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East Anglia Branch News - Snippets Issue 262 - 25/02/2015

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News from the East Anglian Branch of Railfuture, Edited by Martin Thorne and Jerry Alderson.

Railfuture News Snippets 262 - 25/02/2015



Railfuture East Anglia will hold its AGM in Bury St Edmunds on Saturday 28th February 2015. The guest speaker will be Alan Neville of Abellio Greater Anglia, who has spoken to Railfuture on numerous occasion before. He is now the manager of Liverpool Street station (see flier). A reminder that the flier for the next or most recent meeting can always be found at http://www.railfuture.org.uk/east/meetings/.


ROLLING STOCK
Rail Engineer magazine takes an in-depth look at Greater Anglia's independently-powered electric multiple unit (IPEMU) train

The February 2015 edition of Rail Engineer magazine (click HERE looked behind the scenes of the 'independently-powered' electric train (IPEMU) that means using a battery for power, four-carriage EMU train being trialled by Abellio Greater Anglia on the Harwich branch, a story covered in Snippets over the last two years (see [Snippets 247] and [Snippets 256]) as it progressed at a snail's pace.

The article described how eight tonnes of batteries positioned under the frame of the Class 379 Electrostar motor car. The operation of trains running on batteries goes back a century (they were used in ammunition dumps to avoid the possibility of sparks) and London Underground uses battery locomotives for engineering work. The novel use here is with passenger services for an extended period of time during the day. As everyone knows the deal issue with batteries is the need to recharge them frequently and the long time taken to do so. As passenger needs increase, with the expectation of air-conditioning, intensive lighting, flushing toilets. Wi-Fi and charging points for laptops and mobile devices, the issue defeating the widespread introduction of battery-powered trains deem to be getting worse, rather than easer with the improvement of battery technology, hence the need for a trial, particularly of the Class 379 as it has all of these facilities. The last major trial in Britain had been the Hayabusa freight locomotive around 2007.

For the tests the Class 379 was fitted with 396 3.2Volt cells (each the size of an AA battery) with 12 cells connected in series (making 38.4Volts) with 33 rows conneected in parallel to form a battery. The train had 20 of these connected in series to form a 768V "Volt Pod". Two of these were conencted in parallel to form a "Volt Module". Three of these were connected in parallel to form a "Volt Battery Raft". Finally two of these rafts were connected to solebar of the pantrograph so that they could be charged through the overhead line and also using regenerative braking.

Since the the cost of electrification plays a key factor in deciding whether to expand the electrified network (only 60% is believed to ever justify electrificaiton infrastrcture, evne fi costs can be kept down) the government and rail industy is eager to find alternative solutions that supports electric traction. The trail on the line beteeen and Manningtree and Harwich International station has finished after a period of about five weeks commenicng 12th January, which was considered sufficient to provide the concept and identify its capabilities. The batteries have now been removed from the Class 379 train. The trial was the first battery-powered train to run on Britain's rail network in more than half a century. The project was developed by a partnership between Network Rail, the Department for Transport, Bombardier, Abellio Greater Anglia and railway innovation body FutureRailway.


Abellio Greater Anglia unveils the first of its upgraded Mark 3 coaches as part of its £12m refurbishment programme

Keywords: [GreaterAnglia]

On 2nd February 2015 Abellio Greater Anglia has just introduced in service the first of its upgraded Mark 3 coaches (used on Norwich to London Liverpool Street services), which will have a major refresh as part of a £12m programme (part of a wider investment of over £31.5m in customer-focused improvements), which will see 119 carriages refurbished at a specially prepared facility at Norwich Crown Point by the end of its short franchise, which ends in October 2016. Only one coach of the set was put into service to get feedback. The first full set of refurbished carriages is due to enter service in spring 2015.

Passengers should see significant benefits from the latest upgrade (coming eight years since the completion of the last refresh of those trains), which includes installing plug points in both first class and standard carriages, new LED lighting, new carpets, new tables, new seat covers, and upgraded environmentally-friendly controlled emission toilets.


Railfuture East Anglia Branch News Snippets 262 - 25/02/2015

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