Mr Thant wrote:
On 12 Jan, 18:54, Paul Corfield wrote:
Silverlink County did have a rocky patch a number of years ago but
like a number of Nat Ex TOCs they just knuckled down and
concentrated on the basics. IIRC they had the most reliable EMUs
in Britain with their fleet of Class 321s based at Bletchley. For
a railway getting the most boring basics right day in, day out is
absolutely essential and they did seem to manage that despite the
WCML upgrade works.

It's not really a "despite". As part of the WCML upgrade Silverlink
were bought a stack of new trains and 12-car platform extensions and
probably benefited from the other infrastructure upgrades and
renewals. I'd think this goes a long way to explaining the better
reputation of County.

It was perhaps also the fact that County maintained their "old" trains
superbly. Their Class 321 reliability was the best of any National Rail
train type for the second year running, and their average miles per
casualty*, at 49,244, was more than twice the figure for One's fleet of
the same class.

By contrast, Metro's fleet of Class 313, admittedly around 13 years
older but maintained in the same Bletchley depot, achieved a miserable
5189 miles per casualty last year, compared to FCC's 11,355 mpc with the
same class.

* Strictly, it's the moving annual average of total miles run divided by
the number of train faults causing at least a 5-minute delay. Figures
from Modern Railways, January 2008.

--
Richard J.
(to e-mail me, swap uk and yon in address)