90 cars.

Then we have the fact that these things have not exactly been looked after to the maximum extent across their lives.

Sadly I think blame lies on Nexus mostly for the state of things, but DB are not clean by any stretch of the imagination. But to expect a for profit company to do anything other than the minimum required is not exactly realistic either.

Jon

 

[142094]

The only way the backlog can be cleared is if the peak hour short trains are cancelled and the depot has a couple of weeks (at least) to go through some of the cars that require attention. This happened a few years back before the Christmas service, as there was no way that a full daytime service plus extra trains for Christmas specials could be run properly.

Depends on what you call long term but cars 4083 has been out for a while, with 4002 out for a couple of months. 4077 has not been out on the system since it came back from Wabtec, 4003 has been out of service a while and 4045 is having work done on its doors. After that there will be a long list of trains which have faults but could be brought back into use in the space of days rather than weeks. As 78 cars running as 39 paired sets are needed for full peak hour service, there is normally 12 cars available for maintenance or spares. However, of course when you have a lot of cars requiring maintenance at the same time, then the number of spare trains decreases and you work the rest a lot harder, so faults will happen more often.

As 141 and 149 were cancelled today that means there are at least 16 cars out of service. Another couple failed this morning, one at Jesmond which required fitters to attend, so that possibly will not be back out this afternoon.

At the end of the day there is a lot of criticism of DB Regio, especially on Facebook, but anyone who thinks that things will improve overnight if Nexus take back the concession is sadly deluded. There will be the same rolling stock, same members of staff to fix cars and the same issues with procuring spare parts. I wouldn't be a bit surprised if Nexus do take it back in house that the timetable will be changed a great deal, with less peak hour trains and possibly trains less frequent on a night time (e.g. every 20-30 minutes after 9pm).

 

[Leviathan]

55 is working 121 St James to South Shieldd today, unless things change with disruption

Got 4055 although it is on diagram 116 now with 4071. Thanks for all the assistance.

 

[ModernRailways]

At the end of the day there is a lot of criticism of DB Regio, especially on Facebook, but anyone who thinks that things will improve overnight if Nexus take back the concession is sadly deluded. There will be the same rolling stock, same members of staff to fix cars and the same issues with procuring spare parts. I wouldn't be a bit surprised if Nexus do take it back in house that the timetable will be changed a great deal, with less peak hour trains and possibly trains less frequent on a night time (e.g. every 20-30 minutes after 9pm).

You know this is exactly what I've posted about before after speaking with someone in the Travelshop. I believe my posts about it are in this thread, if there not they're hiding in the old Megathread that got closed. Metro are fined for not running the right amount of trains, meaning more ££££ for Nexus. If it's in house, Nexus don't pay fines to themselves, they'd only pay Network Rail, and so why run a service with delays all the time when you can run a good service just with trains so infrequent that people move to buses or risk not being able to get on the train because it's so busy.

Those on Facebook really wind me up, a lot of them complain about the service (and that's fair enough and understandable) but then start saying if it was public it would work fine, or just general things that make no sense. One of them asked why when trains used to fail it never caused disruption... Well, no it did. You just weren't aware of it because of Social Media not being there to tell you about every little fault, every little delay. Someone else complained that there Metro was 5 minutes late and in turn they missed their bus/train, if you're times are that tight then I'm sorry but it's your own fault, you could have left earlier. Or if it's the first train of the day, you should be getting a Taxi, 5 minutes is not enough, what if they had of tripped, what if the bus/train left about a minute early. Grrrrr


Thanks for the info about Nexus doing the spec!

 

[142094]

I am trying to find timetables from before DB took over to see what the difference is to the current timetable, and also to see how much higher the total mileage is per day for the fleet. I'm just about sure that there were less peak hour services, and possibly none of these ever went to Monkseaton (Benton was used a lot at the time instead).

With the refurbishment, Nexus specified what work was to be done to the fleet. As part of the concession, it was DB who had to manage the refurbishment, as just about all the engineering staff with knowledge of the rolling stock transferred over to DB. The contract was awarded to Wabtec, so DB then had to project manage the work down in Doncaster. After the first 13 cars came back (these were the ones which had the roof air con for the driver's cabs), the spec was changed by Nexus as the first 13 had gone over budget. As a result there are a lot of differences between the first 13 and the rest of the fleet, but most are not seen by the passenger.

 

[ModernRailways]

I am trying to find timetables from before DB took over to see what the difference is to the current timetable, and also to see how much higher the total mileage is per day for the fleet. I'm just about sure that there were less peak hour services, and possibly none of these ever went to Monkseaton (Benton was used a lot at the time instead).

With the refurbishment, Nexus specified what work was to be done to the fleet. As part of the concession, it was DB who had to manage the refurbishment, as just about all the engineering staff with knowledge of the rolling stock transferred over to DB. The contract was awarded to Wabtec, so DB then had to project manage the work down in Doncaster. After the first 13 cars came back (these were the ones which had the roof air con for the driver's cabs), the spec was changed by Nexus as the first 13 had gone over budget. As a result there are a lot of differences between the first 13 and the rest of the fleet, but most are not seen by the passenger.

A lot of the old timetables are still available on the WayBackMachine. Here's the timetable from 2005 for Heworth Clicky (There were no Monkseaton terminaters on that timetable, all were Benton/Regent Centre) AND here's the old Haymarket timetable from circa 2005 Clicky

Interesting! I was aware that there were changes between the metrocars refurbishment but not at how much difference, I'm just wondering if any of those spec changes will be the reason we're seeing more metrocars out of service and/or failing whilst out on the network. Definitely comes across to me that corners were cut.

