Must admit I remain flummoxed why the modern generation of UK LHCS, the Sleepers included, has strayed so far away from the way European RIC coaches are basically each standalone with their own brake etc. It almost seems it has been made deliberately complex and unnecessarily reduced flexibility for the future.
I have the impression that many people here look at the continent with rose-tinted glasses when it comes to continued investment in traditional loco-hauled stock. For whatever reason, no-one cares about short term operational flexibility any more, even the tiniest little bit, either in the UK or over here.
The only major European order for sleeping car stock currently is ÖBB's new Nightjet fleet. These will run as fixed 7 coach sets, committing ÖBB to a fixed proportion of seats, couchettes and sleepers for decades to come, and also a minimum portion size. Given that some portions currently run as only 3 cars, it remains to be seen whether this will have a positive(expanded capacity) or negative(reduction in direct services) effect.
To give another examaple Deutsche Bahn's replacement for it's traditional intercity fleet comes in two forms, neither of which are quite what they seem:
- IC2 loco hauled double deck sets - visually they look like ordinary coaches as very commonly seen on regional services in Germany, but in fact use a unique control system which means they can only be split and joined in a depot. The advantages of this control system over the ordinary one used in hundreds of other double deck coaches are unclear.
- ECx loco hauled single deck - these will be talgo sets requiring special equipment to seperate and can only be coupled to a special end car so will also run in fixed length sets
Czech Railways has also ordered a batch of standard RIC coaches from Siemens for international services.... but these ones will once again built to run as fixed sets with ordinary corridor connections only at each end and permanent connections in between(quieter and warmer apparently).
