Morning, I'm on the DLR, on an old B92 stock from 1992
heading for Beckton this morning to go to the depot
because brand new DLR trains are coming
and we haven't done a video with jaunty music for a while
So let's do one of those
(jaunty upbeat music)
So it's really misty, can you see, here at the depot
And sort of coming out of the mist is an existing train
and we just need to have a little discussion
about how many cars is that train
because I think the DLR would call that a three-car train
But I would call it a six-car train
'cause it's three units of two cars
so really it's six carriages
(sighs) It's so confusing
I'm gonna go with calling it a three-unit train
and there's two carriages in each unit
so it's six carriages, three units
But the DLR call it three
I'd call it six
The point is, (laughs) the new ones are only five
So there's no moving train today
because we've just found it there
They've just poked it a little bit out of the depot
It's a much bigger event than I realised
I thought it was gonna be about five or six people
just some print journalists, myself
you know, some London people
No, no, instead, like people from Spain
from CAF have turned up to come out
TfL top brass are here
The mayor's coming out
It's a big event
(jaunty upbeat music)
Here we go, big moment
New Moquette, stand by
Welcome to your new train
Right, it does go all the way down
So it's a proper walkthrough like a Metropolitan Line
or Circle Line S stock
One unit, five cars
They have retained, as far as I can see here
the driving position at the front
So yes, you can still sit at the front
I think on the old trains there was just
there were two sets of seats, maybe even four
but now there's just one set of double seats
And then, these seats here
The moquette, the moquette is called Poplar
P-O-P-L-A-R, as in, the name of the station
And the grab poles are very nice
Is it turquoise?
I'd call it turquoise
This is turquoisey, right?
You're in the first class
Yeah, right
This is the door control panel for the new train
This is the PA
This one is, re-enable all the door
This is close this door, and this is close all the door
And we have your inhibit neutral and energise
at the bottom here
And that's the same as on the previous dock
So from a operating point of view, that hasn't changed
The display itself has changed as you can see
We now have them symmetrical on both sides
which means if the train docks on the left-hand side
you use your right-hand side to operate the door
If the train docks on the left-hand side
you use your left-hand side to operate the doors
I'm aware that the exposure's all off
but it's the only, oh there we go
It's the only way I can do it
to get this green light in here
a bit like the new 777 stock up from the Merseyrail
They've got the green and red lights above the doors here
and I'm reliably informed that after 45 seconds
I should have timed this perfectly
It's not working
There we go
It flashes, it looks yellow on there
but I swear that's red
Nice
Now, a while ago they started to change
some of the current stocks so that the transverse seating
as in not the side seating
was going, and it's all just side seating
And on the new trains, apart from the very front
as we've already seen
with the forward-facing seats
all the seats are now
It's 11 seats in a row here, by the way
I think on the current unit
there's like seven seats in a row
but I'm not sure if there were like armrests separating
a feature I don't like
But here, you've got the grab poles
and the armrests, separating this run of 11 seats
So I much prefer that design
And it sort of means, with the grab poles
you can like swing down
almost as if you're like Tarzan in the jungle
swinging down, grab grab, grab, grab, grab
Which is cool
Just spotted an obvious thing that everybody likes to ask
I can indeed see a couple of USB ports here
So they're the only ones I spotted
Oh, there's two over there as well
They're dotted down the train, okay
I think the mayor's down there somewhere
I can't go too far
Can't crash the mayor
And getting down into what is very clearly
the accessible area
So you've got a dedicated oh, it's really
oh, this is really good
That's a really, hang on, there's two
There's two areas marked out
as a wheelchair space, priority seats
That's a really nice, spacious
accessible priority area
That's nice
I'm just wondering if it would've been
how much time-
The press officer has been chatting
to the head of design
You've WhatsApp'd the head of design
The head of design has
the press officer is nodding
The head of design has WhatsApp'd you back.
And the official line is that the colour
of the grab poles is not turquoise
It's teal or, show us your phone?
Teal or Jade, they're going with Jade
Could you text him back and ask him what the RGB values are?
That would be really handy
(upbeat jaunty music)
This, you just
Sure. (laughs) This is Harry from
Harry from the BBC just stole my flip-up seat shot
He knows what he's doing
You can't use that shot
I, that's my shot
People who watch the BBC, they'll think
I stole it from you Imitation is the sincerest
form of flattery
Well, thanks for stealing my shot
This is Aaron
Aaron, really quickly
all right, I can see that it's walk-through carriages
It's five cars as one train
There's a great accessibility area
But I have some questions
The displays up here
are they gonna be showing realtime information maps?
Absolutely. Scrolly, tell us
about the displays
Realtime information, moving map
showing your location on the network
Okay
Adjacent operators, rainbow boards
so you'll have all of that information shown on here
A lot of people say that the old DLR trains
they used to sort of hunt a bit
trying to find the right top speed
Yeah
Has that been resolved?
Will you still get like the judder?
And also, is there regenerative braking in there-
Firstly, there is regenerative braking
Okay.
Secondly, this train has been designed
to try and minimise the hunting that you get
on the existing vehicles
So there is improved suspension
different suspension package we see through this
To a certain extent
because of the curvature on the DLR network
we have the incredibly tight curves into Canary Wharf
That creates an incredibly sharp wheel profile
And that's what the suspension
is trying to counteract, to provide that.
We haven't taken the train out on the network yet.
The intention is that it does reduce
and improve that ride quality
Okay
We're now gonna start taking it out on the network
in the next couple of weeks
and that's when we start to test that
Okay, will there be new announcements?
So the PAs, are they recording new announcements,
or will they be the old ones?