 

[142094]

The vast majority of faults are due to the mechanical systems underneath the trains which were not touched during refurbisment. There is an increasing number being withdrawn from service due to cab faults, mainly as the B ends were not refurbished and are not particularly fit for service.

 

[MetroCar4058]

The vast majority of faults are due to the mechanical systems underneath the trains which were not touched during refurbisment. There is an increasing number being withdrawn from service due to cab faults, mainly as the B ends were not refurbished and are not particularly fit for service.

Out of curiosity, what work was done on the A end? I thought they stopped the introduction of the new purple cab due to the cost, its interesting to see the hybrids of cabs out there and hearing the difference when the doors close 'brrrr' instead of 'bu-ding'

Interesting to see that the frequency of trains was once every 10 minutes!

 

[14xxDave]

Slightly away from refurbishment but maybe on topic if they have changed the ability to see the monitors easily...tonight was a major farce. The driver of a Shields train refused to either close the doors or leave Haymarket because he couldn't see clearly down the side of the train to be safe to pull away. I assume because of an earlier problem there was a backlog of passengers therefore I can see his problem. When I got there the platform was being policed by several Metro staff and the relevant distance had been cleared, in fact the distance was much larger. The driver still refused to move. It must have been a good 10 minutes before he considered closing the doors and a further 5 before he moved off, oh and at this point the lady with the dispatch flags wasn't there, she arrived on the following train.

I have no idea what his problem was after the relevant distance had been established but he caused a heck of a lot of delay and upset a lot of people.

Apparently photographic evidence of his refusal to move even when the clearance distance had been complied with has been submitted to Nexus.

Strange times on the Metro....

Dave

 

[MetroCar4058]

Slightly away from refurbishment but maybe on topic if they have changed the ability to see the monitors easily...tonight was a major farce. The driver of a Shields train refused to either close the doors or leave Haymarket because he couldn't see clearly down the side of the train to be safe to pull away. I assume because of an earlier problem there was a backlog of passengers therefore I can see his problem. When I got there the platform was being policed by several Metro staff and the relevant distance had been cleared, in fact the distance was much larger. The driver still refused to move. It must have been a good 10 minutes before he considered closing the doors and a further 5 before he moved off, oh and at this point the lady with the dispatch flags wasn't there, she arrived on the following train.

I have no idea what his problem was after the relevant distance had been established but he caused a heck of a lot of delay and upset a lot of people.

Apparently photographic evidence of his refusal to move even when the clearance distance had been complied with has been submitted to Nexus.

Strange times on the Metro....

Dave

Why were they using flags? Was there a signalling fault? If the flags were required it suggests that there may have also been a signal failure? One cannot simply pass a signal at danger without a green flag or contacting control; that could be why the event escalated. There is a very good training vide on YouTube of a SPAD a due to passing a signal just on word of mouth and not the flags. However, I was not present and have a limited knowledge of tonight's events and the railway.
This month seems to have been a bit of a disaster for Metro, another 60ish% on the OTP and more trouble on the horizon for our scapegoat DB?

 

[Scott M]

Tbh I am starting to think Nexus are neatly passing the buck here.

I have very limited knowledge, but as far as I am aware DB Regio were given a contract to run the system, not supply it. So any blame because of delays caused by clapped out trains surely lies firmly at Nexus' feet?

Edit: reading back through the thread it seems others share my thoughts

 

[14xxDave]

Why were they using flags? Was there a signalling fault? If the flags were required it suggests that there may have also been a signal failure? One cannot simply pass a signal at danger without a green flag or contacting control; that could be why the event escalated. There is a very good training vide on YouTube of a SPAD a due to passing a signal just on word of mouth and not the flags. However, I was not present and have a limited knowledge of tonight's events and the railway.
This month seems to have been a bit of a disaster for Metro, another 60ish% on the OTP and more trouble on the horizon for our scapegoat DB?

Because platform dispatch as appose to driver dispatch requires a fully qualified signal, i.e. a green flag. Nothing to do with the signaling system itself. Not all metro staff are qualified to do this.....

 

[MetroCar4058]

Because platform dispatch as appose to driver dispatch requires a fully qualified signal, i.e. a green flag. Nothing to do with the signaling system itself. Not all metro staff are qualified to do this.....

And now we know why there was the perceived unnecessary delay

 

[142094]

The way the cameras are positioned at Haymarket platform 1 means the front doors appear small and the view can be blocked off by passengers just arriving onto the platform. If the driver cannot see the doors are clear then no-one else apart from someone trained in platform dispatch can tell the driver to move. Not sure why anyone would send photographic evidence to Nexus as the driver's decision is final as they are in charge of the train.

If it was a siganl failure, you do not need platform dispatch.

 

[MetroCar4058]

Today I noticed 'asbestos free' or something along the lines on a piece of the equipment underneath the metrocar; does anyone know what pieces of equipment do/did have asbestos within them? Many thanks in advance!

 

[S Lowes]

Today I noticed 'asbestos free' or something along the lines on a piece of the equipment underneath the metrocar; does anyone know what pieces of equipment do/did have asbestos within them? Many thanks in advance!

Im not a 100% sure but i think the line breakers had asbestos in them? :?