The UK has gone bi-mode mad, before one has turned a wheel in commercial service. Yet the obvious candidate is still overlooked
Pan Up
Back in the mists of time, when electrification was cheap and diesel was dear (2011), there was a proposal to convert that second-most despised of passenger vehicles, the Voyager/Meridian genus, to bi-modes – the e-Voyager. It seemed so obvious: they spend much of their time under the wires and idle for hours in covered stations such as Birmingham New Street, spreading unnecessary pollution that is reported to reach dangerous levels. The West Coast units run all the way between London and Glasgow under the wires day in, day out, generating noise, discomfort and pollution.
Who cares? Nobody, itseems.
PRICE TAG
What went wrong? Well, greed basically. The plan was simple enough: build a new Voyager vehicle and fit it out with pantograph, transformer and electrical converter to supply DC power to the traction packages on the other vehicles. The Voyager is perfect for this (I do not believe this sentence has ever been typed before). These trains are diesel-electric, so their diesel engines generate electrical power to a DC link, after which they are basically electric trains …
