Best designed rolling stock

So many to choose from. To be honest, i've only ever had any experience of a few and even then I didn't really give them long enough for a fair trial. D stock might get my vote since it's the one i'm most familiar with. But what about 1972 stock? They have hidden depth.

A stock for me, the design was so well executed that they don't look 45 years old.

I have voted for the A stock.
Like Colin, I can't vote for the stock I have only seen in the LT Museum, so I had to decide which of the currently-in-use stocks to vote for.

Based solely on looks, the A stock wins it. I must admit, I do like the look of most of the stock, but that's probably because I'm an anorak!

Having been down your end lately and had a rides on various stocks my opinion FWIW is that 1973 is the best of the tubes stocks as far as passngers are concerned ands "A" stock the best SSL.

Why. Because the seats are COMFORTABLE!

Mine is that 95' of Northern

It has good design

I voted for 1938 TS, pure perfection inside and out. More comfortable seats and a smoother ride than the 59s. As regards to SSS it has to be COP, no contest!

If you go to the open day at "The Depot" in October and get the chance to go in some of the older stocks then do so. If you can sit down then so much the better and sample the sheer luxury of seats with proper cushioning/

They treat passengers like cattle nowadays compared to then and any old thing is good enough for the people that line the pockets of shareholders.

Bet Q8 now nominates F stock (tanks) ;D ;D ;D[/quote]

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Nah! If they can't remember "Q's" they'll never even get anywhere near the old Tanks

Now that public transport runs at a loss, it is hardly surprising that the decision-makers look for cheaper alternatives....
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But they say it ISN'T running at a loss. They are posting PROFITS now. So I'll give you one guess as to where the money IS going

To further Sydneynick's comments, it is also important to understand the difference between operating profits or losses, and total profits and/or losses.

It is eminently possible for the operations, the day -to-day business of running trains, stations and so on, might be self-supporting or even profit-generating via collected revenue.

However, covering capital expidentures, investment, capital costs, infrastructural costs etc from ticket revenues is an entirely different matter. And if you add in the need to accumulate capital, in order to finance future investments, the picture becomes even more bleak. This was why so many of the private tube builders in London went practically bankrupt, this is why you see a at least parastatal prescence in virtually every large infrastructure project in the world.

I don't understand these financial shenanigans today. The above post'd show quite clearly that loss's are incurred. So why do the TOC's and bus companies and Tube operators keep saying "we made so and so profit last year" Is the "profit" all down to the public subsidy they get?

Thanks Hedghog for you explanation but I don't understand half of it. Can you make it a bit less "technical"?

Very, very briefly:

The operations side of a railway is basically the running of trains, stations, their maintenance, the selling of tickets and collecting of revenue and so on. Your expenses are the salaries of staff, the maintenance cost of the trains and stations, the cost of running the trains (fuel/electricity etc) and the stations etc. Your revenue is whatever you can squeeze out of the travelling public.

So far, so good. It is generally a good thing if the revenue collected equals or exceeds the costs of operating the railway -you rake in more cash on tickets than you expend on staff, electricity, cleaning etc etc. This is what is meant by an operating profit -the operations side pays for itself.

A certain stretch of line might not be possible to run at an operating profit in itself, but it might generate enough traffic to make another part of your network profitable. Or perhaps the governemnt has decided that it is of public interest to operate that line, and has therefore given you a subsidy to operate it.

But to run trains, you need to have a few trains to run. And track to run them on, and workshops to maintain them in, and signals and signallers to regulate them, and a myriad of other things. These cost money, and often lots of it. Driving tunnels deep under a city is horrendously expensive, and building big workshops isn't cheap either. A modern metro train from one of the big manufacturers probably costs around £5 million each.

In order to do all this, you need capital, and loads of it. Thus, you go to your friendly local consortium of big multinational investment banks and ask them for a loan of a few billion. Which they will happily give you, but everything costs, and money is no exception. They will charge you an interest on the loan, demand financial guarantees and a repayment plan. Thus, you have to pay amortization and interest rates on your investment capital -capital costs. You can also sell shares in your company, and go on the stock market. While you don't have to pay any loan-like interest on shares, the shareholders sure want to see a dividend.

One way around this is to not buy any trains. Instead, a big bank buys the trains for you, and then rents them out to you. In effect, the bank assumes the financial risk. You only pay a yearly leasing fee, you won't have to come up with a few hundred million in hard cash and pay interest on that and so on. The bank, being a big, diversified lender, with lots of other assets, can get capital much cheaper that a individual company, thus having to pay lower interest rates -or perhaps they can even fund the purchase completely with it's own capital, since banks are, after all, made out of money. But since the bank assumed the financial risk, they will make sure that they can use their assets after the leasing period is over, or if the leasing period should be prematurely aborted (by your railway going bankrupt). This means, among other things, that they want trains that are as generic as possible, leading to strange things like the Incredible Shrinking Train syndrome in Britain.

How do you come up with this money? You could, of course, increase the fares -but that might lead to a loss of passengers, and thus revenue.

On top of that, you also have to set aside funds for maintenace of infrastructure and rolling stock, both yearly and for major refurbishment. The stations would probably like some paint every now and then, too. And you also have to set aside funds for eventual replacement of rolling stock, track, stations, workshops etc, since nothing lasts forever. Oh, and your shareholders would probably like a dividend, too, while you are at it.

Things can get even more complicated. Say that you are operating the Farawayistan railway, and has just purchased locomotives from BigLocoCo in the USA. BigLocoCo wants to be paid in US dollars. But all your revenues are in Farawayistani doubloons. If the exchange rate of the doubloon falls as compared to the US dollar, then suddenly your locomotives has become much more expensive. You could, of course sign a deal where the price is pegged to a specific exchange rate, but that would probably cost you.

And so on, and so forth. And this is all crystal clear and extremely simple as compared to what happens when you start looking at tendering processes, public-private partnerships, BOT deals and so on.

Zman, Dave -anything to add?

Unfortunately whilst public services we all need are in the private sector, there will be a continued push for profits over service. Thing is, if it goes back into the public sector (e.g. nationalisation of the railways), the government is all to happy to squeeze spending a la LT in the 70s/80s (which leaves a large mess to be sorted out a little longer down the line i.e. nowish).

But to quote Lord Loughton (Chair of LTE in the 1950s): "We don't pack them in. They pack themselves in." Travel on the tube in rush hour has always been unpleasant.