New tube for London stock

I mis-read that as the Waterloo and City line having three-wheeled cars. I imagined a reliant robin on the Underground. At least there would be a middle rail for the third wheel to travel along, but it would get a bit bumpy over pointwork!

Yes - I know that I got that wrong, but I enjoyed the thoughts.

While I am aware of the current 'plan' - inverted commas given present funding issues is little more than a paper aspiration - I am going to predict W&C either gets a NTFL stock variant composed entirely of conventional two bogie per vehicle NTFL half units (which eliminate the totally wheelless cars) - or something totally different, so different that no-one knows of it (in the public domain) yet.

Heathrow terminal 5 transit is only 10 trains.

W&C could be turned into a UTO people mover type line; if not UTO (GoA4) then DTO (GoA3).

I'D not be surprised if in time something like that comes about.

Roughly 100 years back the 1924 British Empire Exhibition at Wembley operated a "Never stop Railway" which I often thought could be a perfect match for the Waterloo and City route. Carriages operated in a continuous loop slowing to barely walking pace at boarding and alighting points before travelling at higher speed once past the platforms. I realise Health & Safety and accessibility considerations would rule out this very basic approach now BUT it sort of proved the concept and operated for several years reliably carrying vast numbers around the showgrounds.

The more I read posts in this thread it seems extant constraints on the Waterloo & City will require major expense to rebuild the depot and costly messing with the existing New Tube for London design for a handful of units. That in turn suggests the Waterloo and City route is going to be faced with another protracted shut down.

It seems ripe for completely abandoning any ideas of cobbling together another tube train variant and instead consider a more radical solution such as replacing the Waterloo and City with a fully automated (unmanned) service possibly on the lines of the recent DART system at Luton Airport.

Whilst the DART platforms have platform edge doors the stations are also staffed to oversee safe boarding and alighting. Meanwhile the shuttle cars are normally unmanned and once again prove that unmanned vehicles can carry large numbers of passengers and luggage day after day without anyone dying.

Perhaps this is the ideal time for TFL to cash in that IOU from DFT/HM Treasury to prove that they really are happy to fund any transport solution which delivers a fully unmanned service.

I know this is heresey on this forum but over in Paris their second busiest metro line - Line 14 is already operating with fully unmanned trains, and doubtless conversion of other lines to full unmanned service is on the cards as existing rolling stock and infrastructure comes up for major renewal.

MODs please note I suspect this post and any replies needs to split off from the New Tube For London thread.

I’m not clear if there’s other UTO systems which are a narrow bore tube tunnel with no escape route. Paris line 14 is double-track tunnels if I remember right (despite being deep underground).

Lots of detail in this FoI release including delivery photo on slide 20 with three cars on a long, long trailer! That has a wheeled car at each end, but the middle section must have had two unwheeled cars at the outer ends. How were they supported on their truck? Anyone seen a photo of that? 

The mechanical design of the coupling between the cars seems to be shrouded in secrecy/IPR (but must have been assessed/assured by now as being fit for purpose).

The coupling to achieve walkthrough carriages was innovative, but now to also to support the weight and stabilise the "unwheeled" carriage is another realm - no wonder the track has to be of a very high standard

Concur that the coupling probably introduces new issues/failure modes (but previous posts have mentioned it may be based on previous designs) - Those in the Inner circle of the project team will presumably have already seen or been involved in the design cycle and seen the mitigations & any residual risk - this will duly be presented to the Asset Engineer as part of the Assurance package.

Interesting question, but I'll predict they will have jigs for that; it won't be /that/ complex a thing to devise, organisations like Siemens usually can work out such things. Such a jig is the kind of thing that could be used during delivery then later utIlised by LU no if but when they need to split a unit, which, at some point, they will.

I will question though w.r.t. W&C (always assuming it gets ntfl stock) how such a long road load would get anywhere near Waterloo to get into the drain => they will be split => there will be a method of splitting => there will be jigs to do it <= can be the delivery jigs.

_

Different question :

slide 15

the three cars shown are

DM1 - IM1 - KM1 -

Don't think this gen has been seen before - Any idea on what the 'K' might mean ? And now - bearing in mind this is Siemens - so they /might/ be German terms if that is a German drawing - even what the 'I' stands for ? My basic German can not come up with any appropriate words though.

Methinks an assumption so far has been 'I' = intermediate; now I (pun intended) question that because of the 'K'.

The three car formation on a low loader was on its way to the Vienna Arsenal climate chamber for testing, shown in the photos on the following slide. The rest of that train had not yet been formed together and the other six cars remained in the factory. This will probably be the only time a 24TS leaves the factory in anything other than a full train length configuration, and the only time one will travel by road.

ta

'key' meaning key to or of what ?

It's not clockwork is it i.e. where you wind it up ? I mean, I know we are into energy saving these days but a t/op winding one up each trip is going a bit far and I have no doubt the t/u might have something to say on the matter.

Mr Gresley managed to do this c1920. 

Yeh that interpretation occurred to me ,........ But then again we are talking LU here ;o)

I recall reading somewhere (possibly on this forum) that Metronet were incentivised by the PPP contract to order a very conventional design for the 2009 stock. A walkthrough train at that point would have probably been technologically possible (I don't know about legislation) but reliability would be unproven. I don't think one with walkthrough and]/i] suspended carriages would have been possible then, but I'm far from an expert.