Virgin to Lose West Coast?

I

iain2006

Member
With the (UK) West Coast mainline franchise expiring at the end of this year it looks as though Virgin Trains, who have run the route since it was privatised may lose out to rival bidder FirstGroup.

Sir Richard Branson has warned the government that First's bid is unrealistically high and after the debacle with National Express on the East Coast route it may be hard to disagree with him.

http://www.railnews.co.uk/news/2012/08/02-surprise-west-coast-intervention-reported.html


What do you think? Should Virgin's franchise be renewed or should it go to First?

Can the coalition be trusted to make the right decision?
 
The coalition couldn't be trusted to go up the road and buy you a Twix and a can of Tango without arsing it up.

I've used Virgin's Pendelinos a lot and I'm quite happy with the way Virgin have run things and I should say that most people would probably agree from what I know, but you know that customer satisfaction will have bugger all to do with the decision. It will most likely come down to which company director is best mates with Cameron, since he's so bent he could hide behind a spiral staircase, and the liberals, having sold themselves cheap for a sniff of power, will have little to no say in it, since they ended up with all the crap ministerial positions, leaving Clegg as little more than Cameron's whipping boy for whenever a scandal crops up. That's what you get for your thirty pieces of silver.

So, as long as we don't end up with another GNER, whose trains were always a filthy disgrace inside, and we don't end up with even more non-tilting Voyagers, i.e, the ones which have that function disabled (as is the case with Cross Country's Voyagers) then I won't mind who gets it, but if the bid is indeed too high, then that will be reflected in ticket prices, which are already very high and are also set to rise anyway.

To paraphrase the Bible, the First shall be last, certainly when it comes to passenger satisfation with First, so we can only hope that they'll be last when the decision is made as well. Otherwise we might find ourselves riding one of those Leyland railbuses all the way from Manchester to Cornwall, sat on a plastic bench seat. I wouldn't put that past First.

Al
 
Last edited:
Q1, leave it with virgin. They've done the hard bit and got the most out of the pendolino's they can. You can't get any more services without more stock which is coming on stream now. 4 new units and strengthening the majority of the 9 car sets to 11 cars.
First group I read is thinking about doing away with the catering which I presume will mean they'll turn the coaches into lovely high density standard class (same as they've done on FGW except they were HST's) with less leg room than there is now.
I hope they put Ryan Air on the side of them, anybody over 6 foot will find them a tight fit for legroom, you won't need a seat belt because you'll be wedged in.
Q2, no to both, not in this lifetime.
 
Hi Everybody.
I have to say I have mixed feelings on this one. First great Western run almost all services here in the West of England and are generally very efficient in their operations. Should they takeover the franchise for the West Coast mainline it would undoubtedly make for better scheduling by way of linkup to first group current operations. We would probably get better scheduled through trains to the north of England by First Great Western with I assume the demise of the cross-country services.

However, first group are already very dominant service providers within British rail passenger services. The element of competition would be further reduced (and there isn't very much now) should first group be handed the West Coast franchise. It could well mean even higher fare charges for us regular rail travellers which means even more cost for businesses that use the rail services, at a time when many small businesses are being pushed to the limits.

Bill
 
Last edited:
wholbr said:
Hi Everybody.
I have to say I have mixed feelings on this one. First great Western run almost all services here in the West of England and are generally very efficient in their operations. Should they takeover the franchise for the West Coast mainline it would undoubtedly make for better scheduling by way of linkup to first group current operations. We would probably get better scheduled through trains to the north of England by First Great Western with I assume the demise of the cross-country services.

However, first group are already very dominant service providers within British rail passenger services. The element of competition would be further reduced (and there isn't very much now) should first group be handed the West Coast franchise. It could well mean even higher fare charges for us regular rail travellers which means even more cost for businesses that use the rail services, at a time when many small businesses are being pushed to the limits.

Bill
Click to expand...


