New Overground trains (378s)

They look ok! I actually quite like the fact that there are windows where the door pockets are-makes the trains look more airy! It would be nice if there were a few transverse seats next to each drivers cab 'j' doors.

The highlight of all those '2009' events for me will be switching to ATO on the Jubilee. If it'll be anything as good as the ATO on the Victoria line, then the speed and frequency improvements and the ability to 'stop on a dime' will make it so much better to ride. It will be good to see proper use made of the 96ts.

The 300 series is for overhead-power capable trains, and nmbers 301-312 were already allocated to other trains when the 313s were built. The 500 series is for third-rail powered trains that ran north of the river, and again there'd already to been 501-507. They were actually built for Merseyrail in Liverpool.

After a while they got bored of numbering consecutively, and allocated higher numbers in multiples of 5s and 10s so similar trains could be grouped. Thus the first Electrostars were arbitrarily given 375, there've since been 376 and 377, so the Overground trains have to be 378.

In the old days the first overhead line trains 301-311 were known as AM1-11! The tops class system came in later. The numbers were allocated in a series-313-314-315-(316 experimental dmu then networker train!)-317-318-319-320-321-322-323! Then it started to get a little lost! The new Siemens trains on the London Midland line are class 350s!

I think, the 357 c2c trains were planned well before the 375s-but its no excuss!!

Why are they only getting 24 class 378s to replace 26 older trains (23 313s and 3 508s). I know that the 508s can only be used on the Watford service, but 24 doesn't seem enough.

They'll be getting 4 more for when the higher frequency NLL/WLL services come in, making a total of 28. 22 are for the NLL/WLL with the remaining 6 for the Watford DC Line. There'll be a 2 train per hour shuttle on the WLL (needing 2 units), a 2 tph shuttle between Camden Road and Stratford (also 2 units), a 2 tph Stratford-Clapham Junction service (4-5 units) and a 4 tph Richmond-Stratford service (10-ish units).

(NB the numbers above in brackets are pure guesswork on my part, but everything else is solid published info)

So that's a total of about 25-26 out of 28 needed in service on any day. Pretty tight, but not impossible. The current fleet is larger than normal (26 with only 18-20 in service) due to the age of the units.

Don't forgot the New Class 172 which will be coming to the LO one day.

Although the Cl378 Does look Very interesting though.

Heres the Link for the Class 172.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Rail_Class_172

What dismays me about these new trains is that they'll be all longitudinally-seated - I.E; there'l only be side-facing seats on them. This makes for a boring journey, imo, as part of the fun of travelling on above-ground trains is being able to sit near a window and look out as we travel along. This will be completely lost when the new trains arrive.

On the plus side, I note they'll be airconditioned - which begs the question: why couldn't SouthEastern's communter electorstars (kent suburban routes) have been done so? The argument, iirc, was that they worked on lines with a lot of stopping, starting and opening of doors - thus rendering aircon ineffecitve. Now I would love to know how this same definition doesn't apply on LO!? If they can manage with air-con on similar high-density use, what was so different about SouthEastern?

Mmm, bad news with 3(?) opening windows per carriage!

I did see somewhere speculation and hints that the ends of the Class 378s might end up with 2+2 seating after all, with TfL possibly having a rethink - meaning longitudinal seating being only between the doors. That would be a sensible compromise in my view.

The problem with the SET class 375 units, are that several journies can involve a particularly long journey without a stop... and every time the train passes over a rail gap at a slow speed, if two shoes on a unit are off juice, the air con gets switched off, to conserve the batteries. This is fine in theory, but if the thing breaks down between stations and is off juice, traction fault for example - [the shoes automatically lift to avoid damage to the sensitive electrics on the unit] I'm not altogether keen on them. Especially the 375/9 High Density stuff, with seat cushions about 0.125" thick. And the air con system on them is not as effective as it was when they first came into regular use.

Give me a CEP or VEP [slam door stuff] anyday!!!

I suppose if the LU SSR is going to have aircon it would look a bit backward for LO not to have it.

Those suburban electrostars on southeastern are horrible - no aircon, no toilets and the most uncomfortable seats I have ever experienced - worse than the 09 stock mock-up!

Even worse than that ?

Or that?