Virgin Trains
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Virgin Trains is a train operating company in the United Kingdom. It is generally considered part of the Virgin Group, although the shareholding is actually split 51:49 between Virgin Group and Stagecoach Group.
The company was formed to take advantage of the privatisation of British Rail in the mid 1990s. Virgin Trains were successful in the bids for two franchises, the first being to run express train services on the West Coast Main Line (WCML). This part of the company is called Virgin West Coast (VWC) and provides services from London Euston to the West Midlands, the North West and Scotland. The other franchise Virgin Trains obtained is called Virgin Cross-Country (VXC - see also Cross Country Route) and runs long distance services which by-pass London and link the south and south-west of England with the north of England and Scotland via Birmingham. Unlike most other train operating companies, Virgin operates the two franchises as a single brand, although legally and operationally, they are separate companies.
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Mixed fortunes
On privatisation, Virgin West Coast inherited a mixture of Mk.2 and Mk.3 coaches, with electric locomotives of Classes 86, 87 and 90. Virgin Cross-Country also inherited several High Speed Trains, and Mk.2 coaches which were hauled by Class 47 diesel locomotives and Class 86 locomotives on electrified routes.
Virgin Trains have had a poor reputation for punctuality compared with many other transport operators. This perception seems to be a mixture of truth and media exaggeration. Although during the year ending 31 December 2002, only 73.6% of West Coast trains and 62.5% of Cross-Country trains arrived within 10 minutes of the scheduled arrival time (source: SRA National Rail Trends), these timings for the year ending 31 March 2005 are looking decidedly better for Cross Country trains, now up to 77.8%, making it the 3rd most punctual InterCity operation. However, only 72.1% are on time on the West Coast Franchise, which is the poorest performing, not only of the former InterCity sector, but out of all of the present train operating companies. The original figures compared unfavourably with historic InterCity train punctuality, but were not greatly worse than other contemporary long-distance UK rail operators.
Image:Virgin Trains class 87 & train.jpg Problems with punctuality had been widely attributed by Virgin to the ageing and increasingly unreliable rolling stock and the equally ageing and outdated infrastructure on which it ran, although other train operating companies managed to operate the same equipment such as High Speed Trains with considerably greater reliability, implying that Virgin’s maintenance regime was partly to blame. The introduction of the Pendolino stock on the West Coast Main Line and more modern diesel-electric trains on the Cross Country route are now helping improve reliability.
Virgin Trains route codes
Virgin Trains routes are coded VT then a single digit number of up to 8, and represented on the Virgin Trains route map as different colours.
VT1
VT1 runs from the South West of England through Birmingham to the North West and Scotland. It is operated by Voyager trains and is coloured blue on the route map.
VT2
VT2 runs from the South coast through Birmingham to the North of England and Scotland. It is operated by Voyager trains and is coloured dark green on the route map.
VT3
VT3 runs from the South West of England through Birmingham to the North East of England and Scotland. It is operated by Voyager trains and is coloured orange on the route map.
VT4
VT4 runs from London Euston along the North Wales coast. It is run by both Pendolino and Voyager trains and is coloured lime green on the route map.
VT5
VT5 runs from London Euston to Birmingham New Street and Wolverhampton. It is run by Pendolino trains and is coloured brown on the route map.
VT6
VT6 runs from London Euston through the North West of England into Scotland. It is run by Pendolino trains and is coloured turquoise on the route map.
VT7
VT7 runs from London Euston to Manchester Piccadily via Stoke-on-Trent or Crewe. It is run by Pendolino trains and is coloured pink on the route map.
VT8
VT8 runs from London Euston to Liverpool Lime Street It is run by Pendolino trains and is coloured purple on the route map.
West Coast Main Line service patterns
Virgin Trains run at least six trains per hour — weekdays, off peak — in and out of London’s Euston station. This is noticeably busier than GNER in and out of Kings Cross, who operate three or four per hour, and busier than Midland Mainline, who operate four trains per hour in/out of St Pancras. Details below are as per February 2006.
Manchester Piccadilly services are half hourly. They consist of the very fast services at 35 past the hour (taking just 2 hours, 11 minutes) which call just at Stoke-on-Trent and Stockport, and the (still rather fast) departures at 5 past the hour which call at Watford Junction or Milton Keynes Central (alternating, every two hours ), then Stoke-on-Trent, Macclesfield, and Stockport. The morning peak hour service from Manchester, and the late afternoon peak from Euston, is strikingly frequent with trains every ten or twenty minutes. The 0705 ex Piccadilly, with a stop at Stockport only, completes the journey in 2 hours 5 minutes. The daily ‘slow’ service between Euston and Manchester via Northampton currently terminates at Crewe. It was to have resumed serving Manchester from the end of the Crewe - Manchester engineering shutdown, which was to have been at the end of March 2006. However , this work has 'overrun' and this train will continue to be curtailed at Crewe until the end of the 2005/6 timetable in June.
