You are forgetting to make an important distinction here between people who have an interest in railways and those that don't. Most members on this forum have an emotional attachment to railways and this is reflected in posts such as yours. As you have demonstrated this sometimes extends to a desire to have trains with an attractive design (although beauty is in the eye of the beholder).
However, for people who have no interest in trains the external design of a train is completely irrelevant, as is the feeling of romance towards rail travel. Free wifi and posh seats will encourage occasional rail travelers but in my experience a good looking train will have no affect what so ever. No one capable of rational thinking will ever chose the train over their car because the train looks pretty!
Sorry, but as sweeping statements go, this one is right up there. I can assure you that the external design is relevant, though perhaps not in quite the way you were thinking of.
I live in part of FGW-land where services are operated by a mix of HSTs, 180s and Turbos and I can assure you among for a lot of passengers locally - with zero emotional attachment to the railways and who pay little attention to what symbol there is at the top of the timetable columns - seeing which type of train rolls into the platform most certainly does produce a reaction when it is a Turbo, as they know full well that they will be getting a far less comfortable journey than in the other two types.
Even infrequent travellers can sense there might be a difference in quality inside as well as out between a short train shaped like a brick and the longer thing with a pointy nose that has just rolled in on the opposite platform.
the IEP's are only being introduced to maintain the current service
Since when is a 20-minute interval to Bristol and hourly to Worcester and Gloucester/Cheltenham maintaining the current service?
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Wonder how much of a slope it will be. How can anyone be a fan of bi-modes is beyond me....
How anyone can be a fan of building a small number of bespoke diesel locomotives - and providing all the supporting facilities they will require - to drag around very expensive electric trains is beyond me....
But people will keep going on about it, just as they will keep going on about how all express trains should have 10 coaches, a silver-service restaurant car, buffet counter with a selection of beers, wines and spirits, and a big blue engine on the front...
I'd be very surprised if anyone posting here wanders about wearing a badge that says "I'm a fan of bi-modes", it's just that some of us recognise that we are not going to electrify to everywhere all at once and that in the meantime there has to be a way to maintain through express services to the places that are not going to see wires for some years.
There appear to be two different ways of achieving that, bi-modes or a big blue engine, but not once, when I have asked you, or other fans of big blue engines, to explain what you do with the big blue engines when electrification is extended, have you come up with an answer.
Use a Class 68? They are mixed-traffic, not designed or geared for the start-stop cycle of station-to-station passenger running on the likes of the Cotswold Line or Swindon-Gloucester/Cheltenham. Most of Chiltern's loco diagrams are on limited-stop services with long stretches between stations, for good reason. I expect Vossloh could come up with something if paid enough money, but given the apparent difficulties of fitting an engine that complies with the new emissions regulations into a UK-gauge loco body, I won't be holding my breath.
On the Cotswold Line over the past couple of years Network Rail has been looking at the potential to lift speed limits from the current 75/90/100mph mix to exploit IEP's capabilities and is apparently confident it can do just that on quite a lot of the line, thus speeding up journey times - I assume the same would apply to the Swindon-Kemble section as well. Use a big blue engine (to drag around all of five coaches much of the day) and you can kiss goodbye to those journey time cuts, never mind faffing-around time coupling and uncoupling big blue engines at Oxford and Swindon.
And my apologies for banging on about this yet again. But if people will keep trotting out the same stuff about bi-modes, never mind that they can now see a picture of one of them in the metal...