CrossCountry Voyagers: Due a refurbishment?

[Ash Bridge]

In the early days did they not used to publish the playlists available on each channel (4 I think on Voyager and 10? on Pendolino) in the onboard magazine, something else that's vanished, at least on XC.

 

[gimmea50anyday]

They did. The channels were 3 of the pendo channels, red hot with Emma B was one of them, a radio1 esque channel while a radio2/smooth type station featured ken bruce. Cant remember the third channel but radio 4 was supposed to be the 4th channel but train managers often retuned to radio 2! All the stations were pre recorded onto CD and inserted into 3 multidisc car radio type cd players while a RDS equipped radio was used to receive the radio channel. These were fitted in a cupboard under the TM's pull out desk in the galley but it is not known if the equipment is still fitted.

The actual seat terminals are inoperative as the PA doesnt broadcast down them when used.

Pendos can actually broadcast any one of the radio channels down the PA but voyagers cant do this. The PA does however override the music channels. Think the commercial cost was covered by virgins record label which of course no longer exists.

 

[SpacePhoenix]

Are the XC Voyagers anywhere near to being due the level of overhaul where the interiors are gutted? If they are it would be a good time to sort the bogs out

 

[Bletchleyite]

Don't know if the Voyagers are the same, but on Pendolinos the rack space was reused for the wifi equipment.

 

[gimmea50anyday]

Thought the pendos still used the radio system? Mind if Virgin Records was responsible for making the stations then they will no longer have the means to make any stations as virgin sold up the record business and its radio station. Absolute radio is doing brilliantly now.....

So what do GW do with their audio carriage? Is that still broadcasting on their 180's?

 

[ainsworth74]

Thought the pendos still used the radio system?

No it's been disabled for ages because the space was re-used to provide the wi-fi.

 

[Ash Bridge]

I think the 175s were similarly fitted in the centre car, Iam guessing the same applies?

 

[ag51ruk]

No it's been disabled for ages because the space was re-used to provide the wi-fi.

Although the additional sets and extra coaches that make up the 11 coach trains all came fitted with the audio sockets and controls so that all seats are the same - even though they are not connected and will never be used. ..

 

[headshot119]

I think the 175s were similarly fitted in the centre car, Iam guessing the same applies?

Yes they where. No idea when they got taken out of use, but they haven't been fitted with wifi instead.

 

[broadgage]

I don't much like voyagers, but at a time of rising overcrowding on many routes I cant support scrapping relatively new trains.

IMHO the most sensible options would be to build some new, full length, proper intercity trains and use these on the longer cross country routes. Cascade the wretched voyagers to secondary routes, after a basic refurb.

Alternatively, refurbish the voyagers to a proper inter city specification with better leg room, more luggage space, non stinky toilets, and more comfortable seats. Use as permanent double units to give a proper full length inter city train.
Supplement the fleet with some of the soon to be surplus HSTs.
This not a long term solution owing to the age of the HSTs, but could be a good short term solution.

 

[giblets]

Yep, more seats ( leave one disabled toilet , the others can be shortened, an extra 8(?) seats per toilet, the 'ex galley' can be made into an extra....8/12 seats,. Get decent air con (anything over 3/4s full it can't cope, and that toilet smell.

 

[BurtonM]

220s for TPE? I'd welcome that, can't stand 185s.
Can 220s run to Hull? It'd be nice to have the Hull-Manchester services actually run to time for once.

 

[thenorthern]

The Voyagers had less channels than the Pendolinos if I remember correctly as the Voyagers only had Radio 4 of the BBC stations while the Pendolinos has BBC Radio 1, 2, 3 and 4. I remeber there was a kids channel with Dick and Dom that I used to listen to. Most the stations were pre-recorded but I think the BBC ones were live and in those days Absolute Radio was Virgin Radio so I think that found its way onto the train radios.

