This from Dan Dare...
According to a Bombardier press release, celebrating an award for its Standsted Express class 379 fleet:
The Class 379 trains’ current performance is such that on average each train would circumnavigate the world more than twice before encountering a technical failure. The target availability of 90% has been met consistently
Now the circumference of the earth is 25,901 miles at the equator, so Professor Peabody calculates that the Class 379 feet should be recording a Miles per Technical Incident of 49,802.
The Moving Annual Average for the Class 379 in Period 1 2012-13 was, errrr... 13,363 miles - or almost exactly once round the planet Mars, scene of my second adventure when my archeologist uncle discovered how the Martian civilisation had been wiped out before it could develop railways.
Southern's Class 377 Electrostars would get 1.4 times round Earth before suffering a 3 minute delay.
For the record, the Equatorial Train Reliability Analogy winners are the SWT Class 458 and LM Class 350/2 fleets which would be starting their fourth circumnavigation before conking out.
Which is roughly 20,000-25,000 miles short of a circuit of Uranus, not a planet I visited although I understand the track gauge is 13 grots in the Uranian system of measurement which is based on the avarage length of the male Uranian divided by...
Right, that's quite enough Eagle pastiche, Ed.
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