RAGNARØKR;1338076 said:
Conclusion - you really don't read other people's posts and pick and choose what bits suit you to discuss and ignore those that contradict you, however detailed they may be.
Doesn't matter how often the locos would need to go to a main depot. they will still need to go to a main depot, on diesel power, under wires for many miles.
What off-the-peg locos are these? The Class 67 is a dozen years old, no longer built and geared for completely different duties than start-stop every seven or eight minutes. The Class 68 is yet to run a wheel and again is not designed for operating in that way, nor has its Caterpillar engine been subjected to this type of duty - look how long it took to find something that could replace the Valenta in Class 43s. I've already made these points before, but yet again you have just ignored them.
There are no conflicting views on the volume of traffic beyond Oxford, not in my mind or my posts, at least. Peak trains are very busy and require all the seats in an HST west of Oxford. Off-peak volumes are lower but 166s are not adequate much of the time and 180s are just about able to cope. Yes, the odds are traffic will grow, but not to to extent that it will require HST-size trains off-peak.
Nor is it "exactly comparable" to your pet obsession of Waterloo-Weymouth. Bournemouth is as far in journey time from London as Worcester. Oxford is under an hour.
The "kind of options" you suggest are, oddly enough, all the well-worn ones that fit in with your prejudices. I'm fully aware of the loadings either side of Oxford (I should be, since I commute on the route) and have already pointed out that the IEP plan calls for trains to divide and combine at Oxford (and Swindon for Cheltenham). I have also previously pointed out that the md of FGW noted that five-car 180s, with not that many seats fewer than a five-car IEP, can be near fully loaded now west of Oxford, never mind with likely future growth to factor in, so something bigger than five cars, but smaller than an HST, may well be needed.
So your latest smokescreen for failing to provide evidence of your "major infrastructure upgrade" is that it's commercially confidential, is it? Whatever next...
"End cars are not the same thing as intermediate cars". Er, thanks for that insight. The 390 driving cars are still 25.1m long though and I haven't noticed any running around with lumps knocked out of them by the infrastructure.
Yes, DMUs are ideal for lightly-trafficked lines but where are all the places your diesel locos are going to be re-used once electrification spreads? Re-engineering locos is not an insurmountable challenge, no, but it wouldn't come cheap and why would you bother when we are awash with heavy-haul freight diesels with years of life left in them anyway? Another point I made previously which seems to have passed you by.
So there's good waste (which fits in with your prejudices) and bad waste (anything which doesn't) is there?
No-one would ever extend electrification just to Moreton-in-Marsh. It might be a short-term intermediate stage while the whole line to Worcester was being wired but nothing more than that.
Turbos are not ideal? That's putting it mildly. They are a lash-up hasty conversion of a suburban dmu design, which were created when NSE needed rolling stock to work the route when it was transferred from Regional Railways. They're just lovely sitting at stations in the current weather conditions with the doors wide open. More like sitting in a fridge than "draughty".
The issues with header tanks were why nothing was done with the seating when FGW carried out the refresh programme, in combination with the need to alter the brakes if you did switch seats around. The costs involved are far from trivial. And that does nothing to address their lack of seating capacity now, never mind if you put 2+2 seats in, that they are not able to handle 500-plus passengers, that lots of the platforms are too short for 2x3-car formations, that there are no catering facilities (Travelling Chef breakfast services are well patronised). And the engines are, as I pointed out, but you chose to ignore yet again, pretty much at the outer limits of their capabilities now in a 166 - the non a/c 165s are quicker off the mark. You also chose to ignore my point about them only being able to run at 90mph.
Rather like posts elsewhere about tearing apart perfectly serviceable Voyagers for all manner of bizarre reasons, you seem to have come up with a solution for something that isn't a problem. The best thing to to with Turbos is leave them well alone and send them somewhere, say Bristol, where they can carry on doing the kinds of things they are good at - which isn't long-distance express work.
Services between the Cotswold Line and London need high-quality, high-speed rolling stock and some is on order. The 166s were a useful stopgap in the 1990s, when no-one was entirely sure what switching to through running to and from London all day would do, after a decade of peak-only trains, but the growth in traffic they generated made them entirely unsuitable within a few years.
If you had bothered to read my posts on previous occasions when someone comes up yet again with the notion that maybe you could boot everyone out at Oxford, you would have seen me make the point that the through running to and from London is what has driven the growth on the route for 20 years. Reverse that and you will drive off many passengers in no time at all. Hope you read and absorb it this time.
Dave1987, I'm still waiting to hear from you about either running diesel locos miles under wires to get them to a depot, or how you will magically electrify the entire network in one go so we don't need bi-modes or diesel locos.
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You do realise that if Bombardier had won the IEP contract then they probably wouldn't have even built the trains in the UK? Most of the long distance trains that Bombardier have built for the UK were constructed in Belgium: All of the Meridians were built there in their entirety and shipped over complete, and even the Voyagers that were assembled in Crofton, Wakefield were shipped over from Belgium as complete pre-painted bodyshells ready for fitting out and marrying up to their bogies, etc - Some of the Voyagers were also constructed entirely in Belgium.