A bit off topic but for some reason the class 397 thread is all locked up. Does anyone know why tpe have only ordered 12 class 397’s? That’s nowhere near going to be enough to cover all Liverpool and Manchester-Scotland diagrams. The 10 class 350’s aren’t enough at the moment just doing Manchester to Scotland. Are they going to still use 185s to Scotland? Or use bi modes or mk5 sets? Would seem such a waste of a bi mode or a diesel to be running them fully under the wires. Why not order enough 397’s? Seems very odd to me.
A few extra journeys have been added to the TPE Scottish services in recent months, but as far as I'm aware the scheduled turnout for 350s is still eight units on Tuesdays to Thursdays and nine on Fridays to Mondays. Assuming that a double 397 will replace a double 350, a single 397 will replace a single 350 or a single or double 185, there will (at any one time) be one unit operating Liverpool - Scotland, and there will always be at least one unit not scheduled for service (as now, with the 350s) then I would expect the 397 turnout to be nine units Tuesdays and Wednesdays, nine/ten units Thursdays, ten units Mondays, and ten/eleven units Fridays to Sundays. There would be no more than one remaining 185 duty, and, even then, probably only on a Sunday.
In the circumstances I think that twelve 397s is the most which could realistically be ordered at this stage.