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

There are some non passenger trips on the Greenford/West Ealing showing today on Realtime trains. These appear to be operated by by SLC trains? Is the 230 battery train back from Reading and doing test runs?

Thanks for the photo, as the red lights are still on at the rear of the train I am guessing the 230 has just arrived from Greenford - and is potentially part way through the process of topping up the batteries.


What is not clear is whether whilst the train was away in Reading they also managed to move the charging rails and stopping point further towards the buffers?

It might just be a function of the camera angle but the train does seem to a lot closer to the buffer stop and is now a metre or so clear of that painted mark on the platform.

The test train is back from Reading and once again carrying out test runs from Greenford to West Ealing this week, and this visit pattern expected to be a fairly regular occurrence over coming weeks.

It seems the charging rails at west ealing have, as planned, now been repositioned a bit further along the track so they are now nearer to the buffers, and then duly signed off by the electrical supplier. This relocation ensures the unused section of the platform can safely accommodate a second train on the rare occasions it is needed whilst the test train is being fast charged at the other end.

For now the test train seems to be mirrioring the normal service pattern for part of the day - so when the service train is at West Ealing the test train is at Greenford and vice versa. They hope these trials will confirm the test train batteries and fast charging system are reliably able to support typical service pattern demands including loads associated with stopping and restarting numerous times per day whilst retaining enough capacity to return to Reading when required.

If all goes well they may at some stage start training GWR drivers to use the unit. What is not clear is whether they will need volunteers to act as ballast in order to confirm the unit evacuation processes are safe for its use in formal passenger service - a bit like they did before the Elizabeth line core opened officially or they can simply start using it for public service once they remove all the current onboard monitoring kit.

So I went to see this today - took three attempts as it kept hiding behind other trains! If my memory is correct this is Castle Bar Park and it was due here two minutes before the train in passenger service ... and thats how I got clear sight of it!

Its colour is very dark - really needs bright sun to be seen properly, against a white cloudy sky my camera makes it look almost black

You can see a cab ride on most of the route in this video - around 13:30 you can see the Greenford shuttle in the middle platform at Greenford Station. As you can see apart from some short single track sections the route was double track.

Finally completed this video - I thought that the train was going to be in public service and replace the diesel, but I was wrong. So I had to rejig the very short film that I was planning to make and yesterday I went to Greenford to see it there.

So much went wrong in making this film but finally its alright on the night (as the saying goes) and I even added what I think is called an 'Easter Egg' to amuse those in the know. (The District line D stock train was going to Mansion House).

The D-Train this trial uses is 230 001, which I think might be the first train that Vivarail converted to diesel-electric. Without its diesel engines it really does sound like a District line train.

I doubt there was much if any "thought" to the number of trailers acquired by GWR. If I recall correctly the deal was primarily for GWR to obtain from the VivaRail Administrators the intellectual property rights to the fast charging system together with 230001 which had already been largely modified by VivaRail to test the system out on. It seemed the VivaRail Administrators wanted to clear the decks and made the sale of those rights conditional on GWR also accepting ownership of all the sundry D Stock rolling stock lurking at Long Marston and elsewhere. So what they got, is what they got.

As for longer Class 230 battery trains there is no reason to assume it would be impossible. However it is worth remembering that the Marston Vale route has some very short platforms where only 2 car class 230s were suitable - so major spend on platform extensions would be needed for a 3 car GWR class 230 battery powered test train to operate there and that gets rather tangled up in planning for East-West rail rather than Fast Charging.

However adding a third/fourth trailer car should not be massively problematic assuming the trailers carry extra batteries and are suitably cabled to work with the adjacent power cars, as this would give extra resilience (range) which might be beneficial on longer branch lines. The downside being potentially longer dwell times at charging stations and slower accelleration as well as the challenge of devising suitable charging controls and cabling allowing the power car to reliably feed and receive energy from those extra batteries as required. Moving from 3 car formations would however also make positioning Fast Charging infrastructure more complicated as additional sets of charging rails (and shore based battery stores?) might be required to accommodate 3 and 4 car operations from the same fast charging location (Reading?).

Because once each 3 car D78 set ex-LU service as DM-T-UNDM has lost its UNDM (which they did not buy), and then the 2car units (5 x 484, 3 x 230) using two DM and no T, and then other DM used for tests (I am pretty sure about 6 DM were used this way), and, I think, they effectively need to take 2 X DM to make each rebuilt single DM and other DM used for component recovery (especially motor bogies) for the rebuilt units, what is then left is a load of T. Somewhere (Todays Railways mag (?)) there was a list of which DM were scrapped for what reason. No more complex than that: arithmetic => simplest answer <= Occams Razor (again !).

I understand the south Western has been buying wheel sets for their Isle if Wight fleet rom scrap vehicles.

Still running, except for 006 which is long term stopped.
Pictures in latest (July) Underground News.

Brilliant.

Guess who is on annual leave for 2 weeks mid September with IOW 484 pencilled in for 1 day having not yet done it mutter mutter mutter

TY for the info saves me hassle.

see my post !

"additional" drivers is not strictly a correct term here - as yet no actual drivers have been trained - only driver managers - and it is these who are doing all this trial running. There is also AFAIK no date to start TOC link driver training, and there are ~90 to be trained in that link. They could, in theory, operate with managers (like SWT 701s do) but there is still no date for passenger running anyway, and, if they did do that, I can't see how link drivers could be trained, as they can't do /all/ the training content while in passenger service ..... and they only have one unit.

It looks like 230001 is back doing test runs from Greenford to West Ealing and indeed Realtime trains shows a full day test is planned on Sunday 4 August. They have already done an intensive test a while back on a Sunday and I wonder why they need to repeat the exercise. I suspect this latest round of testing is mostly to assess the performance and recovery time of the trackside fast charging batteries rather than the equipment installed on the train.

Sadly once this trial has finished I rather fear the project will be quietly dropped and the expertise lost as all the messaging emerging from HM Treasury suggests the new Chancellor has not got a lot of money to spend on anything. Hey Ho it was an interesting idea even if it is about to be dropped.