"Neil Williams" wrote in message

On Mon, 14 Jul 2008 11:29:35 -0700 (PDT), John B
wrote:

I'm not a procurement expert, but Uncle Roger seems to think that the
DfT specification is far too complicated/hard to achieve (not least
the self-propulsion).

The Thameslink EMUs aren't IEP, just bog-standard 20m 4-car EMUs.

Yes, but a similarly greedy feature set is demanded (ie, much lighter,
faster, extremely reliable, able to run at up to 30mph when the juice is
off). Most of the demanded features would raise the weight, but DfT is
asking for something as light as a simple 319.