You are perhaps correct regarding RR's replacement of full length trains with DMU's. I may have led a sheltered life in the South as we were lucky enough to have retained proper, full length trains for much longer.
Nevertheless, to the point in question, we have now had two posters, who it appears are in the industry, who are claiming that a particularly bad decision for passengers has been taken. If this is the case, it's difficult to see how it can have been taken, other than through political expediency.
There's still a lot of dust to settle - the franchise has only just been awarded and one of the other bidders may appeal - and lots of different scenarios that would meet the criteria of "start to replace HSTs with modern trains" (or whatever the wording was) - I think it's still too early to start making some of the pronouncements that are being made on here.
3. The new MML timetable especially post Derby rebuild could eliminate the need for the 6 car ex GC HST sets
The short HSTs (2 trains in weekday service) were only added to cover a very small number of services due to timetabling /diagramming difficulties arising from the Thameslink timetable changes but no corresponding completion of Derby rebuild and timetabling changes. A new EMT/R timetable might remove the need for the short HSTs. In which case. Hence 180s might be able to take over from some 8car HSTs
Good points re the six coach HSTs - eighteen coaches but didn't actually add much capacity to the franchise (just used to cope with the fact that Thameslink meant EMT needed more trains to provide the same number of departures) - if that is now settling down then we could lose those three HSTs with
minimal fuss (not *no* fuss, just minimal, in the grand scheme of things)
*Sir Humphrey might use the words "bold" or "brave" to accompany.
I think most people are missing that most of the 8 coach HSTs are used on the diagrams they are simply because they are the diagrams that could cope with the slower acceleration rather than that those being the services that need the most capacity. In practice the HSTs are often half empty leaving Leicester in both directions and many of their diagrams could quite easily be covered by 4/5 coach trains, it is the services that are currently operated by the 5 coach units (which are actually busier than the HST services much of the time) and Sundays that are in need of extra capacity
That fits in with my belief - the Sheffield/Derby services need more capacity but the Nottingham services have more seats - but then that might be based on where I live!
I still an struggling with the dissonant positions of
1. All HSTs gone by early 2020 (insidrr info)
2. DfT announcement: from May 2020, modern diesel trains will begin to replace aging HSTs . Timetable changes will enable faster journey times from December 2020
The DfT would have surely crafted this statement when everything was fully agreed with Abellio, so what has changed and why did DfT sign this off, if a week later things have changed quite significantly?
So can anyone think how these two pieces of information can be reconciled?
True - if Abellio really were planning on getting rid of all of the HSTs in 2019 then it seems strange for them to announce something as vague as "we'll start to get rid of the first of the fifteen HSTs from May 2020" - why wouldn't they be trumpeting the news (that the 1970s trains were leaving) if they wanted a good positive spin from day one?
If these "insider" claims are true (and I'm not saying that they are...) then this must be the first case of a TOC promising a deadline and then delivering significantly more significantly faster.