Regarding the WIFI take up though how popular is it? I have an EE Osprey mobile router that I use on the train so I never use the train wifi but given the sheer cost I can't see many people paying for it.

In the early days did they not used to publish the playlists available on each channel (4 I think on Voyager and 10? on Pendolino) in the onboard magazine, something else that's vanished, at least on XC.

Yes they did used to be published I remember reading them.

 

[BurtonM]

That sounds about right re:Pendos. I know I've listened to R2 and the Dick and Dom channel on one before. Was there one with Emma Bunton as well or am I going mad?

 

[fairysdad]

. . . and in those days Absolute Radio was Virgin Radio so I think that found its way onto the train radios.

I think the Virgin Radio one was a pre-recorded one played out as well - whereas BBC Radios 1, 2, 3, and 4 are all on FM nationally, Virgin/Absolute was/is only on FM in London. Although Virgin Radio bad been broadcasting on DAB when the Voyagers (and Pendolinos) were introduced, signal was still patchy at the time, so it is unlikely that they would have used DAB to pick up the station [1].

I do know that the on-board radio on FGW's Adelantes had a fair bit of pre-recorded content on it though, my last memories of it was nothing working except for the classical music channel and the comedy channel (which was playing out some recent Radio 4 content as there was a recent episode of The Now Show on!).

Also, just as a point, the 'Virgin Radio' brand name was no longer, at the point of Voyager and Pendolino introduction, part of Virgin and was merely a name licenced to a different company [2]. Not being as much of a radio geek back then as I currently am, I wouldn't be able to say for certain if VR on VT was a pre-record or live, or even if it was actually produced by Virgin Radio or not (or whether it was, for example, a 'Virgin Trains Radio').

[1] I have an old DAB radio that I used to use in my car, and on long journeys I used to have to retune it when passing through different transmission areas, so this might have been another disadvantage for using DAB on the move. Admittedly, it wasn't a radio designed for use in a vehicle, and the one I do have on the car is designed for a vehicle and doesn't have this issue!

[2] Interestingly, or not, it's been suggested that when Times of India bought Virgin Radio, the reason they rebranded was to avoid having to pay Virgin to use the brand. In coming months, however, we'll see a return of Virgin Radio as UTV have licenced the brand now.

 

[gimmea50anyday]

Virgin trains only broadcasted the BBC radio stations live. All other stations were pre-recorded onto CD and changed every 3 months. The stations may (and i stress may) have been recorded by either virgin radio or virgin records under license arrangements or on behalf of the rail franchises thereby cross subsidising sister companies.

If other stations were heared it will most likely be as a result of the radio stations being retuned by the train manager, probably as a result of reception issues or a reported fault. The radios used FM with RDS/EON so the radio should have retuned automatically, retaining lock on the selected radio station. On voyagers this was supposed to be radio 4.
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I tried to use wifi in first class on a voyager glasgow bound from Newcastle. As soon as the suburbs of Newcastle was departed internet connection was lost and did not return in any useable capacity until Musselburgh/wallyford area. Again once past edinburgh and out in the country the wifi again became totally unusable. Sadly my 3 mobile fared little bettter due to the polarised windows which unfortunately blocks mobile reception.

Had i paid for that service in standard i would have been very annoyed at paying for a service that was virtually useless.

 

[thenorthern]

If Great North Eastern Railway get the go ahead to install TASS between Newcastle and Edinburgh is there any chance that CrossCountry would re-activate the tilt function on the Class 221s during a refurbishment?

I would think think its unlikely given the time the units have spent without the tilt function but I wouldn't rule it out completely.

Had i paid for that service in standard i would have been very annoyed at paying for a service that was virtually useless.

With Virgin Trains you can apply for a refund if the WIFI doesn't work properly.

At £4 per hour on Virgin Trains and £2 per hour on CrossCountry I don't think many people pay for WiFi though considering many websites such as YouTube, Netflix and BBC IPlayer that people want to watch are censored to reduce bandwidth.

