Will you do 153’s?? That’ll come later and it’s just a day. I don’t think you need 5 days on a 158 either, but it won’t hurt. The 175 is just completely different, ya need the full 2 weeks on that.
Yeah, I'll be doing 153s, plenty of work on them at my place at present, even if the rumoured 150/153 South/North divide doesn't take place.
Getting back on topic less the moderators get upset with us, I had indeed heard of the 1 day conversion course for 153s - so if the rumoured move north fit the whole fleet to replace 150s are true, it wouldn't be too hard to get people trained up on them.
Now, this is entering entirely into the realms of fantasy and is not based on anything definite, but I've been doing some maths in my head. TfW will have 13 units. They could form these as 6 X 2 car sets, with 1 accessible toilet per 2 car (the other car having it's toilet removed), which would get around the problem that a 153 with a PRM toilet doesn't have a lot of space for anything else. The 6 X 2 153s could work out as:
1 Blaneau
1 Chester - Crewe
3 HOWL/Shrewsbury - Crewe local
1 spare.
Rotating through Crewe depot they'd never need to go south for maintenance.
This would also leave 1 single spare 153 - which I would suggest is left toiletless and used permanently on Cardiff Bay. Yes it would mean a microfleet of 1 153 in the South, but that exact situation occurred before with the 121 bubble car years ago. At least this unit could be swapped with one of the toiletless units in the North for maintenance purposes.
With Wrexham - Bidston going over to 230s, that would leave Chester - Liverpool as the only 150 work in the North, which is often covered by 158s/175s. If this was done permanently it would see the end of 150s North of Hereford altogether.
Like I say, this isn't based on any insider knowledge at all, it's purely hypothetical maths - but I just wanted to prove that it could be done, if TfW wanted to.