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VOYAGER DIESEL ELECTRIC MULTIPLE UNITS
As a result, I now own a first-generation Dapol model of 220 002 "Forth Voyager" in its original Virgin Trains Cross Country livery. Although making more noise under way than later Dapol representations, this is a finely detailed item with the four vehicles being closely coupled by magnets in place of the bar couplings used on the 12" to the foot version. As a result, the train has to be assembled in the right order or the magnets will repel instead of attracting one another.
Since 8 December 2007 diesel electric multiple unit 220 002 - comprising Driving Motor Second 60302, Motor Second Restaurant Buffet 60202, Motor Second 60702 and Driving Motor First 60402 - has been operated without a name by Arriva Trains Cross Country and is pictured below at Manchester Piccadilly station..
And since the first Voyager designs left the Bombardier works in Bruges, Belgium, in 2000 very similar Meridian and Pioneer sets have also begun service for East Midlands and Hull Trains while tilting Super Voyagers continue in both Arriva and Virgin Trains West Coast service.
In their many forms, Voyager units are now a common sight all over Britain and their design philosophy and deployment history tell us much about the privatized railways of the early 21st Century.
Bombardier was to be the total Train Service Provider throughout the life of CrossCountry franchise, up to the year 2012. With a maximum speed of 125 mph, these Class 220 trains were designed for ease of maintenance and a high level of passenger comfort with very quiet interiors. The high power to weight ratio and electric transmission were also designed to allow high acceleration resulting in improved journey times.
Indeed, being a diesel electric rather than diesel hydraulic or diesel mechanical set train allowed the 750 bhp 1800 rpm Cummins QSK 19 engine under each carriage to turn an alternator and so contribute to the electrical current available to each longitudinally body mounted Alstom Onix 800 three phase traction motor, one of which powered one axle on each bogie through a cardan shaft and axle-mounted final drive gearbox. In the event of one diesel engine failing in service there would still be another three to power the eight traction motors of the train.
My first impression on seeing a brand new Voyager 220 009 at Preston station on 11 September 2001 was the thick black cables between each vehicle and the warning sign “Shut down engines, isolate 110v batteries and wait 3 minutes before proceeding
beyond this cover"
This design feature also harked back to the1959 vintage Blue Pullman diesel trains which comprised both trailer and non-driving motor cars between driving motor brake vehicles. The driving motor brakes were fitted with North British MAN 1 000 bhp prime movers in engine rooms behind semi-streamlined driving cabs. Electric transmission then energised GEC traction motors under the driving motor brakes and motor parlour and motor kitchen cars. Sadly all Blue Pullman units were scrapped from 1972 so the only way to directly compare them would be in model form..
The provision of Dellner couplings at the outer ends of each Voyager set also allowed two four car sets to work in multiple or be rescued in an emergency by a Class 221 or 222 DEMU or by a suitably Dellner coupling fitted Class 57/3 "Thunderbird" locomotive.
Each unit additionally featured at-seat entertainment, sockets for laptop computers and mobile telephones and efficient external and internal passenger information displays, as well as the convenience of wheelchair-accessible toilets with baby changing facilities.
The wheelchair-accessible toilets, dominating one end of each vehicle except for the MSRB, were certainly the largest and most comfortable ever fitted on a British train and the utilisation of the 34 units at a purpose built depot at Central Rivers near Burton upon Trent proved the ease of maintenance designed into them.
In addition to Central Rivers, English Welsh and Scottish Railways sub-contracted operations in 14 smaller overnight servicing depots for Virgin Class 220 Voyagers and 221 Super Voyagers including Three Bridges, Sussex, Eastleigh, Old Oak Common and Barton Hill, Bristol.
Each Voyager unit has an unrefueled range of 1 350 miles and Class 220 Voyagers and Class 222 Meridian units can be distinguished from the tilting Class 221 Super Voyagers by their 2 250mm wheelbase Bombardier B5005 bogies in which the hollow axles are supported by bearings between the wheels, thus leaving the outer wheel faces exposed.
