South West Trains franchise

General UK Railway Discussion and questions.
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Warbo40
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Re: South West Trains franchise

Post by Warbo40 »

The 707's will be replaced by yet another new unit in 2019 and yes the class 455's and 458's will also be discarded by the new franchise. The class 442 are said to be introduced onto the Portsmouth Harbour services to which i've been told by someone who drives for SWT that he thinks they won't be able to cope with the steep gradient up to Portsmouth & Southsea high level station.
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Re: South West Trains franchise

Post by Mightyena »

If they're being remotored as speculated that shouldn't be too much of a problem

The 707 situation is ridiculous really
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Re: South West Trains franchise

Post by electra »

On the upside, once someone builds one for T:ANE, there's a fleet of almost brand new trains for Hayden Trains to lease ;)

Seriously though, I could see the 707 fleet ending up at Thameslink. On a side note, I read somewhere that plans exist to convert some of the modified 455s to DEMUs - per the class 769s.
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Re: South West Trains franchise

Post by Scratchlight »

I don't understand why they would discard the 707s, but I do understand my disliking for modern EMUS.. they're so difficult to model!
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Re: South West Trains franchise

Post by electra »

They're said to be more expensive to run.
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Re: South West Trains franchise

Post by RowanTrodd »

In addition to Electra's comment, the 700s were apparently not too popular after their inaugural run with Thameslink. As 707s are shorter, with no toilets and expensive to run SWR have decided that to buy in Crossrail-inspired trains would be better for their satisfaction rating. However, we can't overlook the savings in running the new units:
When commissioned, the 707s were expensive as they had a small production run (just them and a small amount of 700s), with the rates of interest relatively high. This left the stock owners (Angel Trains) shelling-out a lot of money. They, of course, want to make money and so their 'rental rate' of the 707s is relatively high to cover the interest on the units as well as some of the build cost. Currently, the cost of borrowing is relatively low and so the interest that has to be paid on the new units is lower. Also, as they are essentially extending the build run of the mass-built/ordered Crossrail units, the overall cost of building them is cheaper. Because the interest and build costs are comparatively low compared to the 707s, it will save SWR a lot, ergo; SWR make more profit(no prizes for guessing if they'll reduce fare hikes as a result)!
As I think I've mentioned before, this has left Angel Trains 'holding the baby' with a unit that can't be widely used (because they have no lavs, so can't operate beyond large metro areas). They're also not likely to be popular (based on the 700s reputation) and will cost a lot for TOCs to hire. The only saving grace may be that they can be converted to run on OHLE, meaning that maybe they'll move to an area other than the 3rd Rail Zone south of the capital.
It's one of those things where Angel Trains didn't mind following SWTs bespoke request (5 car units, no lavs, open seating, extra standing room etc.) as SWT had held the franchise for years and thus didn't think about re-usability. Speaking as somebody who is too young to remember the days of BR, I wonder if some of the older members of the forum could enlighten me as to what BR would have done in such a situation - I'd guess that the old nationalised model would not even create a situation like this.
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