I think you forget that Thameslink 700s are well suited to their services? They often have huge loadings and more longer distance stock, would heavily decrease passenger capacity and more importantly passenger standing capacity.
Yes in a different thread, people were speculating having a 444 type train run services which would’ve been detrimental to passenger loadings and satisfaction
Do we actually NEED so much standing capacity now, seeing that they were ordered for a pre Covid/WFH world where passenger numbers coming into London were expected to grow and grow.
New trains are bought for the next 40 years or so, and it seems likely that passenger numbers into london will grow, so we should allow for the standing space in the order
A bit late on this, but god yes. You see them come into Redhill in the evening peak. Or even some of thee morning peak trains. Nearly every seat is taken by redhill going up on various 12 cars and 8 car sets for a few trains in the peak. And then there's the 00:53 from RDH to Bedford....good luck getting a seat on that at times
After Thameslink's little hoo-ha in the Summer, most people seem to be scared back onto Victoria bound services at Redhill but I am not sure about the dead of night, so I'll take your word for it.
Are they suitable for metro operation?
They worked on TL, and while I understand the seating and door times aren't perfect for metro, they aren't unsuitable.
And Southeastern already have 376s and 707s, so aren't short of metro stock when compared to say Southern
I doubt that the class 379 units will be used by GWR. However, I can see the 29 class 387/1's with Great Northern being replaced by the 30 class 379 units, as there would be little paintwork required on the class 379 units. Great Northern would still have 7 class 387 units in the shape of 1 class 387/2 and the 6 class 387/3 units if the details within https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Rail_Class_387 are correct. I don't believe that the details are correct, as it is not showing what has happened to 387202 - 387204.
The 387/2 is going to Southern. The plan would be to send all the 387/1 and /3 to SE with 379s going to GN and GWR getting 350/2s, though that is unlikely given the investment by GWR in maintainance for the Electrostars. Instead it would simply be the GN 387/1 and /3s .The only place I can now see the 350/2s going other than scrappage is Scotland given that they can be maintained alongside the 380s.
SE have enough micro fleets as it is without adding 387s to the collection.
I suspect that paintwork has absolutely nothing to do with the destination of rolling stock. It has been pointed out before that one reason the 379s aren't going to GN is because 387s are a better fit for the future introduction of ETCS.
Source?
