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When I went past a few weeks ago, the motor coach for 442402 was still outside at the back of the works, where it has been for months. I assume the rest of 442402 must still be at Bournemouth as only 442419 went back to Eastleigh in January (both units left Eastleigh without their motor coaches...
Just the 2 at Eastleigh Depot (2405 & 2424). The other 4 are at Ely.
Using them as spares might have been helpful early on, but not so much now 2 years later with suppliers in place.
I don’t think so. The blue was much lighter than NSE. It just happened that Stagecoach branding was close to NSE branding. Just look at a Stagecoach bus from the 80s.
In September’s edition of Modern Railways, Angel Trains were quoted in saying “currently in storage, ready to go on lease and enter passenger service”.
Only locos or units with the 27-pin control cable would be able to do that, which limits them to the classes 33/1 and 73.
At most they could provide heating to some of the 442s with ETH cables, like the class 37 and 47 did with some of the units going to Ely.
2x 442s on route to Portsmouth Harbour via Winchester and then back to Bournemouth via Swanick.
http://www.realtimetrains.co.uk/train/Q15849/2018/10/09/advanced
Is it the responsibility of SWR to source spare parts, or Angel Trains? As SWR pays to lease the trains from Angel, surely Angel must provide spares. A fleet of 21 or 22 trains might suit both parties.
I would be thinking that Angel Trains were hedging their bets that Grand Southern may never happen (put a time limit in place) and that SWR might want to take them on one day. Southern initially took 17 units back in 2008.
Unless things have changed, 2 units are at Eastleigh Depot, which one...
ORR has rejected Alliance Rail Grand Southern (01/08/2018), partly because Alliance Rail will not be ready to run the services along with capacity issues and various other tests they carried out. They informed the ORR back in May 2018 that the 442s were no longer available to lease.
They took on 17 of the best/standard units, with just 2 of those requiring both C4 & C6 overhaul (2417 & 2419). 2409 went to Chart Leacon in the summer of 2008 and stripped for parts as it was the least likely one to return to service because of its unique, although better, camshaft. Eventually...
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