My ideas for future use of Class 222 units

[The Ham]

There are a number of other arguments for not leaving the end driving vehicles parked up in sidings:

- it would be a disaster politically - people facing unnecessary over-crowding, whilst Ministers allow coaches to be parked up in sidings.

- it would lead to more cancelled trains. If a 8 coach unit fails, the service doesn't run. If one unit in a train formed of two 4-coach units fails, you can still run the service, albeit short formed.

- with trains formed of shorter units joined together, you can split the units at towards the end of the journey to serve multiple destinations.

The downside of running multiple units joined together is additional train crew, but it's a price worth paying for so many additional seats and service reliability.

Politicians would just say "rolling stock is down to franchise owners", anyway as I have pointed out it could be that whole trains are at in sidings whilst people complain about overcrowding. Alternatively the TOC could lease the same number of coaches, just in shorter units and there still be over crowding and trains at idle.

Under both options (XC, at least the option where there were 3 coach crowd busters, and Chiltern) there would be the same number of units. There could be some times towards the edges of the network where it would mean a cancelled service, but then would still be the same as it is now as few double length trains go that far out. If you have to substitute a unit then the shortest it would be would be 5 coaches rather than 4. Also it could be that the spare unit is longer (given that only 5 of the 7 units with 9 coaches were being allocated to run services that long). Finally imagine the political fall out when a 8 coach service is short formed because the spare units are the wrong class of train.

There are times when splitting services to serve two destinations are useful, and you could still do this with the 5 coach units for XC. However I am not aware of XC doing this (maybe a unit stopping short compared to another) and although I'm not aware of Chiltern doing it on their Birmingham services I know less about them.

I did suggest a few 3 coach crowd busters (4) could be useful, this should be seen in the overall context. These would replace 4 of the 34*220's the remaining 30 units would all be replaced by 5 coach units. Of the current 22 5 coach 221's (the 4 coach train would be replaced by a 5 coach unit) 10 would be replaced by longer (7 or 9 coach units, leaving 12 that wouldn't change. However they could be coupled with the 3 coach trains for about 1/3 of the time.

For 60% of the current fleet (220's and the single 221) that would mean a 25% increase in seats (or 38% in standard class seats). For the reminder of the fleet there would be between a 0% increase (for those services remaining as 5 coach units or where a 7 coach unit replace a pair of 4 coach units) and 60% increase for those being run as 7 coach units or (more for those run by 9 coaches or a pairing of a 5+3 units due to the standard only nature of the 3 coach units).

Anyway, it could be that such a setup could be for one 7 year franchise with things changing after that.

 

[CosherB]

Politicians would just say "rolling stock is down to franchise owners", anyway as I have pointed out it could be that whole trains are at in sidings whilst people complain about overcrowding. Alternatively the TOC could lease the same number of coaches, just in shorter units and there still be over crowding and trains at idle.

Under both options (XC, at least the option where there were 3 coach crowd busters, and Chiltern) there would be the same number of units. There could be some times towards the edges of the network where it would mean a cancelled service, but then would still be the same as it is now as few double length trains go that far out. If you have to substitute a unit then the shortest it would be would be 5 coaches rather than 4. Also it could be that the spare unit is longer (given that only 5 of the 7 units with 9 coaches were being allocated to run services that long). Finally imagine the political fall out when a 8 coach service is short formed because the spare units are the wrong class of train.

There are times when splitting services to serve two destinations are useful, and you could still do this with the 5 coach units for XC. However I am not aware of XC doing this (maybe a unit stopping short compared to another) and although I'm not aware of Chiltern doing it on their Birmingham services I know less about them.

I did suggest a few 3 coach crowd busters (4) could be useful, this should be seen in the overall context. These would replace 4 of the 34*220's the remaining 30 units would all be replaced by 5 coach units. Of the current 22 5 coach 221's (the 4 coach train would be replaced by a 5 coach unit) 10 would be replaced by longer (7 or 9 coach units, leaving 12 that wouldn't change. However they could be coupled with the 3 coach trains for about 1/3 of the time.

For 60% of the current fleet (220's and the single 221) that would mean a 25% increase in seats (or 38% in standard class seats). For the reminder of the fleet there would be between a 0% increase (for those services remaining as 5 coach units or where a 7 coach unit replace a pair of 4 coach units) and 60% increase for those being run as 7 coach units or (more for those run by 9 coaches or a pairing of a 5+3 units due to the standard only nature of the 3 coach units).

Anyway, it could be that such a setup could be for one 7 year franchise with things changing after that.

You should try and get a job at the DfT.

 

[The Ham]

You should try and get a job at the DfT.

No, that wouldn't happen as I've just realised that replacing the HST's doesn't need doing at the start of the next franchise. As such there would be several long trains and an increase in the number of sets by between 1 and 5 depending on if the 3 coach crowd busters are created. At worst that could result in 20 long trains compared with 5 now (with 4 crowd buster units allowing many services through the core to be 8 coaches long).