How do the routers work on trains though? Is it 4G, 3G or satellite, when WiFi was first introduced on most trains 4G didn't exist in this country (I think it came in 2012).

 

[HarleyDavidson]

Nothing to say you couldn't use a portable battery powered Wi-Fi device like you can find on amazon & a mobile broadband sim to connect to a tablet.

On Amazon you can get a preloaded 6Gb data sim on EE for £15, a portable Wi-Fi unit for £60 upwards and you're done.

 

[thenorthern]

Nothing to say you couldn't use a portable battery powered Wi-Fi device like you can find on amazon & a mobile broadband sim to connect to a tablet.

On Amazon you can get a preloaded 6Gb data sim on EE for £15, a portable Wi-Fi unit for £60 upwards and you're done.

Thats what I use.

 

[andrewkeith5]

How do the routers work on trains though? Is it 4G, 3G or satellite, when WiFi was first introduced on most trains 4G didn't exist in this country (I think it came in 2012).

They mostly use the 3G network - when Virgin first introduced WiFi, I don't think even HSDPA was available so it was just basic 3G and I'm not sure if that's been upgraded or not. Even now most are still 3G and 4G is only slowly being installed.
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Nothing to say you couldn't use a portable battery powered Wi-Fi device like you can find on amazon & a mobile broadband sim to connect to a tablet.

On Amazon you can get a preloaded 6Gb data sim on EE for £15, a portable Wi-Fi unit for £60 upwards and you're done.

Indeed, I rarely use on train WiFi - I have a personal Mobile WiFi unit on EE that only costs me £5 a month for 1Gb, I can also use my iPhone to connect anything WiFi to the EE network. At work, our VPN doesn't even allow us to use public WiFi networks if you have to 'sign in' to a website before you can use them, so we are routinely issued with EE 4G Mobile WiFi devices to use instead.

Why on earth would I pay £4 an hour to share a poor 3G connection when for a fiver a month I can have my own 4G connection with no censorship of youtube etc.

 

[gimmea50anyday]

When GNER introduced wifi, the connection was via sattelite and 3g combined. The receiver was a distinctive white dome on the buffet cars of HST's and the DVT's on mk4's. The sever was in sweden leading to some bizarre search results when google was used!

First and Stagecoach are likely to be using EE when wifi is installed on the 185's

Voyagers unfortunately shield mobile signals. The windows are polarised which has an effect on blocking reception, which is why traincrew often stand in the corridoor connection when making calls.

I doint the TASS will be reactivated. The thames valley equipment was removed leaving only the west coast covered. It will be a lot of cost to reactivate for little gain ath the mo

 

[fairysdad]

Virgin trains only broadcasted the BBC radio stations live. All other stations were pre-recorded onto CD and changed every 3 months. The stations may (and i stress may) have been recorded by either virgin radio or virgin records under license arrangements or on behalf of the rail franchises thereby cross subsidising sister companies.

Another random question (apologies if this is starting to veer into offtopicness; if we continue down this track, feel free to split mods, but it probably won't!): I assume that the pre-records would've been as MP3s rather than an audio CD to allow for the fact that there's only 80 minutes on an audio CD (well, 74 if you're strict about it). If they were in Audio CD format, then I can see why they were seldom used by passengers given that if you have a regular long-distance commute then before long you'll have heard it all!

It's quite interesting how far technology has advanced in the years since the Voyagers, Pendolinos and Adelantes have been introduced in that it would be very simple to have a more advanced version of this system put in place that could have much longer and quicker updated content. In fact, if I could be bothered, I could quite easily chuck something together this afternoon that would do just that. The problem being that as that technology has advanced, so to has the increase of mass personal entertainment and mobile Internet, rendering such a system useless! (Much like the Velo TVs that FGW had!)

 

[thenorthern]

CrossCountry did refurbish the voyagers slightly in 2008 when they removed the former Virgin Shop from Coach D which added more luggage space and a couple of extra seats.

