LITTLE TOWN FLIRT
Some readers might just remember the Del Shannon No. 4 ‘hit’ of early 1963 carrying the same name as this article, but ‘FLIRT’ has now been hi-jacked by Swiss train builder Stadler as an abbreviation for Flinker Leichter Intercity-und Regional-Treibzug. Presumably by design more than good fortune this already much-anglicised German title further translates into English as Fast Light Intercity and Regional Train, so retaining the same acronym.
Surely a train which is both ‘InterCity’ (to use the original British Rail intermediate capital) and ‘Regional’ cannot truly satisfy either market perfectly and therefore barely qualifies as a concept let alone a class of train. However, Stadler has adapted the basic notion to achieve sales in 20 different countries from Russian-gauge Azerbaijan to the automobile-dominated United States.
As the UK authorities eventually rumbled the inadequacies of the franchising system after a whole generation of wastefulness, the final rounds of bidding were won by operators who had grasped how the umpteenth iteration of franchise assessment criteria favoured complete replacement of the rolling stock fleet even if some of it was less than a third through its working life. Let us set aside concern that the new regime is likely, even without Covid-19, to result in fewer train services, and consider how this context influenced the arrival of a whole fleet of ‘FLIRTs’. The British ones show just how difficult it is to marry standardisation to the different requirements, indeed expectations, of the travelling public.
The problem facing Greater Anglia was complex. At one end of the spectrum the Class 90s and their ageing Mk3 coaches were becoming increasingly difficult and more expensive to maintain. Both were basically sound but were past their best.
Satisfactory
At the bottom end of the scale were noisy and relatively uncomfortable first generation sprinters. It was not a difficult task to justify replacing either of these groups in terms of either
