I don’t have an answer as to what it could be, but that’s irrelevant. As a driver at Mach depot, TFW’s 158’s could be staying with them a fair while yet, there’s still no sign of us being trained on 197’s and they’ve not even finished testing and route clearing them on the Cambrian yet.
I guess that’s the issue though. Good luck finding any spare Turbostars. ScotRail cut their nose off and released too many meaning they’re now having to open a new line with just an hourly service. EMR as we all know seem to have gone Turbostar mad. XC, Northern and Southern would likely all require new build stock to come in.
Not only on Cardiff - Penzance. At least 2 a day are trundling between Worcester and Bristol on stoppers.
Where would GWR (if they had the 175s) use them? What routes?
Cardiff- Penzance and Okehampton/ Barnstaple.
Upthread the informed posts (Clarence Yard) said that Cornish mainline & Cardiff - Taunton stoppers, Barnstaple and Okehampton, releasing 80x for Intercity work, 158s for (most of the) Cardiff - Portsmouth and 150s for Mid Cornwall Metro.
Yep lol
Okehampton releases 2 150s and Barnstaple 3 158s. Not enough 150s for Cornwall, especially in summer. If the 175s end up Paignton-Exmouth which will happen if stabled at Exeter it would be a disaster.
175s are not suitable for Paignton - Exmouth because of the door layout (but then nor are 158s). Short-forming to Exmouth has been a big problem recently as so many 150s seem to be unavailable. Looks as though 207 came back from Wolverton yesterday, having already spent time there and then sent back.
The main issue with the short forms is unavailability of turbos, meaning the 4 car 150 diagrams have to be split to cover. There's a 2 car 158 on Exmouth Paigntons today
I must say, I’ve only done a little summer rail travel around the area, but have done plenty of travel on 175’s. 175’s are great units even on routes where the end door layout may not be ideal. As long as GWR are able to have a sufficient number of carriages on 175 operates services, they will be a great addition on any route.
Better than a 2 car 150 though in terms of capacity
As long as the engine bay is checked and has debris removed regularly there won’t be any issues.
They’re very well panelled compared to other units, I’ve often wondered if the panels prevent the debris getting pushed out by airflow, so the answer is, I’m totally the wrong person to answer it haha ! But it does seem like there should be a relatively easy solution.