You asked me this question the other day
and I'm still waiting for the answer on that
So we don't know
We do know
I don't know
Okay
Give me five minutes, and I can tell you
Oh, (laughs) okay
I'll come back, okay
Currently, it's a six-car train
but it's a three
So, it's a three-car train
It's a three-car train with two carriages in each
But this is one long five-car Five-car, which is
the equivalent of a three-car existing train
Hang on, so they're 87 metres, am I right?
87 metres
Just the same length?
Same length
But all the door positions will have moved
They will have. Oh, that's gonna
upset everyone and their door positions
We've gotta relearn all our door positions. (laughs)
Unfortunately it's not possible
to have the door positions on a five-car train
in the same position as a three-car fixed unit
We did look at that
It was physically impossible to make it work
Is there air con?
Fully air conditioned
Is there WiFi?
No WiFi because we're above ground
for most of the journey
But there is USB charging
USB chargers throughout the train
And you're gonna go and find me out the answer
to the question about, what was the-
About the voice
We'll find, before the end of the video
That's it
Okay, have a good day Aaron, thank you.
Comprehensive, a man- You're welcome
That knows his stuff
Apart from that one
Apart from the one around the voice
which I'm gonna find out now
Bonjour, Paris
That's Callum from MyLondon
He said, "Bonjour, Paris."
It does remind me a little bit of a Paris metro train
I like that
Oh, yeah
Philip's here
Hello, Geoff
What were we thinking, Phil?
It's a step change
when you think about air conditioning, walk-through
It's the things that you'd expect
from other TfL services
that you get on Crossrail on the overground now
and it's bringing that to the DLR
I mean, advertising screens
the digital information systems
So, it's things the DLR hasn't had.
People always wanna know
if the seats are hard or comfy or
it feels like there's a mlotta good back support
Hard to say
You'd have to take like a 20, 30-minute journey
The point is, when you're on the DLR
you're not going for a two-hour train ride
You're doing a short commute
The fact that there's more space
it's definitely more spacious
so you can get more people in
Yeah, feels good
It's Andy, hi
You're always popping up in my videos
Ah, Geoff, sorry about that
You love it, really, don't you?
No, well, maybe
It's when my daughter, my daughter's university friends
send her tweets about you
so there you go. Saying, "I've seen your dad on Geoff's video." Yes, yeah, and this will
probably make another one there
Well, say hello to your daughter
if she's watching
Hi, Ellie
That's not at all weird, okay
How many of these new trains are coming out?
When are they being tested
and when will the public see them?
So 54 new trains
This is the first one
Second one arrives in a matter of a few weeks
We start operational testing
as soon as the second one arrives
You'll have met some of the team today
who'll be driving them
Tests throughout this year, initially overnight
Then we'll be putting them into service during the day
but not for customer use
to really test the frequency
and reliability of the railway
So people might see them
Absolutely. Sort of in between
other trains out and about Come late summer, autumn
Okay, but then passengers
next year, 2024 Passenger service in
early '24
And then we'll be retiring the 92 fleet.
And why are you retiring the 92s?
Because they've served us incredibly well
but they're beyond their design life
They're just sort of life-expired
Yeah, and we have the team here doing an incredible job
maintaining them and keeping them safe
But you know, they're costly to operate, costly to maintain
and of course don't have anything like the capacity
or the customer features that these trains have
They don't, really great
All right, Andy, that's it
Short and sweet
And thank you as ever Nice to see you
See you again?
Cheers, will do. Take care
Yeah. And bye to
your daughter, apparently. (laughs)
Bye, Ellie. (laughs)
(personnel conversing faintly)
Because it's the latest
We're almost finished
Of course, the key thing that you really want to know is
can you still drive them by sitting at the front?
So Aaron's turned back up again
He's got a brilliant fact
and then we'll check in with him
about that PA announcement
So Aaron's just gonna show us this real quick
So we've retained front seats and the windows
so you can still pretend that you're driving the train
which is obviously popular with our customers
both little and large.
In fact, that's pretty much the first thing
anybody asks about the train
It's usually the first question.
"Can I still pretend to drive the train?"
Yes, you can.
The only differences we have on this train
is that this front driving panel is slightly higher
The reason for that is that in modern standards
of train design, we have to do some different things
than you had to do in 1992
So this is higher on this train
because when the passenger service agent
is operating from the front
they have to be able to stand and control it
Having it lower leads to you bending over
which could lead to back injuries
So we've had to change that
It's also deeper, and the reason it's deeper
is modern crashworthiness standards
So we have to have additional equipment
in the front of the train from crashworthiness perspective
And that is why its higher and slightly deeper
than on the existing train
But you can still drive it
Oh yes
Aaron, I wanna see you
pretending to drive it right now
There we go
Yeah, it's all good
Aaron's just shown us this
Staff and the PSAs were actually engaged with
and asked on early stage of the design
So when they're taking control of a train
there's now this panel here
It's locked at the moment
It won't slide out
But imagine this slides out and that just gives them
a bit of segregation
when they're taking control of the train
to drive it manually
That's a nice little touch, yeah
So we're on our way out
Just gonna do my closing piece
I'm gonna clash with Harry, the BBC man
and Aaron was just telling me
is that there could be new passenger announcements coming
They could use the existing ones
but why would you when they're new trains
The person that recorded the old ones
is no longer available
So in all likelihood, they will record new PAs
But a complete decision hasn't been taken yet
But watch this space
I think it'll happen.
So there you go.
That's your new CAF-built, B23 DLR train
on test this year
Watch out for it in passenger service from next year
Press subscribe, thanks for watching
Catch you soon, bye