paul1609
Established Member
As has also been previously mentioned those have tended to be DMUs which have a completely different electrical supply or coaches that were supplied or modified in BR days as either ETH or DualHeat. The crashworthyness is inherent to the original design of the coaches it can be mitigated to an extent by stuff like overide protection but they will still lack the crashworthyness of MK2 with their hybrid construction or MK3 with monocoque construction. Im afraid I dont think that you can make a financial case for the majority of the remaining VAC/ Steam heat mk1 stock to be CDL fitted.As has been previously mentioned, other TOCs have successfully fitted CDL to Mk1 stock and also significantly improved the crashworthiness of that stock so I don't see why Mk1s should be retired as you suggest.