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Most people don’t drive in Cambridge, which has narrow mediaeval, pre-car streets, poor-condition roads, and very little parking in general - they cycle, walk, or take the bus or train instead. There is a lot of traffic congestion, which dissuades people from driving. Hence, cycling is often a...

Paint warranty length, and if re-painting is necessary. The Class 357s (in both the white-and-magenta Trenitalia c2c livery, and the GBR livery) have been re-painted because they had to have the paint stripped off for mid-life bodywork corrosion repairs anyway, so would need to be re-painted in...

At least personally, I think the addition of blue makes for a better livery than just red and white, as a Great English Railways would presumably have - blue shows less dirt than more white would have.

It’ll still come under GBR - it’s just that it’ll apparently be “Great British Railways | Stansted Express”, like how it’s currently a separate brand to Greater Anglia, rather than being part of “Great British Railways | Anglia”.

It was in the original IEP Invitation To Tender from the DfT in 2007 - see Page 13: It also said under Additional Options that they may get some for CrossCountry. The table on Page 15 says the ECML Phase 2 units are EMUs, not bi-mode, with enough availability to provide 11 half-length sets...

I wonder what it would be like if Cambridge-London had gotten IETs, as the original plan was. I used to live in Cambridge, but I’ve never been on an IET before - the one chance I had, on a journey from Norwich to Manchester via the ECML, changing off the EMR service for a quicker journey, I just...

They’re having to spend money to buff the current livery now at any rate, because the white shows up dirt so much.

I hadn’t even considered locomotives! I had only considered multiple units.

With the middle coach of the 5-car Class 720 being in plain blue rather than the original u-shaped stripes concept, I wonder if that means that any locomotives in GBR livery will be in plain base blue as well, a lighter shade than BR Blue.

Despite the GBR livery having been introduced, some TOCs, not yet being nationalised, are still painting trains into non-GBR liveries, such as CrossCountry, GWR for the Class 175s, and EMR. I seem to recall reading that Northern are refurbishing trains into their current livery, despite being...

This also means that seats like the original ones won’t be specified by GBR in the future, which is good news.

I suppose this might be to help out by replacing the unit involved in the Sailsbury incident?

The “metro” units (which are marked with stickers saying so on the door windows) are the Class 357/3s, re-numbered from Class 357/2s, which have had the aisle seat of the 3+2 removed to make them 2+2, to give more standing space. c2c has some Class 720s now as well, like the ones on Greater...

I did consider that there would be fewer services on a Sunday than on a week-day, but I also thought that there would be proportionally fewer staff to work those services, and perhaps more maintenance work scheduled on the trains, so fewer trains might be available for use - but I suppose if...

I’m surprised that it can be heard so far away - isn’t there a big open green space/park on the other side of the station from the hospital with no dwellings on it, until you get to the junction to the busway to Trumpington?

How do they have the staff and rolling stock availability to do things like this at short notice? With an ECS move like with the LNER one, I understand that the train and staff are already going somewhere, rather than the train undergoing maintenance.

I presume that the 1,000 miles fault-free running is being combined with the driver training runs, to kill 2 birds with 1 stone? I suppose drivers could do with the experience of fixing the faults that they can as drivers on the train before having to do it in service, too.

I feel like they’re making them quite quickly, if they’re close to testing the second and third units out of 10, and this order is meant to be tiding them over until they start building the trains for HS2 as they said, if the HS2 trains don’t need to be in service for a decade from now. Their...

Alstom’s press release says: https://www.alstom.com/press-releases-news/2026/6/first-alstoms-ten-new-elizabeth-line-aventra-trains-rolls-production-line-derby-uk So by the end of 2027.

I never knew that “Lewes” was pronounced like “Lew-ess” - I had presumed that it was pronounced like “Loos”.