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I totally agree , There is also football games on Boxing day as well stupid sales starting. New Years day is normally a dead day.

Merseyrail are rightly taking a pounding today after confirming the decision to permanently axe the peak-time West Kirby 6 car services. These formations have been dropped during the leaf fall season for the last few years to accommodate an extra unit on the Chester line, but this time it won't be returning.

Suffice it to say this is an absolutely appalling decision. A taste of the future too once the 507/8s are fully replaced and the fleet shrinks to 52.

(16/12/2019 19:43)H101GEV Wrote: [ -> ]Merseyrail are rightly taking a pounding today after confirming the decision to permanently axe the peak-time West Kirby 6 car services. These formations have been dropped during the leaf fall season for the last few years to accommodate an extra unit on the Chester line, but this time it won't be returning.

Suffice it to say this is an absolutely appalling decision. A taste of the future too once the 507/8s are fully replaced and the fleet shrinks to 52.

Merseytravel & Network Rail are said to be talks to extend certain station platforms to accomodate 8-car trains. Southport and Liverpool Central have been mentioned.

(16/12/2019 22:49)Olympian2100 Wrote: [ -> ]Merseytravel & Network Rail are said to be talks to extend certain station platforms to accomodate 8-car trains. Southport and Liverpool Central have been mentioned.

The carriages are smaller so a 8 car train only slightly longer than 6 car 507/8. There is no need to extend the platform. As I understand it the marginal extra length has impact on some signal positions, hence the work required.

The size of the 52 unit fleet is of concern and gradual erosion of extras and train sizes has been happening so that the impact will not be attributed to the smaller size of the new fleet when it comes into service.

Peak hour extras and some 6 cars on the Southport line quietly disappeared when Maghull North opened and Ormskirk timetable was revised. Notably timetable booklets issued by Merseytravel no longer list the "6 car services" giving Merseyrail a free hand to shortform trains.

The Chester and Ellesmere Port line is back to a 6 train circuit for chester services and 3 train circuit for Ellesmere Port services.

During the leaf fall timetable an extra unit is provided and this does considerably make the service quite reliable on the chester line.

I dont think its viable long term to have only one electrified platform at Chester , both in terms of turnback time and access for TfW services terminating at Chester needing Chester depot.

I might be wrong here but I would guess that if merseyrail are planning to introduce 8 coach trains, quite a few if not all station platforms would beed to be extended, this would be in order to prevent doors being in areas where getting would be awkward like at green lane station.

Currently on 6 coach sets, the 1st and last set of doors are in tunnel with narrow platform width, however, although alighting in the narrow area is not allowed, I have witnessed people who cannot be bothered going through to the next set of doors getting off in the narrow area.

Also, please correct me if anyone knows different but while the current train order is for 52 class 777s, there is the possibility of an order for a further 60 units giving 112 in total although, I would say why not order a daft number like 68 or 78 extra units therefore giving 120 or 130 units in total and therefore giving 60 or 65 units each on both the wirral and northern lines.

This extra capacity of units would therefore ensure that there would be plenty of units available to cover for failures and also allow merseyrail to put out 8 coach trains at anytime if crowd numbers were high on platforms even outside of peak hours.

In regards to platform length, it’s worth noting that the 507s and 508s have a coach length of 20m, whereas the spec sheet for the new 777s lists the train length as a little over 64m. So, theoretically, this would mean an 8 coach pair of 777s would be 8m longer than a pair of 507/508s.

While this would be relatively easy to account for in most ground-level stations (for example: Chester platform 7 is more than long enough to account for this, and I’m pretty sure Hoylake’s extra-long platforms could take the extra length too?) the underground stations such as those on the Liverpool loop (and Green Lane) would need significant work. That, or SDO to keep the end doors locked in underground stations, perhaps?

Also, in regards to Chester, I believe there was talk of adding extra platforms - but I haven’t heard much of anything about this for a while now. Anyone know if this is still in the works, or was it scrapped?

(22/12/2019 22:21)FireFly209 Wrote: [ -> ]In regards to platform length, it’s worth noting that the 507s and 508s have a coach length of 20m, whereas the spec sheet for the new 777s lists the train length as a little over 64m. So, theoretically, this would mean an 8 coach pair of 777s would be 8m longer than a pair of 507/508s.

While this would be relatively easy to account for in most ground-level stations (for example: Chester platform 7 is more than long enough to account for this, and I’m pretty sure Hoylake’s extra-long platforms could take the extra length too?) the underground stations such as those on the Liverpool loop (and Green Lane) would need significant work. That, or SDO to keep the end doors locked in underground stations, perhaps?

Also, in regards to Chester, I believe there was talk of adding extra platforms - but I haven’t heard much of anything about this for a while now. Anyone know if this is still in the works, or was it scrapped?

Dont forget there is only one door in the 1st and 4th carriage of these units , so on the underground they may place the platform signals further into the tunnel and you could probably just about fit the 8 car unit on the platform without SDO. Liverpool Central Northern Line maybe the problematic one as there are signal overlaps for the points beyond which cant really be altered.

(23/12/2019 22:57)wirralbus Wrote: [ -> ]Dont forget there is only one door in the 1st and 4th carriage of these units , so on the underground they may place the platform signals further into the tunnel and you could probably just about fit the 8 car unit on the platform without SDO. Liverpool Central Northern Line maybe the problematic one as there are signal overlaps for the points beyond which cant really be altered.

Surely they have two doors pin the front and rear carriages, as all EMUs do. At least the mock -up did.

(24/12/2019 22:06)Olympian2100 Wrote: [ -> ]Surely they have two doors pin the front and rear carriages, as all EMUs do. At least the mock -up did.

Wirralbus is correct - the driving cars of the new units will only have one set of doors per side