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You would have thought that four years, nine months was long enough to replace the Great Eastern Class 312 fleet
Back in March 1998, when Great Western Holdings was taken over by First Group, making some of my old railway chums comfortably rich, the Office of Passenger Rail Franchising, not be confused with its soi disant successor, demanded a package of additional passenger benefits as a condition of its assent. These benefits included the replacement of Great Eastern's slam door Class 312 electric multiple units by the end of 2002.
At the time, Adtranz' ‘Classic' concept of modern body on existing running gear was all the rage and First Great Eastern explored the possibility of re-engineering the Class 312s before plumping for new trains. A Notice in the Official Journal of the European Community initiated competitive tendering and a ‘statement of intent' was signed on 6 July 2000 for 21 four car Siemens Desiro Class 360 EMUs.
Already, the franchise commitment was getting somewhat close. Testing of the first Class 360 was scheduled to start at Siemen's Wildenrath track in August 2001 (or two months time) and the units would start to enter service in the summer of 2002. Delivery would be completed by December, meeting the franchise commitment with a month to spare.
Now, in May 2001, Angel Trains had already ordered 25 four-car Desiros ‘on spec'. While many of us interpreted ‘on spec' as ‘for FGE', this was denied and to maximise the number of potential customers these trains were designed with cab ends incorporating connecting gangways.
And this is what I saw in February when I zipped round the M25 to Siemens facility at Sunbury where a full scale mock up of a Desiro driving car in FGE livery was on show. The front end featured two small cab windows separated by the gangway.
When checking up on Desiro deliveries for this month's lead item I was surprised to learn that FGE had subsequently discovered that the layout of the mock up cab was not compatible with Driver Only Operation. As you may have noticed, modern multiple units with their crashworthy front ends are a bit short in the glazing department and in the case of the Class 360 the original design would have restricted the driver's view of platform CCTV monitors and mirrors.
As a result, Siemens is now redesigning the Class 360 front end with a driving console similar to the Northern Spirit Class 333 plus two large windows similar in size to those on FGE's existing Class 321 fleet. The gangway has gone.
Now this is a pretty fundamental redesign, since it will mean new finite element analysis of the end structure ‘crumple zone' and tests to demonstrate the 1 MegaJoule energy absorption required by crashworthiness Railway Group Standards. As a result, the service entry of the first units has been put back from July to December 2002. FGE then hopes to have all 21 units in service by the May 2003 summer timetable.
So despite having what you might consider to be ample warning, my highly respected chums at FGE are going to break their franchise commitment. I did ask the Strategic Rail Authority what they would do about it, but I don't expect an answer.