"Richard J." wrote:
On 08/05/2013 22:26, Paul Corfield wrote:
On Wed, 08 May 2013 15:19:15 -0500,
wrote:

In article
,
(Recliner) wrote:

I see that TfL has now signed the contract for the 57 new cars to extend
all the Class 378s to five cars:

http://www.railnews.co.uk/news/2013/...-for-more.html

Did they buy some extra whole trains too? The report doesn't say.

I believe not. The original project authority had scope for a couple
of extra new trains but this has not been proceeded with at this
stage. If it had then I would expect it would have been clearly
stated. I suspect the cost for such a tiny run is too high to be seen
as value for money. Bombardier are (allegedly) notoriously "difficult"
about prices for small production runs.

My wild speculative view is that TfL would prefer to wait to see if
they get approval for GOBLIN electrification. That will obviously need
new EMUs, most likely 378s, so it would decide then if it wanted to
add to the overall fleet to help add extra services on the existing
electrified network.

One thing I did find interesting is that the 5th cars were an option
on the previous contract for supply of the 378s so clearly someone had
some foresight!

Did Network Rail have similar foresight or are the North London Line
platform extensions only fit for 4 cars?

Extending the platforms, sidings and depots was all part of this project.