Manchester Piccadilly to Llandudno is two hours either way, and there's an hour turnaround at each end (during which the units shuttle to the Junction at one end, and run to the Airport or sit in a siding at the other). That makes for a basic six diagrams, excluding peak extras, so I think you're pretty much on the money, there. Naturally, having the MkIII rake in the middle of it mucks the diagramming up a bit for the time being.
Thanks; 20 class 197 units is probably about right then (7x 4-car diagrams = 14 units plus Conwy Valley and the Crewe-Chester shuttle makes 16 in service with four spare / in for maintainance; suppose you could put one on Crewe-Shrewsbury too). Anymore than 20 built and these 'Turbostars on the cheap' will have to work 3hr journeys (or longer), and that's assuming they make the N.Wales-Manchesters 4-car (a big assumption to make given how tight their proposed Cambrian fleet is).
Do the CAF Civities have any advantages over the existing 175's?
Unit end gangways and air quality (reduced NOX and particulates from the exhaust). Very little else; TfW claim a 30% fuel saving too but I can't see how with the additional exhast cleaning systems.
As such the CAF units two greatest downfalls appear to be seats and bogies, closely followed by toilet provision for the longer journeys.
And a total inability to make use of OHLE where available, thus killing any case for electrification stone dead for the next 30 years.
Regarding the toilets, do TfW's 3-car 170s have three toilets? The XC seat plan shows only two toilets, but the TfW franchise document says a 3-car 170 has 3 toilets.
4 window bays in the middle - so I assume misaligned bays as per Northern, then?
Northern's 195 windows are 129.5cm x 76.5cm with deadspace of 48cm between them I think. Think that aligns to a bay seat pitch of 177.5cm (129.5+48) and TfW told me that the bay pitch on 197 is 180cm so 2.5cm out.
Poor. I do understand the "we need the same bodyshell for 1st and Standard" thing, but most of these units will be Standard only so, as CAF does offer a different window layout as WMT have ordered (where a window is Standard-bay-sized), this is sheer laziness/penny-pinching/incompetence.
Since these are replacing 175s and the population is getting taller on average it should really be done to the class 175's seat pitch which is probably equivalent to 1st class spacing anyway. Plus the WMT approach doesn't work here since the bay seat pitch is GREATER than the size of the 195's windows, meaning we need larger windows not smaller ones like WMT. Unless of course TfW got the pitch wrong when they told me; they got the toilet count wrong (they told me it was 2 loos on every unit, not only the 3-car ones).
This is big news as it means that production of TfW's brand new trains has started! I'm guessing that Stadler will start production not too long from now...? Maybe that could do with its own thread 
