Altnabreac
Established Member
I thought those were mostly going to be used to strengthen other already existing services though? And they'll only mostly be freeing up 156s with a number of 158s too.
They are being used this year for strengthening Commonwealth Games services and they're due to be used across Scotland next year for more strengthening. It may well be that from Autumn 2015 (Borders rail opens) until December 2016 (Falkirk High electrified) some of these strengthened services may be temporarily shortened again.
It doesn't really matter which units are freed up by these particular electrifications. There are plenty of slower lines currently using 158s that could be served by 156s so there may well be a fairly complicated cascade of units to free up faster ones for Borders rail.
I suspect this means the loco hauled unit is safe enough until December 2016 but I'm not convinced they'll need an extra diagram.