I understand that its expensive repainting trains, but surely senior management at scotrail would rather have all their trains branded in their saltire livery rather than in old carmine colors as those old spt colors are not true representation of the scotrail the old SPT do not represent the identify of the scotrail brand
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what I am saying is that old SPT units are not representative of the scotrail franchise as they are not in saltire colours and the fact remains that if scotrail have these old spt units then why not hurry things along
I'm sure Scotrail would prefer all the units to be in the same livery, and for everything to have the same branding. But there's only so much money, and you can't take a unit out of traffic for a lick of paint when you already have a shortage. Scotrail are running a business. They can't afford to take all the units out of traffic and just paint them blue, regardless of when the last repaint was. Repainting a train isn't like painting your bedroom walls. It takes a lot of time and a lot of money. The decision's been taken for the right reasons to do the refresh as and when needed (aside from a handful of launch units).
I think if you polled passengers about what they want from the railways, the top responses would be punctuality, reliability, comfort, getting a seat... I don't think all that many would want a consistent colour of train. A strong brand is good, but Scotrail (in its various guises) has been doing well for the past decade. We've had SPT livery and branding for quite a long time (even going back to the orange trains), and it never harmed anyone. It's gone now, but I don't think people are getting angry about some stations and most trains still being in those colours. It's not causing anyone any confusion, and it isn't harming the railways.
I have ride the 318 many times and see that they are out of date they need a repaint/overhaul
I've already said the 318s have just had a refurb. In fact, they've been amongst the most recent EMUs to see a refurbishment in Scotland. There is no need whatsoever to send them back in. If you continue to make this point, can you perhaps give some specific examples as to what needs improved?
It is laughable to suggest that a train refurbished about five years ago is out of date and needs overhauled.
The fact remains scotrail needs to hurry up and ... update their fleet as well
Err... I think they've got a pretty modern fleet! The 314s are old, there's no denying that, and they really should have been refurbished a long time ago. Other than that, the rest of the fleet is no older than 25 years old, there's been two new fleets of EMUs and one new fleet of DMUs since privatisation ... nothing really needs updating. The refurbs are being done to schedule; nothing's desperately needing redone, and the delay of a few months isn't anything to get yourself too worked up over.
As I said before, can you please take a trip to the North of England. You might actually realise just how lucky you are to be in the ex-SPT area. Some trains in England were still running around in Regional Railways livery in 2008, some fifteen years post-privatisation!
