Unless some 377/3s suddenly become available, then 10-car 377 formations can work to Tunbridge Wells, as they do with Networkers. Freeing those up from the Coastway and sending them to Southeastern seems to have its merits.
BML services are really busy - they need to be 12 car ideally. With the loss of the 455s and the 313s services are becoming shorter. As I mentioned above the recent NR report identified the need for capacity upgrades on the Brighton Mainline. Imo the easiest way to start going about this is make all trains 12 coaches where possible due to infrastructure. As far as I can tell GTR do not currently have enough stock to do this.
Southeastern will likely want to avoid the 5-car units for commonality reasons, as all their 377s are 4-car. 12-car would increase capacity, as even 10-car Networkers get crowded in the peaks, mainly because they're the only fast Orpington peak services. The only other alternative is more mainline services that run fast to/from Orpington in the peak, whether terminating at Orpington or further south, but the paths and stock probably don't exist for this.
I was thinking of 4+3+3 (or even 4+4+3) formations using the 377/3s. I'm sure that the 5-car units aren't on offer.
It was established on another thread somewhere that a 12 377 will not fit in the Tunbridge Wells turnback siding - this was discussed in some detail iirc
would be nice to see the 458/4s on the south london metro routes. this could perhaps indirectly revive service cuts. but what’s the chances
If the other 8 458/5s are converted to 458/4s. Would that permit more Coastway services to switch over to 458/4s or running 8 car sets on Southamptons?
Yeah I don't see how that can work otherwise, unless 28 of them enough and the rest are scrapped, as I don't see how 4 car and 5 car of the same unit type can run together on the same line? Yet another problem caused by the poor planning and messy refurbishment scheme.
They won’t be.
Indeed. And how would the above be of any benefit to Porterbrook, which owns all of these fleets.
Also, there are loads of previous threads, going back to the SWR 2017 decision to get rid of them, explaining that it was not cost effective to fit AC equipment.
There is a lot of logic in keeping them in a dedicated geographical area and not mixing them with London trains. I would probably limit it to just the western coastway routes
Why? The network is centred on Brighton, and 28 units gives flexibility and sufficient fleet size to cover both sides.
I’m struggling to find this, can anyone quote some text? Thanks!
On page 39 of Rail 1060, Laurence Bowman is quoted as saying the first 458s will be withdrawn in a couple of weeks - which could well mean a couple of weeks from the interview date rather than publication date, in which case around now.
I agree with what you say, but just to note, it could have been worse. At one stage, while the refurb/conversion programme was still in progress, SWR proposed never to put them into service - the converted units would be stored unused for the minimum lease period, then offloaded (and possibly scrapped without ever having carried a passenger). At the time, it was said that penalty clauses in the refurb contract made it cheaper to do this than to stop the rebuilding work. It was only the extraordinarily delayed 701s not being available to replace the 707s, that meant the 458/4s have been used at all. Unfortunately the conversion arguably made them less suitable for the available work than they had been previously.
Page 13 of the May issue, "No home has been confirmed for the EMU's,....., there are suggestions they could transfer to GTR", nothing more than that.
Yeh. I can understand what you are saying. I would feel that it could be the same situation as it was with the 379s. It took over 3 years for GN Railway to get the 379s, even though it was rumoured that it was going to GN in 2019, and it took till 2025 for the 379s to be in passenger service. I would say that 458/4s would be a good fit for GTR Southern Railway or SouthEastern Railway. But I wouldn't think that it is definite.
Why would some random at SWR know about GTR interest? Apart from anything else, GTR ceases to exist at the end of this month and any talking would be with DfT and Porterbrook.
The only possibility I can think of is the owner Porterbrook arranged a visit to inspect with potential future customer (either at depot, or off record checking a unit in service), Someone saw or heard conversation and converted it to likely deal outcome.
Bear in mind that the various fleet teams within SWR are oftentimes privy to conflicting information.
