Transport for Wales Class 175! The Welsh Workhorse! 

The Class 180 Adelante DMU's are loved by passengers as much as they are loathed by staff. With a First Class carriage and a Buffet they would be ideal units for the long rural branch line which meanders between the villages of Cardiff, Newport, Bristol, Bath, Salisbury, Southampton and Portsmouth. But GWR knows its market and dedicates slow, noisy and underpowered Thames Turbo units to this route, realising that it has no potential for business travel.

@@DaveSuperThomas There have been many attempts to resolve the 180 problems. They suffer from many niggles rather than one major flaw, and the faults are hard to pin down. The 30 class 458 units had similar troubles and that lost Alstom the SWR fleet replacement contract. I understand that Alstom engineers were put on the challenging task of commissioning the Pendolino fleet and the other new trains did not get their teething troubles fixed. I had expected that the the ROSCOs would have gone in for locomotives and stock in push pull mode so as to maximise flexibility and create a sort of spot market. I also expected much higher use of refurbishment to get the most out of the BR legacy fleet. A lot of the mark one fleet went 15 years early and a lot of expensive serviceable components could have been recovered and reused. Here in Sweden there is still a lot of stock running on B4-style bogies, and older stock is still giving good service in places like Bulgaria. I guess that the newer generation of railway managers have got the idea that you change your trains like you change your mobile phones. The spread of female managers might be a factor. but the result is overcrowded trains with the seats crammed in. Also they are full of complex sub systems. If there are not problems with corrosion or fatigue then trains should last about 50 years. I don't particularly like them but trains like the 365s are too new to be going for scrap if they do not have metal fatigue. I would have thought that they would be good for battery or hydrogen propulsion or as dual modes with generator cars. The finances are distorted by artificially low interest rates and modern stock needs to be kept in warm storage, which means that it cannot be held in reserve for long. Some HST power cars have gone to Europe and are working as pairs for freight haulage but the mainstream railways want new trains. The engineering on the newer trains here in Sweden is awful, same goes for trams. Too complicated and they give a rough ride, which also means that they bash up the track. The situation is better with freight though they are running freight trains too fast. At least they don't try to design freight trains for forecourt appeal.

@@ironmantrains As I understand it the 175 and 180 design was done by some of the former BREL team. The bay dimension was reduced from 2.1 to 1.90 metres which is why the seat bays align correctly. This change was brought in with the BREL International. I am not sure if the very efficient Mark 3 construction system with joggled top hat section pillars was adopted. Do you have any information on this?

No surprise that they are well designed if BREL engineers helped with the design

Class 170 and 185 are great too

I've gotten on at Haverfordwest a couple times. Amazing sights to see. One of the many great things of travelling by train.

Yes would love to see route to Milford Haven 🤞

Been to Pembroke Dock year's ago on HST

I regularly get this train to and from Swansea, I quite enjoy the 4 hour journey.

Llanelli to carmarthen is amazing views

This. HMP Shrewsbury is basically next door to the railway station - if you're on Platform 7 you'll see the remains of the old prison platform.

Doesn't it span the River Mersey, so beloved of Gerry Marsden and the Pacemakers?

@@DaveSuperThomas Yes, though it isn’t a ferry!😀. Stockport County is the nearest football ground to the Mersey.

Isn't the poet E. A. Housman - author of "A Shropshire lad" - buried in Ludlow Churchyard, beneath a flowering Cherry tree? "Lovliest of trees, the Cherry now ....."

That would make good sense, but I think the CAF units are destined for this route.

@@MervynPartin Correct, seems a weird choice IMO.

@@iman2341 Weird? I'd say it was the wrong choice, or a terrible choice, but not weird since 'suburbanisation' of long-distance routes has been going on for a while with the Turbostar family etc. I'm not too keen on the FLIRTs for, but bi-modal trains would make sense if buying new. In my view, procurement of new trains without at least passive provision for a pantograph should have been banned shortly before Northern ordered the class 195s.

they appear to have a buffet from what i’ve seen

Unfortunately there are not nearly enough mark 4 sets incoming to cover all the long-distance routes (and the mark 4s can't even work on the Cambrian lines at all) so TfW are going to have to either keep the class 158s and 175s or introduce the awful 197s on long journeys.

TFW 158s are 2 carriages tho not 3 like some companies of 158s are so on Birmingham to Aberystwyth and Pwllheli they are 4 carriages unless sometimes there 2 then you need to change in Machynlleth and for Birmingham to holyhead they are Birmingham 4 carriages to Shrewsbury with the back 158 goes back to Birmingham with the train from North Wales but sometimes they do keep the 4 carriage 158 to holyhead or Llandudno Junction but saying that they do put a 153 with 158 from Chester to holyhead. I hope I made sense

@@SionsTrainVideos that is what I meant it starts as 4 and spilts en route but during the hight of the summer peak you are very lucky to get a seat by the time it leaves new street

@@shaneD7378 must be a very busy service then ,it dosnet make sense coz you also get west Midlands railway to Shrewsbury even tho it stops in lots of stations and TfW don't

Sometimes the toilets on 175s are faulty

197s should be 4s and maybe 5s because there is more of them to do combos

Five-car Coradia DMU's do exist. They are called Class 180 Adelantes and have First Class accommodation plus a Buffet.

