This is nonsense. In all the time I've followed the TRU and NPR projects I've never heard this suggested by anyone as a thing that should happen. This rolling stock order was never going to be 'NPR-ready'. If and when NPR happens, more rolling stock will be ordered. And the rolling stock which has just been ordered will either carry on being used on the classic TRU route, or redeployed elsewhere.
What's the point of spending it on HS2 only to not build the parts of HS2 that offered most of the benefits? Government policy is rarely to spend public money so that it's good value, it's to spend it so that it looks superficially good and wins some votes in the near term.
Of course people said the same about Crossrail, TRU and HS2 and they're all happening/completed to a large extent. As far as I know, the plans for HS2 remain largely similar to what has been discussed in the past.
But we are going to do it again. What we need isn't an order for TPE or whoever but a class that will be widely used and gradually built in larger numbers - like I think the 158 were. Oh and prototyping.
You can't have it both ways. The 345s may have been designed under Bombardier, but the current batch are very much built by Alstom.
29 Units is not a micro fleet! It's likely more orders will follow.
It's certainly a very poor value for money choice to go running, say, two separate five cars per hour between York and Manchester when one eight would have sufficed. There will still be further services on top, I'm just drawing the comparison of part of the increased quantum. Personally I wouldn't be adding that extra fast train at all. However this is what wins the votes, because the eight going all the way to Scarborough would be unworkable, and for political reasons the Scarborough train running into the bay at York isn't workable either.
I hope that you are right. I don't have the bandwidth to follow the Trans Pennine Upgrade very closely: the thing I like about this announcement is that it doesn't look like a bespoke train for Trans Pennine, it looks like a train that is scalable to a large fleet with widespread applications.
But Burnham has not backed NPR with funding yet. We will find out more with his 10 year plan and a Treasury spending review.
The point is to specify the detail of what is required.
But it still takes £1.1bn and time (more than 8 months) to do it.
There isn't a plan until the £1.1bn has been spent working it out.
More likely that they will be approaching withdrawal, as they will be over 30 years old in 2034. I cannot see Northern's successor wanting to run expensive trains anywhere.
Even with the best will in the world and starting work on it immediately, NPR is going to be at least 15 years away and probably more like 25. It will be every bit as difficult to design and build as HS2. That doesn't mean it won't happen, but we need to recognise the reality of what building a high speed railway through a densely populated part of the country with hostile terrain means.
The plans for NPR are different to HS2 though. We're talking about far smaller diversions from the classic route from Marsden to somewhere around Liverpool. If NPR is built most, if not all of the services will be diverted on to it. There won't be capacity between Marsden and York for significant numbers of additional trains. I personally don't see scenario where these trains aren't too short in the future or are surplus to requirements.
Of course they'd but put to use. I'm not disputing that but is the quantum of units going to fit with their alternative or is it going to be a case of square pegs. It's seems like the kind of thing that the franchised system produced over and over again. I was hoping that the greater public control would lead to better planning and less need for constant cascading of rolling stock. This could be part of a wider plan, a 5 car train would certainly be easier to cascade than a 7 car train, but at this moment in time it looks like a poor decision to me.
Longer term, absolutely GWR needs new stock to replace 158, 165/166 and the 175s, but the infrastructure isn't there yet to support trains exactly like the TPE ones mechanically. Either they need more electrification or another solution.
Will the TPE core have enough alignment to justify 110mph?
Gareth is a cheerleader for complaining about everything.
Which doesn’t make it an Alstom design. Nothing is from Alstom on an Aventra, be it by design or manufacturing.
The compromises and cost of increasing to speed from 100 to 110 are far less than from increasing the speed from 110 to 125, so you don't need to have an much running at 110 to merit the upgrade – and it will be a boost that all trains running can benefit from, unlike the putative increase to 125.
You are arguing just for the sake of arguing.
Aside from all of the components, assemblies and certification which are being procured by, erm, Alstom.
Well yes because Alstom took everything over. Doesn’t make a Bombardier or ABB component an Alstom design all of a sudden. Same with the employees which didn’t really magically become Alstom employees all of a sudden. Yeah sure the pay check started saying Alstom instead of BBD, but you just don’t change a whole factory’s mentality and way of working from one manufacturer’s to another’s overnight.
With modern ac motors and electronic control systems, there is not really the old big compromise between acceleration and top speed from dc motors.
So new trains will be built for services which run to and from NPR, and the existing trains redeployed on other routes. Just as the Javelins on HS1 continue beyond Ashford over routes in Kent that used to be served by 375s.
NPR isn't a plan, at least not yet. As you say, it is just talk.
Building them is the only thing Alstom is doing. All the rest was done by Bombardier and the suppliers chosen by Bombardier at the time.
