Should Grand Central suspend their service?

[Chester1]

The DfT sign-off on any rolling stock changes at XC and Arriva gets paid a management fee for XC for following the DfT's orders.

Grand Central's first concern will be their track access agreement expiring in December 2026. Once they've got an extension they can look into new stock.

Bradford only has ~30 miles off wires and Sunderland ~40 miles. Both could be done roundtrip by a battery EMU so a battery 397 would be a possibility.

Arriva won't avoid signing a deal for Grand Central on chance DfT want them them for CrossCountry at a later point. A deal with Grand Central until December 2026 would be better for Rosco than having units in storage. Grand Central seem to have a choice between ditching the 180s and having a very unreliable fleet for next 40 months.

 

[mike57]

180s nearly brought Hull Trains to their knees a few years ago, and it looks like the same scenario playing out at Grand Central. GC appear to have a plan going forwards, 221s, which as diesel under wires while not ideal solves the problem. GC should have seen this coming, after all 180s have to be polite a 'reputation'.

The issue is likely how long their access agreement has to run, if they had longer then new trains could probably be justified, and then 80x would be the obvious choice. If the 221s prove reliable then I cant see any new trains being ordered anytime soon unless there is pressure to move to bi-mode. HSTs would be nice from a nostalgia point of view, but as someone who has used HSTs since their introduction 45+ years ago and still thinks the HST+Mk3 coach is the best design to come out of BR even I can see that HSTs are at the end of thir life and really need to go into honourable retirement.