Plus also additional Voyager coaches wouldn't need a "universal" toilet, so would have more seats than a "normal" Voyager coach.
(or room for a shop etc)
Working from the Meridian seating capacities, which I know isn't entirely fair as they have an entirely different interior layout but one that is generally accepted to be superior to that of the Voyagers, a class 222 MS vehicle without disabled toilet seats 68, which is the same as a Virgin 221 MS
with a disabled toilet.
I presume that Virgin (or XC) would be able to cram in more seats of the existing design in a carriage with no disabled toilet.
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Only if the Voyager was doing a South West to North East XC service. If it was doing Reading - Manchester service it would not make any difference at all other than having more seats available for the passengers.
As
schnellzug says, there's still wires from Coventry/Birmingham to Manchester. Fingers crossed that the Chiltern line is proposed for electrification in the CP6 period, in line with the possible withdrawal of the 165s, so that it joins up with, via Oxford, the Great Western electrification. If the sections of infill electrification needed south of Reading were also carried out, you could do away with the need for bi-mode trains at all on the route and pass it over to new dual electric AC/DC units.
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Now, ignoring the problem of the body shells, people would tend to agree that Class 222s are improved with regards to interior space and so on, so any new carriages would preferably incorporate the interiors of those into the design.
The question becomes whether it would be feasible to build a Class 222 carriage that was compatible with Class 220/1 trains.
Only as long as the Voyagers undergo an interior refurb at the same time to bring them up to the same standard; otherwise you'd have a couple of distinctly oddball looking new carriages in the formation.
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The 220's have never been able to tilt, only the 221's (Super Voyagers) can tilt (Virgin's can, XC can't) and XC don't have many 221's anyway.
But both classes use the same bodyshell, so if the 221s had never been intended to utilise tilt in the first place, then it is possible that a less restrictive bodyshell profile could have been used for Voyagers and Super Voyagers alike.
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Currently only Virgin Class 221s can tilt, Class 221s in the possesion of XC are effectively equivalent to Class 220s at this point, therefore I propose the following:
- Cascade all 57 XC 221s and 220s to secondary routes, both with XC and with other operators such as EMT and TPE to enable the replacement of Express Sprinters and Turbostars, particularily those on crowded runs such as Liverpoo-Norwich.
- Order 57 Cl220/1 compatible non-tilting pantograph trailers to convert the aforementioned units to electrodiesel operation.
- Order 21 Cl221 compatible tilting pantograph trailers to convert the remaining VT units to electrodiesel operation
- Order 62 new 11 carriage electrodiesel class 222s to replace the aforementioned XC units and its HSTs and give them a uniform (excluding Turbostar) fleet.
- Order 208 new pantograph trailer and intermediate motor vehicles to make all existing Class 222 sets up to 11 carriages, cascading 220/1s will permit EMT to release the shorter existing sets to replace HSTs.
All that results in the order of 947 new vehicles of various types, almost entirely for Class 222 trains, with some 57 newly designed non tilting, and 21 tilting, Class 220/1 compatible pantograph trailers added in.
If we assume the displaced Voyagers go to XC, EMT and TPE we could be looking at total elimination of 18 HSTs from the first two and Turbostars from the latter as the 22xs have sufficiently low RA to go where the 185s cannot.
It would require the government to buy the 22x design family from Bombardier (and they arent likely to get any more orders so it wouldnt be insanely expensive) and develop pantograph trailers compatible with both 222 and 220/1 tilting and non tilting trains itself and then contract out production to any builder (preferably willing to build a plant in Britain).
It would likely result in the cascade of large numbers of turbostars and sprinters as well, helping pacer replacement.
It'd probably be simpler and cheaper, providing that the DfT ever get round to deciding what they want from the specification, to purchase an order of 8-car Bi-mode IEP trains for Crosscountry to work the long distance services, and restructuring the XC franchise so that a number of shorter distance regional services are set up that could use some of the Voyagers released, with the remainder of the Voyagers, moving to other regional duties.
It sounds as if there is a minimum threshold order size below which it would be unfeasible to build the bi-mode IEP trains that the DfT is so wedded to (Though there seems to be no reciprocal minimum order threshold for the puny number of electric IEPs being built :roll
, so if XC put in an order for quite a few bi-mode IEP units (And please not 5-carriage units; we don't want to see the same mistakes being made twice), it would reduce the pressure on the GWML to take on large numbers of bi-mode trains and perhaps make the DfT think about wiring up the GWML properly. Well, I can dream...
Plus, ordering IEP trains would tick that all important box of "supporting British jobs" which there is currently such a rumpus over, whereas additional Voyager/Meridian carriages would almost certainly be built and fitted out on the continent.
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They have 22 or 23, don't they?
Twenty three. Which is a strange turn of events when there were initially only four Voyagers (The 4-car 221s, 221141-144) ordered specifically for West Coast. Although of course the shared nature of the two Virgin franchises meant that West Coast was free to pinch units from XC as it pleased.