Great Western Coffee Shop

So back in November the first 197 entered passenger service on the Conwy Valley line. A sensible place to start them off being reasonably close to Chester depot and a single diagram that does the route all day that could easily be replaced with either a 150 or a bus if there were any issues. 

Last Monday they started being used on the Chester-Liverpool service and from today 2 diagrams on Manchester Airport-Llandudno (along with the Liverpool one so 3 in service today).  The Conwy Valley is a 150 today so unsure whether thats just substituting a 197 or they are concentrating them on the North Wales coast for now. 

I understand we wont get any in the South until the May TT change at the earliest, as to my knowledge training hasn't started at Cardiff and Carmarthen depots.  But the plan seems to be to get them onto all 175 routes by this time next year.  Fingers crossed all goes to plan. 

On a 197 now, an evening trip from Chester to Newport. The only thing I'd change about the experience is the train spec*, and also swap out the several passengers who've treated everyone to TV and phone conversations on speakerphone. What's that about?

Mark

* This one's 131008 and rides rough with a lot of clunks and thumps. They get going quickly but the gear changes give something of the flavour of 3 stage orbital launches. The internal ambience isn't good when it's dark outside, the appearance is on the stark side, there are frequent halting automated announcements and as far as GPS is concerned they're a faraday cage.

The design involves a fair few problem traps for dirt including the junction between table and wall, and the window surrounds, the walls being white. From my seat I can see three cobwebs between roof and walls, and the plain glass floors to the overhead luggage racks have collected mice. To avoid the need for bilingual notices, the carriage contains the UK national collection of pictograms.

We're now an hour and a half into the journey from Chester and I've not seen a member of staff. Oh and the buffet's awol. Overall impression, not a train suitable for long distance travel (and several of the passengers unsuitable as well, but it may be that the current one is merely taking revenge on the initial noisy one...)

OK, apologies for this, I've just found I was carrying emergency rations, I'll have something to eat!

A chance to reflect on this particular trip now and... hmmm.

Part of the issue might be that the interiors were evaluated in daylight - once it's dark outside the lighting and mix of surfaces make for a very harsh environment in which to travel. Top that up with the ride quality, engine noise, 1/3 - 2/3 door opening, halting bilingual automated announcements and screens.

TfW needs funding to reallocate 197s from the long distance routes to increase capacity on the shorter runs for which they're designed, at which point they then need an alternative set of trains lined up that are suited to long distance travel.

The link below is a pdf from TfW with details of their current fleet, allowing a comparison between capabilities of class 158, 175 and 197 trains. Compared with a 158, the 197 cuts the number of seats per 2 car train by 16 and the number of loos by 50%.

Mark

https://tfw.wales/sites/default/files/2022-01/Fleet%20Access%20Specification_English_V1.pdf (https://tfw.wales/sites/default/files/2022-01/Fleet%20Access%20Specification_English_V1.pdf)

Good grief: TfW + 197s = three classes of rail travel return to the rail system.

Mark

https://tfw.wales/ways-to-travel/rail/ticket-types/standard-plus (https://tfw.wales/ways-to-travel/rail/ticket-types/standard-plus)