I’m gonna miss the meridians 😢, been living on the MML for 13 years and I’ve ridden on them plenty of times, but these new trains look cool, they’re different than all the other IETs
I'm not, really. I'm missing HST's: at weekend was few special morning services with full breakfast included to 1st class tickets. With early booking travel to London was comfortable, not expensive and with proper food. Meridians are little better than Voyagers, but: 20 years in service make them pitty: dirty and collapsed seats Plus design flaws: like lack of headroom Currently most of them are crowded as single 5 car sets. We need better trains here.
I seen 810004 pass Luton airport parkway yesterday while spotting, and passed me on a train at luton, then overtook it at Luton airport parkway the following day
Sadly the former operator almost 2 decades ago had tried that... Midland Mainline had purchased Class 222's, at the time it has 4 or 9 coach formation But it ended up that 4 car trains go full and the 9 coach trains happens to be empty, coupled the fact St Pancras has now been the Eurostar terminal it had to built new platforms that a 9 car meridian won't fit on there anymore This resulted to SRA had said to MML to make some 4 car train 5 car by reducing the formation of 9 car trains to 8, subsquently EMT reducing it to 7 which we all know also 11 coaches is too long for St Pancras MML platforms
11 coaches not fit into St.Pancras platforms lenght. These sets will be running double lenght (10 cars) in peak hours. And still, design was changed to shortern every coach by 2metre and change front, because 10 car set in original lenght not fit there.