In his Informed Sources column in the August 2021 Edition of Modern Railways, Roger Ford has a section with the same sub-title as this post. He discusses what is to happen to the Class 22x fleets of 125 mph diesel trains and then says this about Project Thor, which was an idea of a few years back.
I still believe the addition of a pantograph transformer car to convert a ‘22x’ to a bi-mode has even more potential than the first time round. Routes operated by the CrossCountry ‘22x’ should be early candidates for electrification, and bi-modes are a simple way of boosting the benefits of electrification.
Roger Ford, in his Informed Sources column in August 2021 Modern Railways
Project Thor is described in a section in the Wikipedia entry for the Voyager train, which is entitled Proposed Conversion To Electrical Operation. This is said.
In 2010 Bombardier proposed the conversion of several Voyager multiple units into hybrid electric and diesel vehicles capable of taking power from an overhead pantograph (electro-diesels EDMUs). The proposal was named Project Thor.
It appears that, one of the reasons the project foundered was that Bombardier had no capability to make steel carriages in the UK.
In the July 2018 Edition of Modern Railways, there is an article entitled Bi-Mode Aventra Details Revealed. A lot of the article takes the form of reporting an interview with Des McKeon, who is Bombardier’s Commercial |Director and Global Head of Regional and Intercity.
He also confirmed Bombardier is examining the option of fitting batteries to Voyager DEMUs for use in stations.
In the three years since that brief sentence, technology has moved on. Perhaps most significantly, Hitachi have launched the Hitachi Intercity Tri-Mode Battery Train, which is described in this Hitachi infographic.
One of the issues with the original project Thor was that Bombardier was dependent on Alstom for the traction equipment. As they were competitors, there was speculation that this caused extra cost.
Why such competition wasn’t an issue when the trains were originally built? One needs to remember that these trains were originally bought before Bombardier acquired ADtranz, and at the time Bombardier had no in-house traction supplier.
Now with it all under the Alstom umbrella, one might think that the project could be revived, but adding a pantograph/transformer car is just the start of the required modifications. Probably the most significant is the provision of cables from the pantograph/transformer car to all the other cars to distribute the power. Add to this, the switchgear the control it all and changes to a 20 year old TCMS software (aaarrgghhh!) to control it all.
With the large East Midlands Railway Meridian fleet and the smaller Avanti tilting Voyager fleet soon to be made redundant, perhaps some of those vehicles might be repurposed as pantograph/transformer cars and still have plenty of trains to augment the Cross Country fleet, and there will certainly be capacity to do it as the Aventra production line will soon start to wind down.
I’m sure it is all technically feasible, but is it economically viable? Some of the recent “upcycling” projects of middle aged/old trains have cost a lot more than expected in terms of both time and money.
And finally, there has to be the will and imagination from the key stakeholder to do it.
LBM
But, surely the bugbear of all railway actual electrification in this country – The Treasury – will love it?
Expansive unit conversion, yes, but it is still a lot cheaper than actually doing the really sensible thing, such as electrifying the whole system?
I would expect the DfT & the Treasury to back this, along with more Hydrogen Vapourware, if only so they can kick the can of stringing the knitting even further down the road.
Not that I’m cynical, or anything, of course