How many services do those 31 carriages actually cover? Three peak services on a weekday and some fill in turns then two services on a Saturday so that is, at best 18 of those 31 carriages.
They’re not.
What Alstom facility in Birmingham? If your thinking of Washwood Heath it was demolished a few years ago in preparation for the new HS2 depot.
The whole point is to get rid of both the Mark 3s as well as the locomotives.
But then other London termini don't have 2 and 3 car trains arriving during the rush hour. And presumably some of the lost passengers will return - if people come into the office say 3 days a week, chances are the vast majority will come in on Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays, so those days will need plenty of capacity.
Not when HS2 is coming.
In the case of Paddington, that is electrics replacing diesels - GWR operated 5 and 6-car 165/166 formations where appropriate immediately prior to the 387s with more seats. The passenger loads on Thameslink are vastly greater than those into Marylebone.
Another big loss for Chiltern will be the almost complete loss of tourists going to Bicester Village shopping centre which pre Covid would have kept their off-peak Oxford services busy.
Even if the flows to Bicester Village were a good source of revenue, they never needed the capacity of 68-hauled trains.
Except the emissions from the 68s are lower than the rest of the Chiltern fleet as they meet Stage IIIB emissions standards, unlike the 165s and 168s.
Whilst that was the case during the various lockdowns and effective travel bans, it's reasonable to assume the tourists are returning.
If you go to Leeds when there is a 68 there you definitely know about it even not up close.
Ask the residents of Scarborough what they think. I don’t think the word ’impressed’ comes into it.
The 68's meet Stage IIIA, not IIIB.
until your waiting in the waiting room and cant hear yourself think. from a plainly passenger non enthusiast perspective they are just plain noisy and they would likely appreciate a quieter train
This is thing that has to be remembered when talking about Chiltern's "intercity" aspirations. There's no point in them investing time and money in the London-Birmingham express market long-term. Their fleet and service plans need to be tailored to the intermediate markets along that route, not end-to-end traffic.
It’s rather more than that in the Scarborough case though isn’t it, unless you’ve not read what’s been going on there for the past few years. Noise pollution is a very serious issue with these locos, especially when a new depot is built near your house (which wasn’t there when the majority of people no doubt bought their house and could cope with an hourly DMU going past in either direction).
