Standard EMUs haven't been built since BR really - even the supposedly uniform Class 377s are a mess of different designs bodged to work together.
The only reason electrification is going anywhere is because of the massive surplus of Mark 3 derived EMUs. This is not going to continue forever - after all the current programme is in sufficiently dire straights that most of them will be being converted into razor blades.
Standard meaning not a bi-mode or battery-powered unit. Basically an EMU which could be tagged onto whatever order is going, like how the TransPennine 350s were the option on the London Midland order or the new Gatwick Express 387s are on the normal 387 order. Your interpretation of my use of the word is bizarre.
After that we will be back to hard nose economics - and diesels turn out to be cheap to own and operate.
The amount of track to be electrified per EDMU replaced is enormous once the main lines are complete - and thus the lines won't be electrified is because it will be cheaper to simply run diesels for ever.
This is essentially the situation that prevailed between 1993 and 2008.
But half of those places are not going to be electrified - there has been and will be no attempt to electrify the lines on Tyneside and Teeside that are not already electrified - the MML programme is dying on its feet and Birmingham-Derby will have its case obliterated by HS2.
You seem to have completely missed the point here. Passenger numbers are growing across the entire network and rail travel is becoming more and more important across city regions the length and breadth of the country. When passenger numbers grow so strongly, it doesn't matter whether there's a current surplus of Mk3 EMUs or not, as the economics of electrification improve and the economics of not electrifying get worse. The economics of electrifying a line seeing two 2-car Class 170s every hour aren't going to be very good, since there's such a high capital cost and the marginal cost of running them as diesel services is low. When that line starts seeing four 4-car or 6-car DMUs an hour to cope with increased demand, along with additional station calls to serve new markets, the economics of electrification improve dramatically. The capital cost of electrification is the same, but the costs are spread across a much larger passenger market and the marginal cost of running those extra services on electric power is much reduced. The marginal cost of running them as diesel services increases, since every extra carriage has another diesel engine rumbling away and every extra station call means another wasteful deceleration and acceleration taking more time than an electric equivalent would.
The very first services to be electrified were local services because the economic case for doing so is so slam-dunk. The intensity of these local services is only going to go up, and there's no real alternative to running these on proper electric power rather than going for bi-mode or battery power. Both these options make sense for short extensions of electrified services onto non-electrified lines, but the sorts of services I'm talking about are ones which don't do this. There's no point running a bi-mode train on the Tees Valley Line since it only touches the wires at Darlington. There is a huge demand for such improved local services all across the country, especially since they are necessary now for housing developments as road networks are mostly at capacity.
Electrically hauled freight has been dying, slowly and painfully, since BR was dismantled.
Loco changes or electrodiesels will almost certainly be more expensive than simply hauling a second 66 or 70 around, DiT until the steep section.
Electrically hauled freight makes sense when there's enough of a network to make entire freight flows electric. Would total electrification be justified by freight flows alone? No. What I'm arguing is that the need for electric local services makes a case for more electric long distance services using the wires which fill the gaps between stations (remember, electric local services means you have to electrify the complicated bits in and around the major stations, where most of the expensive bridges and signalling works need done). Once the core mainline network has been electrified, the case for wiring the final miles to freight terminals becomes reasonable since it is more economical to run an electric locomotive than a 66 on a long distance freight service, especially on a busy line where the increased performance of an electric makes pathing easier.
