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Is it really necessary to improve the service at these stations given their proximity to the Central line which will always havw a much more frequent service? Should the Chiltern line’s main function not to provide fast and relatively frequent services to the Midlands and Oxford? Would that...

I hear some of the 720s are going onto Stansted Express duties, releasing some of the 745s to Norwich-Liverpool Street, which will release the triple 755 diagram.

Unless they swapped 6 220s for the remaining 6 221s with a net gain of 6 carriages (one per unit)?

Probably this thread should be moved to Specilative Discussion to be fair. What about EMR as a stopgap?

Good evening all, Just wondering what is the current status of the 221 fleet? Looks like XC already have their full quota of what they were allowed to take on, GC have their two but I did hear some months ago they may get two more? Wikipedia suggests (and I know this isn’t reliable!) on the...

I partly agree with you! Let’s see what happens. Maybe the 170 option is more likely as they have them already? Subject to their availability of course, but logically you would take 221s.

Well I think from an operational view yes you would take the 221s over the 180s. I do like the Avanti refurbished 221s though. However I do like the 180s over most units to travel on and they have had them before. On the other hand the 221s are likely more similar to the 222s they currently have.

You can’t run 180s with 222s either but they ran them before! The inly suitable available options I am aware of are the 180s or 221s. Wishful thinking hopefully they take on 180s!

Probably about the same as via Birmingham?

I think Virgins protection of competition didn’t help W&S, they were unable to pick up at Wolverhampton southbound/drop off Northbound and couldn’t call at places like Birmingham International or Coventry, or run via New Street. I wonder if Paddington or Marylebone could be accessed with going...

Disappointing the WSMR didn’t get approved- I thought that was looking likely but I didn’t expect Virgin to get approved. Could WSMR revisit Marylebone or even Paddington off-peak? Could Lumo join and split at Crewe for the Manchester services? Obviously this would need more 222s or more stock.

Losing money isn’t great unless the economic benefits are greater. Not sure it’s a good use of taxpayer money to pay for a 40 minute frequency on a branch line carrying 30-40 passengers? The only way I thought portion working would work is if the tph that joins/splits at Wickford went non-stop...

Good evening I travelled on a few services today between Wickford and Southminster and noticed the pateonage seems to be particularly low - is that normal for this route? I counted around 32 total SMN-WIC on a trip this afternoon - surely this is not cost effective and is losing a lot of...

I was aware of the C6 exams, hopefully they will find homes abroad or used as spare parts donors. My thoughts are the 175s going to GWR won’t be enough to replace all Castles and IETs on regional services so to enable this maybe GWR could take some of the 158s?

Will all the TfW 150s be scrapped or will some be cascaded to other operators? What about the 158s?

I think maybe the most likely outcome for the future of 180s if they aren’t scrapped would be Open Access operators? As it seems most Open Access applications propose using 22x which there won’t be enough of to go around if the 222s go to Scotland!

Thank you for your detailed response! I didn’t realise how much was involved. I suppose if you’re stopping at Diss and Stowmarket there would be less benefits whoch would potentially be outweighed by the costs. Ideally you would want non-stop Norwich-Ipswich I suppose.

It did come down pretty quick to about 101mph which seems more accurate. Another question regarding the 745s which is more speculation/hypothetical: could they be reduced to 10 cars with more driving cars constructed to give more sets? I know this is unlikely to happen but in theory would it...

A few months ago on this thread we discussed linespeeds north of Ipswich and if they could be raised. While sat on a northbound LST-NRW service I looked at a speedometer website on my phone (not sure how reliable it is but don’t think it is far out) and at one point it recorded us doing 113mph...

Carlisle can be good, also see the Scotrail ones there.