The seats in Coach D of the Virgin Trains 221s though are strange as they are dual first/standard class use so are more comfortable than standard class but they are still 2x2 configuration rather than 2x1 that is common in First Class.

 

[Bletchleyite]

fairysdad: No, they were CDs - this is turn of the century technology remember! They did each last about an hour.

 

[Haydn1971]

fairysdad: No, they were CDs - this is turn of the century technology remember! They did each last about an hour.

That doesn't surprise me, I bought an Audi A3 in January 2004 and went for the 6 disk changer for IIRC £300 over the hard drive MP3 solution for £1500 ! Just over two years later (Sept 2006), my next car a 3 Series had an iPod port for £215 IIRC, which allowed me to control tracks via the steering wheel - MP3 control has been rather hit and miss since then, the BMW was annoying in that random meant restarting over after about 100 tracks or randomly whenever I exited the car, similarly my 2012 C-Max didn't understand random and frequently reset, my current 2015 Kuga is better but the cache fills after about 2 month and I need to reset the USB connection.

 

[thenorthern]

fairysdad: No, they were CDs - this is turn of the century technology remember! They did each last about an hour.

That doesn't surprise me, I bought an Audi A3 in January 2004 and went for the 6 disk changer for IIRC £300 over the hard drive MP3 solution for £1500 ! Just over two years later (Sept 2006), my next car a 3 Series had an iPod port for £215 IIRC, which allowed me to control tracks via the steering wheel - MP3 control has been rather hit and miss since then, the BMW was annoying in that random meant restarting over after about 100 tracks or randomly whenever I exited the car, similarly my 2012 C-Max didn't understand random and frequently reset, my current 2015 Kuga is better but the cache fills after about 2 month and I need to reset the USB connection.

The CDs at the time would have cost a large amount of money, I knew a man who owned a recording studio in Tamworth in the 1990s and he said to have a CD-RW device it was £6000 so to record to CD he used to have to travel to Cambridge to get CDs written which cost quite a bit.

 

[Dent]

The CDs at the time would have cost a large amount of money, I knew a man who owned a recording studio in Tamworth in the 1990s and he said to have a CD-RW device it was £6000 so to record to CD he used to have to travel to Cambridge to get CDs written which cost quite a bit.

"The 1990s" covers an entire decade, over which CD burners gradually went from unavailable to common and affordable.

CD burners certainly weren't rare or expensive in 2004, they were a standard part of any normal home PC being sold at the time.

 

[yorksrob]

That doesn't surprise me, I bought an Audi A3 in January 2004 and went for the 6 disk changer for IIRC £300 over the hard drive MP3 solution for £1500 ! Just over two years later (Sept 2006), my next car a 3 Series had an iPod port for £215 IIRC, which allowed me to control tracks via the steering wheel - MP3 control has been rather hit and miss since then, the BMW was annoying in that random meant restarting over after about 100 tracks or randomly whenever I exited the car, similarly my 2012 C-Max didn't understand random and frequently reset, my current 2015 Kuga is better but the cache fills after about 2 month and I need to reset the USB connection.

Yes, I've noticed this with mp3 players. The developers don't seem to think about the practicalities of using them anymore. My first one I used to enjoy putting the whole thing on a continual loop, and it would start wherever in the loop I had previously switched off.

My latest one is alright, but everytime I charge it, it goes back to the same track. Lack of attention to detail at the design stage.

 

[thenorthern]

"The 1990s" covers an entire decade, over which CD burners gradually went from unavailable to common and affordable.

CD burners certainly weren't rare or expensive in 2004, they were a standard part of any normal home PC being sold at the time.

Good Point.

 

[gimmea50anyday]

CDDA, not MP3 so yes a CD holds about 74 minutes. Each pre recorded station used 3 CD's to produce a reasonable length show of about 3 hours.

Think i have a set of CD's for Red Hot and over easy from summer 2004 in my attic.....