S stock delivery & introduction - discussion

Whilst I'm sure there are good reasons for this, I have to say that the entire S-Stock conversion has, from a customer POV, been an utter farce.

This is almost certainly more down to an overenthusiastic publicity department than any technical incompetence (I'm sure we'd all rather have the new stock safe and working than delivered to any particular schedule.)

Fortunately, most passengers don't care that much one way or the other and the D stock are still doing the job pretty well - and I'm missing the C Stock already.

Absolutely nothing to do with any publicity department - the press and communications team do what the project and management team ask them to do, not the other way round.

It is just a brief pause in the rollout to ensure that the fleet of D and S we have got are performing well. Too many delays last week on the District.

My understanding is that the two C&H trains that are due to start from Upminster will start as planned on Monday and so a couple of District paths that are due to have an S stock may not.

Where did you see that 2009 date?

Dates can slip for all sorts of reasons: often political: see the Croxley link, or Thameslink 2000-and-counting. The first S stock in public servce was in July 2010. The first H&C service was in 2012.

The trilemma of engineering - "on time, on budget, on spec - choose two!". As time was not of the essence here, (the ACD stocks were not actually falling to bits), they decided to get the other two right.

I was deliberately vague as the information I got was itself vague!

All I can add is that the pause is to allow certain interested parties and stakeholders time to ensure they have the mechanism's in place to assist the S stock introduction. If were to add my thoughts on what that means, well I suspect its a combination of driver training, depot works and train maintainers all not being at the right point.

In terms of driver training, the actual training courses at the east end of the line are running bang on schedule. However, drivers have an option to sign them themselves off as happy and competent to drive an S stock on their own after their "qualification trip" at the end of their course. The qualification trip (one Barking/Olympia rounder) is the one and only time they get their hands on a real train - all of the training is done on a non moving simulator. Of course many drivers are not signing themselves off that after just the one round trip between barking and Olympia and so although the number of drivers trained is high, the number actually able or willing to drive an S stock alone is extremely low.

The depots at Ealing Common and Upminster have required extensive works in order to accommodate S stock. In particular all of the stabling markers and walkboards have needed to be altered. Whilst Upminster is well advanced and is currently able to accept something like 36 S stocks, Ealing Common can only handle about 10.

Then there's the train maintainers. I don't know how their training has gone, etc, but there have been one or two teething problems at Upminster with train preps not being able to take place due to non qualified staff.

I stress that what I have posted is my own guesswork and is not the formal position of anyone. All I have seen are words to the effect of "the pause is to allow certain interested parties and stakeholders time to ensure they have the mechanism's in place to assist the S stock introduction".

The 'Acton end' half yes, the 'Ealing end' has yet to be touched.

Excuse my ignorance... is the Chiltern Line the only possible route for delivering S stock?

There is a link from the District to the Goblin line at Barking. I thought it was put in for moments such as these.

John

I believe at the depot they will be based from so either EC or UP

So Midland Main Line, Dudding Hill, Acton Wells, Castle Bar line to New North Line would seem to be the easiest way to Ruislip if the line is blocked north of Banbury. If you don't want them to end up back to front they could be reversed off the Dudding Hill line at Neasden onto the Chiltern route via Wembley Stadium.

My understanding is that the 'handed' stock mainly came about from the CLR, because of their asymmetrical unit connections. With the advent of the wedgelock automatic coupler, it became less of a problem but having distinct car orientations still occurred (but not with the C stock). With the S7 stock, it seems that the handedness of the stock is more of a token than anything else. Over the past couple of days, I have been in the same car relative to the formation (5th from the back) which have been both odd and even cars over the past week.

96 stock does get shunted around on a regular basis - and if I recall correctly the couplers on these are handed. (Can anyone confirm for definite?). The Jubilee has no way of turning the trains however.

95 stock was the first stock where the decision was made to leave the trains in delivered formations as far as possible. Generally this has held true, even on the handful of occasions where trains have swapped about they have eventually been reformed back. I think as I write this all 106 trains are 'correct'. The 09 stock has also avoided reformation, never seen one of them not in delivered formation.

The Chiltern line to Princes Risborough, then via Aylesbury to Neasden or direct to West Ruislip are the only routes gauged and authorised for S7 deliveries and S8 workback moves.

Yes the next stage of introduction is delayed from 2 February.
Today 63 67 123 125 are S7.

Is 125 an S stock in the morning too, because that's when it does the Mansion House move. I only saw it during the afternoon.