West Midlands Trains Class 196s

A couple of weeks ago I took an impromptu trip to the West Midlands to have a ‘railday’ and try out some new trains. West Midlands Trains (WMT) began introducing the class 196 to services between Birmingham New Street and Shrewsbury back in October, and they now operate the majority of services on the route.

Ordered to replace the incumbent class 170s that were due to be cascaded to East Midlands Railway, the class 196s have been constructed by Spanish manufacturer CAF, with the first of the type being delivered to Tyseley depot in April 2020. Obviously Covid-19 has had an impact on their introduction with both fault free running and driver training being delayed as a result of the pandemic, however 17^th October 2022 marked the first revenue service of the fleet.

In total WMT have ordered 26 class 196s, with these a mix of two-car (196/0s) and four-car (196/1s) units. Along with the Birmingham-Shrewsbury route these are also planned to be used on the Birmingham-Hereford route along with services between Oxford and Milton Keynes on East West Rail once that opens (supposedly in late 2023).

Generally I find the class 170s to have the most comfortable seats on the network, and so the 196s have big shoes to fill. I took a couple of rides on the class 196s between Birmingham and Shrewsbury and whilst the seats are probably not quite as comfortable as the 170s, they are certainly comfortable enough for the hour-long journey through the West Midlands and Shropshire and are miles better than some modern seats.

However, overall passenger comfort on the 196s is higher, with the units having both USB and standard power sockets at every pair of seats and onboard Wi-Fi that was both reliable and of a decent speed. There are also screens in each section of the train providing journey information along with connections at each of the stations and a mix of both ‘airline’ style and table seating, allowing me to write most of this post whilst I was on the move.

To be honest, the only negative I could find on board the 196s was the very loud and rather ‘shouty’ automated announcements which I could hear clearly despite my noise cancelling headphones. Whether this is just a setting that can be changed or if it’s the actual announcement recording that’s the issue I don’t know, but hopefully WMT can resolve this in the near future.

The new trains also vastly increase the capacity on the routes with a pair of two-car class 170/5s having roughly 250 seats between them, whilst a four-car class 196/1 has 311 seats, a more than 24% increase in capacity. Even a pair of two-car 196/0s provides a 12.8% increase with 282 seats and despite the increase in capacity, there is still plenty of leg room.

Obviously the new units meet all of the passengers with reduced mobility (PRM) legislation, with wheelchair spaces, accessible toilets and clear markings as to where to board the trains. Unfortunately, as with the vast majority of the rolling stock being introduced in the UK, level boarding is not achieved with ramps being required for wheelchair users to board.

Its good to see more modern units being introduced onto the British railway network, however its obviously disappointing that these have locked in a lack of level boarding for another 30-40 years. However, these units are a positive step forward for the West Midlands and I look forward to using them on other parts of the network in the future.