Are there any surplus 323s at WMT that can transfer to Northern in the short term, as they are planned to do eventually anyway? I realise the bulk of the transfers are awaiting another CAF product that may be similarly affected, but wondered if they had any spare due to pandemic service reductions.
I doubt that Northern has enough drivers who sign 323s in the relevant depots to enable more to be used in the short term. The 331s on the west side are mostly booked on the services out of Blackpool, but 323s have never been used on these routes.
323s have been used to Hazel Grove though. Maybe they could split the Blackpool-Hazel Grove service temporarily with the Manchester-Hazel Grove section operated by a 323 and the Manchester-Blackpool section a 331. But then you have the question of where you terminate the northern (with a small N!!!) section as I highly doubt there's capacity to turn it around in p13/14.
FWIW the 323 transfers aren't waiting on the CAF units for WMT; they're waiting on the Aventras (which are proving similarly poor, but if I understand correctly it's due to their software rather than their build quality)
There's probably a decent number of units that could be freed up if (some) CrossCity services were short-formed to single sets. It's the kind of thing you might expect to see happen if they were one company, but for a (hopefully) temporary issue like this, a cross-TOC transfer seems unlikely.
You could do that, but then you'd be incoveniencing another TOC. I also can't see Porterbrook really wanting to mess around with the arrangements of their fleet to cover for some Eversholt units.
In reality, the simplest solution is to just cut the 6-car services to 3 on Northern, and if that still doesn't leave enough units, start bringing 319s back out of storage - which, if what is in this thread is to be believed, is what they have already decided to do.
The question I have is how they can get electric units from the western to the eastern side at short notice, which would presumably be necessary unless the failures are concentrated on the western side, as the nearest electrified route goes via Glasgow! Presumably they'd have to get ROG to haul them through the Calder Valley or something.