I've finally had a look at the Roger Ford article in current Modern Railways (online it's linked below, I did not find it to be paywalled).
I was depressed by the delivery comparison with the Avanti 805 order and the in-service comparisons with - in particular - TPE and Hull Trains.
What I hadn't seen before (perhaps I wasn't looking hard enough) was RMT's instruction on the failures that lead to their members refusing to work the trains, which are (1) galley >29.4C (2) Any HVAC malfunction, (3) <2 toilets operational, or the 1st class UA toilet is in-operational, (4) Any external door or cab door faults or (5) the fire reset cabinet is inaccessible.
There is also a mention of AWS failures, which appears to have been the initial event that ultimately led to the collision at Elstow.
His article also sets out the very many technical differences between the 810 and 80x. The conclusion I drew is that Hitachi set the project up to fail by multiplying risk - firstly risk by changing
what they were building (technical design, components, manufacturing techniques) and then disrupting
how they were building it (design work, design authority/governance/assurance and manufacturing responsibilities). i.e. it's strategic failure at Hitachi Rail board level that's got us here, not some instances of poor design or shoddy welding.
He ends on a downbeat note. Whilst there is probably still the option to cancel the order and return delivered trains but this would obviously sink EMR and/or see Scotrail/Holyrood go ballistic. And assuming they do enter service, he has set my expectation that reliability will be closer to what GWR continue to experience than what TPE/Hull Trains are managing.
https://www.modernrailways.com/article/informed-sources-aurora-centre-emrs-perfect-storm
■ Rolling stock shortage forces truncated timetable
■ EMR lays blame on Hitachi
■ Multiple faults challenge rectification
■ 10 trains available seven years after order
■ Meridian reliability collapses
