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What will change in Scotland after Class 314's are withdrawn?

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Scotrail12

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I'm a bit out of the loop. From what I can tell, the remaining few Class 314's will be withdrawn.

What will be replacing them? It seems as if they still do the Glasgow Ctl - Newton services and some of the Inverclyde services at rush hour. Will the 385's be doing these routes?

In addition, where do you see ScotRail heading in terms of rolling stock in the next decade? As a regular on the North Clyde & Argyle Lines, I often use 318's and 320's and I can imagine that they will be next on the chopping block. 320's seem to be all over the place at the minute, some on the North Clyde, some on Inverclyde, some on Cathcart, some on the Argyle and some on Paisley Canal.

The North Clyde & Argyle Lines haven't seen new stock in a while - would be great if we could get the next set of new trains once the 318's and 320's are withdrawn.
 
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jopsuk

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I can forsee three upcoming future fleet procurements for Scotrail
1. Electric suburban units to replace the Mark 3s. I think things have calmed down recently and the 334s will not be part of that
2. Rural/commuter bi-modes for far north, west highland, south west lines, aberdeen locals and residual central scotland diesel routes.
3. bi-mode 7 cities expresses

Number 1 will be a fleet of about 55 3 car electric-only units with 23m carriages (so 9m longer per unit) to match the 380 and 385 fleets. The eventual 334 replacement will be similar
 

NotATrainspott

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I can forsee three upcoming future fleet procurements for Scotrail
1. Electric suburban units to replace the Mark 3s. I think things have calmed down recently and the 334s will not be part of that
2. Rural/commuter bi-modes for far north, west highland, south west lines, aberdeen locals and residual central scotland diesel routes.
3. bi-mode 7 cities expresses

Number 1 will be a fleet of about 55 3 car electric-only units with 23m carriages (so 9m longer per unit) to match the 380 and 385 fleets. The eventual 334 replacement will be similar

I think the rural bi-mode units would be optimised just for that use-case and not as mixed rural/commuter units as the 15X fleet are today. The 170s will last long enough to cover the final electrification of the commuter routes (Fife, Aberdeen Crossrail, Borders) at which point they can get the 38X style. There might be a bit of commuting demand around Inverness but there'd be no justification for a separate fleet there. Even in the boldest 2043 Route Study scenario of 2tph to Dingwall things like dwell times wouldn't really be that much of a factor.
 

JonathanH

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Number 1 will be a fleet of about 55 3 car electric-only units with 23m carriages (so 9m longer per unit) to match the 380 and 385 fleets. The eventual 334 replacement will be similar

Seems a bit unlikely to run 140m rolling stock on a system built around 120m rolling stock.
 

alangla

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Yep- especially given the constraints at certain locations, e.g. High Street, where SDO is pretty much a non-starter, as are platform extensions. Given the number of services that run as 6 cars, I reckon the eventual 318/320/334 replacement will probably be a 120m long walk-through unit, probably either 5x23/24m or 6x20m. I know I’ve said this before, but the 707s would be a good start.
 

alangla

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5x20m would be fine, the layout difference would probably mean crush load capacity was better than 6x314.
 

NotATrainspott

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Yep- especially given the constraints at certain locations, e.g. High Street, where SDO is pretty much a non-starter, as are platform extensions. Given the number of services that run as 6 cars, I reckon the eventual 318/320/334 replacement will probably be a 120m long walk-through unit, probably either 5x23/24m or 6x20m. I know I’ve said this before, but the 707s would be a good start.

If I'm not mistaken there was talk of High Street station being rebuilt as part of one of the City Deal or similar projects. I don't mind the notion of moving it for the sake of a chord onto the City Union line. There's no shortage of land available for the station to expand and have wider and longer platforms.

While the network might have standardised on 6x20m that doesn't mean it couldn't manage marginally longer trains. 23m carriage lengths didn't exist back at the time of the Blue Train electrification, let alone 23m commuter EMU designs. 8x20m was not necessary, so it was reasonable to go to the next easiest formation size of 6x20m. There are plenty of stations along the routes where platform structures are longer than 120m (e.g. Singer, or Queen Street). The problematic stations are typically the ones built for or after the Blue Train project, such as Garscadden or Argyle Street.
 
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