Built at Crespin in France, the disc-braked B5005 is a development of the B5000 bogie produced in 1991 by RFS Specialist Rail Products in collaboration with British Rail Research for the Networker EMUs and DMUs then being ordered in quantity by Network SouthEast. Initially used under trailers, a powered version with AC motors and 25 tonne pivot load followed in 1994.
The lightweight B5005 bogies also give the Class 220 Voyagers a Route Availability Index of 2, allowing them over most parts of the British railway network and also radically lowering the amount of damage that each Voyager does to the track it runs over compared to locomotive hauled trains or InterCity 125s.
Along with the use of inboard journals and shorter axles, the B5005 also offers a 60% reduction in frame mass with primary suspension achieved by a simple free-rubber Metacone, with longitudinal traction rod, that sits directly on top of the axleboxes and eliminates the need for hydraulic dampers. For speeds of up to 125mph, the B5005s on the Class 220s also feature a secondary air suspension although rubber Metacones with an emergency vertical damper permit degraded operation if an air-spring deflates.
As trackside hotbox detectors are set to scan outboard journals, fusible plugs melt if the axleboxes overheat. This results in a loss of air pressure that triggers a warning light in the cab.
As well as Bruges, Class 220 Voyagers were also assembled by Bombardier at Horbury near Wakefield and tested during 2001 and 2002 on the Monk Bretton branch, also near Wakefield, and on the East Coast Main Line (ECML) Serco undertook all the formal Acceptance Testing and a multitude of train operations on the class 220 fleet including commissioning runs on every unit and the train maintenance depot created at Crofton for these trials still remains to service Voyager, Meridian, Class 170 and Class 180 units.
As introduced by Virgin Trains Cross Country the Class 221 Super Voyagers were named after famous travellers and the Class 220 Voyagers were by 2003 named thus:
| 220 001 | Maiden Voyager | 220 018 | Dorset Voyager |
| 220 002 | Forth Voyager | 220 019 | Mersey Voyager |
| 220 003 | Solent Voyager | 220 020 | Wessex Voyager |
| 220 004 | Cumbrian Voyager | 220 021 | Blackpool Voyager |
| 220 005 | Guildford Voyager | 220 022 | Brighton Voyager |
| 220 006 | Clyde Voyager | 220 023 | Mancunian Voyager |
| 220 007 | Thames Voyager | 220 024 | Sheffield Voyager |
| 220 008 | Draig Gymreig / Welsh Dragon | 220 025 | Severn Voyager |
| 220 009 | Gatwick Voyager | 220 026 | Stagecoach Voyager |
| 220 010 | Ribble Voyager | 220 027 | Avon Voyager |
| 220 011 | Tyne Voyager | 220 028 | Black Country Voyager |
| 220 012 | Lanarkshire Voyager | 220 029 | Vyajer Kernewek / Cornish Voyager |
| 220 013 | Gwibiwr De Cymru / South Wales Voyager | 220 030 | Devon Voyager |
| 220 014 | South Yorkshire Voyager | 220 031 | Tay Voyager |
| 220 015 | Solway Voyager | 220 032 | Grampian Voyager |
| 220 016 | Midland Voyager | 220 033 | Fife Voyager |
| 220 017 | BOMBARDIER Voyager | 220 034 | Yorkshire Voyager |
| 221 101 | Louis Bleriot | 221 123 | Henry Hudson |
| 221 102 | John Cabot | 221 124 | Charles Lindbergh |
| 221 103 | Christopher Columbus | 221 125 | Henry The Navigator |
| 221 104 | Sir John Franklin | 221 126 | Captain Robert Scott |
| 221 105 | William Baffin | 221 127 | Wright Brothers |
| 221 106 | Willem Barents | 221 128 | Captain John Smith |
| 221 107 | Sir Martin Frobisher | 221 129 | George Vancouver |
| 221 108 | Sir Ernest Shackleton | 221 130 | Michael Palin |
| 221 109 | Marco Polo | 221 131 | Edgar Evans |
| 221 110 | James Cook | 221 132 | William Spiers Bruce |
| 221 111 | Roald Amudsen | 221 133 | Alexander Selkirk |
| 221 112 | Ferdinand Magellan | 221 134 | Mary Kingsley |
| 221 113 | Sir Walter Raleigh | 221 135 | Donald Campbell |
| 221 114 | Sir Francis Drake | 221 136 | Yuri Gagarin |
| 221 115 | Sir Francis Chichester | 221 137 | Mayflower Pilgrims |
| 221 116 | David Livingstone | 221 138 | Thor Heyerdahl |
| 221 117 | Sir Henry Morton Stanley | 221 139 | Leif Erikson |
| 221 118 | Mungo Park | 221 140 | Vasco da Gama |
| 221 119 | Amelia Earhart | 221 141 | Amerigo Vespucci |
| 221 120 | Amy Johnson | 221 142 | Mathew Flinders |
| 221 121 | Charles Darwin | 221 143 | Auguste Picard |
| 221 122 | Doctor Who | 221 144 | Prince Madoc |
Although adding to the allure of each new train set, names were also useful for identification as the numbers only appeared in small type below platform level.
