London North Western Railway has unveiled the new look its incoming Class 150s will get for the Marston Vale Line.
Currently, services are suspended with rail replacement bus services running after Vivarail, the company that maintains the Class 230 trains that operate services on the line, filed a ‘Notice Of Intention To Appoint Administrators'.
They have secured Class 150s No. 150137, 150139 and 150141 from Northern to run the line, and Northern has advised LNWR that the units will be available for release in July.
Ahead of this, the operator has been developing the required training courses that staff will have to complete ahead of passenger services resuming.
What do you think of the new livery? Let us know in the comments below.
All this faff with a replacement bus service for months on end while countless Class 153s sat in storage doing nothing could’ve been put to use on the line ages ago!
Who cares what ridiculous design is chosen, it is criminal that the service has not been operating all this time.In the good old days of British Railways stock would have been found from somewhere in the country and transferred in overnight.
Exactly the point I made in my post. There’s no spare capacity in the availability of train sets now. Another price of privatisation! If it’s sitting in a siding/depot, not under maintenance etc, then it’s not a viable asset because it’s not making money. That’s how the TOCs have been operating for the last 20yrs!
Who cares about the livery of the recycled 150s for the Marston Vale Line? How about a reliable train service – NOW?
The miserable saga of the Bletchley-Bedford service shows that the present operators have failed utterly to make the Vivarail 230s work after exasperating travellers with a shambles of a replacement bus service. They put legal ‘arse covering’ before their moral duty to provide a passenger service.
Is the bus service that bad? You have big bud and minibus if I remember…just asking….
And what are Northern going to replace these three sets with?? I don’t think Northern even have enough train sets to run its current level of service! Sending three to another operator just seems crazy. There’s just no spare capacity available as far as train sets go, it’s madness!
You are right although Northern try to deny it and their non electric service delivery depends on a level of availability of what will soon be the last eight 769s that despite their considerable efforts remain completely unreliable.
Wikipedia tells me that there are several ex-EMR Class 156s currently “off lease”. But whether Porterbrook is intending to have them released, I’m not sure.
Well its good to see the Class 150 DMU Sprinters coming back to the Marston Vale Line as the Class 230 are not going to continue because of Vivarail who have gone into administration and the recent death of Adrian Shooter who was Managing Director of Vivarail. I hope that the Class 150 will be permanent.
Adrian Shooter had retired before his death, so this isn’t relevant to the company having gone into administration.