Sending them anywhere other than Cardiff is basically of no use as any maintenance depot they are based at would require a multi-million pound upgrade as almost all the gubbins are roof rather than underfloor mounted. Add that to the sheer cost of traincrew & artisan training for such a micro-fleet & the costs would be huge. Only possible option would be for GA to take over or work with EMR on the Norwich-Nottingham route at some point.
Maybe for operator convenience and internal finances but 379s have only been in service 10 years meaning if GTR dont take them it becomes another modern fleet from the 2010s costing millions upon millions wasted.
That’s the ROSCO’s problem though.
Unfortunately so. Hopefully somebody might snap them up. Rumours abound but unconfirmed connecting GN & a couple of years back South Africa.
Still. It should not be happening otherwise whats the point in ordering new trains in the first place like the 379s if they are not gonna last
They were needed and no longer are. There are office blocks built which aren't needed any more. It happens. All investment is in some way a gamble. There is nothing special about trains, relative to other things people can invest in, that they should be guaranteed use for their full lifetime.
National Express East Anglia would’ve had no idea of that however in the late 2000s when the 379s where procured.
With the diverse array of rolling stock financiers now available - the former ”big three” ROSCOs can’t afford to overcharge.
The 379s aren't owned by one of the big three that came out of privatisation. Via various acquisitions, they are Akiem owned.
The airport services are also the "fast" at Harlow and Bishops Stortford and 12-car trains aren't useful for the stops on the Cambridge line so it makes sense to leave the 745s where they are. Trying to get to 100% 720 operation as soon as possible is a reasonable aim.
They’ll focus the 720s more on the Cambridge’s I would imagine - the takeover is almost fully complete on GE suburbans, so makes sense to start introducing more on the West Anglia side now.
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Yes, that is the one. Five main service patterns:
The 317s aren’t bad trains, just outdated and as you said, lack plug sockets and have 3+2 seating.
It’s more the fact that said seating is so knackered I regularly see the cushions on the floor.
"West Anglia Main Line" is a railway name for it dating from at least as far back as the late 80s, when Network SouthEast branded the services as such. It's why the immediate post-privatisation franchise that ran commuter services from Kings Cross & Liverpool Street to Cambridge was called "WAGN"- it was "West Anglia Great Northern". "the railway" has form for this sort of thing. After all, the "south east" included Kings Lynn and Exeter.
The 379 lease was already up and has been extended once. The units were originally owned by MACQUARIE UK PASSENGER LEASING LIMITED and they were charging £19.5m pa for the stock so in these money constrained times thats a chunky saving. Akiem who now own them factored that in when they bought the assets of MACQUARIE EUROPEAN RAIL LIMITED and they were largely interested in the European locomotive fleet. They will want to keep units in warm store and im sure that a game is being played here by DofT to get them back on a more cost effective lease.
If the lease was already up and been extended once, typically secondary leases are cheaper since most of the cost recovery has already occurred. Is thst not the case with the 379s?
These leasing people play games with the finances to keep tax down but on the last set of accounts they were still in the books for 115m and had a big loan outstanding. Now since then Akiem have bought them and whilst you don't know what they paid for the 379's but given they had no long term lease in place im sure they would have got them for less than book price. Akiem also have financed the deal at much lower interest rates so will now be able to lease them for less than Mcquarie did so im sure a deal will be agreed in due course.
When Akiem acquired the 379s they didn't do a separate valuation of the 379 fleet - they bought the entire Macquarie European rail leasing business. All the various factors around the entire portfolio would be factored in to the price, but they don't agree a separate price for each asset - they value the business as a whole.
Agree with that but what i was trying to say was they can now ascribe what value they want to each asset and most important factor is they don't have the higher interest cost on loans that Macquarie was saddled with. At least with the 379's the owning company was British Domiciled but isn't now as are the likes of Porterbrook and Eversholt who use Jersey domiciled entities and thus don't need publically publish accounts.
Without going into a semantics debate, what to you constitutes a route vs a mainline?
