Lostcarpark: when the service goes hourly, 9-coach sets will be neither possible nor advisable. While some services (say the 1700 down) may experience excess demand, other services provided by the same link will not, and it's out of the question to shunt a set just to add or subtract a coach (what's the point of push-pull in that case?).
Furthermore with hourly services it appears that there will be 8 eight-coach sets: 7 will be in use and one will be spare/in maintenance on any weekday. This leaves 3 more spare vehicles to make up the full order of 67. I assume these are a DVT a diner and an end coach, as it's a bit of a disaster to run short of one of these.
The problems of excess peak-hour demand should be solved by on-line reservations and clever peak-load pricing. This might also make IE money: after all it's what very commercially successful arilines do.
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