@@SionsTrainVideos yeah, hopefully more double sets

@@DaveSuperThomas yeah, they're more suited towards intercity instead of regional, I am a fan of the 180s aswell

@@AwesomeAd64 yeah should be because like I said more units. They only have 27 175s

Time spent in Oxford is never wasted.

Damned right 121zoso! Travelled on a horrible 2 coach TfW at the height of Covid restrictions, for a funeral! Manchester to Cardiff. Train rammed. Nice "virtue signalling" by company, with signs saying "keep apart", and back seats blocked! What a farce. Arrived at Crewe, train already full, but PA says "Please move down the carriage, customers waiting to board" FFS, this was the height of the pandemic! What a bunch of Charlatans. If you can avoid this company, do so. Love to all train lovers. But not TfW.

This train company is awful the service on my local line to ebbw vale is often late or cancelled very frequently the trains are clapped out ex Anglia class 170 units that need a good refurbishment

Didn't know that!

Thanks!

All of the seats in First Class on South Western Railway's Class 444 EMU's and Class 159 DMU's used to be very comfortable and, what's more, were laid out in 2+1 format across the aisle. Now, in an effort to persuade more passengers to buy Weekend First supplements on Saturdays, Sundays and Bank Holidays, SWR is replacing the comfortable 2+1 seats with uncomfortable 2+2 seats. I'm sure that it will work wonders for their revenue stream over the remaining lifetime of these units.

I so agree with you! Seats with proper rake and padding to enable sleep without the head falling forward. From being someone who always enjoyed rail, travel I now dread it due to the uncomfortable seats found on most operators coaches.

@@robertp.wainman4094, this particular rail company needs to invest in double-deck passenger cars if it's going to do this.

I've never seen a 150 with the same seats as a 175; only the 180s have the same seats as far as I know. Sadly it seems the Welsh aren't allowed comfortable seats either. When KeolisAmey won the franchise back in 2018 they promised that the 175s (and the 24 TfW class 158s, which also have nice seats) would be sent off-lease and replaced by brand new class 197s with ironing board seats. When the government-owned body TfW found out about this, they paid KeolisAmey extra to 'upgrade' the seats on the new trains but instead of choosing nice seats the 'upgrade' is just replacing the 'ironing boards' originally planned with the similarly unpopular 'interogation centre seats' found on the Hitachi class 800/801/802 trains. That's far from the only problem with the new 197s, compared to 175s the new trains also have less tables, less legroom, less toilets, no interior vestible doors and smaller luggage stacks. The only things you gain on a 197 are unit-end gangways appear to be (these being about the only good thing I have to say about the 197s) standing room and draughts from outside whenever anyone opens the exterior doors. By buying new diesel trains, TfW have also pushed back the date of efficient rail decarbonisation (ie. removal of diesel trains when they are due for retirement rather than with many years life left in them) by many years.

Class 158 run on this line aswell they are great trains to travel on.

That must be why Transport for Wales is planning to introduce Mark 4 carriages with First Class seating (and a Restaurant Car serving breakfast, lunch and dinner) on the "North and West" travel corridor between Swansea and Manchester. Just as soon as the locomotive and the driving van trailer can be persuaded to talk to one another!

TFWr are also introducing Class 67 + Mk.3 coaching sets for services between Manchester and Swansea as a more intercity style service starting in December 2022, should help take the strain of the 197's when they arrive!

@@jamesmorten6571 ​ thats good, I didn't know about that. They should still retain the 175s as spares to use during busy times as the 197s will probably provide little or no increased capacity, but hopefully the new service will. Shame to see those 175s leave though :(

Oh...Lol. Yes,I can hear it ,kinda loud !! Lol.😅💜🥁🐉🎤🎶🎄🚉🍾🥂💞

They run between Chester and Manchester Airport as well!

Indeed. Hopefully the Mark 4s should alleviate this slightly, but the 197s, with fewer 3 cars than the 175s, are unlikely to do much.

The 2-car class 175s would (apart from the 100mph top speed being overkill) in my view be ideal for the Heart Of Wales Line (Swansea-Shrewsbury). That isn't a short route by any means (it takes something like 4 hours) so it needs a high-quality comfortable unit like the class 175s BUT with only four trains a day and very few towns of any size on-route the Heart Of Wales service is unlikely to be busy enough to require more than 2 coaches most of the time (for years it was run with a single car class 153 unit with no complaints of overcrowding that I'm aware of).

Holyhead and Cardiff you mean?