Worth remembering those sets work a roughly 6 hour round trip, what was an empty train then could quite easily have been rush hour at Cardiff and Bristol.
The wheels have been falling off this sort of operation for a very long time. Back in the mid-1980s (so almost 40 years ago) when I was working for BR’s South Western Division there were fewer cruise ships but we still had a semi-regular QE2 boat train at the Ocean Terminal in the Eastern Docks. A set of elderly Mark I carriages was kept in Clapham Yard and there was an even shabbier Reserve Set too. One evening there was a busy programme with both sets in use and I went to help out at the Terminal.
And how would those parked up EMUs be of use to XC or GWR when they are running diesel trains?
I was thinking of the 769/9s for GWR, which would (as intended) have released Turbos for use in the west. Also the remaining ex Avanti voyagers for XC, though I may be out of date with plans for those.
Maybe they wouldn’t, but the Castle sets they were required to take out of service would.
Very interesting, I guess advocates of privatisation suggested a vibrant & competitive charter industry would serve all these types of markets in future
There was indeed. In The Intercity Story - 1964-2012 there is mention of 'Cruise Saver Travel', with a picture of DRS' 47832 on a Southampton Docks-Glasgow Central working on 2 January 2009.
) and walk to Paddington. Much less hassle.
I travel to Reading (from Penrith) fairly regularly to visit friends and I've long since given up on the XC route. Leaving aside the risk of missing the connection at Wolverhampton the XC trains are so jammer, particularly on the Sunday return trip, that it's pot luck if you can even squeeze yourself on the train. These days I head to/from Euston (on the occasions when Avanti are actually running any trains
You should see the traffic jams on days cruises leave before you say that! (And especially on Saturday if there's football as well)
I shall look forward to this - my company have an office at Radley, and I often visit a customer in Reading, bit journeys which I currently route via London rather than risk XC
To run an additional service, the cruise lines would effectively have to foot almost the whole bill for a driver and guard for a full shift, which is substantial, with a little on top for servicing and maintenance, and administration. Ideally the cruise passengers would then be entitled to the free transfer by SWR between London Waterloo and Southampton Central.
Rush hour on a Saturday ?
www.southamptonvts.co.uk
I find that there isn't much of a difference when I travel through Cardiff so yes.Rush hour on a Saturday ?
As it happens arriving cruise ships tend to arrive around 6-7am and passengers with luggage make the trains busy around 08:30 to 10:30. The schedules are available and any operator can check to know if they will be busy
| Cruise_Ship_Schedule
Saturday 18th May was a 5 ship day :
Iona (P&O). (capacity 5200 double, 6264 max)
Aurora (P&O). (capacity 1878 double, 1950 max)
Norwegian Star. (capacity 2348 double, 2813 max)
MSC Virtuosa (capacity 4842 double, 6334 max)
Mein Schiff 3 (TUI) visiting (not turnaround)
Of course any day where anything upto 17,000 are finishing their cruise, bound to be busy on trains mid morning. So putting on short formations on busy cruise turnaround days is madness.
As far as XC are concerned that's not a short formation, it's a normal one, which is probably why I've avoided their services (bar the odd HST) for the last 20 years.
Things have moved on since the days of boat trains, some of the cruise ships are now over 6000 berths at max capacity.
Yes. About 10 years ago I was offered either travel on this train or free parking at Southampton cruise terminal as part of cruise booking option. At the time neither suited my itinerary so I used a service train. Next time I took a cruise a few years later the train option had ceased running sadly.
