Those 707s were on SWR before any of the other classes shrank iirc ?.
So even more space ?.
At its peak we could assume SWR had an extra 150 coaches (30 x 5car units) making 1,675 and falling by 368 coaches !.
Add in the 10 sidings at Feltham and there should be space for 46 x 10car 701s.
But I recall (up thread) a snag is not all the sidings on SWR can take 10car units !.
Even so that is a fair chunk (50%) of the 701 fleet.
Raw coach numbers can be a bit misleading. The 456s and 458/5 to 458/4 while reducing coach count will usually leave an unfillable gap in a siding. In some places the 707s going might have led to a pair of 455s replacing a pair of 707s and a pair of 450s replacing a pair of 455s elsewhere from reduced length non-metro services which again is theoretical but unfillable space. Feltham has 10 pairs of units stabled there overnight, currently 84 coaches as only 2 are 701s.
An alternative way to look at it would be reductions in 4-car or 5-car units, that gives 11 455s, 15 707s, and 3? 458s or 29 half sidings of metro stock. Add 20 more for Feltham gives 49 halves or 25 full not taking into account some of the 8 cars in Feltham have probably left a 8 car siding unfilled not a 10-car one.
In terms of 701 fleet on SWR patch from reports on here, RTT and Google Earth, there's 8 in passenger service, usually 6/7 at Clapham for training/testing and at least previously been 4 at Farnham. Wimbledon often has at least 1 visitor outside the passenger service lot. That's roughly 20 10-car equivalents which isn't far off the half sidings numbers above.
It still seems odd to me that DfT or GBR to be, only want 5 year leases.
You would only do that if you had a serious consideration of returning them and not expecting the railway to want them in year 6.
If that had been restricted to 159s and 458s I get the logic as some new common fleet may come along (although £50m extra per year for short term on just those two small fleets seems unlikely). But the idea the 701s and 450s will not be still running in 10-15 years time I don't buy.
My other thought is someone made an arbitrary decision to not commit for more than 5 years, even if it was more expensive. Although how that would ever pass a best value test I cannot comprehend.
They will still be awarding a public service contract to a company which will then take out the lease on the rolling stock. That lease shouldn't extend beyond when the company will be operating and government guarantees under Section 54 can only be justified if bringing in new private sector investment.
I can't make the numbers in the Telegraph article add up. The 2023/2024 SWR accounts have £93m for "Hire of rolling stock" even allowing £50m for the remaining 701s and some inflation that will be under £200m. But 10% to 20% of that won't be £50m.
Legislation still limits the award duration to a
maximum of 10 years. All the OLR contracts were for five years or less so would guess something is missing from the reporting.
Seems like the 701 on the Shepperton line today has struggled to run and is now all 455 for the rest of the day. Why is this? Are they not capable of running on diverted routes?
There's engineering work on the simpler diversion, so instead they are diverting to Twickenham and going round the Hounslow loop. While they are cleared it will take longer to do that route and throw the diagrams off so easier to switch to stock that all crew sign. The Windsor services were planned to be diverted and those 2 701s are running smoothly over much of the same route.
