F Great Eastern
Established Member
The we had all the armchair experts here saying that the Stadler brand were exceptional, and quoting various European versions, and they would work out of the box ! well seems that was wrong in fact the 755's seem to very flimsy indeed, and I think, they will last nowhere near as long as a 150 /153 / Cl90 / 321 etc !
The FLIRT itself is a proven product in other European countries, I don't disagree with that at all.
The problem is that the UK is not another country, we have a different gauge, we have different rules and regulations and we have different safety requirements to these other countries and Stadler has not had experience of building a product for these so there was always going to be a learning curve for this and to expect them to get things 100% right, first time was naive at best on Greater Anglia's part if indeed they did rely and expect that.
Some of the concerns I heard about a long time ago were in relation to how Stadler were going to adapt the trains and their software and the Automatic Selective Door Operation and camera set-up in line with union and Greater Anglia requirements and these have proven to be some of the problems that GA have had, if what well informed people on this forum have suggested, are right.
FLIRTS on the whole are very well built trains in the other countries which they run, if they are constructed to the same standard I have no doubt they will have a good life. Just they were never going to bed in right away, no unproven UK fleet ever does, especially not from a manufacturer building it's first UK Trains. Even the classic Desiros had transformer issues before going on to be the most reliable fleets in the country.