I’ve heard many people hate on this Greater Anglia units and even once saw someone had used their finger on the dirty unit to write “we want our old trains back!” I personally love these units and they are my favourite trains in England so what are your thoughts.
Personally, I'd prefer the 90s and Mk 3s but times change and we must move ever forward. As far as I can tell the FLIRTs are a good upgrade on the old stock, especially in terms of disability access. Reliability has been up and down a bit, but it has given me a couple of extra 37s to spot, so no complaints there. Assuming nothing significantly problematic arises in the next couple of years (like the AT300s and Civitys) then all will be good. I imagine they will serve us faithfully for many years, the level boarding alone will probably see them outlive many of the other new units we have seen in the last few years.
Don't know why we listen to what people say in the first few years of operation. These units are effectively still on test until the bugs are cracked out. People hark back to the good old days with rose tinted specs...
I work around them due to the nature of my work - I have spoken to multiple drivers and they all mentioned the same thing. They are barely legal in the UK. In law a train carriage requires 2 exits per side, as you can see on the OP photos they seemingly forgot to add a 2nd door? so GA instead converted a window to be a emergency exit. They also lack CCTV.......theyre decent units done on the cheap. Again, a aspect I have alot of experience in, GA in general are really bad at CCTV operation and simply put them into service without any working CCTV or way for people like me to access it in a timely manner. To cut a long story short, you dont want to be in that seat in the event of an emergency.
“Done on the cheap” is a fact of life in modern Britain with the culture of awarding contracts to the lowest bidder via a tendering process (a requirement of the EU I believe). Companies bid artificially low because they are scared of not getting the contract and then have to cut corners in order to meet the absolute minimum specifications of the contract and still make a profit.
Stadler's product is usually pretty high quality - but it's pretty obvious when you compare with the SOB units built at the same time that GA ticked very few of the optional extras. Also with the single door thing, how does Eurostar get around that? The 373s only have one pair of doors per vehicle and the 374s have a few vehicles with just a single pair as well? Is it possible that the single pair of doors is compliant and extra window exits are belt and braces, much like the emergency windows on an aircraft?
GA certainly did on the 745 fleet, 20 units with 18 needed each day. Have a set out for any reason and you have a problem.
Interesting point, do we know where Eurostar registers their trains? perhaps they get around it in the way of saying its a french train so is compliant etc etc
374s are UK registered (they have UIC numbers and the country code is 70 for UK) - 373s don't carry UIC numbers (or didn't) so it's not obvious there
I like the design but until I ride on one I can’t rate them yet. Fun fact: the class 755 (3 car) on electric is one of if not the fastest accelerating train the uk
They're decent, still very unreliable multiple years after their introduction though, when even Bombardier has managed to mostly sort even the most troubled of its Aventras that have entered service. With the FLIRTs and 720s GA are going to be in a very good place in a year or so, both fleets are very good inside and much better than what they're replacing overall. I can't say I've personally heard of any issues surrounding the doors, dwell times are still shorter than LHCS and the same as existing units, and nothing is mentioned in their approvals as to derogations for number of exits. It also seems to be forgotten that GA never intended to order the 745s originally, it's just that Stadler refused to sign a contract for just 755s, as the order was simply too small to be worth their while.
It wasn't that Stadler refused as they are short run specialists - but I gather it was the maintenance contract. GA wanted Stadler to take over and rebuild Crown Point and maintain the units - Stadler insisted on a minimum order value for them to do so. They'd be happy to build just the 755s if GA did the maintaining in house. Elsewhere in Europe its common for the operator to do maintenance on their fleet, where as in the UK the trend is for Repair and Maintenance contracts with the manufacturer building or taking over depots as required.
