Great Western Coffee Shop

From Rail News (https://www.railnews.co.uk/news/2019/03/11-new-train-deliveries-stall-again.html)


Not (any) new stories, but a worrying pattern and the article isn't complete in its list.

No mention for example of Hull Trains....so thet've 'borrowed' a GWR Castle class HST from the south west in the meantime.

Short set but are they using "Castles" - video I have seen shows (I think) 5 carriages, 1.5 first class, and doors with 'andles on the outside ... but then they may be swapping sets around.

No mention of 802 delays on the Bedwyns

As I understand the current situation (might change tomorrow of course ::)), is that some of the 'Castle' sets are initially going to be slam door so that they can get them into service earlier (i.e. by the December 2019 timetable change).

Yes - I heard of short HSTs working with slam doors.   Lots of questions ... Would they have the loos changed by then to ensure a disabled loo and no track dumping on each train?  Would they be able to keep to the (new) timetable with shorter station dwells since the train manager would have to walk up and down if whenever someone left a door open on an unstaffed platform?  Would they still be called "Castles"?

Software and computer problems seem to be a growing problem.
Many of the IET failures have been "computer says no" rather than a physical component breaking, dropping off, or catching fire.

And the IET design is now at least 5 years old, so newer trains for other parts of the network are potentially even more complicated with more things for the computers "to say no to"

Yes, mind you it's a bit of a double-edged sword that one.  Some of the 'computer says no' incidents might have prevented the much worse situation of a component breaking, dropping off or catching fire! 

Asset monitoring such as Hitachi Rail Europe receiving a real time message sent automatically from the train saying an engine is poorly is much better than that only being discovered when 'on the shed' that night as it allows better maintenance planning and reduces the number of failures that occur in service when a 'poorly' engine turns into something more terminal.

On the flip side, spurious faults can be an annoying source of unnecessary delay, so it is important that on board computers work properly, and with new trains it does seem to take an age for them to settle down.  There are signs that the IET software is improving though - witness the recent HSS performance and reliability statistics which simply would not be that good if the trains were regularly sitting down in service.

Has ATP ever got to a state of really being considered reliable? Quite a lot of train faults used to be attributed to that as I recall.

I'd say it's pretty reliable.  There are usually a few locations where the brake is automatically applied due to trackside equipment issues, which causes delays, though nothing too severe (especially now as the brake on IETs can be fully recovered much quicker than on HSTs where you could often be brought down to a crawl).  Failure of the on-board equipment is pretty rare given the number of times it is used per day.