The point is that by the time this stock becomes available for Iarnród Éireann/National Transport Authority to lease, the rolling stock shortfall in Britain should be addressed.
I don't believe that to be true. EMT's Liverpool - Norwich, particularly north and west of Nottingham, services will still be overcrowded, along with other of their regional services, such as Derby - Crewe which still often operates as a single carriage, as will Crosscountry's regional Cardiff - Nottingham and Birmingham - Leicester & Stansted services. Plus Transport for Wales' new fleets aren't due to be fully delivered until 2023, and that's assuming that they enter service on time, not something with great precedent. In addition, once Northern's Pacers are gone by my reckoning the franchise will still be operating with the bare minimum of rolling stock necessary to provide the agreed level of service (Though even that would be a luxury at present).
Granted that there will be a fairly large number of ex-WMT class 170s becoming available after the end of 2020, but with the number of potential takers these could end up spread thin and in large part there will still be plenty of stock shortages and overcrowding on unnecessarily short provincial services across Britain for another four to five years at the very least.
Why is nobody considering the use of 185's to cover all services that run through the Calder Valley? They were built for Pennine runs and they are the right type of unit for Northern Connect style services. I would personally think it very logical to use them on:
York - Leeds - Bradford - Manchester
York- Leeds - Bradford - Blackpool
Leeds - Bradford - Manchester - Chester.
I might not have these diagrams exactly right but you get the point. These routes would surely eat up a lot of the units.
If fuel consumption is still a problem then maybe the eco mode installed a few years ago can be taken a stage further, or the trains modified to drop out an engine?
I realise that negotiations with the DafT would be required and not necessarily easy but worth a go? For me, this is the sort of thing Rail North should be batting for, and maybe they are but somehow I doubt it.
This has seemed eminently sensible to me for some time. Northern's franchise agreement calls for an additional 18 x 2-car class 170 equivalents to enter the franchise during 2022, it's a pity a case can't be made for a similar number of 3-car units to enter the franchise two years earlier instead. It frustrates me that revenue, subsidy and premium profiles are so tightly constrained by the DfT that there is no leeway at all for franchisees to make improvements above the minimum required that would be of benefit to passengers. Though then again, where is the incentive for franchisees to do so even if they could?