First, a note of explanation: some readers seem to have been perplexed by aronyms in this monthly table. I have included a handy acronym buster with this month’s contribution (p25), but as regards this page the key one is TIN. A Technical Incident Number is handed out when a service is stopped for three minutes or more due to a train fault. MTIN is miles per TIN: the higher the number, the more miles between TINs and the more reliable the train.
This month’s comparator heritage class is Govia Thameslink Railway’s Class 313, phased out of service from Moorgate suburban duties as this column went to press: more reliable than all but two of the new classes in the table. Unfortunately, I don’t have the figures on the new Moorgate units, the Class 717s, at present, hopefully these will come next month.
With just over two months to go to midnight on 31 December, when non-accessible rolling stock (theoretically) turns back into pumpkins, new fleets are continuing to enter the table.
This month’s newcomers are the Northern Class 331 EMUs and the Greater Anglia Stadler Class 755 bi-modes. But as the number sets in the table shows, deliveries are late and slow.
An analysis of fleet mileages shows that five are averaging over 10,000 miles per train per four-week Reporting Period. A further four fleets are between 5,000 and 10,000 miles.
What may be significant is that the members of the 10,000 miles plus club are also at the top of the table.
Intuitively, more miles run provides more opportunities for problems to show up and be eliminated.
TABLE 4: NEW TRAIN RELIABILITY, PERIOD 5 2019-20
TOC Class Traction Maker Number of units / trainsets Number of Technical Incidents (TIN) Unit Miles Miles/Technical Incident (MTIN) MTIN Moving Annual Average
SWR Class 707 EMU Siemens 30 2 212,755 106,378 46,577
ScotRail Class 385 EMU Hitachi 62 25 705,601 28,224 16,504
GTR Class 313 EMU BREL ? 10 158,496 15,850 14,315
GTR Class 700 EMU Siemens 115 99 1,328,616 13,420 13,233
GWR Class 800 Bi-mode Hitachi 57 77 847,819 11,011 9,422
GWR Class 802 Bi-mode Hitachi 36 62 522,031 8,420 8,381
LNER Class 800 Bi-mode Hitachi 12 26 178,069 6,849 8,279
GWR PRM modified
2+4 HST set Diesel BREL/Wabtec 2 10 99,452 9,945 6,630
TfL Rail (Crossrail) Class 345 RLU EMU Bombardier 16 19 100,936 5,312 6,142
ScotRail HST Set* Diesel BREL/Wabtec 19 25 167,623 6,705 6,138
Northern Class 331/1 EMU CAF 5 9 19,780 2,198 3,869
Northern Class 195/1 DMU CAF 12 22 91,343 4,152 3,515
TfL Rail (Crossrail) Class 345 FLU EMU Bombardier 11 19 8,861 466 3,147
Greater Anglia Class 755 Bi-mode Stadler 2 4 7,472 1,868 1,868
Arriva Rail London Class 710 EMU Bombardier 8 16 36,738 2,296 1,828
Northern Class 195/0 DMU CAF 3 3 3,106 1,035 1,488
West Midlands
Trains Class 230 Diesel Vivarail 3 30 12,555 419 461