Great Western Coffee Shop

IET review from a Journey made "to my home town" of Exeter from Paddington on the 18:04 train on 23rd December 2020 - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i1At3LMD_QM

From Superalbs Travels

What a totally depressing - but totally accurate, video of these so-called Inter City trains. The only plus point is the excellent leg room, which was quite acceptable on the High Speed Train (HST)s anyway ! That train didn't look too bad but one thing I have noticed is how easily the seats and carpets seem to stain, even plain water seems to leave a mark !

There is one possible blessing to look forward to.............these trains cannot possibly last anywhere near as long as the High Speed Train (HST)s, they will fall apart like the circus clowns' car ! 

Edit: VickiS - Clarifying Acronym

I also stumbled across this video a couple of days ago - I was going to post the link and then forgot...! Doh! (Too much port...?  ;) )

It reflects my experiences and I have posted about them previously. For a modern train the ride is totally inadequate - the wheelsets and/or bogies hit bump stops too frequently even on apparently straight and smooth track.

These trains are specified as being 140mph capable - the very thought scares me.

Fairly early into the video, the reviewer compares the seats to some European commuter sets. I think the whole IET concept shouts 'middle-distance commuter train'. It is completely unsuitable for long-distance leisure travel.

So it is not just me that considers these DMUs to be a significant downgrade and unsuitable for intercity use.

And yes I know that IET supporters will say that the seats are not that bad really, and that they are not really DMUs because they use electric power for a small part of the journey, and that not every vehicle has an engine, and so on.

And no catering on a so called intercity service, simply appalling. And yes I know that there might sometimes be a trolley, but this is so often in the other unit, static, hiding in first class, or completly absent, that for all practical purposes one might reasonably say that the new units dont have catering.

Seats don't really stain now the new seat covers have been added.  The old covers were terrible.  The badly stain showing aisle carpets are all going to be replaced in the New Year on the 800s, with hopefully the 802s to follow. 

Whoever chose the colour of those two items should hang their heads in shame, particularly the seat covers which had, IIRC, been already been fitted to at least one HST set and Turbo and were clearly not suitable.

Is any member able to watch this video and then put the case for IETs?

I suspect that the case for IETs can be summarised as

The seats are ergonomic, but an ill informed minority don't appreciate this. And anyway padded seats are now illegal.
The engine noise is not that bad, and you can always sit in a non engine coach if you prefer.
The poor ride is subjective, they are quite good really.
All the incorrect announcements are operator error, not the fault of the train.
Luggage space is fine, provided people don't take too much luggage.
Loose and rattling panels are due to people trying to pull bits of.
No one wants buffets anymore, surveys show it.
A effective trolley service remains an aspiration that is being worked towards.
Hot food was tried briefly, but was not a success.
Other TOCs are rushing to order similar units because they are so good.

I can't help feeling that a video "In support of the IET" by Broadgage would elicit doubt in the same way as "Why we should nationalise the railways" by Jacob Rees Mogg, "Proposal to convert GWR to metre gauge" by Isambard Kingdom Brunel, or "The best car buy for 2021" by Geoff Marshall and Vicki Pipe.

What other unlikely videos can members imagine?

I confess.....! these trains are so good that I want my very own in my back garden, so I am nicking one - bit by bit !!

We are so mobile these days!  In the time of my youth, we travelled just a few miles to school or work each day, shopped local and took days out in the same county or a neighbouring one; holidays were a week at the nearest seaside, and a long distance journey - perhaps from London to Formby or Minehead, was a major excusion to be planned months ahead. The days of pacifics out of Euston,  Warships or Hymeks out of Paddington.

The High Speed Train revolutionised long distance rail travel in the UK. Intended as a stop-gap provision as the railways wound down into their final retirement, it had quite the opposite effect; travel became regular and the routine, towns that had previously has a service of one train every two hours steeped up to two trains every hour.  The ethos of travel moved from "plan way ahead" to "turn up and go" and intermediate stops were added as the residents of towns skipped wanted to be part of the brave new 125 world.

The 125, if you like, was a victim of its own success. It was never built to be running a sto-start service but much more an intercity one. It was not built to provide clock-face services in the same hourly pattern all day. And it was not built to be clean and green. Yes never the less it provided all those things - and it provided so well that people voted with their feet and kept coming along to use it more and more.

From a train that was grudgingly accepted when it replaced people's beloved Westerns and Deltics, the HST grew in stature. It was like an unplanned child, adopted by the parents of APT when it came along and APT proved to be a high maintenance princess, moving from a cahrity case to a grudingly accepted member of the family to one that was much respected, cherised and loved as time went by, and goodness weren't to many of us sad to see it getting a little bit long in the tooth, run down, and no longer as quick or clean in its habits as we might have wished.

So - the 125 developed a loving following and a mass transport market that was very fond of it - familiar with "do not flush in the station", the long pauses at Kintbury or Pewsey while the train mananger walked the eight coaches to close a door and the ever-so-slow take off from Hungeford or Bedwyn or other stations along the way.

Built to take the success of the 125 and build on it, fit for the new market developed, the IET has been designed with that market in mind.  But, hey, that kills some nostalgia. Yes, you may flush the loo in the station. You can get out by pushing a button to open the door rather that sticking your hand out of a window and fondling for a lever in the rain out there. And you can get there so much earlier that you now have time to pop into a cafe for a full cup of coffee rather than balance a half cup along the corridor of a rocking and rolling train.

The new trains are both electric and diesel. No longer the fumes and particulates under the roof at Paddington. No longer that slow takeoff as the engines roar but a rapid, if unromantic glide. They're boringly the same as the one that was an hour before and an hour after.  They are notable by their lack of notability - they do they the job but (at least as yet) we haven't grown to know them well and have a quiet love for them.

