Great Western Coffee Shop

Reduced timetable on Merseyrail services
 
Last Updated: 23 Aug 10:13

Route Affected: Liverpool Central, Moorfields & Kirkby/Ormskirk and Hunts Cross, Moorfields, Southport also Moorfields, Liverpool Lime Street, Liverpool Central, James Street, West Kirby/Ellesmere Port/Chester

TOC/s Affected: Merseyrail

Description: Due to a shortage of train carriages Merseyrail will be operating to a reduced timetable until further notice.


 
 

These are electric trains, right?

Yes, and non standard width.

Merseyrail, Glasgow Underground and London Underground use narrow gauge track.

Lets get this right.

Non standard width and narrow gauge track are two different things.

The three rail systems quoted do indeed use a non standard width, that is body width or loading gauge but all three use the standsrd 4' 8 1/2'' track gauge.

My post was merely to notify other readers of this forum that FGW are not the only TOC suffering from a lack of rolling stock.

Oh indeed .... I just followed up to ensure that any readers not familiar with MerseyRail could be aware that we are indeed looking at a different stock "pool".   I would imagine serious concerns about running anything like a 142 under the Mersey!  Do you know why they're short of stock?  Do they share / exchange with any othere electric train areas?

From Merseyrail website ;-

Over the last few weeks Merseyrail have been experiencing unusual levels of wear on train wheels. Unfortunately this has caused a maintenance back log resulting in fewer trains available for passenger service.Until further notice, all Northern and Wirral line trains will run as half hourly services and will be three cars only. All Wirral line services will terminate at James Street. We will, wherever possible, run additional services during the peak hours. If at all possible, we would ask cyclists not to travel on peak time services with their cycles to prevent overcrowding. We are working hard with Network Rail to resolve the current problems and would like to apologise to our passengers for any inconvenience this may cause.

Sorry to be a rivet counter but Glasgow underground is narrower than standard gauge, sorry, going off topic!

Apparently the Merseyrail system does have their own tyre turning facilities at Allerton Depot but this is struggling to cope with the excessive wear recently. Eight sets have been taken from Birkenhead Depot to an unknown destination for wheel re-profiling.

This makes me wonder if the Mesrseyrail stock is suffering from new track syndrome. This is where rails on newly laid track or track that has the attention of the rail grinder to reprofile the rails is rough on the top edge corners and when a train travelling on this newly laid track / rails rounds curves, the roughness of these top edges acts as a file on the wheels and thus distorts the tyre profile. After a while these rough edges usually 'smooth-up' or can be treated by local use of an angle grinder. This phenomenum has only become more of a problem in the last few years due to the higher specification of the steel used in the rolling of rails today which is of a higher tensile strength.

I think that describes the problem, anyone with more in depth knowledge of the problem please feel free to expand on the problem described in this post.