West Midlands services are half hourly between Euston and Birmingham New Street, with trains continuing every hour to Wolverhampton . Trains leave Euston at 10 and 40 past the hour. The xx.10s call at Watford Junction , Coventry , Birmingham International and terminate at Birmingham New Street. The xx.40 departures call at Milton Keynes Central instead of Watford, then the same stops to Birmingham New Street and continuing to Wolverhampton, calling at Sandwell and Dudley. Journey time between Euston and Birmingham New Street is 1 hour 30 minutes.
Liverpool Lime Street services are hourly and leave Euston, generally, at 15 past the hour. They call at Watford Junction or Milton Keynes Central (alternating, two hourly at each), then at Nuneaton, Tamworth, Stafford, Crewe, and Runcorn. Journey time is two hours 30 minutes. There is an additional fast morning train from Lime Street to Euston at 0707. Calling only at Runcorn, this train completes the journey in just 2 hours 9 minutes. There is no equivalent late afternoon return, however.
Preston/Scotland services run hourly between Euston and Lancaster, with many trains now continuing to Carlisle and Glasgow Central and one per day continuing to Edinburgh. Trains leave Euston at 46 minutes past the hour calling at either Watford or Milton Keynes (two hourly, alternating) and then at Rugby, Crewe, Warrington, Wigan, Preston and Lancaster. North of Lancaster, most trains call at Oxenholme, Penrith and Carlisle with a number calling at Motherwell. Virgin Trains now run nine trains per day , each way, between Euston and Glasgow Central. The pattern is generally every two hours but there are now some hourly intervals and Virgin Trains intend to ‘fill in the gaps’ in time. The service compares favourably with GNER’s rival service from Kings Cross for both journey time and frequency. Typical journey times are just over five hours, but there are a couple of ‘crack’ express services - most notably the 1029 out of Euston which calls just at Preston and Carlisle and takes 4 hours 25 minutes. The 0949 out of Glasgow is the southbound equivalent. Virgin Trains is ‘testing the water’ with a daily Euston to Edinburgh service. This does not compare at all favourably with GNER’s service from Kings Cross, which is far faster and much more frequent.
North Wales: The line from Crewe to Holyhead — via Chester, Rhyl, Colwyn Bay, Llandudno Junction and Bangor — is not electrified, so services are mostly in the hands of Class 221 Super Voyager diesel-electric multiple units. One train a day between Euston and Holyhead is worked by a Pendolino, which is pulled by a Class 57 diesel locomotive over the Crewe - Holyhead sector. There are five trains per day in each direction between Euston, Chester and North Wales - four serving Holyhead and one serving Llandudno.
Radical changes to service patterns on the West Coast are planned from 2008. It is proposed that Liverpool trains will be accelerated with just one intermediate stop at Runcorn. Frequencies from Euston to both Birmingham and Manchester will be increased to three per hour, with a regular hourly service to the latter via Crewe and Wilmslow to complement the existing half hourly service via Stoke on Trent. This service would also serve Stafford and Nuneaton to compensate for these points being omitted by the accelerated Liverpool services. There are also proposals for an increased frequency between Euston, Chester and North Wales. This could prove controversial as it may involve releasing 'Voyager' units from (already hard pressed) Cross Country. Journey times will be shortened by increasing the double track sections on the Trent Valley Line in the Lichfield and Tamworth area to quadruple track and also by a remodelling of the track layout at Rugby to allow for 125 mph running. There are even tentative proposals to for 135 mph running over some sections.
Cross Country service patterns
Virgin Cross Country has easily the most extensive network of any franchise on the British railway system — stretching from as far north as Aberdeen to as far southeast as Brighton and as far southwest as Penzance. The hub of the network is Birmingham New Street. Apart from the Manchester – Glasgow/Edinburgh service and some early morning/late evening services at the extremeties of the network, all services serve Birmingham. Services are operated using Class 220 and Class 221 Voyager DMUs, which are based at Central Rivers depot near Burton on Trent, Staffordshire. However, Voyager units have been encountering serious technical problems as of late 2005/early 2006 and as a result other traction has been ‘hired in’. Midland Mainline HST diesel units have been used on the Leeds/Newcastle – Plymouth sector whilst Class 90 electric locomotives, with Mk 2 coaches and Driving Van Trailers have been used on Birmingham – Manchester services.