I would have thought there would be competition issues considering First are so dominant nationwide while West Coast is Virgin's only franchise (though granted they are a partnership with Stagecoach)

As for First's track record I can't say I'm overly impressed with their Scotrail services. They are still using alot of relatively old rolling stock and the newer DMU/EMU trains are extremely cramped. Infact I recently read that even some of their own staff travel between Edinburgh and Aberdeen on East Coast intercity services because of the lack of legroom in the Turbostars (if you're average height or taller you can expect interlocking knees if someone is sitting opposite to you. They cram trains like sardine cans at peak times and during rush hour they are a thoroughly unpleasant experience. That's bad enough for a 20 minute journey into Glasgow but imagine a 4-5 hours trip to London like that!

While Virgin aren't perfect I have to say as a rail user I'm very impressed with the Pendolinos. Even standard class is clean and comfortable and the only things that really set First Class apart are the free wifi, free coffee and snacks and guarantee of a table to yourself.

If First are proposing to pay £1 billion more than Virgin they will have to do it one of two ways. Hiking fares or cramming in more people.

I travel to London regularly and I can honestly say if First get the franchise it's likely I'll start getting the East Coast service instead even if it means adding an hour to the journey.

They won't get many extra seats in (maybe 16-20 at most) by removing the shop on Pendolinos (assuming conversion is even possible - they don't have many windows in the shops cars) which is fairly compact and if it came down to it I'd sooner remove the cycle storage which seems to get very little usage on any service I've used. I suppose they could outsource the catering by leasing the shop space (now there's a thought - put Costa Coffee in that would be good).
 
Quote "both front runners are believed to be planning changes to onboard services and have discussed the changes with Alstom. Virgins changes are not thought to be as severe as First groups."
I would guess that to mean standard class onboard sevice to go and first class will get a trolley service.
 
I would rather it stayed with Virgin. Seems to me that the First Group have enough of our transport under their wing. Up here north of the Border First Scotrail has the whole system and they also have a wide bus franchise but thankfully not of course all of it. They are the biggest lot in the Greater Glasgow area and have the franchise for all the suburban rail which is the second largest in GB. In addition they also have the biggest bus lot in the area too. When not on the train I tend to take one of the smaller company buses as they are faster and better services. To be fair I ma happy with the First franchise in Scotland espeically in my corner and it is better than the previous one.
So it is over to the government which has made some hashes but there again so did the last lot getting us into a bigger mess. Such are politicians so I hope Sir Richard keeps the franchise, First has enough.
 
What would happen to the pendolino units if virgin lost the contract? Would they be sold or just reassigned? Their a great piece of engineering and very comfy as had been said.
 
scratchy said:
What would happen to the pendolino units if virgin lost the contract? Would they be sold or just reassigned? Their a great piece of engineering and very comfy as had been said.
Click to expand...

First group would then lease/use them, at the moment the bids are based around the pendolinos. Apart from crewe-holyhead they run under the wires.
 
How about doing a proper job and just renationalise it to reunite the infrastructure with the service and put the passenger first? Pendolinos* are fine if you're in 'business' class - Branson insisted on more first class seats than any previous West Coast trains, leaving 'peasant' class passengers (sorry, 'customers') to stand all the way to Glasgow. Now they propose to abolish catering (no, a trolley isn't 'catering'), decimate the staffing and stuff even more inadequate seats in what ought to be renamed 'midget class' (I speak with feeling as someone who is 6' 2" tall!)

Imagine if British Rail had proposed to abolish catering on the WCML, we would never have heard the end of it in the Daily Mail!

Talking about British Rail, they did a fantastic job with the WCML with a fraction of the resources lavished on Virgin/FailTrack - remember the multi-billion pound 'upgrade' featuring the signalling system that didn't work? Which, massively over budget and after ten years, managed to upgrade line speeds by 15mph?

And did I mention the highest rail fares in the world (unless you're prepared to travel at some ungodly hour and give them three months notice)?

Private sector - so efficient, so magical!

