The recent awards for the East Anglia and South Western franchises will have sent a seismic shock through the rolling stock market. Wholesale replacement of the existing fleets in Anglia, including modern Class 379 units on the Stansted and Cambridge routes and the Class 360 units on the Great Eastern main line, introduced in 2003, was a major shock in itself, but this was dwarfed by the planned replacement of the entire suburban fleet on South Western, including the Class 707 units which (at the time of writing) haven’t yet entered service.
The logic of First/MTR’s rolling stock strategy is quite clear. Offering new trains wins quality points in the bid process, even if these are in part replacing trains just about to be introduced. I doubt whether this is really what DfT intended, but the Department can hardly criticise bidders for optimising their bids by using the rules as set out. The new fleet will provide a unified operation across the suburban network, going out as far as Reading on the Windsor lines, so the specification represents a compromise: the units will have toilets, as some of the journeys will be quite long, but no first class, which is entirely sensible but will upset a handful of…
