re the earlier points about the eight coach 390s (which were about half Standard and half First Class), whilst they seem pretty inadequate in hindsight, it's worth remembering that these were 125mph trains replacing 110mph trains on increased frequencies (e.g. Birmingham was half hourly, Manchester was hourly under BR, Glasgow was bi-hourly), sot he overall number of carriages did increase.
The difference is that it was possible to increase the length at a later date, unlike the 185s or Voyagers (which were never extended)
That, and in many cases replacing three 20m vehicles (or even 17m) with a brake van by two 23m vehicles would have little or no loss in seat numbers.
Things like Sprinterisation and Operation Princess always seem to catch the railway by suprise. Turns out that making a service more frequent doesn't just spread out your existing passengers, but gains you more because it's more convenient. If the Voyagers had been 8 cars and 5 cars rather than 5 cars and 4 cars - or the 185s built as 4-car sets (and more of them) I think they'd be viewed very differently.
Scotrail's 170s are another screamingly obvious case of being overtaken by demand. It's telling that the HSTs are giving back similar seating capacity (though more frequently) to when the lines were worked by loco-hauled rakes of 7 or 8 20m coaches.
Good point re the shorter carriages and "brakes" on older stock (something that is often missed when people compare MK1 rakes with modern trains).
ScotRail 170s were a step forward at the time - doubling the frequency of Edinburgh - Falkirk High - Glasgow - replacing 150s in Fife - but at least ScotRail have been able to increase supply to keep up with the demand.
So the 170s replaced nothing effectively. Thank you for the run down on the services, it's quite difficult to find timetables for that period really.
It's an interesting example of a line that has gone from a poor frequency (every forty five minutes from London to Leicester) with patchy stops at intermediate stations to a line bursting at the seams now. For all that people suggest we kept the GC open (as a parallel line from London to Leicester), there was hardly sufficient demand to keep one line from London to Leicester open in the 1980s yet alone spread that demand over two lines.
But National Express turned around a quiet line - whilst people give a lot of credit to Chiltern for the transformation of the Marylebone line, I don't think that NatEx get sufficient credit for what they did on the MML.
Before National Express took on the ECML franchise, their stock was pretty high, they "rescued" C2C/ WAGN/ Valley Lines/ Wales & West, they invested in ScotRail/ Midland Mainline, they did a reasonable job of the messy Central Trains franchise. But, like a football manager who will always be remembered for taking on that one job too big for him, their reputation now will always be defined by the NXEC days. The Graham Taylor of the railways.
Away from the NR/BR network, the 1983 Tube stock were a massive error. Specced at a time of declining passenger use with single leaf doors to save money, those doors made them a complete liability once passenger numbers recovered and started growing strongly, and contributed to them being scrapped after a tiny life, with all gone by 1998.
Interesting example - I hadn't thought of that
Similar theories allowed the planners to decide that a remodelled Preston station would only need to cater in the future for 80% of the traffic it was carrying at the time.
In a wonderful self fulfilling prophecy, the remodelled station only carried 80% of the previous traffic!
Ha!
It's a tricky one, I accept - at the moment there's argument about whether the increases in passenger numbers have plateaued - there's a fairly shaky commuter demand with fewer season tickets, the Friday commuter market seems pretty badly hit, the industrial action on some franchises hasn't helped... but at the same time some people still take the If You Build It They Will Come approach to new fleets of trains - sometimes whilst suggesting that we don't need HS2 because we'll all be working from home and doing everything digitally in a few years time.
If I were remodelling a station in anticipation of being electrified (say, Oxford/ Leicester/ Bristol Temple Meads) would I be "future proofing" it so that it could cope with 50% more trains than now (given that such a remodelling might lock the infrastructure in place for the next forty/fifty years)? Same number of trains as now? Or partly fund the remodelling by removing some underused platforms?
Will people look back at these threads in a decade and wonder why on earth we were replacing 3x23m 185s with 5x26m 802s when it was obvious in hindsight that passenger numbers would go down rather than up? Or castigate us for only having five coaches in the 802s?
So, for those reasons, it's hard to criticise BR/ TOCs for the decisions they took decades ago. It is, however, regrettable when things are built with no "Plan B" (e.g. stock that can't easily be lengthened - or in the case of trains like 319s, shortened!).