D Stock for GwR

It seems GwR have purchased 67 withdrawn D Stock cars that have been stored at Long Marston, ex-VivaRail.

GwR MD Mark Hopwood CBE and Dave Horton Chief Mechanical Engineer (Battery Train Fast Charge Project) at GWR have Tweeted:

That makes only 17 trains, so even if they all use two trailers there will be a few spare.

I thought that originally there were many more DM's - it was somewhat short sighted cutting them all up so quickly after Vivarail ceased trading.

I am pretty sure quite a number of cars were scrapped long before VivaRail went bust.

There were at least a couple that were used as test rigs and probably had irreversible try outs done on them

I don't think because Vivarail bought X number of cars that simple arithmetic makes Z trains ever meant that precisely Z.000000 trains would ever appear. The whole thing was speculative.

Don't forget too a key original reason for D78 was quick and dirty 14x railbus replacement. Since actually no D78 were used for any 14x replacement, directly or indirectly, Vivarail must have had many more D78 cars then first planned or subsequently had a future for.

This could be another GWR fiasco to rank alongside 769s. which failed to materialise meaning all the 165 3 cars going to Exeter to replace the 150s did not happen.
230 fast charge battery trains are not likely to be suitable on the Cornish/Devon branches because of short layover times; often only 5 minutes. Paignton has the longest layover times of 15/20 minutes which is often used up due to late running. I don't think people realise how busy Paignton, Exmouth, Barnstaple, Falmouth, and St Ives are. Newquay as well if they had a decent train service which might happen with the Cornish metro they have just received money for. They never expected the latent demand at Okehampton and the Parkway station in the middle of warehouses and housing is still to be built.

There's far more latent demand for trains than anyone ever realises. The North London Line and West London Lines are prime examples. The St.Ives branch is another that springs to mind.

A 5 car D stock train would be great

I suppose that its too late for the UNDM's. What a shame, retaining some might have proven to be commercially viable.

Off-peak perhaps, but not in the rush hours.

On the other hand, many passengers would suggest that a train every 15 minutes is the minimum requirement for a 'turn up and go' service.

before covid I used the route between Highbury & Islington and Stratford a lot. It was always busy and in the rush hours trains were sometimes so crowded that passengers had difficulty boarding them. Train lengthening only helped a little - it really needed a more frequent service.

Camden Road - Highbury & Islington were used 'often'.

Since covid I've not been out so much

I use the WLL less often but the trains are always busy. I find waiting even 10 minutes for trains to be somewhat irksome and suspect that for some would-be passengers the waiting time is actually a deterrent.

Clearly, the 'wider scheme of things' doesn't extend beyond urban London.

My mistake.

Lots of people seem to be assuming GWR have a long term interest in the D stock - They Don't!

To be clear - the only reason that GWR happen to own all the D stock is simply that the administrators of Vivarail refused to sell 'just' the converted units and associated fast charge technology being developed for the Greenford branch to GWR (which was all GWR really wanted). Instead the administrators insisted that either GWR take absolutely everything Vivarail had or they would be told to get lost.

As such although GWR have ended up owning all the remaining D stock they have no plans to do anything with it (other than possibly scrap them). Certainly there is no intention to convert any more units and deploy them on other GWR branch lines, particularly as the fast charge trail at Greenford has yet to start!

(Edited to remove formatting)

Have you considered what GWR management may say now in public is not necessarily what they planned to happen originally.

Put it this way - all GWR really needed (and all the DfT would initially allow) is the purchase from the administrators of what was necessary to allow the Greenford trial to take place.

The administrators however didn’t want to be saddled with disposing of the remaining stock or dealing with the few remaining Vivarail staff - so they told the DfT and GWR it had to be ‘all or nothing’

With the Greenford trial deemed too important politically and mindful of the press / political fallout from abandoning it GWRs hand was forced.

Naturally GWR (which we must remember is still operated by First Group PLC under contract to the DfT) are not going to go round saying “Well we had to buy all this extra stock we don’t know what to do with” are they - it opens up all sorts of accusations of wasting public / shareholders money. They will instead be looking to put a positive spin on acquiring all the extra stuff and as such making noises about converting more D stock for use on their Thames valley branches is hardly surprising.

Against that however you have a DfT who are still demanding huge cuts (GWR is under massive pressure* to ditch its remaining HSTs for example with NO replacements - GWR is being expected to manage with its exhausting fleets) and it’s hard to see then authorising GWR to go and create extra trains in this climate.

You should also note that the trial on the Greenford branch is more about testing the ‘fast charge at termini’ concept than anything else. If successful the technology is intended to be used for new build trains to replace the British Rail Sprinter DMU fleets - it is NOT a specific initiative to find homes for trains converted from D stock.


* HSTs are going from XC for the same reason and there are plenty of other examples of DfT mandated cuts to rolling stock going on at other TOCs if you dig deep enough.