They could put back the polished wood floors they were built with
I would need a lot more than that - Pacers would have to be cleared to work through Shrewsbury (can currently only do so with special authority and must be treated as on track plant), and Crewe men would need to be trained on them as no Cardiff crews have signed Manchester since the resignalling work more than a decade ago. No Pacer has ever worked a Marches service north of Craven Arms and those that got that far were all on the short-lived 00.30 SO Cardiff - Craven Arms. It's not, however, unheard of for them to work Manchester - west Wales services west of Cardiff (although quite rare).
Whether it's 90mph or 75mph, it's still almost 20 miles straight at speeds a D-train can't match. I'm a bit surprised that they're fast enough to meet the service requirements. If a Chester-Crewe train was timed for more than 25 minutes, and everything else ran the same, it would either lose the connection with the train from Llandudno at Chester, or with the one to London at Crewe.
I have nothing against either seat, but it seem strange to be seeing Fainsa ironing boards on the long-distance CAF units, while the Cardiff light-rail Stadlers are getting Grammer IC3000s (same as a GWR HST).
Christ, that looks spartan: Whatever happened to the concept of making the interiors of long distance trains a comfortable and relaxing environment with such basic features as carpet, muted colours and seats that look like they might actually be comfortable to sit on, rather than taking their inspiration from prison cells where the primary criteria of the design appears to be to encourage passengers to want to leave as fast as possible so that the whole thing can be washed down with a high pressure hose?
Those computer consoles always did seem to have shoddy electrics upon the first hint of a klingon attack.