There is plenty of variety in IETs.
Some are full length, others are 5 car only.
Some have reservations, but many don't.
Some have toilets working, others don't.
Some have correct announcements, others don't.
Some survive the perils of Dawlish, others hide.

A few had a trolley service, others had a static trolley, location unknown, others had a trolley only in the other portion, many had no trolley, the ultimate improvement.

With all due respect, the issues with the IET are not that it is not an improvement over the HST in some technical respects such as it can use electric power, its power-to-weight ratio when on electric power, dynamic and rheostatic braking, stiffer coach bodies, toilet waste disposal and selective door control but that so many of the things that directly affect the customer have been so badly designed and implemented.

These include, but are not limited to:

• the ride - which at best can be described as 'vintage'
• noise levels - even the end coaches which have no diesel power units have an annoying whine
• unwelcoming seating
• flimsy internal trim and components.

I defy anybody to argue that these are an improvement over what went before. In some cases they are not even as 'customer friendly' as other modern train designs such as the Siemens Class 444s ordered by South Western Trains.

The HST was such a marked improvement over what went immediately before it on the Western, specifically in its ability to cut travel times, that it became, as you said a victim of its own success. In a new train intended for longer distance travel one would have expected at the very least a silky smooth and quiet journey in welcoming seats and surroundings.

This is why there is so much disappointment - the cleft between expections and reality is so great.

And I can see little chance of anything changing soon. The TOC has no influence on the internal layout or fittings and certainly little or none on the mechanical parts of the train or the trains' maintenance as all these factors are covered by the IEP contracts between the DfT and Agility Trains. And these have about another quarter century to run...

I thought one of the reasons put forward for privatisation was that decision making was to be pushed to being as close to the customer as possible. Clearly the civil service didn't hold much for that idea...

I agree that in some technical respects that IETs are an improvement, the ability to use electric power, selective door control,, retention toilets and the like are improvements.
Mechanical reliability seemed rather poor, especialy WRT coupling and uncoupling. The "essential requirement" to couple and uncouple in some short and specified time seems to have become a future aspiration.
The alleged "essential requirement" to cope with the conditions at Dawlish turned not to be a requirement to function, with no service in rough weather at high tides.

The seat reservation system has been unreliable, apparently no one could have foreseen lack of the required signal when at a station.

Luggage space is inadequate for a long distance train serving popular holiday resorts.

Passenger comfort and facilities are very poor indeed. Noise vibration, hard seats, no through gangway, seats not aligned with windows, and few table seats. (and before IET supporters all scream "more tables than an HST" this is only true of the down graded commuter style HSTs. The original HSTs had 16 tables per coach. Loco hauled inter city coaches had almost all table seats.)

And as for catering, it is not just me who believes that providing a proper full sized hot buffet is a requirement on a long distanceservice. Not a microbuffet or a static trolley.

All sorts of grand promises were made about the trolley service, none of which have been regularly achieved.

"Improved trolleys that keep hot things hot and cold things cold" not achieved.
"Hot food from the trolley" sunk without trace, possibly after a brief trial.

And the alleged advantage of obtaining refreshments without leaving ones seat is completly negated by having to search for the static trolley.
And leaving one portion of the train to walk along the platform to search the other other portion for the trolley is SO much more convenient than going to the buffet.

And none of this is excused by the pandemic, my remarks refer to pre pandemic days, though it will be probably be even worse after the pandemic is over.

Reminds me of the old (rather unkind !) David Beckham joke:
Becks goes to training one day carrying his brand new vacuum flask.

Sir Alec: "What you got there son ?"
Becks:    " A vacuum flask boss"
Sir Alec:  "Whats that do ?"
Becks:    " It keeps hot things hot and cold things cold boss"
Sir Alec:  "What you got in there ?"
Becks:   " A cup of coffee and a choc ice boss !"

I doubt that we will see any significant improvement for some years, if ever.

Almost any shortcoming can now be blamed on the pandemic "stop complaining, you are lucky to get a train at all"

In the longer term, a future operator MIGHT add a buffet, or fit padded seats, or even extend some of the half trains to full length. Seems very unlikely in the near term.

Downgrades are generally permanent.

No space for a buffet in a 'sardine midget' 5-car set...

If you ask me they should have had padded seats and plug doors from new (no chance of fixing the latter mistake now) and a minimum of 7 coaches per set with none of this portion working the 5-car units were built to do. However, there is a possible silver lining; the class 220, 221 and 222 fleets will need replacement sometime in the late 2020s or (more likely) early 2030s. When Oxford, Swansea and Bristol were expected to be wired by December 2019 the 21 9-car IEP trains were all going to be class 801s (that averages out at 7 units each for the three destinations). If I recall correctly, 7 class 802s were ordered when it was announced that electrification to Oxford would not be completed in CP5. Thus, I expect delivering the missing electrification to Bristol Temple Meads and Oxford would allow GWR to introduce 14 class 800 derived EMUs and release 14 bi-modes to CrossCountry.

I understand the power-to-weight ratio of the current class 800 trains in diesel mode is not up to the job of replacing high-performance diesel trains such as the Voyagers. However, I see that as an opportunity to address the issue of too many 5-car sets without wasted vehicles. Instead of building 14 new EMUs for GWR, you build 98 intermediate coaches (no cabs) to replace the centre cars from 14 class 800s (which would go into 14 other units, making 14 8-car units with six diesel engines for XC). 28 class 800 5-car bi-mode units would thus become 14 8-car bi-modes for XC and 14 9-car EMUs for GWR.