Paul

* featuring tilting train technology which the Tory government forced British Rail to cancel in the early 1980s after some journalists got soup in their lap on a test run. :o
 
Last edited:
@paulsw2 i know what you mean about the lack of legroom on trains especially the voyagers i'm 6' 1'' and as for the people that design those trains must think that everyone in the uk must be 5' or less
 
Paulsw2 said:
How about doing a proper job and just renationalise it to reunite the infrastructure with the service and put the passenger first? Pendolinos* are fine if you're in 'business' class - Branson insisted on more first class seats than any previous West Coast trains, leaving 'peasant' class passengers (sorry, 'customers') to stand all the way to Glasgow. Now they propose to abolish catering (no, a trolley isn't 'catering'), decimate the staffing and stuff even more inadequate seats in what ought to be renamed 'midget class' (I speak with feeling as someone who is 6' 2" tall!)

Imagine if British Rail had proposed to abolish catering on the WCML, we would never have heard the end of it in the Daily Mail!

Talking about British Rail, they did a fantastic job with the WCML with a fraction of the resources lavished on Virgin/FailTrack - remember the multi-billion pound 'upgrade' featuring the signalling system that didn't work? Which, massively over budget and after ten years, managed to upgrade line speeds by 15mph?

And did I mention the highest rail fares in the world (unless you're prepared to travel at some ungodly hour and give them three months notice)?

Private sector - so efficient, so magical!

Paul

* featuring tilting train technology which the Tory government forced British Rail to cancel in the early 1980s after some journalists got soup in their lap on a test run. :o
Click to expand...


I agree nationalising would be the best option but not sure I trust the government to run it either. Look at all the money that is being poured into the new high speed railway. The money would be much better spent improving the existing infrastructure and lowering fares. I'm not particularly bothered about getting to London in half the time but for half the price would certainly be good.
 
Who gets the franchise should make renationalisation paulsw2?? Too simple by far.

As for catering on the old BR it wasn't all ideal and many have been the stories and humour of that facet of our railway system. So somehow we are to forget that? In the one part of Gt Britain that still has a "State" railway on one of two inter-city routes catering was scrapped yonks ago. We cannot asume that if rail went back into government hands that would solve all ills. A better argument for government control would be that passengers are vanishing but in that sphere which is the criteria as our railways are virtually (for all intents and purposes), travel numbers have went up dramatically and well superceded the days of Nationalisation from 1948 until modern back to private).

As for the ususal dig about the Daily Mail (which can do awful and at the same time be very near the truth) we could do the same with much of what is espoused from the Guardian, Independent, Observor mentality - the declining tomes of the would-be progressives. They are in free fall and running in debt. Or the proletariat nationalisation rag the the Daily Mirror. There will always be a debate on State or private and of course a valid exercise but as railways are experiencing their continuing biggest increase and thus finding that hard to adapt to, says much. We have had several lines re-opened in Scotland which the old BR wouldn't touch and they are successful. In fact one in the pipeline and started when it was clsoed BR wouldn't even let a preservation group have it. It will be back in 2014.

One last thing. None of the three main political parties have advocated re-nationalisation.
 
Not at the moment they haven't, but you can bet that one of them will soon enough. The country is on its arse, and ticket prices are at such ridiculously high levels, and set to rise again. There is little doubt that under such circumstances, people will be receptive to a subsidised greener alternative to getting to work than something such as car sharing or whatever. Of course they won't call it nationalisation, it'll be 'a state-funded partnership with the private sector involvement' or some other euphemism, but I bet we will see one of the main parties suggest it as an election policy before too long, as it would almost certainly be a vote winner among commuters who currently pay through the nose to ride trains where they are jammed in like sardines.

Al
 
scratchy said:
What would happen to the pendolino units if virgin lost the contract?
Click to expand...

The Class 390 Pendolino sets are, like most UK rolling stock in fact, actually owned by leasing companies. In the case of the Pendolinos that is a company called Angel Trains, which owns just over a third of all the rolling stock in the UK. There are Alstom - the company which built the trains - facilities for the Pendolinos at Manchester, which is what could be regarded as their 'base', and there are also some minor servicing facilities at Manchester, but the main servicing is done at Polmadie (Scotland) Oxley (Midlands) and Wembley (London), so they have repair facilites basically spread along their route, and this would likely remain the case if the trains switched operators.

