Class 710 Delivery / Entry to Service

Is whatever depot maintains the Romford-Upminster train familiar with 710s yet?

103/105 Have been at Ilford for quite some time now, making regular trips up the electric lines to chadwell heath turnback on test. They are longitudinal yes.

7101XXX Will be Ilfords responsibility. Completely seperate from wilesden and their 2XX. Wilesden drivers wont sign anywhere near Ilford and WA/GE driver wont sign anywhere near Wilesden. Will be two completely seperate entities. This is why currently all test trips that traverse accross both separate operations are driven by Rail Operations Group (ROG) own drivers who can sign anywhere they are required to test units on. They are a separate company.

Noticed 378 232, still in 4 car formation, working one of the current passenger diagrams on the DC Line this past week. I assume this was to start on the maintenance backlog, rather than returning it to a 5-car formation first?

andypurk , Two 710/2's have been rostered for training since the GOBLIN has returned to a full service. I would expect that this will remain the case until this course of training (involving over 250 drivers) is fully complete which simultaneously offers cover with a GOBLIN compatible unit.

alpinejohn , Luckily all bar two of the stations (South Tottenham and Gospel Oak) on the route have the luxury of redundant space (stemming from rationalisation) that would make platform extensions comparatively painless. Even with a five car service I would predict that there would still be strong case for a 10 min headway in the peaks at least.

That doesn't really explain why a 4-car unit should be pressed into service on what is currently a five car duty. Unless, of course one of the five-car units is unavailable due to maintenance requirements.

First thing to learn about all railways is that non-railway logic should not apply. Whilst something might seem odd to an outside observer, there is always a good reason for implementation.

The primary reason for utilising the 4-car 378s is that it allows the full, 4tph to be implement on the DC lines now - instead of further delays whilst the trains re re-lengthened, re-tested and returned to service. In turn, using more than one on the DC (the quietest of all LO routes) allows certain NLL services to be re-instated with cascaded five-car trains where cancellations were previously to release the four car units.

As you say, it also enables any maintenance backlog to be caught up on, and in time will allow the 378 refurbishment programme to recommence.

The 710s will be coming to the DC lines soon - also as four car trains, remember - so there is no huge issue using four car trains there for the time being. The DC has never needed five-car trains - it just benefited from a common fleet based out of Willesden. Introducing the remainder of the 710s on the ‘classic’ LO lines remains the priority, with West Anglia to follow at a later date.



Let’s us not forget too that the 710s are over double the capacity of the previous class 172s. That’s a 100% increase in capacity overall now that the 4tph timetable has been re-instated - and only ten years ago the Goblin was still running a 2tph timetable with ageing ex-BR DMUs. Like the rest of the Overground it may well be a victim of its own success, but funding was only available for the four-car upgrade. That’s better than nothing at all, which is always the alternative.

...or the whole West Anglia last weekend. 😝

Yep.

Depends how you define "free". You pay and then get refunded. This will be automatic with Oyster and contactless.

To avoid paying the zone 1 fare I assume you tap a pink reader. As such the system routes your fare via the GOBLin and thus will trigger you a refund.

Gospel Oak might actually be quite tight. At one end, you have the 'v' of the junction between the GOBLIN freight lines and the NLL. There might be slightly more space to be exploited from when the bay road was put in in 1981 as the original mechanical signal box was located in the 'v' of the junction and burnt down in c.1984. At the other end, you have the curved bridge over Gordon House Road so there isn't a lot of space to play with, and preserve overlaps. The luxury solution of course would be to reconfigure the layout entirely and either resignal the freight lines for bi directional working and have platforms on them, or build a new bay road on the far side adjacent to Parliament Hill Fields - either would be massively costly and disruptive.

With South Tottenham, one could probably get round the issue with SDO to an extent, but obviously, this isn't an option at a terminus.

The problem at Gospel Oak is that a longer train cannot fit between the buffer stops and the fouling point of the entrance to the bay.

I believe (but am not certain) that it would be possible to build platforms on the link to the NLL at Gospel Oak if you are prepared to sacrifice the current bay platform to do so.