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Originally Posted by electricron
Cascading has worked well in the past, but cities Manchester, Liverpool, and Newcastle are buying brand new rolling stock wholly owned by themselves, with no share of ownership for the National Trust. I wonder why? Maybe they are completely tired of the UK's past "Cascading" system used in the past.
They want bespoke trains built especially for their needs too.
NJT, MRA North, and LIRR want bespoke trains in the past, and will far into the future as well. Sorry, "Cascading" will not work here.
The Port Authority already runs PATH trains between NY and NJ. It's one line out of over 26 lines. And to add to all the other incompatibilities, it is bespoke and its trains can't run anywhere else. It is not the solution.
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With the exception of Merseyrail and Tyne & Wear Metro (which both operate a BART-style metro/commuter rail style system), there isn't devolved control over rolling stock to the cities. Not even There are several train operators that run across the north, with the key one being Northern Trains (previously privately run, but now wholly by the UK Government's Department for Transport) which
operates services across 474 stations across the north-east and north-west. However operators like Northern Trains don't own their rolling stock, they lease them off rolling stock companies, who compete with each other to provide stock to train operators (whether on quantity, cost or amenities).
Northern Trains onboarded a lot of Thameslink's cascaded bi-mode class to fill service shortfalls. The latest addition to the Northern Trains fleet are refreshed class 323 trains cascaded from West Midlands Trains (the main operator in and around Birmingham), who are in turn acquiring a new fleet of class 730's.
London Underground's old D stock which served London from 1980 - 2017 are now serving routes in Wales for Transport for Wales and South Western Railway's Island Line (which has a history of receiving cascaded Underground stock), and more will deployed onto lines operated by Great Western Trains routes.
It isn't always a case of historic stock being cascaded, South Western Railway leased a fleet of new class 707 trains in 2017, but they have since been transferred to Southeastern Trains as of 2021, all because SWR opted to do a larger fleet refresh to streamline the fleet, replacing three train classes for one (701's).
In short, it is pig-headed to think that rolling stock is some monolithic asset that can’t be deployed elsewhere, whether across the existing network (new, upgraded or intensified routes) or even elsewhere across the US where there is demand to expand or offer a service without the substantial cost of new stock.