RAGNARØKR;1263926 said:
Thereby throwing away ten years' value.
The costs of the HSTs to the ROSCOs will no doubt be fully amortised by 2025 (and probably by 2017), and the track access charges for the TOCs will likely be little different (They may even be lower, given that the IEP uses distributed traction and there are also shorter formation sets) for 5- car and 9-car IEPs compared to what they are for 2+8 HSTs, while the costs of leasing the trains may also be comparable. So what further “value” is there to be gleaned from fifty year old trains?
The life spans of most of the major components of the mark 3 carriages might be able to be spun out to 2035, but from what I remember from that report this would not be without further, extensive, life-extension work and would probably not be applicable to all the vehicles, as additional spare parts will be needed as the carriages continue to age. Life-extending mark 3s to last until 2035 is also not likely going to be commercially or economically desirable for the TOCs involved compared to purchasing new trains.
As
starrymarkb says, it is extremely likely that we will continue to see some HSTs in revenue earning service on the main line into the 2020s. However, I do not envisage that the HST fleet as a whole will make it past 2020 without inroads being made into their numbers.
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Cascaded Class 222s from MML electrification and 221s from XC and ICWC in combination with the current Bi-Mode IEP results in an oversupply. Thats before we consider the Basingstoke wires and other infill...
Precisely: For the sake of argument, I have attempted to roughly plot out a couple of different potential scenarios that would see large numbers of HSTs remaining in service following displacement from the East Coast and GWML.
However, once MML electrification and probable further electrification of Crosscountry routes is taken into account (Even before that, to be honest), the principal conclusion that I can draw is why would any TOC or railway official ever deem it worth bothering? There will be many, more modern trains available for deployment on other routes at around the same time that the HSTs would become available.