Ebbsfleet and Ashford were definitely akin to parkway stations for those in Kent who didn't want to travel to London and double-back at St Pancras. However it has since become uneconomical, and while Virgin will probably seek to serve them if the stations open again, I doubt they'll be the ones to finance it. Lille is the only exception to the intermediate stops on route because it's a major interchange that fits the hub-and-spoke model for international services.
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Proposed new Channel Tunnel services discussion
- Thread starter TheWierdOne
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STINT47
Member
Will Interrail be valid on Virgin services? I hope so but not sure if they will be obliged to accept it.
It's valid on Eurostar Standard and Plus on a Global Pass, so I don't see why it shouldn't be valid with Virgin either. Compulsory reservations, if they apply, would still probably need to be done separately though. Depending on how much of the cross-Channel market are InterRail travellers it might not make much sense to exclude them when the competition allows it.
Cross City
Member
You’re suggesting that no other routes would make money?
Realistically only Paris, Brussels and Amsterdam (+Rotterdam and Lille by virtual being on the way) produce the demand volumes that justify running trains that cannot carry intra-Schengen demand, and only those stations have the space and can justify immigration and customs facilities. There have been talk of Germany and Switzerland, but I'll believe it when I see it.
This has been discussed at length on this and other threads. But, essentially there are very few UK to Europe rail routes that will make money under current securty snd border control arrangements. Geneva, Frankfurt via Köln, Zurich at a push. (plus ‘holiday’ specials to the Alps, Provence, and possibly Bordeaux). In time Milan might work, but that needs the Ceneri base tunnel and other new works to make it so.
A french letter regarding Virgin. Nice juxtaposition.
zwk500
Veteran Member
Eurostar are the operator of the Depot, so Virgin will need to enter into a commercial agreement with Eurostar to access the depot (the ORR have told EIL sternly to behave, I would love to be in those meetings).
VTE access to stations will be an agreement with what was HS1 Ltd (not London St Pancras Highspeed) I think.
Eurostarosaur
Member
Very exciting news. I just have one question though. Everyone is talking about Virgin Trains as if they were the same company that operated the WCML and did it very successfully. Despite no longer having any active train operations in the UK, are they run by the same management and team as before? Surely that company is effectively long gone and this is something wholly new.
The person managing this is the ex MD.
Charging per passenger makes no sense. I could understand that being the system at St Pancras, because each passenger comes with a cost to process them, but the tunnel should be charging for path occupancy.
180-odd extra seats in a pair of Eurostar's new units compared with a 374. It all helps.
The 374's interior layout isn't exactly efficient. With Frecciarossa's ETR400 layout just without the executive class (no less premium) but in a continuous 16-car train you'd get 950 seats easily.
When they are running nowhere near line capacity, absolutely maxing out the capacity per path isn't necessary.
TheWierdOne
Member
Interrail tickets tend to be booked out on most services, often few days in advance but sometimes weeks in peak season. I imagine Virgin might try to undercut Eurostar on that front as the interrail reservations on Eurostar are very expensive compared to other high-speed operators
The station is open!
about 2h15 non-tilting and non-stop, up the WCML, slow lines from Wembley, turn left at Primrose Hill, right at Camden. If paths were available, which they are not.
It does both. And that was the deal agreed in 1986.
Legally the companies might be different, but they are marketed as the same brand. Virgin West Coast and CrossCountry were legally separate entities as well despite being under the single banner of Virgin Trains. This is why people will talk about them as if they are the same company even if it's not entirely accurate to say that it is.
Given that Virgin is more of a brand than a company these days I wouldn't be surprised if they only had a minority share in this new operator like they did with Virgin East Coast and the prospective West Coast Partnership bidder, though there is no word on Stagecoach or anyone else being involved thus far.
i think its more Plausible to get a single path a day or maybe two paths vs the dozens of paths requested for all the rejected Open access requests, especially if using a non peak timeslot
no way would Demand be enough for multible Trains a day
more plausible, just. But as the WCML essentially works on a standard hour, if you can find a path in one hour you (generally) find it in every hour.
But operating trains along HS1 and through the tunnel is also very expensive compared to other high-speed routes, I think.
Though they were so close in practice that a lot of staff only found out who they worked for when Virgin lost XC.
Ashford is kind of a pound shop Lille in that you've got a pretty upmarket shopping centre right next door to the station and that it acts as a regional interchange for most trains in East Kent. There's a lot more appetite for reinstatement there than Ebbsfleet.
There may be a local appetite for it, but Ebbsfleet has a far larger catchment area, round through Surrey, Essex, and indeed beyond, who are closer to here in time (especially driving) than either St Pancras or Ashford. Part of its previous failure was a notable lack of marketing of it compared to St Pancras.
zwk500
Veteran Member
If you search 'getlink network code' you can see the track access charges for yourself. Its a mix of components, of which 1 is a passenger fee.
HS1 charges in part by minute on the line.
TheWierdOne
Member
Gemini Trains still hopes to exploit Channel Tunnel capacity
EUROPE: Gemini Trains still has ambitions to launch train services between the UK and continental Europe, despite the rejection of its application for depot access rights needed to enable it to launch services from London to Paris, Brussels and eventually Köln.
www.railwaygazette.com
The ORR may have made a decision on TMI but it isn't over until the fat lady sings, and Gemini appear to think they can find a fat lady hiding somewhere in the theatre. Gemini appearing to be quite gracious in defeat, but emphasising this is not the end for them. I wonder if they might try and go down the route that Proxima did in France and build their own depot, either in the UK or France, or negotiate access to a depot in Europe that gives them enough maintenance capacity to get away with cleaning trains in the platforms at St P and doing all else in Europe. I suppose the other option is going into hibernation until the second depot tender process bears fruit.
HSTEd
Veteran Member
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Is the depot even the limiting factor on HS1 international services?
The station is very heavily loaded, is there room for more passengers to be forced through?
The station is very heavily loaded, is there room for more passengers to be forced through?
While you say it does both, it overwhelmingly charges based on passengers instead of paths. From my memory, the per-path cost is equivalent to around 100 passengers. This really closes the door to a low-cost Ouigo style operation.
The station is being upgraded such that it will no longer be the limiting factor.
zwk500
Veteran Member
There can be more than one limiting factor.
Weren’t passenger numbers higher from Ebbsfleet than Ashford?
Nobody is sure. There's a bit on Ebbsfleet's Wikipedia page claiming that since opening in 2007, Eurostar withheld usage figures for the station because of "commercial confidentiality" but it's unsourced.
What we do know is that before 2020, more than twice as many ES trains called there compared to Ashford.
The target markets are very different. Ashford really just appeals to those from East Kent; it did very little inwards traffic despite all the French tourists one encounters in the area, particularly Canterbury. Ebbsfleet even more so, its users almost wholly arriving by car, from surprisingly far away (I encountered Cambridgeshire residents there), and also from a lot of NE/SE/outer London. Major Eurostar flows of those coming from the Continent, and a notable quantity of touring Americans, head wholly to St Pancras, along with all from provincial Britain who come into London by train, and these groups may well be a majority of those on Eurostar. They are actually quite different markets.
The directional flow issue is similar to that experienced by international airlines. From the UK to the USA there is a reasonable demand from provincial areas, but a plane takes everyone, and those Americans travelling in the opposite direction are almost entirely travelling to London - Edinburgh is apparently the single UK outlier in this.
The directional flow issue is similar to that experienced by international airlines. From the UK to the USA there is a reasonable demand from provincial areas, but a plane takes everyone, and those Americans travelling in the opposite direction are almost entirely travelling to London - Edinburgh is apparently the single UK outlier in this.