CAF DMU Civities as one joint pool between TOCs

[Philip]

Northern, WMR and Wales & Borders all wanted new trains within a similar timeframe and all 3 of them decided to order CAF Civity DMUs separately. The 195-96-97 trains are very similar but with slight differences, such that traincrew who learn one type would still need to be trained separately for the other types.

Do you think a better idea would have been for all 3 TOCs to have worked together to place a single big order for one train type, in a joint venture for use between the 3 operations? It would have been cheaper having only one production line and would have allowed each TOC to 'borrow' a spare unit from the other if there were shortages elsewhere, without having to put traincrew through an additional unit-learning course. The EMU variant (331) would be the electric version of this single DMU type.

Northern, TfW & WMR all use their Civities for similar purposes, so a 'one size fits all' order would seem to have been logical with cooperation between the TOCs & DfT, particularly with GBR about to start and the end of franchising subsequently.

 

[LNW-GW Joint]

Well it's too late to bemoan separate historic orders for similar trains.
Northern, along with TPE for different designs, ordered theirs first which established the type in the UK, but did not mandate CAF maintenance, unlike TfW.
CAF now has UK assembly at Newport (thanks to the TfW order), and several maintenance contracts (including TPE and presumably LNER in the future).
The major Civity maintenance centre is at Chester (TfW), at least for DMUs.
TfW is unlikely to merge its operations with Northern or WMR, even under GBR.
What happens next probably depends on whether CAF gets new orders in the GBR framework, and for which TOC.