The other trains which would likely see some service on the route, since they too have a high speed tilting capability and are also used by Virgin - Class 220 Voyagers and Class 221 Super Voyagers - are owned by a leasing company which is a partnership between The Royal Bank of Scotland and the Halifax Building Society. The Virgin Voyagers have their tilting mechanisms operational. In case you are interested, the thing which actually makes the trains tilt is a series of transmitter boxes alongside the lines at either end of any bends on the tracks which they run along, which send a signal to the train as it passes, to commence it tilting and then to straighten up again as it traverses the curves. The WCML is generally regarded as a route which tilting high speed trains should run along, so one would think only the tilting variants would be picked up by the new operator as is the case currently with Virgin. However to save on costs, rival operator Cross Country, which is part of Arriva, which itself is owned by Deutsche Bahn and which used to be Virgin Cross Country, chose to disable the tilting mechanisms on their Voyagers, and they run them a bit slower as a consequence of that, which means that cost cutting might also see slower journey times if the new operator decides to do the same thing, although they would be ill-advised to do so.

This speed aspect is fairly critical for success, because the Pendolinos and tilting Voyagers in particular are an important link for business travellers in the UK. Average speeds along the line are typically around 110 miles per hour when the trains can tilt, although the actual speeds Pendolinos and Voyagers can get up to is about 125 mph on straight sections of the track. Pendolinos are actually capable of about 140 miles per hour, but the tracks are not capable of supporting such speeds. Without tilting on the curves along the route, it can add about 20 minutes to a trip between Manchester and London. An additional 20 minutes might not sound like a big deal, but it is a big deal to business travellers, since it is more practical to travel to London from Manchester in the morning for a business meeting rather than having to stay in London the night before if you know you can set off from your home in the north of England at 6.30am, board such a train and be certain that you will get to your meeting in London well before 9am. The alternative is to fly there, and if people choose to do that simply for the sake of saving 20 minutes, then the train operator is going to lose a lot of revenue. Driving is of course another option, but not an enjoyable one; driving into London is a royal pain in the arse compared to arriving at London Euston on a train, and simply jumping on the underground to get to your final destination in the city.

Al
 
Last edited:
In addition to what Al above has said, I think Edge Hill depot at liverpool has been revived recently after years out of use.
And yes your first class passengers pay big bucks, a quick check, preston-euston fares for monday, advance £63, off peak £92.90, anytime £215.00. SINGLE.
 
oh wow, you'd need to rob a bank every weekend to afford that commute! Surly it would be cheaper to fly?! Crazy... I heard the underground wasnt exactly cheap either
 
scratchy said:
oh wow, you'd need to rob a bank every weekend to afford that commute! Surly it would be cheaper to fly?! Crazy... I heard the underground wasnt exactly cheap either
Click to expand...

City center- center in 135-165 minutes depending on which one you catch, by plane from manchester probably only 40 minutes but you have to get there (35 mins), check in etc then get from heathrow or gatwick into london, maybe 30-40 minutes.
I'd prefer to park my backside on the train any day than attempt that lot.
 
It's about four quid to go maybe ten stops or so on the underground, taking a bus in London is about two quid or so. You can buy weekly and monthly passes and such which reduce the costs a fair bit.

First Class tickets on trains in the UK are very expensive, but standard class is okay and nowhere near as expensive, so I generally do that. In fact, most of the time you can pay an additional eight to fifteen quid when actually on the train and upgrade to First Class if there is room in those carriages. It's probably fair to say that few people would commute daily from somewhere like Preston to London, most commuters on trains in the UK are probably looking at maybe a twenty mile trip, which would cost something along the lines of about a tenner for a return ticket. In my case I go about eight miles one way on the trip to work, and that costs 5.90 for a return ticket, which is about twice the price it would be on a bus, although it is often very packed on the train and much of the rolling stock is fairly crappy, such as Class 140s and 150s. That would be a more typical trip on a train in the UK for most people. The services themselves however, are generally punctual and frequent, and for a train ride that takes about twenty minutes, it is not the end of the world if you have to stand up, which you do sometimes find yourself doing.

