It’ll most likely be a return to the pre-Covid setup where a peak Hastings to Cannon Street service would then form a Tunbridge Wells from there, spend the day doing Tunbridge Wells to Charing Cross before going to form an evening Cannon Street to Hastings working.
It was spotted by an enthusiast on TikTok going to a scrapyard by road:
There were unconfirmed rumours few months back that an award could happen this summer, but all gone quiet.
If they are not good enough to stay with SWR due to reliability problems, Southeastern will want to stay clear of them. They were fine with 707s as they were relatively new, but even then they were kind of dumped on SE, but another fleet that brings a load of new training, maintenance and platform testing requirements that is different to others, as well as being older, won't help them. It's more likely that they try and get more 377s off of Southern if they need to get rid of more Networkers before a new fleet does, as at least there is already compatibility here.
Another case of our dithering combined with no longer having sufficient home-grown factories is costing us more overall.
Spot on. We should be self sufficient in this country when it comes to rolling stock, buses etc. Its pretty criminal. It should be one of the first things this labour govt shouldve looked into especially with nationalisation on the horizon. The country needs 3 types of train. With long term build strategy (IMO mk3s should still be being built, updated as required).
Surely it was to get Networkers off the mid distance services, which means they are then predominantly used for Metro services. The GTR business case for using all 30 379s has been justified in part by being able to send on the 13 377s to Southeastern for further Networker replacement. There is nothing particularly wrong with that approach in a time of limited availability of funding.
I think around 30 x 465 have gone but there are only 16 x 466 left in service, out of 43. This has drastically reduced the scope for 10 car Networkers. Currently 11 are diagrammed.
Any photos? And any idea if it’s off for scrap or repairs?
This photo wasn't taken by me but a friend of mine. Not sure where the coach is going I'm afraid.
So 465188's gone and 465005's going. Any idea what could be next? Could it be 465027? I've not heard of that in donkeys years.
Southeastern have offloaded 25x 465s and 27x 466s from the MetCam side, which is 154 carriages. 30x 707s brought in 150 carriages, then 13x 377s added another 52 carriages, so this gave SE an additional 48 carriages, equal to 12x 4-car units, vs their pre-covid fleet size.
depends on the season. In the summer a 707 is preferred due to aircon, but 707 or networker over 376 every time. I time my commute to avoid 376 wherever possible
I would imagine that units will be and have been scrapped for primarily one of two reasons:
1) might be beyond economic repair, but why did their maintenance regime allow just certain units to deteriorate and become uneconomic whilst others are still economic to repair. If economic to maintain, why not look after all of them.
I imagine the withdrawn units will have suffered a severe fault i.e. failure of main motor / traction equipment. Obviously minor faults would be sorted as required.
Because the Networkers are old trains, spares will be hard to come by. Therefore another reason to abandon certain units to keep the rest going.
Steve White in February when asked stated "with a view to creating the business case for the Treasury and DfT this summer". That is the final step and once approved the various already agreed (by that point) contracts can be signed.
The ScotRail financing competition is still open for registrations of interest. If they've said May they probably meant 2027 or 2028, their expected dispatch of invitation to negotiate/tender is July this year.
The Electrostars/707s and Networkers have rather different availability targets. If the new fleet merely replaced Networkers vehicle for vehicle that would still be an increase on number of vehicles in traffic each day. While perceived as big changes looking at some of the existing gaps the additional running isn't as extensive as one might first expect in terms of extra mileage.
Think of it like a car. If the engine's been smashed to bits somehow that'll obviously not run and needs reparation. In some cases repairs can be more expensive and/or financially burdening for the owner and so there's no use repairing it and off to scrap it goes. However if it's something less major like the check engine lights being on, that can be fixed easily, and in the context of railways, it should be done ASAP while maintaining safety, especially when SE needs all the stock they can get.
