There’s talk of “deadlines” on this thread, but ScotRail didn’t really have a deadline to worry about. Other TOCs had to ensure sufficient stock by the 1 January 2020 accessibility deadline (e.g. the Wales & Borders scattershot approach of bringing in loco hauled/ 230s/ 769s and temporarily hiring in additional Pacers whilst disabled bogs are added to Sprinters to try to cobble together sufficient “fit” trains to meet the deadline).
But the 170s are already accessible; for various well documented reasons, ScotRail hasn’t had the legacy of Pacers – the last slam door diesel stock was the 117s that ran peak extras on the Fife Circle up to the millennium.
So there’s not been the same urgency to get new trains in – it wouldn’t have been the end of the world if they’d had to wait another six/twelve months for something like an 802 to be built – if Northern/ Wales & Borders/ GWR don’t get sufficient fit stock to replace Pacers then they face "bustitution" and potential line closures in the short term – the worst that’d happen in Scotland would have been passengers mildly inconvenienced by doors closer to the middle of the carriage than they’d prefer for “Inter City” journeys.
In a way, I'm surprised the economics of converting 22 HST sets for Scotrail added up. On GWR's West of England route, HST rebuilds were considered and ruled out with new Class 802s proving a better investment for a longer period of time.
Although it couldn't have been foreseen, the extended HST rebuild times at Wabtec do beg the question of whether a new fleet, built for a 30 year lifespan, would have been a better long term investment, although I appreciate that the franchising structure meant that bidders weren't necessary looking beyond the end of the current franchise.
In the meantime, Scotrail customers can look forward to an improvement in capacity and quality over their current Class 170s, which can only be a positive thing. I do however wonder whether a 'stopgap' train could have actually been a new train for the next 30 years, without the upheaval and cost of needing another fleet replacement programme in 7-10 years(?).
In my view, good for customers (depending on the quality of the refurbishment and how the reliability of the HSTs pans out), but not so sensible as a business decision.
The funny thing is that, given the political set up and the fact that the Scottish Government have effectively *bought* the 385s for the current/future ScotRail franchises, you’d expect them to take a long term approach to the longer distance routes too – whilst the GWR franchise was the one suffering from short term decisions made by Westminster.
Instead it’s the GWR franchise that’s getting long term trains (800/801s leased for twenty seven years) whilst the ScotRail one is the one that is making-do-and-mending with “upcycled” old trains.
(as a Scot living south of the border) I thought that Scotland did long term planning better than England but it seems that the Powers That Be are happy to defer the difficult decisions about services from the Central Belt to Aberdeen/ Inverness for a future administration.
It's only a minor point and I don't mean to detract from what is a thoughtful and well reasoned post, but it's 26 sets: 17 x 5-car and 9 x 4-car
I know this has probably been answered elsewhere (and maybe this is me being a little OCD) but the omission of those nine coaches seems peculiar.
I can see the point in having two lengths of trains when you are ordering five/nine coach 800s, I could see the point in the original order of four/nine coach 222s (for Midland Mainline to use short ones as Turbostar replacements and long ones for London – Leeds services), but the lack of a fifth carriage on nine of the Scottish HSTs
Okay, the idea may be to diagram them on the Aberdeen – Inverness services (where they will be an increase in capacity over the majority of services); it just seems like a funny bit of penny pinching (when the HST carriages already exist, so it’s not like an order of new trains).
Just bugs me for some reason.
How much of the GWR routes are electrified though? I'm assuming the 802's were chosen because they'd be able to partially run on electric power whereas in Scotland they're only be running on diesel power. I'm assuming there's not any realistic plans to electrify the Scottish lines over the next few decades?
There’s certainly wires from Glasgow to Dunblane, which makes up a reasonable part of the journey to Aberdeen (when compared to 802s under the wires from London to Reading then diesel power to Devon/ Cornwall).
Seems no chance of wires over the Forth Bridge any time soon (the focus is on wiring up shorter routes around Edinburgh/ Glasgow, rather than taking a difficult and expensive decision about wiring to Fife).
But maybe the plan is to make a decision on future long distance stock in a decade’s time when a decision can be taken on electrification to Aberdeen.
Maybe by then we’ll know whether electrification is still feasible or whether solar powered/ hydrogen/ battery trains are the answer? It just seems a sideways move (at a time when other TOCs are taking longer term decisions and successive Scottish administrations have been prepared to dig deep to fund railway improvements, rather than upgrading 1970s trains to sweat another decade of service out of them before someone has to take a bigger decision about the future).
Shame, as a lot of other areas show Holyrood taking a longer term approach to things than Westminster.
While the delays are not welcome at least they have the option of putting the older stock into service as a stopgap which wouldn't have been possible if they'd ordered new stock. Given both the new 385's and mk 5 sleepers have been delayed for differing reasons, there's no guarantee ordering new stock would have been quicker and I think it was mentioned on here that if they had wanted 802's they'd have been at the bottom of the pile.
Not every new order has had delays. TPE have got their loco hauled coaches reasonably quickly (that would have been pretty suitable for ScotRail – there’s not been any significant delays with the 195s for Northern either (AFAICR). I’ve not been particularly following the “London” train orders (Crossrail, Thameslink, Moorgate branch, SWR suburban, GEML etc) so can’t comment on delays there.
Whereas upgrades to existing stock (e.g. 319s) seems to have had more problems.
Impossible to prove, in hindsight, certainly, but the HSTs certainly weren’t the only option (for 100mph unelectrified lines).
