Vivarail's 'D Train' - 'D' stock reborn

I would guess that is done as a 'shunting move', at low speed and without the continuous brake.

The following photo was posted on Facebook by someone called James Pilbeam

It was posted in the comments of this post (Facebook account probably required)

Similar, but considerably less-engineered than the one in use on the Isle of Wight, which is more solid and doesn't rely on a pin and clevis arrangement.

Note also that the IoW move was done with the powered unit propelling rather than dragging which was a causal factor in the Northern Line incident.

Yes, unit 230.001. There to give rides for COP 26 event apparently.

I've seen it all now. As alluded to above 230 001 is up in Scotland for COP26. Never thought I would see D stock leaving Glasgow Central High Level for Barrhead.

Well, you better believe it....

Its a while since I looked at the vivarail website and can see that clearly it has a recent makeover with a few interesting pieces of news buried in other articles.

So there is confirmation that another two car unit is being completed this year for the US Pop-up-Metro demonstrations.

It also looks like the unit currently being used in Scotland for COP 26 event will see further use for a year trial operation on the Greenford shuttle from early 2022.

I wonder how long it will be before we should expect to see charging facilities appear? My guess is sometime in the next month or two, to allow the kit to be tested and staff training completed before the class 230 actually starts carrying fare paying passengers.

What is not clear is whether charging facilities will be provided at both West Ealing and Greenford. Their website states that their patent fast charge system can now get to full charge in 10 minutes, so given how short the route is, charging at either end should work fine. However Greenford may be the better choice as it is exclusively used by the shuttle, whilst the West Ealing platform is occasionally shared by a Parliamentary service interloper meaning passengers would face a longer walk to board the train at West Ealing if the charging facility was located far enough along the platform to leave space for the occasional Parliamentary service.

I believe the fast-charge eqipment is based around a third and fourth rail - so installing it at the LU interchange on the branch would at least be thematically appropriate!

(That said, it uses a different arrangement of rails to LU...)

I'll be very surprised if two charging stations are thought to be necessary, and if the one they do install is at Greenford.

In other words, I expect it to be at West Ealing.

I'll be disappointed if the 40ft trailer includes a diesel / other fossil fuel generator. Surely there will be an ability to take power from somewhere else - perhaps the overhead power supply or a lowish power feed from the local area grid that trickle charges whatever is in the 40ft trailer (capacitors?).

I've seen the second solution being adopted overseas, eg: with the TOSA electric bus demonstration in Geneva. The purpose of trickle charging a static power bank (ie: the 40ft trailer) is to ensure that there is not a power drain on the local grid that causes the supply system to be interrupted anywhere else during the top-up charging process.

Also, the range of the batteries per charge is such that I would not be surprised if they are only 'top-up' charged occasionally, rather than after every round trip to Greenford.

Re: the third and fourth rails, that partly depends on the adopted power transmission solution. The Volvo + industry partners OppCharge system does indeed see a pantograph lower on to two conductors on the on the vehicles' roof.  With buses the pantograph head is H shaped and there are actually four electrically separate contacts - live, return, signal and earth. I do not know if the same will apply to trains, after all (unlike rubber tyred buses) these can earth via their wheels on steel tracks.

Other 'overhead' solutions use pantographs (one or several) which rise to an overhead receptacle (Schunk system) / a longish rail that is electrically split between the two polarities (OpBrid 'Busbar'); or an arm that slides out sideways from a platform shelter roof (several incompatible proof-of-concept demonstration systems in various countries).

Ground based solutions also exist, although I have not read about any of these being mooted for use here in the UK.

Whilst I agree only a temporary power supply would be sufficient for the proposed 1 year trial, it rather ruins its "Green" credentials if a fossil fuel generator is actually used to keep the batteries charged.

It must surely be appropriate for TFL/GWR to provide a way to tap into whatever power supply is already in situ and simply rectify/transform that power supply as necessary to match the charging system requirement.

However I have no idea what voltage/current AC or DC is required to supply the charging system which this unit has been designed to work with.

As the Vivarail charging system is currently(sorry) the only system approved for use by Network Rail - I suspect it a very remote prospect that Vivarail would go with any of the admittedly interesting alternative charging systems currently being developed around the planet.

As the Vivarail charging system is already subject to a patent, presumably the actual supply voltage requirements are no state secret and already out their somewhere. So if the system needs AC then West Ealing must be the most likely choice whilst if it needs DC then Greenford might be better - always assuming their is adequate reserve power capacity in the existing infrastructure to allow the occasional demand from the fast charging station - which could well entail providing a fairly minimal trickle charge supply into a ISO container loaded up with a heap of end of life Tesla batteries and some fancy automated charging monitoring kit to maintain balance between demand and supply..

Some onboard and cab footage of the 484s in this film about the new trains, thanks to the LTM Hidden London team - Hidden London Hangouts S4E10

They really do look good inside, and the ride quality still appears to retain some character...

I agree it is good to see the class 484 variants are finally carrying fare paying passengers even if there appear to be a few gremlins now affecting punctuality - if RTT can be believed.

The sad bit is that someone (presumably ORR) has forced them to modify the original D78 door closing mechanism so that it now takes an eternity to open and close. On the District I never noticed any lengthy delays to something as simple as opening the doors. Indeed in some instances they seemed to begin opening marginally before the train was fully stationary.

I realise the delay is probably mostly because SWR insist in having the guards open the doors rather than simply close them. I recall basically the same grumble when the Class 230s were introduced on the Marston Vale, and I suspect they just ignored the issue then in the hope it would go away. Well it has not. Come on VivaRail figure out how to reduce the insane impact on dwell time.

Whilst most of the overly long line closure can be laid squarely at the feet of VivaRail it is ironic that first day services were also impacted by a signalling failure and then a line side fire. Lucky they are not.

An impressive first week for the 484s - supposing nothing drastic happens tonight, 004+001 and 003 today seem to have worked all week without any significant issues. Timekeeping needs to be improved as they really struggle to recover any delays, but that's probably as much if not more an infrastructure concern.