bramling
Veteran Member
I like that the stations look a bit old, 'retro' if you will compared to many other stations. The stations are clean and serve their purpose perfectly adequately.
I used to like riding on the older trains on the Bakerloo and Piccadilly lines but I do think it is time they were replaced with something more modern. I realise this will be at least a few years away though. Does LUL even have the funds to replace these trains?
At this moment, no LU does not have the funds to replace, and hasn’t really done so for the last decade, hence why the can has been kicked so far down the road. Remember the Piccadilly fleet should have been replaced last decade, and that was deferred due to the PPP collapse.
As to what happens next, that will depend on what sort of financial deal LU gets from the government. Then there will be a shopping list of projects, and no doubt an element of prioritisation will be inevitable. So it’s a combination of what sort of settlement LU gets from the government and how far up (or down) the list Bakerloo fleet replacement is. That in itself may well be influenced by how the fleet performs over the next few years, which is a bit of an unknown, and also the small matter of how the Central Line fleet performs over the next few years, as that will influence the order of priorities.
I’d say the odds are fairly decent that these trains will see the 2030s. There’s a fair few schemes competing for finance - Piccadilly resignalling being a big one, and some costly stations works like Holborn and Camden Town. Choices will have to be made.