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No. If rolling stock is purchased in cash by the government, it must be funded via debt taken on via the Treasury. The interest rate at the Treasury is typically higher than available on the private market. If leasing costs more, you wouldn't have seen TfW leasing its new fleets. Unclear but...

If it's good value, you generally don't need to tell people...

International traffic being short of expected is well known, HS1 international services are constrained by St Pancras' check in facilities being constrained. However, there are more domestic services than originally envisioned.

I cant see why it couldn't be done, though it doesn't get around new sets being very expensive, and having a long lead time.

Word elsewhere on the forum is that Hitachi are only offering new sets (and not additional intermediate cars) from Italy and Japan. Both of those plants are busy so new sets would have long lead times and high prices. If Hitachi would supply new sets from Newton Aycliffe at a reasonable price...

Both of which are fairly self-contained and have enough rolling stock. GA has also got much quicker stock but the timetable hasn't been tightened, its noticeable on the WCML that there isn't much slack at most station stops so when a train gets delayed it often struggles to make up time. The...

Any XC rebrand feels pointless unless they do it after the additional stock is in and routes are up to a decent capacity. XC's routes are already attractive but it needs longer trains. If the 12 extra voyagers are enough, future advertising on XC needs to focus on its trains being much longer.

Not really. For electronic components, one supplier makes sense as there is integration work. Multiple manufacturers can make parts like the aluminum body panels to the Aventra spec with no additional work needed at Bombardier/Alstom. Multiple production locations have already been mentioned...

Maybe the DfT mandated white wasn't so bad after all... They don't seem to have learnt from the current livery that their trains can take a while to get cleaned. It's not going to hide the dirt that well. 170 looks quite nice. The voyager combines 2 nice ideas and 3nds up with a livery which...

In the Inside The Factory episode they were covered and the text looked like they had come from overseas. It's quite likely that Bombardier/Alstom are sourcing from multiple suppliers.

Newton Aycliffe was meant to be Hitachi's entry to Europe, but their subsequent purchase of AnsaldoBreda (now Hitachi Rail Italy) undermined this. Brexit has hardly helped either.

Adessia is a new platform that draws on features of the Aventra, like the Flexx Eco bogies, but will have been adapted to work across more countries and allow for varying floor heights. Alstom often has more funky designs which can be unpopular in markets where a more traditional train is...

What does built from scratch mean? The bodywork on Aventra is 4 aluminum extrusions made overseas and bolted together in Derby, the bogies are made in Siegen, Germany, and the traction motors and equipment come from Vasteras, Sweden. Modern manufacturing has pieces made all around the world.

I wouldn't do this. Route should decide the stock and not the other way around.

£13m of S106 and £26m from the council. I'd expect the station to have buildings on both sides of the line, one for Wixams and one for Universal, with the S106 contributions funding the Wixams building & car park and Universal/council deciding who funds the rest. The current 2 platforms on the...

Which thread is this? I've seen one on TowersTimes which had that concensus but it came from the 'train doesn't work for me so it won't work for anyone' viewpoint. Judging a thread which believes rail will be small for the park is difficult when we don't know where it is. Wixams has been...

It'll be the aspirational date for GWRs new fleet. May 2028 is just after the end of that financial year. First Group's management contract goes on a bit longer till June 2028.

Unlikely. Gunnislake and Looe can be problematic with longer stock so 150s will still be kept around for them. 175s on Barnstable and Okehampton should allow the worst of the 150s to be scrapped, that should give some spare parts to keep the rest of the fleet going. Corrosion on the GWR 150s...

More to do with increased DfT control. Procurement rules mean that anything of significant value needs to go out to public tender. Tenders are often written with something in mind, see Great Northern's recent procurement. During franchising the operators were private (except Thameslink with had...

Agreed. While they were on lease they struggled to get the 2 in service per day needed. I presume the thinking of keeping them around was that they could pay Angel as little as possible as nobody else wants them. Though they'd obviously still need to pay for maintanence. Agreed, I hope they...