The only 'old' thing about the prototypes that will be obvious to the passengers are the doors but for me, if they are working fine then dont see why they should'nt be out on the system even if its just for the peak trains only. The prototypes are older but they were decommissioned for quite a number of years in the 80s to remove the door on the front of the units and in terms of mileage, it would not surprise me if the production fleet has done mileage and that reliability will probably be similar.
I wasn't saying they should be decommissioned, I'm just expecting them to be. I would hope they will continue running - I get all giddy when I see 01 it's like travelling back 20 years, I just I don't want them running full services when imo they should only be on peak services (or used to fill a service gap before being swapped out once at Gosforth).
4001 definitely had the most mileage circa 2012 when I looked into it, but that may have changed in recent years.
Speaking as a very regular commuter, I do want them out there. They support a fragile network.
Rather an older train than no train at all or passengers shunted onto overcrowded operation.
Metro just needs to keep getting people from A to B. The public understand the problems Metro faces and the need for investment in the short to medium term.
They should be used as a backup, not as cars just thrown into the pool with the rest of them. I'm not saying they should not be used, but they should be kept as backup/peak/additional cars for use when needed. We require 50 metrocars for a 12 minute service (Saturday/weekday timetable) on both lines. That leaves 40 spare. Of those 40 you could have 5 out of service with faults, 4 are unrefurbs. You still have 31, which iirc is enough for the current full weekday timetable.
I completely agree. I use the Metro 6 days a week, and I agree they're needed, however as mentioned I don't think they should be on full services, they should be kept to peak services or to provide relief should there be a fault etc.
The public really don't understand the issues Metro have though, a lot of people I spoke to at work thought the refurbs were actually new trains. It wasn't till I told them they're refurbished that they realised. You're on this forum which means you have more knowledge of the railway than the vast majority. Most people don't care about Metro, they only care about when they arrive at the station is a train going to be there at the time it says or are they going to be late.
There's no way they should be decommissioned if the system is short of trains. It seems they are always short, as demonstrated by the fact these trains have been out so much, so the alternative is cancellations or less maintenancevtimevfor the remaining fleet. In an ideal world they would have been refurbished, and presumably all four units would have been done had the money been available. The current situation is a fudge, but presumably it satisfies the budget constraints. No rational operator would slim down its fleet by four if they weren't forced, so likelihood is status quo will continue.
Again, I never said I wanted them decommissioned. I am saying it is likely they will be. The system isn't short of trains though. We have enough now. What we don't have however is good reliability on those trains - mainly down to their age amongst other issues. That reliability, as mentioned by 142094 further up the thread, is improving well but the trains are only getting older and there's only so much the engineers can do in a day and I can see it dropping just as fast. Again, as I said, in my view they should only run peak/additional services and act as backup when things go really wrong.
IIRC, I could be wrong, but 4001 was never going to be refurbished again, same for 4002. 4040, and 4083 weren't because there wasn't enough money.
