That really will be hell of challenge. It’s going to take a lot of 195s and 331s to do that, asuming Northern go for and are able to get more 195s and 331s in time.
I imagine cost will be the issue there. They're also slightly longer than 323s which might affect whether they can be doubled up (which is one of the advantages of 323s at the moment) - I don't think their selective door operation is granular enough.
They aren't, and I say that as someone who will happily admit they have a soft spot for 323s.
I don't think that's an issue. 331s are already seen on routes that used to be operated by 323s (and 319s, which have a similar configuration inside), i.e. Manchester Airport, Hazel Grove, and occasional appearances on Stoke, Crewe and Hadfield services. They seem to do perfectly fine.
The luggage racks were removed as the 323s were not ment to be working airport services anymore as that was ment to be a job the 331s. (I’m glad the luggage racks on the 323s are gone btw, been on many a peak time service to Manchester on 323223, 224, 225 when they had racks and it was a nightmare).
Not since the refurbishment, which replaced the rather comfortable seat cushions with much thinner ones, effectively turning the previously quite good seats into ironing boards! They're also too narrow which isn't a problem you get on 2+2 seated stock and there is as lack of legroom.
I wondered why the seats on the refurbished 323s felt rather odd when I went on one last year, as pior to 2021 I had only been on the unrefurbished 323s.
Or, and this is a bold idea, more electrification. Lime Street to Oxford road is for example not fully electrified, as it still uses DMUs, but I can't imagine it would be too much wiring to completely electrify it. They have enough EMUs for it already. Then they can remove the 150s, and move the 195s elsewhere to replace more Sprinters.
I feel like all new trains that were ordered post 2010 should have had low floors for level boarding. I fell that any new trains Northern order must have level boarding.
That is a route (no pun intended) that the DFT will never go down because it’s too smart of an idea for the DFT.
Yes, they really should have done, but Northern seem to only want more Civity units for now. I suppose this is a bit of a shame though as it means we'll be stuck without it for another few decades.
I don’t get why the 195s and 331s were not ordered with level boarding I really don’t.
Wouldn't you then use those 156s to replace 150s and 153s?
Why?
What 153’s?
Northern withdrew all their 153s late last year iirc, so there are no 153 to replace at Northern.
There aren't enough 175s to replace all the 156s, so they'd need to retain some. There definitely aren't enough 175s to replace ALL the Sprinters, so again the 175s can't be the answer. This arbitrary suggestion about getting rid of BR era stock by a certain date is thus far unverified anyway, so I'm taking it with a grain of salt.
185s aren't exactly cheap to run, so they won't be much help to Northern from a cost reduction point of view. In fact I'll make a radical prediction here: once they leave TPE, the 185s will only find work in the UK as a stopgap solution before being either scrapped or exported.
Definitely London first, but I think Manchester would actually be second, as part of 'levelling up'. This of course would impact Northern, involving more electrification around Manchester and maybe even full electrification for some routes.
Being cynical, or perhaps just realistic - the whole Northern operation has always been done on the cheap, so Arriva and the DfT wanted to spend the bare minimum to be able to say they'd seen off the Pacers and introduced brand new trains in the North (on some routes for the first time in a generation).