Why are all the trains and carriadges on the tubes so old?

Question

All the carridges I have seen on the tubes have been around 1980's - mid 1990's. Why are there never any newer ones such as around the 2005 mark?

Answer 1

Because they work on the principle of "if it ain't broke, don't fix it".

Things like trains are designed to last approximately 40 years, all things being equal.

The oldest trains on London Underground are on the Metropolitan Line (dating back to 1960/62), Victoria Line (dating back to 1967) and Circle/Hammersmith & City Line (first batch dating back to 1969/70).

All of these are currently in the process of being replaced with new trains being built by Bombardier.

The newest trains on the network are those on the Jubilee and Northern Lines, introduced between 1997 and 2001.

Answer 2

becuase there p*ssing your fare money up the wall, my friend.

Answer 3

Buy New Ones Cost Money. They rather not buy new ones.

Answer 4

There are new ones coming soon.

Answer 5

Why do they need to be brand new? Tube trains have a life of about 30 years. When I started regularly travelling on the tube in the 1960s the stock was then dating from 1938 and was not replaced until 1988 Some of that 1930s stock is still running on the Isle of Wight. In the 60s, stock on the Central line was even older, dating from 1915. Currently, on the tube lines, the oldest stock is that on the Victoria line, dating from 1967 (when the line was opened) which is due for replacement in 2009. Other stock, Bakerloo and Piccadilly dates from 1972/3, whilst other lines have stock from the 1990s. The Metropolitan, District, Circle and Hammersmith and City sub-surface lines are due to begin receiving new stock from 2009, with delivery due for completion in 2011. London Overground, the former surface lines taken over from Network Rail, is to receive new stock, again commencing from next year.

You must remember that railway stock is not like your car, built to be obsolescent within 4 or 5 years. It is built to last.

Those answers which make glib comments about cost, really don't show any understandings of the issues

Answer 6

Because the old ones still work fine! Most trains are built to last around 40 years or more.

The oldest trains still running on the Tube network were actually made a lot earlier than the 1980s. The Victoria Line Tube trains were made in 1967, and the Metropolitan Line trains date back to 1960!

A similar situation exists on National Rail, where the oldest trains still in regular service date back to the early 1970s (although as recently as 3 or 4 years ago there were still 1950s-built trains in service). Even on the flagship high speed main lines out of London (the exception being the West Coast line) you'll more often than not be travelling on an Inter City 125 train from the mid seventies.

I think the bottom line is: if they work, are kept clean and get you to your destination, why should you care how old the trains are? Even when new Tube trains are introduced, they won't go any faster or have more comfortable seats. They probably won't look much different to the old ones either.

Answer 7

How much money would you like invested and are you willing to pay 5 times the amount on your tickets for the upgrades?

this is the trouble, balancing out the cost of travel to the benefits, if the system gained all new trains, each cost hundreds of thousands of pounds, this has to be passed onto the passengers by the company or paid for by increasing taxes within the London area (council charges), it could be done another way by removing free travel from say OAP's. Children, Oyster holders, etc and going back to a proper peak / off peak fare structure, but even this would only pay a partial cost towards the services.

Private companies could invest the money, if the returns warrant the costs or if a fault was found on the original trains which meant that the safety of the passengers and staff was put at risk (like the Mk1 slam door coaches on the national rail network), but again this would have to be subsidised from the London Authority and reflected in taxes.

So no easy way to pay for the upgrades.

Hope this helps