Rail Franchises

[Nawdic]

Bench seats are the best.

[Pilot]

Bench seats are the best.

No, Just No! Not the ones on the 142s!

[Chris]

Bench seats are the best.

All the crappy old Arriva buses around here have bench seats which seem to think that people don't have legs. Then again the bus always seems like it is on a mission to fumigate you.

[Nawdic]

I like the older, but more modern bus, such as the "classic" Wrightbuses, ALX200s, ALX400s, Metrobuses, Volvo B6/B10s and the humble Scania. I also find that buses with the engine in the middle rather than in the end produce the coolest journey.


I don't like new buses. Some E200 Enviros with a well-established company in Sussex ended up getting recalled as their chassis were poorly manufactured.

Also, on another bum note, I have some rather prematurely ageing Arriva E400s with hard suspension to cope with down here!

However, Stagecoach's fleet tends to have the best in terms of comfort and ride quality... Let's have some step entrance B10s in London once more!

[Ameecher]

Please, take them, I hate the 323s! They have that annoying Whine, from the Transmission I think, annoys me a lot.

Unless they've gained a diesel lump, it's not the transmission. The traction motors however...

[Pilot]

Please, take them, I hate the 323s! They have that annoying Whine, from the Transmission I think, annoys me a lot.

Unless they've gained a diesel lump, it's not the transmission. The traction motors however...

Lol, that's what I meant. I make some stupid Mistakes sometimes.

[Geo Ghost]

I make some stupid Mistakes sometimes.

Welcome to my world lad.

[Dave]

The 323s are one of the best commuter units around. High density, mostly reliable, and capable of very good acceleration.

The traction motors are clearly a personal thing, but I like the idea of being in a Formula 1 car haha.

[Geo Ghost]

I've never thought of it that way...
Dave, you may have just made my journeys on FCC 365s a lot more interesting!

[Nawdic]

Nah, SET 465/6s with a mix of GEC and Hitachi motors are the most interesting, especially when they're formed of 10 cars...

[61653]

There was talk a couple of years ago about the 323s (or at least some of them) being sent to Neville Hill/Skipton for Airedale services to replace the 333s, as platforms 1 & 2 at Shipley (the S&C lines) can't be extended to any longer than 6-cars. Of course, this was the rolling stock plan prior to the NorthWest/Great Western electrification plans, so who knows what the future holds now?

[Pilot]

I imagine, what with NW getting 319's, that the 323's will either go over there, or to LM.

[EXTspotter]

The last noises on the 323s were that the Northern ones would head to LM after the NW electrification project.

[Ameecher]

I think that was the plan to allow a strengthening of Cross-city, currently the extra 350s would allow 323s to solely run cross-city but I don't know if the 323s be reunited as a complete fleet.

[EXTspotter]

I thought the idea was that the 319 (or whichever units end up being handed over to the NW) would completely replace the 323, in order for the entire 323 fleet to go to Birmingham to improve costs (as keeping a certain class of trains under one operator would lower costs through the removal of duplicate posts). For instance if say there were 100 units train X split 50/50 between operators A and B, say the number of fitters needed is one per 5 trains in order to keep the trains in service, providing routine maintainance plus 5 in case of fixing trains which are out of service (over the level of standard maintainance). If one operator had all of the units, they would continue to need the one per five trains, but 5 extra fitters may be able to cover the entire pool of 100 trains.

I guess I just did a crap explaination of economies of scale entirely by accident. Blast! Oh well. Sorry.

[61653]

The national fleet of 25kV AC EMUs is pretty shambolic when you think about it ...

I suppose that given the 319s going to the Manchester/Liverpool/Preston areas (along with a handful of 317s maybe?), it would make sense to unite all the 323 fleet in one place. The most obvious candidate would be Birmingham (I'm avoiding TOC names as we're talking about 3-5years down the line), and there'll be plenty of suitable alternative 3-car units (318s? 320s? shortened 4-car units?) on Leeds-Skipton. The 333s and/or 321/322 fleet could then boost capacity in Scotland for example. It's possible of course that all areas will end up with a ragtag fleet of assorted classes!

It could be that once the current raft of electrification projects is completed, there'll still be a number of issues along certain routes: I only know of the Shipley issue, but I vaguely recall someone mentioning power supply issues somewhere in the Birmingham area and there may be others (not all insurmountable, but there won't be A LOT of spare money around, what with all the wiring, and HS2!). On that basis, an entirely uniform fleet is unlikely to be obtained in any operating area (bar Essex Thameside (Thames-side?)/Crossrail/Expanded Thameslink) until the majority of Mk3-based units reach the end of their lives. But in the meantime it would make sense to unify particularly the smaller fleets for the reasons outlined above by EXTSpotter.

I would quite like to see the 323s back in their birthplace of West Yorkshire though, for purely sentimental reasons!

[Dave]

Think the line from Four Oaks-NS-Longbridge is fine, but if there are any issues with the Power then it would be in the outer extremes. For sure, the only services the 323s run now that you wouldn't want them to is Wolves-NS-Walsall and the occasional foray down to Brum International. Most other EMU services other than the XCity are 350 based anyway.

[Ameecher]

You ignored what I said that even the Japanese, masters at HSR railway building, don't even tunnel under cities. Not even the smaller ones. Because it's so bloody expensive. And they're pretty loose when it comes to spending money on railway lines to nowhere and building stations to serve communities with a few old people.

If they won't even do it, then why would we?

In the UK, we are building a tunnel across Central London (Crossrail)

Yes and the Japanese also build mass transit frequent stop tunnel systems in their cities but the cost of doing that for a High Speed railway is not even viable for them.

[Hazzard]

It quicker and cheaper to build a tunnel under a city centre rather than demolish it!

It really depends on which city centre.

[Ameecher]

It's even cheaper to not serve Stafford because it doesn't need serving.