What does amaze me about rolling stock orders at the moment is. Newer and in this case brand new EMUs are being sidelined despite the fact the UK has a modest surplus of them, whilst the diesel powered fleet which is woefully short of stock and still struggling by with aging trains. The only fleet of DMUs likely to come free soon are the limited 185s from TPE which most people seem agreed are pretty limited in where they can be deployed.
I am not complaining as such, just observing that the overall decision making process seems quite flawed at times. It would be great to see a modest surplus of a variety of layouts and power sourced trains to allow TOCs to grow their service when required and also an attempt to bring down the leasing costs of units.
And people are still rejecting the class 230's! Without trying to start a debate, people need to realise that conversions such as these are needed. The comments people make about them not being very good units are valid at times but that doesn't matter because what other choice is there?
Although the class 195's will come into service soon which should free some 153's (and pacers but they need to be gotten rid of) which must be of some use somewhere. Plus the 385's will leave a handful of Scotrail units spare.
Having lots of EMU's isn't necessarily a bad thing, but electrification is not progressing quick enough for all of them to be put to decent use. At the moment the problem is lots of brand new trains replacing mid-life EMU's. If this was to happen in 6 or 7 years time then it wouldn't be such a bad thing, but right now it's probably not economically smart to scrap units that aren't quite life expired yet. What should be happening is the new trains replacing DMU's.
Another problem is the new company going mad with power and announcing the replacement of all it's fleet because they have the money to do so. This is silly in my opinion because, in reality, the public don't care about new trains. They only care about 'new' trains. Of course it's good press to stand in the depot with a shiny new train, but the press is just as good if you stand in the depot with a shiny refurbished train. The public and media don't notice because they simply have better things to do than look into the specifics when it comes to shiny clean trains.
There is some justification for this 'madness'. Remember that while only a relatively small proportion of the overall rail network is electrified, those electrified miles carry a disproportionately large number of passengers. The lines which are electrified are either fast InterCity and freight trunk routes and/or suburban commuter routes into major cities, particularly London but also Birmingham, Manchester, Liverpool and Glasgow. Because of this nature electrified services tend to be much, much busier than diesel ones.
A packed Pacer service somewhere in the forgotten regions of England and Wales might be uncomfortable for passengers but it's not actually going to be that busy on an objective level. The main limit to capacity here is the available diesel rolling stock. If more trains were available, it would be trivial to run longer services as there are rarely platform length issues and it is often possible to run additional services as more paths can be easily made available.
All of these huge numbers of electric trains are being ordered for routes where this is not the case. In many cases, the trains that are being replaced are already as long as is practically possible on the infrastructure. 12 car trains are pretty much the absolute limit on any route, while some others are restricted to 8 cars due to depot and severe platform length constraints. The Thameslink route, for instance, only has some 8 car trains because that's the maximum feasible on some of the important stopping patterns and routes. Current passenger numbers are either overfilling or close to overfilling the trains, while future projections suggest that the problem is only going to get worse. Increasing capacity beyond this requires major investment of some kind, and once the infrastructure is at its practical limit the next best option is to optimise the trains. Instead of having individual 3-5 car units which get joined up at peak times, you have full length single units where every possible metre of length is used to carry passengers. You have extra wide doors and gangways to minimise dwell times, shaving off precious seconds that are required when trains are coming in at 150 second intervals. You make trains lighter so that the track doesn't get as hammered, meaning less need for disruptive and expensive infrastructure repairs. Depot space is at a premium near London so you have to make trains as reliable as you possibly can, so that as many of them as possible can be squeezed into what depot space is available.
London commuter services really shouldn't be thought of as normal National Rail services, either by us on this forum or by the powers-that-be. Their requirements are now much more aligned with traditional metro operations such as the London Underground. These metro systems are absolutely vital to the economic well-being of the city and so they do things to achieve maximum efficiency which traditional rail services simply do not need.
The majority of the public don't know, and don't really care about, specifics when it comes to the rail industry, and they will only complain about getting cast-off's if it is pointed out to them. I doubt the average guy from East Didsbury will see a shiny, clean, re-fitted train rolling in for Manchester at 07:26, and then start sniffing around saying "hold on a second, this is a class 319, which previously spent 1987 to 2014 IN THE SOUTH!"
