I personally feel as though these 360s haven't actually resolved the main problem that I have noticed.
The main problem in terms of capacity isn't the stretch between Wellingborough and Kettering (where the EMR Connects are mostly running 8 car), it's the stretch between Kettering and Leicester. And of course the 8 car HSTs have been shortened to 5 car Meridians now.
The 14:13 departure from Leicester to Kettering was rammed in the 3.3 cars of Standard Class (the other 1.7 cars of 1st Class was quiet because it's too expensive). How is this supposed to maintain social distancing and keep Covid levels down? No wonder why Covid levels are increasing again! It would have been safer (albeit slower) to drive the 1 hour from Leicester to Wellingborough...
The 14:49 "EMR Connect" service, from Kettering to Wellingborough was 8 cars (all standard class) and was perfectly fine from a social distancing point of view. Plenty of room for everyone.
The problem is that, whilst the EMR Connect services were/are fine for their purpose, the capacity bottleneck hasn't been resolved - in actuality, it has been made worse. At the minimum, the 7 car 222s should be doing the Nottingham services (Sheffield is fine with 5 car as both Sheffield's are fast LEI-STP). Ideally, they should have electrified as far as Nottingham and Sheffield, used modern EMUs of at least 8 cars (preferably 12 cars) up there to do the Intercity services, retaining the intermediate stops (because that is where the extra capacity is needed!) and used a 4 car EMU to provide a Kettering-Corby shuttle.
I also don't know why they went for all that bother to increase the speeds of the 360s to 110mph, instead of the previous 100mph. The only place you'll get any benefit is doing the stretch between Wellingborough and Bedford: the electrified parts south of Bedford are capped at 100mph due to the old wiring, the stretch between Kettering and Corby is capped at 90mph due to linespeed restrictions, and the part between Kettering and Wellingborough is often don on the Slows (at least southbound), which have unnecessarily low speed limits of 90mph and 60mph (IMO, the 60mph sections extend too far out), hence the 360s do WEL-KET in a slower time than the Meridians, despite the former having better acceleration than the latter. Gong Northbound, you have to cross onto the Slows anyway, either just past Wellingbrough (=90mph) or just before Kettering (slow down too early to make use of the 100/110 limit as the points are only rated 30). It would have been better to use the time and resources doing the internal refurbishments instead.
