Same reason they omit Earlsfield. The Shepperton line also has one of the longest end-to-end times of any SWR suburban route, so providing trains with toilets (whether 458/5s or 701s) seems like a good idea.
because they've pretty much all gone to south eastern...
I meant the one remaining set, 024 and 030, used to be on the Shepperton until June timetable change.
they are being used on the Epsom line predominantly because that line suffers from major rush hour overcrowding.
Thanks for the reply, apologies for taking things off topic. They managed for years with 455s what changed?
Presumably the point is that they didn't manage.
I think earlier timetables had longer turn rounds - requiring an extra train in order to accommodate the longer round trip time. Cost cutting, plus greater demand on platform occupancy at Waterloo, (and the longer time to clear the throat with 10 car trains) led to trying to run the service with four trains instead of five.
Thanks that makes sense
Was shared when it was posted a few weeks back
It won't be late summer. Driver on twitter mentioned it's not likely for more diagrams to appear for another 1-2 months.
They will be coupled up as 10 for most of the time. The 5 cars were bought for flexibility during engineering works as a 10 car does not fit at certain places for turnarounds (Kingston bay and clandon station to name a few)
And although not originally intended as such but given that there'll probably be a surplus of units the 5 car units would be useful for Ascot - Aldershot/Farnham - Guilford.
There will also be a Desiro surplus, however.
They will most likely undergo an overhaul / refurb once enough have been released. Plus there are many services which are meant to be 12 cars but currently are not due to the lack of stock.
Indeed. And I seem to recall many years ago (when 442s were to relieve the pressure on 450s) it was said that the 450s have much higher lease charges for the above expected miles/hours in the base contract. So I am sure SWR will like to get the 450s back down to the normal levels of usage that were at lower rates.
Is it known how many drivers were passed for the 701s on Friday last week when the first conversion courses will have finished? An idea of the numbers would give us a ( very ) rough clue on how quickly it's likely to step up...
Surely that would depend on how many drivers are on each course which undoubtedly inevitably vary and whether any will run concurrently.
Not sure how reliable this is as it's word of mouth, but I have been told by a crew member that they're running two courses at a time. What I should have asked, but forgot, was whether that's staggered ( i.e. the second course starting one week after the first course so there's an overlap ) or if it's two courses running in parallel.
Shouldn't be too difficult to get the other units into an acceptable condition
Can't see that happening, and in any case the quantity of 701s ordered was based on the bid timetable which required more units than the pre-Covid timetable.
One way or another there are going to be surplus 701s or 450s, or both!
It’s not the lease charge as such, it’s the maintenance charge to Siemens. It’s also entirely understandable: more mileage means that bogie overhauls - which are not cheap - come around more quickly.
It was all published at the time, but that's going back seven years now. There were many enhancements, for example, it featured 4tph to both Reading and Windsor all day, seven days a week (Yes, even Sunday evenings).