Thameslink is currently undergoing a £6billion (c.$10bn) upgrade that's scheduled for completion in 2019 (though these trains will start to be introduced from 2015).
Hitachi dropped out of this race to concentrate its resources on bidding for the new fleet of InterCity trains, and Alstom -- which looked to me like far and away the most interesting bid -- was ditched early on. That left Siemens against Bombardier (the latter having won the biggest number of UK modern rolling stock orders until now), and Siemens has emerged triumphant.
This brings into question the future of Bombardier's UK factory -- the only train manufacturing facility left in Britain -- but probably ensures a better quality of train on Thameslink services.
Although it looks like a high-density commuter operation, Thameslink is in fact an outer-suburban (almost long-haul) service which stretches from Brighton to Peterborough (>100 miles). The new trains -- 1,200 carriages forming 4-car, dual-voltage electric multiple units, most of which will run in 8-car or 12-car formations -- will cost about £1.2billion. They will replace ageing Class 319s that will then be refurbished and cascaded to other, soon-to-be-electrified, routes in North-West England and on the Great Western mainline.
6 comments:
They have a feel of the GWR's inter-War early DMUs
Well it's nice to see the long standing tradition of London getting all the new trains, while everywhere else makes do with London's old trains hasn't changed.
That said refurbished 319s sound positively palatial after nasty 142/144 pacers and noisy dated 150s for the last 20 odd years.
Where did this myth come from, of "London getting all the new trains"?
For years and years, London had the oldest, most miserable suburban stock on the network. All those slam-doors had to be replaced, and they were -- so yes, at that time London did get lots of new stock.
But other places did, too: new electric trains for Leeds; a fleet of new diesel trains for Trans Pennine; and almost the entire cross-country fleet replaced with brand-new stock (admittedly they chose piss-poor Voyagers, but they were brand-new). And Scotland has been buying new trains like there's no tomorrow, with more to come, too.
Then again, since the majority of the UK's rail journeys are either in or from/to London, you'd expect the majority of rolling stock to be for there. Or does a train that for any part of its journey is in London count as solely a London benefit (those Cambridge people are presumably getting zero benefit from the new Class 379s)?
London is over-serviced in many areas of public life, but I'm not sure railway rolling stock is one of them. Especially if you've actually ridden on, say, a new London Overground train.
Er... that said, my sympathies to anyone who has to use a Pacer. Blame it on the stupid "cost benefit" system used by Government, where low-volume routes can never generate sufficient positive return to prove a "business case" for new stock.
Then again, the fact that Government wants a "business (sic) case" for public services tells you all about the idiocy of Government. It drags us back to Heseltine's "vision" of every new public building being a Portakabin, because that was what offered the most economical "solution" to any architectural problem.
Ok I may have exaggerated a little.
But I think it's pretty fair to say that the very worst stock and the most dilapidated and inadequate infrastructure has for a long time, and still is, found in the north of England.
Yes there are exceptions.
The Airdale electrification and the introduction of 185s on SOME transpennine routes being the obvious and best examples.
But there are I believe far more relatively well used middle distance routes that are so starved of investment (think pacers, semaphore signals, rickety wooden sleepered bolt-jointed track, stations with no shelter or information systems ect) than further south.
I understand why new(er)trains and updates are always going to be slower to reach some places than other, but I don't think using public transport should have to feel like punishment in any region in this day and age. Which it often still does.
Bolt-jointed track and semaphore signals? Rife on East Anglia's secondary routes/branch lines (indeed, the theoretically express line Cambridge-Ely-Norwich is (just) still semaphore signalling and manual level crossing gates).
Ancient trains? Try the "InterCity" service from Norwich, operated by Mk3 coaching stock and Class 90s -- probably the oldest long-haul rolling stock still running after HSTs (though they have been so heavily modernised that they don't really count as 1970s equipment). And it's one of the slowest InterCity routes in the country.
Having written that, I am in complete agreement with you that "using public transport should [not] have to feel like punishment in any region...". And, indeed, there should be a reasonably comprehensive coverage of public transport across all regions.
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