3141
Established Member
One of the class 170s ordered by Porterbrook was 170392, which was being used by SWT during 2002-03 IIRC. It differed slightly from their other 170s and is now 170730 working on Southern.
In the last two years or so the procurement of new stock has been carried out by TOCs rather than by the DfT, e.g. 350s for TPE and LM, 377s for Southern, and the 110 mph EMUs that it was very recently announced Southern was going to start procuring. So if we continue to have shorter franchises there's nothing to prevent oders being placed by TOCs in the future.
If LexyBoy sets up his ROSCO and buys a fleet of trains I guess there's no reason in principle why he should not be able to lease them to a train operator. Three or four years ago the DfT caused a lot of money to be spent by the ORR and the Competition Commission investigating why train leasing costs weren't lower. One of the pretty obvious reasons was that there aren't lots of suitable spare trains waiting around for someone to lease them. But before LexyBoy Rail Leasing places an order its Managing Director will no doubt want to think very carefully about exactly what sort of trains to buy, making sure that the specification closely matches what one or more TOCs will want to operate. Even then the company might have a problem getting a high enough rental if they are in competition with stock owned by other ROSCOs which don't want their trains to be sitting idle. Presumably its fantastically wealthy proprietor won't mind subsidising EMU suburban services on the GWML if he knows he's providing a better class of train tthan anyone else could have offered!
Last edited: