Recent content by tocguard

What year are your quoted figures from? Skegness has had an hourly service for decades but Newquay had just a handful until this year. Of course the passenger figures are going to be higher on a route that sees hourly trains.

Haha thanks unfortunately my memories of last unit workings arent as accurate as I thought. I know I had 514 and 513 this week and they weren't done but maybe I've not had 510 or 511 for a while. Either that or they've been broke :lol:

I think we're up to set 9 now so 501-508 are all done and out and about.

Not short of units. Was planned transfer for the extension of Matlock services to Newark. Don't think this was ever talked about, same as somw 170 units with declassified first won't be being removed. Quite. The state of maintenance, if you can call it that, is abysmal. There's some real basic...

Not that difficult. A fair amount of Derby drivers also sign 158/170. There's a mixed link that does some Matlock and Crewe work amongst London so not really an issue with drivers. From a guards perspective it would just additionally need a spare regional guard to work the train with a TM...

Quite! Having to change at Leicester and then again at Kettering as it is now and then getting the DART sometimes makes it pretty tedious and can me much easier to just go to Pancras direct and change once at Pancras for Gatwick. From past experience even if it took longer, it didnt seem it.

Likely 799. The 158s are split between ownership of Angel Trains or Porterbrook which determines where and how they're getting done. 799 is a Porterbrook set and has been interior refurbished in house at Eastcroft. Angel sets go away to Bristol for full treatment. I'm not sure what the...

Absolutely not. In which way do you believe they work "excellently"? They don't like gradients for a start so theres several areas their speed will stagnate or even fall, whereas 158s will hold their own. They're rate of acceleration from a stand is also much slower. It's only because the...

And ex EMR before that. At least its only 8 months as a stand in!

It's the very reason for the upcoming strike throughout August. I would refer you to the wording in the public domain available on the RMT website if you wish to do so. I would not like to disclose the ongoing concerns and failings that have not made it out in the open, but there is definately...

There seems to be a lot of people focusing solely on the Hitachi situation as being the reason he has left. Actually, there's a lot more to it than that. Yes, the Aurora roll out hasn't gone to plan and everyone can see that and also see that it is not necessarily the fault of EMR or its...

Also don't forget, as far as I'm aware, didn't EMR close down all the first class lounges too? With the design and introduction of the new fleet, it could have been an opportunity to go down the route of something similar to avanti standard premium. I'm unsure of the amount of first class seats...

Quite! Another example of the company seemingly not bothered about really improving first class. They've had years to sort out weekend catering and yet it's always been inconsistent. Must account for one of the reasons they believe they can't charge too much for a first upgrade at a weekend...

This is a very good point to look at. As had been pointed out a few times by different people, it is felt the first class uplift can or is too cheap on EMR. There are still regularly empty seats though. So what does that say? It could be argued that pricing first class only marginally higher...

I guess it depends on volumes and things like if you want branding. EMR brands their cups depending on the season too, ie snowflakes in winter and they do pride ones in pride month. Personally, I'd have thought the volume and the additional costs of branding would be long term a lot more...