(20 Nov 2023, 9:08 pm)Storx wrote Yeah agreed, hopefully it might be the sort of route to look at for electric battery vehicles, when the tech comes in. Use the wires from Newcastle to Ferryhill and then run on battery for the short'ish section from Ferryhill down to Middlesbrough.
The Morpeth / Ashington services are the same and are going to be self contained in the future as far as I'm aware aswell, the extra acceleration on those would help on the sections on the ECML. Would help with going green aswell, rather than having diesel trains running under wires.
Northern have a notice out to tender for up to 450 new units, which is more than their entire fleet, so hopefully that means that the Sprinters may disappear up here which might help with making everything a bit faster. I'd be happy with bi-modes, although suspect they want full tri-mode capability with Diesel, Pantograph and Battery power.
(20 Nov 2023, 9:11 pm)Andreos1 wrote I've been racking my brains to reckon up what the ECML was like when Sprinters were on the Transpennine Services.
Without checking, I don't think the paths were too much different to what they are now.
Isn't there a higher frequency of services these days though? Although I can remember the days of seeing them leaving Sunderland Station with Manchester Airport on their destination I don't know much else about the TPE route back in those days, or even how frequent services were on the ECML in the GNER days or even before that.