Chiltern is not the flagship service to Birmingham by any means.
The HS2 rolling stock specifications lists the options as:
Please don't try. Have you seen how people do anything to avoid the middle 'sandwich filling' seat? We are getting bigger and wider too which makes a nonsense of the three abreast seat width. Not popular on the Portsmouth Direct line so can't imagine it going down well on HS2. Imagine the headlines about billions being spent on 'sardine trains'.
You said Chiltern to "Brum," not Solihull, and one can hardly compare the demand of Solihull with that of Manchester.
For Solihull, Warwick, Leamington and Banbury its the only direct option. It is a good service but its still a turbostar, Pendolinos are really the flagship till HS2 comes along.
A 444-style First Class layout with a cheap £10 supplement would probably be very economical, but how popular it would be is another matter. I'd likely pay it to avoid the Lumo-style crush, but only if there were dedicated coaches.
And Watford Junction to / from Birmingham, which could be served by the same.
The political issue would be that that land is/was earmarked for HS2/NPR wasn’t/isn’t it?
Currently, the plan for NPR is identical to what was proposed for phase 2b; the scheme reuses the Airport station, airport tunnel and Piccadilly station, connecting it either side with a new stretch of high speed track. The Hybrid Bill for 2b is in the process of being repurposed for NPR. This is subject to change, depending on what TFGM and other local authorities want - eg a through station. But for now, that is the working assumption.
The number of 402 isn't really accurate though because it can't cope with the luggage load of 402 people onboard, and it includes tip-down seats.
Sorry, I meant 2 x 1 seating in first class.
But there won't be any double sets heading to Manchester unless the Chancellor gets his chequebook out to pay for the platforms.
I don't believe that this is possible, as I think there is a requirement for the train to be able to split in half - similar to the Eurostar units. This is for redundancy, safety and evacuation reasons - in the event of an incident, people can evacuate to the front or rear 4 coaches. It would be possible to insert additional trailer cars to bring the units up to 10 or 12 coaches. This would add between 74 and 84 seats per trailer, depending on the number of tables etc.
That is unfortunate. I wonder how many lives would have been saved anywhere in the world if all trains over say the past 100 years had had that capability to split in half in the event of such an incident?
There is also the issue of having 2 separate sub fleets to maintain, and having to ensure that units stick to their diagrammed routes. It’s not insurmountable but is a problem. If I were the DFT, I’d definitely look at it as a solution.
If there's any money to lengthen platforms, I reckon that Crewe, Warrington BQ, Wigan NW, Preston, Lancaster and Carlisle could all have some 400m platforms without too much disruption.
This would I think be feasible, and not too disruptive. But probably for another thread.
The TSIs do not require this so far as I know.
Indeed, I'm struggling to find any reference to this in the Train Technical Specification, or anywhere else.
Apart from Section 5.2:
If you know that all your rolling stock is going to be a fixed consist or a pair of them then that allows for a lot of simplification of your infrastructure. Flexibility in your rolling stock is also a cost, putting couplers between carriages rather than fixed links that need the workshop to split, etc.
Surely it would be more sensible to have 300m and 150m sets since the latter is half the capacity of the first ?
