hermit
Member
I do seriously wonder how long the 483s can soldier on for. I suspect things are going to get worse before they get better. The industry has known about this for years, I really don't understand why it's taken so long to come up with a solution.
I remember that we were told in the mid-2000s that the trains could not possibly be maintained for more than a year or two, yet here we are. The engineering staff certainly deserve all credit for proving the predictions wrong, but the fact that the trains have proved so very reliable over the years certainly took the pressure off finding replacements.
A lot of time has also been wasted in searching for alternative solutions which the Treasury and some local politicians hoped would save money (at least for central government). So there was talk of unloading the line on to the local authority, converting to trams or hatching up some deal with the private sector. These ideas proved illusory, but it was largely due to the efforts of a local pressure group, who insisted that the line should not be treated differently from similar branch lines elsewhere on the network, that we have ended up with the present plans which amount basically to modernising the existing setup. But the decision could and should have been made years ago.