Yes you get fancy service in First Class, but not always, the last two times I went First Class on a Pendolino, the meal service either wasn't operating (which it doesn't on Sundays most of the time I discovered) or it was greatly reduced owing to some member of staff being ill, which led to them coming around the train giving people crisps and fruit, which wasn't my idea of First Class. The table lamp was busted too, so it's not always great on the Pendolinos. I've even had to stand up all the way from London to Manchester on a Pendolino on one occasion, this being on the Friday night (7.30ish) train from Euston to Manchester (which is very often full to capacity), and that was with a Standard Class return ticket which cost about a hundred quid.

If you ever find yourself in London and want a laugh, go to the concourse at Euston at about 6.45pm, and look at the departure announcement board, specifically, you are looking for what platform the Virgin Pendolino Manchester train is going to depart from, which can be any one of about 14 different tracks. This info is always notoriously missing from the info board until about ten minutes before the train is due to depart. When it finally flashes up the info about which platform that train will depart from, you will see literally hundreds of people on the concourse start running for that platform like Olympic sprinters loaded with suitcases, so that they can get a seat in coaches D and E, which are the only ones that have unreserved seats. Behind them, you will see another large group of people strolling there looking a lot less flustered; these are the people with a seat reservation. This is because the 7pm train is the first one out of London going north that you can have an off-peak ticket for, which is cheaper than a peak time ticket by quite a large amount.

Al
 
Last edited:
Hi Alan and everybody .
AlanBradbury said:
If you ever find yourself in London and want a laugh, go to the concourse at Euston at about 6.45pm, and look at the departure announcement board, specifically, you are looking for what platform the Virgin Pendolino Manchester train is going to depart from, which can be any one of about 14 different tracks. This info is always notoriously missing from the info board until about ten minutes before the train is due to depart. When it finally flashes up the info about which platform that train will depart from, you will see literally hundreds of people on the concourse start running for that platform like Olympic sprinters loaded with suitcases, so that they can get a seat in coaches D and E, which are the only ones that have unreserved seats. Behind them, you will see another large group of people strolling there looking a lot less flustered; these are the people with a seat reservation. This is because the 7pm train is the first one out of London going north that you can have an off-peak ticket for, which is cheaper than a peak time ticket by quite a large amount.
Al
Click to expand...

Alan, as a regular rail business traveller to London and many other parts of the country I can very much associate myself with the comments you make their regarding the departure boards at the London terminus station's. Paddington my normal arrival and departure point is exactly the same as Euston with the commuter charge down the concourse as the platform number is flashed up on the departure board.

I once enquired of a station attendant why they left it so late to post the departure platform and the reply was that every train is cleaned on arrival into Paddington and therefore the departure platform cannot be posted up until that is completed as you would have passengers trying to board while that was going on (which would seem reasonable).

Regarding seat reservations, I normally reserve a seat out of North Somerset if I am due to travel any time after 7 AM. Any time prior to that for London normally does not require a reservation due to the unearthly hour in the morning unless you are a boarding the HST at Bristol Temple Meads. The big problem comes with a same day return journey with business travellers. You can never be sure what time a meeting or other business will finish in this world and therefore you cannot book a seat reservation. Therefore you find yourself at the mercy of the “concourse charge “as to whether you get a seat or not.

Having said all the above, there is little alternative to rail travel in Britain these days if you wish to get to a destination at anything like a set time. The state of the British motorways means that it is just a lottery as to what time you will arrive at any destination which has a journey distance of more than 50 miles or so. Also many businesses use the rail network as a travelling office where you can prepare documents or presentations on your laptop or tablet computer on your way to your destination and then file reports etc on your return journey, which can then be in the office before you actually get back.

The above make for far greater business efficiency as it does away with the “downtime” which you get travelling by any other means. On all the HSTs to London and various other major destinations out of the West Country during the morning peak periods virtually everyone is carrying out some kind of work which perhaps will give Britain's business community and edge over others during these very difficult times.

Bill
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top