There are four principal corridors radiating from Birmingham New Street, each with a half hourly service pattern. These are south eastwards to Reading, south westwards to Bristol, north westwards to Manchester and north eastwards to Derby and Sheffield. There is also an hourly pattern over the Birmingham – Preston – Scotland sector via the West Coast Mainline. Apart from early or late in the day, most services do not start or terminate at Birmingham but operate as through services (e.g. Manchester – Brighton, Glasgow – Penzance). The southerly terminating points are Reading, Brighton, Bournemouth, Penzance, Plymouth and Cardiff. The northerly terminating points are Aberdeen, Dundee, Glasgow, Edinburgh, Newcastle and Manchester. The Manchester – Scotland service, via Carlisle, sees a two hourly pattern with four trains per day Manchester – Edinburgh and three per day Manchester – Glasgow.
The past
Virgin formerly ran a service from Swindon to Birmingham via Stroud and Gloucester using Class 158 diesel multiple units, officially numbered VT0 on its timetables. This service was operated by Wales and West, the predecessor of Wessex Trains under contract from Virgin. These services were to be extended to London Paddington using HSTs refurbished to standards of the new Virgin interiors, but this plan was dropped in 2001 or 2002 and the route was transferred to Wessex Trains in conjuntion with First Great Western.
A serious drive was made to improve reliability and punctuality after much press criticism in 2001, but infrastructure problems still remain unsolved in central Scotland, South Yorkshire, and parts of London.
Image:Virgin Voyager 220003 2005-06-09 03.jpg
The remedy to these problems has been a slow, painful and expensive one. Virgin, in 1997 placed the largest rolling stock order (£1bn) in British history with new Class 390 Pendolino tilting trains for the West Coast Main Line network. These state-of-the-art units are based on technology developed by state corporation British Rail for their prototype APT tilting train of the early 1980s; the technology was subsequently licensed to the Italian manufacturers. The Pendolino trains have a nominal top speed of 225 km/h (140 mph), but will be limited to 200 km/h (125 mph) on the West Coast Main Line. The cross-country routes have been served by new diesel-electric four-carriage Class 220 Voyager and five-carriage Class 221 Super Voyager trains. The Super Voyager trains have tilting ability like the Pendolino and will be used for services operation on the West Coast Main Line.
This meant that by December 2004, Virgin Trains had replaced all of the rolling stock inherited from British Rail with brand-new trains. The new trains offer many features not available on the older stock but have also been criticised for cramming seats into the carriages at far higher densities, leading to sharply reduced leg-room and generally more cramped passenger conditions. The trains were intended to work at much higher frequencies than British Rail’s did, and so each train has fewer seats than the ones it replaced. With the failure of the infrastructure company to deliver track which can operate those higher frequencies, Virgin's trains now have too little capacity and are regularly overcrowded.
The West Coast Main Line itself has been the subject of a massive £10bn refurbishment programme to accept the new trains, one that has been the subject of massive controversy, since it is now running three years late, and has cost twice the original estimate. (see West Coast Main Line page for full details).
Given Richard Branson’s personal popularity with much of the British public and the high-profile success of some of his other business ventures such as the Virgin Atlantic airline, the relative failure of Virgin Trains may appear unusual (but might perhaps be considered alongside Virgin Cola and Virgin Vodka, both brands launched in a blaze of publicity that have now largely disappeared).
In 2003, Virgin Trains introduced some new set-down only or pick-up only stops into its passenger timetable. What is unusual about these restricted stops is that they are in the middle of the train journey, rather than the common practice of instituting set-down only stops at the next-to-last station or pick-up only on the second station of a train’s run. For instance, some South-North trains are pick-up only at Oxford, despite Oxford being the sixth or seventh stop and previous stops not being pick-up only. The company has stated that these are enforceable by means of fines; for example, a passenger leaving the train at a pick-up only stop is deemed not to have a valid ticket, and could be charged accordingly, although exactly how this can be enforced once a passenger has left the train is unclear. The apparent intention of the restricted stops is to stop short-distance passengers from overcrowding the long-distance trains, although they might also put some bona fide long-distance travellers off using the trains.
Additionally, some occasional destinations, such as London Paddington and Swansea, were removed from the Virgin Trains network altogether, and some services pass through important junction stations, such as Taunton and Exeter St Davids, without stopping.
The future
It has been announced [1] that the Cross Country franchise will finish in 2007 as part of a franchise reshuffle in the Midlands. The new franchise will include former Central Trains Citylink services.
See also
- National Rail
- West Coast Main Line
- Class 390 Pendolino
- Class 220 Voyager
- Class 221 Super Voyager
- Virgin Cross-Country
- Virgin West Coast
- Though Jungfrau is German for ‘virgin’, the Jungfrau Railway has nothing to do with Virgin Trains.
External links
| Template:CommonscatTemplate:Commonscat |
- Virgin Trains web site
- virginbrand.com Unofficial blog of the Virgin Group