GWR CLASS 800s PUTTING IN THE MILES

This month’s New Train TIN-Watch includes distance covered as well as TINs

While the gradual improvement continues, the Northern depots, boosted by the award of a Golden Spanner (p55, last month), have ensured that the Class 142 Pacer fleet reliability remains tantalisingly just ahead of the Thameslink Class 700 Miles per Technical Incident. However, this month I thought I would focus on the work the new fleets are delivering.

A simple metric is miles run per period by a unit and this is shown in Table 13. I have added the GWR IC125 fleet as a yardstick. Obviously inter-city diagrams offer scope for higher mileage than commuter duties, but GWR is clearly getting its money’s worth out of the Class 800s.

It did occur to me that there may be some hysteresis in the GWR reporting system, since the main table shows 44 units in service when all 57 have been delivered. But even if you assume all 57 are in service, the period mileage per unit is still 13,185.

Class 800: GWR IET Nos 800031 and 800024 (rear) arrive at Swindon with a Cardiff service on 22 November 2018. Tony Miles