Where has it been said that there will be 5 cars running between Swansea and Manchester/the North? Ive only seen it on here, no official document.
The Manchester trains tend to do Ok as 3 cars whereas 2 cars are often crowded, especially at peak times. 5 cars would be overkill most of the day. It's been publicly announced in the franchise plans that there will be increased frequencies on the marches with the addition of 2 hourly Cardiff-Liverpool services from Dec 2022 which should increase capacity overall and ease the demand on the specific peak busy services.
There's not much in the public domain that I can point to that I didn't already mention a few
weeks ago, but going over it again:
- Rolling stock requirements documents include 14 three-car units with first class accomodation from 2024 (see documents at https://tfw.wales/projects/wales-and-borders-rail-service)
- The "What's Happening" list of improvements mention new 2/3 car DMUs in 2023 for the Manchester-Milford route, but only state First Class is to be introduced between Manchester and Swansea in 2024
- Manchester to Milford every two hours is a 13-hour round trip (with turnaround). Manchester to Carmarthen is 11 hours. So a minimum of twelve units would be needed in service.
- If the units with first class run through to West Wales, then there'll be two units spare for maintenance each day, and the First Class finishing at Swansea is an anomaly or a mistake.
- Alternatively, an hourly Manchester to Swansea round trip would be nine hours, leaving up to five first-class units spare or on other diagrams. (Maybe available as stand-ins for the Mark IV rakes in the event of failures?) There'd have to be another unit detached at Swansea for the West Wales portion.
I think when we first crunched the numbers we didn't know exactly how many units would be fitted with First, but worked on the number of units that were to be delivered in the "add-on" batch. On re-examining the numbers I think the argument could be made either way.
One issue that comes to mind is the fact that you say 2-car services are inadequate, but 3-car services are usually sufficient for Manchester services. The First Class 197s will only have 158 standard class seats, ~30 less than a 175/1. Perhaps we'd better hope for multiple working!
