Merry Xmas from Cross Country

[whole diary]

[devon_metro]

Today was the turn for the 0608 Edinburgh Plymouth to fail  at Totnes. What a farce XC^▸ (Cross Country Trains (franchise)) are becoming!

[Btline]

How much more time is added to HST^▸ (High Speed Train) schedules?
It would be better for XC^▸ (Cross Country Trains (franchise)) to cut some stops to compensate.

And surely XC staff know how to run HSTs, its only been a few years since Virgin got rid!

[devon_metro]

How much more time is added to HST^▸ (High Speed Train) schedules?
It would be better for XC^▸ (Cross Country Trains (franchise)) to cut some stops to compensate.

And surely XC staff know how to run HSTs, its only been a few years since Virgin got rid!

Exeter - Plymouth gets 4 minutes extra running time
Cutting stops would not be good!
The sets probably don't get much quality time on depot and so can't afford to be driven aggressivly, although due to the hopeless mess and congestion on the railways they simple can't keep up as they loose times at every possible location of conflict. You should see the early running towards Bristol on the up trains, they could easily keep to Voyager timings!

[Electric train]

And surely XC^▸ (Cross Country Trains (franchise)) staff know how to run HSTs^▸ (High Speed Train), its only been a few years since Virgin got rid!

Who's were these HST before XC started to reuse them, have they been maintained correctly in the last few months by the previous user or have they been in storage where they would have been left to almost rot for a year or two which is what had happened to the HST's Grand Central aquired

[Steve44]

and digressing slightly, guess which TOC^▸ (Train Operating Company) is down the bottom of the league for its DMU^▸ (Diesel Multiple Unit) reliability?

XC^▸ (Cross Country Trains (franchise))? everytime i check the live updates on their site, at least 2 or 3 cancellations/delays are due to train faults on the Cardiff-nottingham/birmingham-leicester/stansted airport.

[vacman]

And surely XC^▸ (Cross Country Trains (franchise)) staff know how to run HSTs^▸ (High Speed Train), its only been a few years since Virgin got rid!

Who's were these HST before XC started to reuse them, have they been maintained correctly in the last few months by the previous user or have they been in storage where they would have been left to almost rot for a year or two which is what had happened to the HST's Grand Central aquired

The XC HST's have been completely refurbed, new engines etc, also, the XC HST's are not a coach shorter than ours, they are 2+8 but with no buffet, however, there have been at least one short set lately, running as a 2+6 bet that one could keep to time!!

[eightf48544]

Roger Ford's annual tables of performance for different classes of train have just been published in January's Modern Railways.

FGW^▸ (First Great Western) HSTs^▸ (High Speed Train) period 7 moving average 2008/9 = 11,501 miles 2007 = 9624
XC^▸ (Cross Country Trains (franchise))   HSTs period 7     "           "         "     =   9,623         2007 = N/A

Best overall IC^▸ (Inter City)  is ECML^▸ (East Coast Main Line) with 24,317. Could it be that loco and coaches gives better performance?

To compare and electric traction unit against a diesel traction unit is not a fair comparison. electric traction units have far less moving parts than diesels therefore require less maintenance and the maintenance is of a short duration.  An industry study has recently been done to compare the reliability of an electrified railway compared to a non electrified railway, because of the perception that OHLE is unreliable I don't have the figures to hand but it came out that electric traction failure and maintenance rates per Km was far lower than diesel even though the infrastructure requires a higher level of maintenance this is more than compensated for by the very much lower maintenance and failure rates of electric traction units.

Excellent that's exactly why I put the IC 225s in as a comparison.

When can you start slinging the wires?

As an aside it seems interesting that the ECML doesn't seem to be having as much OHLE trouble now the Eurostars aren't running. Something about higher pan pressure?

[smokey]

Now IIRC^▸ (if I recall/remember/read correctly) FGW^▸ (First Great Western) had problems with their HST^▸ (High Speed Train)'s after Refurbishment, so it's not surprising XC^▸ (Cross Country Trains (franchise)) are having some troubles.

[Electric train]

Roger Ford's annual tables of performance for different classes of train have just been published in January's Modern Railways.

FGW^▸ (First Great Western) HSTs^▸ (High Speed Train) period 7 moving average 2008/9 = 11,501 miles 2007 = 9624
XC^▸ (Cross Country Trains (franchise))   HSTs period 7     "           "         "     =   9,623         2007 = N/A

Best overall IC^▸ (Inter City)  is ECML^▸ (East Coast Main Line) with 24,317. Could it be that loco and coaches gives better performance?

To compare and electric traction unit against a diesel traction unit is not a fair comparison. electric traction units have far less moving parts than diesels therefore require less maintenance and the maintenance is of a short duration.  An industry study has recently been done to compare the reliability of an electrified railway compared to a non electrified railway, because of the perception that OHLE is unreliable I don't have the figures to hand but it came out that electric traction failure and maintenance rates per Km was far lower than diesel even though the infrastructure requires a higher level of maintenance this is more than compensated for by the very much lower maintenance and failure rates of electric traction units.

Excellent that's exactly why I put the IC 225s in as a comparison.

When can you start slinging the wires?

As an aside it seems interesting that the ECML doesn't seem to be having as much OHLE trouble now the Eurostars aren't running. Something about higher pan pressure?

The pans on Eurostars were designed to run predominately in France so the pan pressure could be higher, also the French rail system uses copper contacts on their pans were as we use carbon in the UK^▸ (United Kingdom).

As for stringing the wires up comes down to money and time, the big OHLE projects currently are Liverpool St to Shenfield to replace some equipment that was erected before WW2 that was converted to 25 kV also ECML is being refurbished and there is work to do on parts of the WCML^▸ (West Coast Main Line) in and around Brum, Manchester Liverpool etc.  Money is not the only scares resource designers and construction staff are in short supply the 10 years post privatisation decimated the resource we had in the UK