It would take all the spare capacity at Moor Street, and given that it's currently a pretty horrible change to New Street it would heavily impact on dozens of interchanges people currently make at new Street. Most importantly though, it requires the moor st terminators to go via Coventry (for interchange at Coventry or international), and there isn't a line that does that.
Not unless somebody wired the line to Leamington spa while I wasn't looking. There also isn't the capacity down the Coventry to Leamington spa line, otherwise the cross countrys would both be going down it
HSTS aren’t compatible with 220/221, so there’s actually no need for 222s to be compatible either.
Dedicate the 222s to the Edinburgh - Plymouth services and I don't see why there'd be a problem. That's about 21 diagrams, so the 27 class 222s would be a pretty good fit, allowing for a modicum of doubling up (Using the 4 x 4-car units) and a couple of maintenance spares. Though unfortunately that's not going to be a possibility until 2023 at the earliest.
If it's just a case of removing the ATP gear, ScotRail are doing that at the minute for theirs so it's not exactly impossible, or costly compared to the automatic doors. I would guess that once you refurbed it all at least a bit and done necessary staff training then the costs aren't that much different, and the timescales would be similar. The choice then is between technically well-understood stock that's really old but still in wide fleet use and reasonably comfortable, against more oldish stuff that's a bad passenger experience, runs okay but is a bit a gas guzzler and has systems nobody will understand in 15 years. Personally I'd go with maybe 10 HSTs, and then aim to go to bi-modes within 5-10 years. Wouldn't surprise me if instead they decided to do neither and just let the current situation carry on
Who knows, the DfT still haven't awarded the new franchise! It's a fair bet that the 221s will go at some point during the franchise term but it's by no means certain.
And for the other power car, a pantograph and transformer gear. Come on boffins, how hard can it be!Agreed and to be quite honest it's the doors and the wider accessibility issues that rate against re-using GWR HSTs on XC rather than having to remove the ATP equipment.
Wonder if anyone has considered how practical it would be to fit the right voltage transfer into the luggage area of a HST power car so you could sandwich some Mk4s between them they're basically fully compliant and will very soon by off-lease in very large numbers!
Most XC trains run for at least 4 hours and often well over 6. Most of them will hit a peak somewhere. How would you allocate HSTs to the peaks?
Technically speaking, Crosscountry don't own any of the 220s or 221s to sell them, nor is it likely that they would buy HSTs outright - They would lease them from the Rolling Stocking Owning Company (ROSCO) that owns them. There's a limit to how long Crosscountry HSTs can be before their poorer power to weight ratio impinges on schedules based around Voyager timings, though that doesn't have to be a show stopper: Even a 2+6 HST offers far greater capacity than a 4 car Voyager.
I'd say it was more a lack of events that took over the plan!
There is only one service each hour which has to reverse each hour anyway and that is the Reading to Newcastle services and those ones usually have plenty of time to do this, especially the northbound ones.