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RAIL’s latest train test is the Stadler Class 745 12-car inter-city electric multiple unit. Is it better than a rake of Mk 3 coaches? PIP DUNN investigates
Ever since the mid-1980s, locomotive haulage has been deemed as expensive and (sometimes) inflexible.
There is an element of truth to that, but for passengers it was often a better travelling experience, especially for diesel trains.
Locomotive haulage had many advantages -least of all the ability to add or remove coaches as required to meet demand, although that too added to the costs incurred by shunting vehicles in and out of sets.
The optimum was push-pull operation with a driving trailer at the other end, and fixed (or near fixed)-formation coaching stock. That was the solution that gave the benefits of a multiple unit -no need to run round or shunt release trains at terminals, and the benefits of no noisy underfloor engines and the ability to swap the locomotive if it failed without rendering the whole trainset out of service.
That said, for multi-engined diesel multiple units, losing one engine would not (typically) need a train to be cancelled or terminated-so there are advantages and disadvantages for both types of trains.
But since the mid-1980s, multiple units have been the preferred operation for just about every route. And those remaining locomotive-hauled trains had morphed into ‘multiple units’ anyway -with their DVTs and fixed sets.
One of the last operations for inter-city locomotive haulage was on Greater Anglia’s Norwich-London Liverpool Street route, using Class 90 AC electric locomotives.
These 110mph machines were at the London end of the train, next to First Class on a rake of Mk 3 coaches. A fleet of 15 Porterbrook locomotives (90001-015) was maintained at Norwich Crown Point depot -hence them being at the London end of the train, so that they could easily be removed from a set at Norwich.
The Class 90s, which date from 1987-90 (Anglia’s were built in 1987-88), had replaced Class 86s in the early ’00s. The Mk 3 coaches dated from the late 1970s and early 1980s. Initially, GA hired Freightliner locomotives, replacing the majority of elderly Class 86s (dating from 1965-66) working with Mk 2 coaches from the early 1970s.
But the time of the ‘90s’ came to an end during COVID. A fleet of ten 12-car Stadler Class 745/0 inter-city units was ordered by GA in 2016, with the first entering service on January 8 2020.
The last Class 90 used was on March 24 2020. There had been two or three trains worked by Class 321 electric multiple units in the timetable pre-pandemic, but the core inter-city service (half-hourly, plus a couple of peak extras) was always ‘90s’ and Mk 3s.
GA went straight from ‘90s’ to Class 745s. The last 745/0 into passenger service was in summer 2020, following acceptanc
