When you say "sort out these restrictions", what you mean is you want to ignore the ruling by the Health & Safety Executive, right?
To understand the context, you’ll need to read the earlier posts.
Pretty sure any cascaded class 158’s will go to the other operators for spare parts.
If that restriction was never put in, I think we would of had 444/450s running to Exeter by now and the 158/159's being long gone or elsewhere.
That depends... you can have 30-odd times as many vehicles today if you are paying £147k per vehicle, rather than £4m - and if you have lease commitments, it's harder to cut that budget; whereas if you set out to buy 100 vehicles, it becomes 90, 80, 70...
But it is a high risk strategy, there is no guarantee that the leaseco will agree to lease them again at a sensible price in 4 years.
It's £405 a day per vehicle so hardly expensive, how many tickets do you need to sell to get that back? The five year lease gives them time to work on a replacement plan so by the time this lease is ending they should have a good idea of how long the next lease needs to be if there is one.
The point I am trying to make is that need to have a plan for when the lease ends. Assuming it ends July 2030 (see link, 5 years from July 2025, with no mention of extension options) what happens if replacement fleet is not ready to go into service July 2030.
But there's also the risk of reliability deteriating, and lack of spare parts. According to the most recent edition of Today's Railways, only 22/28 159s, and 9/10 SWR 158s were available at the time of writing, and there have been some incidents of 2 car 158s being ran singly out of Waterloo.
There isn't going to be a replacement fleet by mid 2030 as they would need to be in the procurement phase by now so the 158/159 SWR fleet will be running well past that date as will all the other 158 fleets since there is no alternative. I can't think of a fleet of serviceable trains that the ROSCO's have refused to lease/sell, why would they when there's money to be made? ScotRail have just extended their 156 lease and they had no other option so did they get ripped off by the ROSCO, I don't think so.
Much as I would like to think it would, it really won’t.
May I ask why you think that please?
Despite the desperate media scaremongering Brent Crude is only at $81 a barrel which is nothing compared to historical peaks, the USA can turn the taps on and there's plenty of cheap Russian oil around for those countries that want it.
Because we have been through this many times before with rising fuel price spikes and it makes no difference to government policy with any long term electrification or alternatives being committed to. They would just rather go for the cheaper option which is life extension and/or continual reliance on fossil fuel.
Northern's 158s already have replacement stock out to tender, and won't be removed from service until 2032 at the absolute earliest (in the queue behind the 150s, 155s, 156s, and 769s).
Northern are tendering for a framework agreement however they are currently only committing to the Phase 1 orders which as you say replaces the early 15x fleets. The Northern 158's should go under the Phase 2 order if/when that goes ahead but that isn't yet tendered or committed too but needs to be.
I don't know where the narrative that the 158s aren't accounted for in the replacement has come from.
While the 15xs and 769s aren't the most reliable, especially the 769s, records show that recent new train orders haven't gone very smoothly in terms of reliability either! You'd hope that this would be considered as part of the procurement process, to avoid awarding the order to a builder with a poor track record, such as CAF. And, Northern are short of trains as it is (and have been for decades), so the uplift in number of carriages is definitely deserved. I too, was under the impression that 158 replacement was in Phase 2 Lot 2.
That solution requires infrastructure changes (charging points at strategic locations), which is not something noted as happening at any great pace and then there is the time to convert the trains themselves.
While the number of carriages may be the same, the numbers don't look to add up for units. Lot 2 expected to be 48 3-car and 63 4-car making 111 units. Even counting the 4-car as 2 two-car that would be 174 equivalent units with the Northern 15x fleet including 158s being 200ish. On RTT a lot of trains currently run as two-car formations which makes 174 equivalent units a significant overestimate. Excluding 158s that's 148 existing units, would expect enough doubled up that could be replaced by 111 longer units without removing services from the timetable.
In terms of phase 2 that should be quicker for Northern to get through. Those 158s might be usable for other operators to lighten the load on their existing 158 fleets while their own replacements are procured and rolled out. While Northern procurement could have orders called off for other operators I'd be surprised if 3rd rail was included as part of the spec. GWR, SWR and Chiltern would probably benefit from a combined procurement as have similar requirements/challenges. There's also suggestion those operators might skip the multi-mode stage and would prefer battery combined with infrastructure. That would mean their 158s would continue for longer to be able to make that transition as wouldn't just be new trains required.
While a joint procurement makes most sense I think the penny pinching DfT will make the procurement as small as possible, allowing for cascades to make up the shortfall of new stock ordered. The TRU does free up a load of 185s on Huddersfield stoppers and if some of their other routes like Manchester - Hull gets trasnferred to Northern which will have the stock to run it multimode, then you get a few more 185s freed. Then again there won't be near enough 185s to replace the Sprinters, checking the SWR fleet list again.
Correct, I didn't actively think about that since on my side all 15x services are supposed to be 3 or 4 carriages.
Fair enough.
There is a Government policy ?
It's the stated plan that Phase 1 replaces the early 15x fleets and we hope the 769's, the number of vehicles isn't a comparison because the plan is for 3 car units as a minimum so all the two cars will become three at least. Some 158's may get moved around following the roll out of the new fleets and some may be released but currently they are expected to be replaced in Phase 2, along with the 323 & 333 EMU's, Phase 3 would see the 170's replaced. Phase 2 & 3 should be a case of calling off the framework agreement so should be quicker but would still need finance to be made available so is at the will of the DfT/Treasury.
Given the 15x replacements are planned to be MMU & BEMU's your likely to see similar if not lower availability than the current 15x fleets although they will hopefully be more reliable.
And when an exciting plan is announced it either gets downgraded over time or dropped by a successive government
Like IC225's actually running at 225kph...And when an exciting plan is announced it either gets downgraded over time or dropped by a successive government
Got no further than Peterborough to Grantham and then only on test. Nothing changes.