On 6 Jul, 08:44, wrote:
On 6 Jul, 03:20, TheOneKEA wrote:

On Jul 5, 5:07 pm, Bob wrote:

Possible bidders would include Britain's top five bus and rail
operators, Stagecoach Group (SGC.L: Quote, Profile , Research), Go-
Ahead Group (GOG.L: Quote, Profile , Research), First Group (FGP.L:
Quote, Profile , Research), National Express (NEX.L: Quote, Profile ,
Research) and Arriva (ARI.L: Quote, Profile , Research), as well as
Germany's Deutsche Bahn [DBN.UL] and French bus and rail operator
Keolis, the source added.

Oh wonderful. If any of the usual suspects acquire it I can see
Chiltern getting sucked into a tiolet tank and turned into a shadow of
its clean, reliable, expansionist, common-sense self. Whoopee.

*has horrible mental images of Barbie swirls all over the 168/Xs*

There are suggestions going round that whilst Chiltern is doing very
well on punctuality etc. there are many problems to do with other "key
performance indicators" linked to retaining the franchise that need
very urgent attention. (suggested as one reason behind the change of
MD recently announced) - so whilst it may seem to be doing very well
it could be that there are issues that need to be resolved elsewhere
in the company that we aren't aware of.

Tony

I think the tunnel collapse hit the finances hard and have they been
compensated yet?
Ridership does not seem to be a problem, but reliability of the 165
fleet, whilst hitting a peak a few months ago has again slumped to
around half that achieved by the Reading based examples. ATP problems
perhaps? The Chiltern 165s do have a few extra bits on them which
would mean more to fail. The Chiltern engineering staff are looking at
some innovations which have caught the attention of other DMU
operators, all of which would go a long way to improving reliability.
Doors and couplers being the main problem for most operators. In all
honesty though, apart from the tunnel incident, I cannot see what has
hit the finances to this degree. It was predicted at the time Laing
sold out that the business would be sold as a non core activity.

Ridership does not seem to be a problem, but reliability of the 165
fleet, whilst hitting a peak a few months ago has again slumped to
around half that achieved by the Reading based examples. ATP problems
perhaps? The Chiltern 165s do have a few extra bits on them which
would mean more to fail. The Chiltern engineering staff are looking at
some innovations which have caught the attention of other DMU
operators, all of which would go a long way to improving reliability.

I spent a few weeks at Aylesbury TMD about 3 years ago and one of the
new fitters was a former employee for FGW at Reading Turbo depot. He was
saying that staff at Reading were set to work in teams, (eg: those with
electrical expertise would work on electrics.) Whereas at Aylesbury, all
fitters end up doing all types of work. Could possibly be an issue...

JP wrote:
Ridership does not seem to be a problem, but reliability of the 165
fleet, whilst hitting a peak a few months ago has again slumped to
around half that achieved by the Reading based examples. ATP problems
perhaps? The Chiltern 165s do have a few extra bits on them which
would mean more to fail. The Chiltern engineering staff are looking at
some innovations which have caught the attention of other DMU
operators, all of which would go a long way to improving reliability.

Could it simply be down to a bit of over-zealous fault reporting? Certainly
I can't recall the last time that I encountered a Chiltern 165/0 operated
service that was cancelled or that was a failure in traffic (it's been 168s,
if anything). Similarly, I can't recall the last time that I found a 165
with defective air-cooling in any vehicle in the set or was on a set that
had door problems - in fact I can't think of any instance in the last year.
Conversely, your 165/1s don't have air-cooling to worry about and, IME, on
the 166s I've found it quite common to find a vehicle in traffic with the
air-con not working, even on my infrequent GWML inner-suburban journeys.

On Jul 6, 12:44 pm, "Jack Taylor" wrote:

Could it simply be down to a bit of over-zealous fault reporting?

No, the reliability figures are based on miles per casualty, a
casualty being defined as a fault which causes a delay of five or more
minutes. Air-con faults do not normally result in a train being
delayed. Faults with engines, doors, couplers, TPWS, etc do, and when
a train sits down on the line with one of those, there's no question
of under-reporting it.

W14_Fishbourne wrote:

No, the reliability figures are based on miles per casualty, a
casualty being defined as a fault which causes a delay of five or more
minutes. Air-con faults do not normally result in a train being
delayed. Faults with engines, doors, couplers, TPWS, etc do, and when
a train sits down on the line with one of those, there's no question
of under-reporting it.

In that case I definitely don't believe that they have got *that*
dramatically worse. You couldn't travel up and down the line (almost
exclusively on 165s) as much as I do and not notice at least some
cancellations or have some problems en route. The only thing that I have
noticed is the more regular use of the 121 on the branch during the day,
periodically, which is generally cover for when depot-based refurbishment
work or mods are being undertaken on 165s.