220 009 "Gatwick Voyager" made history on 28 September 2001 by becoming the first of its class to operate on a preserved railway with testing and training carried out on the Bo’ness & Kinneil line in Scotland. On the same day 220 018 bucked the trend of including “Voyager” in any name by being christened “Central News” at Birmingham New Street. However, the event was not broadcast on its namesake BBC TV show ( which still airs nightly at 1800 ) until 1 October and the 2003 Platform 5 Combined Motive Power recorded 220 018 as being named "Dorset Voyager".
220 006 subsequently became “Clyde Voyager” at Carstairs on 25 October 2001, just after it had run south from Edinburgh Waverley coupled to 220 002 which had just been named “Clyde Voyager”. This marked the first passenger carrying Voyager journey north of the Border and Railtrack certification of all Scottish routes for Voyager operation.
220 034 “Yorkshire Voyager” meanwhile became the last of the Class 220 Voyager sets to leave Bombardier’s Wakefield factory on 13 December 2001, leaving both Wakefield and Bruges plants free to concentrate on the production of 44 tilting Super Voyager trains.
Even more importantly, the desire for a high power to weight ratio - to facilitate good acceleration - was to result in an under-floor engine configuration at odds with noise levels being kept low in the passenger accommodation. A conventional train - with a twin cabbed diesel locomotive at one end - or an InterCity 125, with a streamlined one-cab locomotive at each end - both tend to concentrate engine noise at the ends of the train. Similarly, having four engines per train instead of two or one has increased the risk of fires in the exhaust systems if these units are not properly re-assembled after maintenance.
Another design feature which caused some teething troubles in service was the rheostatic braking with roof mounted resistors. Debris such as lumps of wood from trees or small birds on occasions became lodged in these hot grids and started fires while inundation with sea water whilst running through Dawlish on the South Devon coast caused control software to shut down the whole train.
Luckily this software issue was soon addressed, but the Class 220 Voyagers remained in four car sets whilst replacing seven or eight car InterCity 125s. Although the idea behind the new four car trains was to use them on more frequent services the upsurge in rail travel and transportation since the early 1990s has had the effect of making timetable pathways more scarce than ever. Additionally, because the Voyager units are only internally gangwayed a train manager cannot access more than one unit at a time if two units are coupled together to make an 8 car train.
Another debatable feature common to the Voyagers and many modern multiple unit trains is the reliance on powered air conditioning. This creates a pleasant environment when working correctly but in the event of failure the air in the carriage soon becomes difficult to breathe and, unlike the Mark III carriages on the InterCity 125s, there is no possibility of opening a door droplight.
As a result, now that Arriva rather than Virgin Trains are the sole operators of the 34 Class 220 Voyagers, the shop has been deleted and replaced with extra luggage and bicycle stowage space. Each four car set now comprises:
Coach A with 26 First Class seats in 2+1 arrangement.
Coach C with 70 Standard Class seats in 2+2 arrangement.
Coach D with 68 Standard Class seats, luggage space and reservable space for three bicycles.
Coach F with 44 Standard Class seats in a quiet zone, disabled seating and stowage area for the catering service trolley - replacing the shop - just behind the driving cab.
