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On SWT ‘growth's off' – official
While it is convenient to refer to SWT's Siemens Desiro electric multiple units as ‘Mk 1 stock replacement', in fact the 32 five car Class 450/2s are, strictly, a growth build. They were part of franchise owner Stagecoach's 20 year franchise which included substantial investment in stations to take 10 car trains.
Now since Stagecoach are not mugs. They always practise safe franchising and ensured that should the 20 year franchise gang agley they would not be lumbered with a growth build. So the SRA is responsible for the Class 450/2 fleet under a Section 64 Agreement.
Angel Trains are pretty cute too. They were happy to bank on Mk1 stock replacement backed by Parliament but made sure that the risk of the growth build vanishing was on someone else's balance sheet.
As a result the Desiro contract included provision to slide 450/2 delivery back by up to a year. And in February Angel Trains Managing Director Haydn Abbott told the Parliamentary Transport Select Committee that negotiations had begun on just that. Sub-contractors had been getting a similar message from Siemens for some months.
For this latest development we should thank not the Southern Region power supply, or rather the inability of two out of three train builders to understand that what mattered was not Amps at the shoegear but Watts at the substation, but our old chums of Her Majesty's Railway Inspectorate.
It is a case of ‘in defeat resentment – in victory, revenge' and goes back to the Class 455s. When these were introduced BR persuaded HMRI into allowing their introduction within the then existing stepping distances and platform lengths.
Having been outmanoeuvred once HMRI were adamant that when the Mk 1 EMUs were replaced, the platforms would fit the trains. Achieving this was at the core of the SWT £1billion infrastructure upgrade.
Obviously, you can deliver trains faster than you can lengthen platforms. And HMRI agreed that Selective Door Opening (SDO) could be used as a short term solution to the train/platform length mismatch..
When a 10-car Desiro arrived at a ‘short' platform the guard would enable only those doors with a platform outside. This would stop passengers stepping out onto thin air.
Now you and I might think that SDO was safe enough anyway. But the Guard might confuse stations and lure commuters into a short sharp drop. You and I might think of simple ways of providing automatic SDO to protect commuters from confused guards. After all the Underground has had right door enable for years.
But, no. If you stop at a platform, HMRI demands a platform outside every door. Stagecoach had no sooner completed the necessary feasibility studies on short platforms than the 20 year franchise evaporated leaving the SRA responsible for the mismatch. Meanwhile. The Class 450/1 and Class 444 have facilities for SDO on the rear unit, or units in the case of a 12 car 450/1.
What should have happened next is that someone from the SRA went to HMRI and said ‘here is a list of the station works required plus a construction, schedule, it's all funded, please can we have an exemption for all these trains in store in Germany and Austria to run with SDO. But that hasn't happened yet.
It is, as they say in management consultancy, a lose/lose situation. With an exemption on the absolutely final, final deadline of 31 December 2004 for total, complete not one left Mk 1 stock withdrawal now inevitable, HMRI is not going to be accommodating on SDO.
Even if Richard Bowker challenges the new head of the HMRI to submit the SDO issue to trial by combat and wins, SDO still means that dwell times will suffer for ever at short stations, hitting performance
Since the five car Class 450/2 will only exacerbate the problem, and since they are for growth rather than Mk 1 replacement, and since the SRA has vouched for them under Section 64 then it makes sense to send them where they can run unfettered.
Now last year I was talking to traction and rolling stock chums at a depot not a million mils from Bletchley and the issue arose of the new high performance EMUs which Silverlink would need to maximise capacity on the West Coast Main Line when the Pendolnos start zooming up and down. The mischievous solution suggested was that the Class 321s should be cascaded to Great Eastern – giving them an homogenous fleet, while Silverlink took over the Class 360 Desiros.
Many a true word spoken in jest, because it looks as though the Class 450/s could be heading in Silverlink's direction. Since the fleet is larger than Great Eastern's some might go further north to Central.
This would be good news for Siemens, since it would require a massive Variation Order covering the retrospective addition of a pantograph and transformer to allow the trains to operate on a 25kV supply. And, as was said of those masters of the art, Metro-Cammell, a variation order can turn a net loss into a gross profit.
Meanwhile, on the champagne challenge front, Great Eastern has back-tracked to ‘some' Class 460s in service for the Summer Timetable and Siemens is going straight to an I Passenger acceptance certificate in July.
Several chums said I should have based the Desiro challenge on the October timetable. So, in an attempt to be more sporting, if the SRA provides the glasses, I will bring a bottle if the press conference announcing the order for brand new CTRL Domestic Stock trains is held before 31 December this year.