I've got to say that I'm very disappointed that Virgin Trains lost the West Coast Main Line (WCML) franchise as a regular user.
When they took over the franchise, they inherited out of date rolling stock running on out of date infrastructure.
As someone who worked on West Coast Route Modernisation (WCRM) on PWay, OLE & civils projects, I saw at first hand the engineering challenge of carrying our "open heart surgery" as Network Rail say of such work on Victorian infrastructure.
I worked on WCRM under the days of Railtrack and sadly the Pendolino's so admirably sought by Virgin Trains to replace the Class 86, 87 and 90 electric traction on WCML never has had the opportunity to run at it's design speed on 140mph due to problems within Railtrack.
OK, the "Voyager" class 220 and 221 do not come up to the HST sets they replaced, but Virgin revolutionised service levels from one which was pretty poor to being customer focused.
They also changed the way people think about ticketing. Yes, some of the walk on fares are very expensive, but they are for airlines too. For planned journeys off peak, even first class travel is very affordable.
My main worry with the next WCML franchise holder, First, is that the great customer service levels will be cut. I enjoy the first class lounge at London Euston and have spent many a productive hour working from there waiting for trains and then having complimentary food onboard makes business trips to London, if planned in advance, affordable and efficient.
So, on reflection, the red revolution of Virgin changed attitudes of service and punctuality from some awful standards and via a painful experience of providing services through WCRM and the Railtrack blanket speed restrictions post-Hatfield. I hope First West Coast can meet these standards and hope all Virgin staff who have delivered this service retain their jobs with the new franchise holder.
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