Avanti putting 9 car Pendolinos on Anglo-Scottish services

amahy said:

I agree, and the same can be said for the London - Birmingham services. There should really be no need for 11s on them, with the number of options for customers travelling between the two cities.

Stupidly though, the Blackpools interwork with Glasgow fasts at Euston, which prevents them properly matching demand to each route, where a 9 is very quiet on a Blackpool run, but an 11 is borderline essential for Glasgow.

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As a regular traveller between London and Glasgow, I would say that the only time that an 11-car is full north of Preston is when there is service disruption or the previous service has been cancelled. Which to be honest is pretty much a daily occurrence....

amahy said:

I agree, and the same can be said for the London - Birmingham services. There should really be no need for 11s on them, with the number of options for customers travelling between the two cities.

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Some Birmingham services can be very busy and justify 11 carriage units.
Although I agree most services on this route between London and Birmingham would probably be a lower priority over other routes but with every other Pendolino service working through to Scotland (especially the Edinburgh services) should be 11 carriages.

Kite159 said:

Or convert one of the 1st class/standard premium coaches on a 9 coach to be standard class, that way a 9 coach gets 2 unreserved coaches and when a 11 coach replaces it, they gain an extra coach of standard premium & extra coach of standard class coaches

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There are only 2 1/2 first standard premium carriages now so that would either mean having only half a first class carriage on 9 carriage weekday services which would be inadequate on many services or have no standard premium (first class would need to be next to the kitchen in K).
This would add more unpredictability as to when standard premium is available, although I accept there are some services where all seating is first class and no standard premium already.

For 2 unreserved carriages on 9 carriage sets while also keeping reservations consistent the easiest and least disruptive option would be to switch the unreserved carriage to a fully seated carriage like B or D and make C reservable.
They could also block a few rows of seats at the ends of other carriages on all services to provide a few more unreserved seats dispersed throughout the train.

If on flexible tickets, I aim for 11 car services whenever possible and head for Coach G

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VT 390 said:

For 2 unreserved carriages on 9 carriage sets while also keeping reservations consistent the easiest and least disruptive option would be to switch the unreserved carriage to a fully seated carriage like B or D and make C reservable.

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That is a good idea and should have been the case initially.
D also tends to be the last coach to fill up with reservations. Is it too little to late though, as everyone will have C in their head when needing an unreserved seat. Could take a while for people to get used to the change?

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hexagon789 said:

One thing that hasn't been clarified explicitly that I see is whether there are seperate 9 and 11-car diagrams.

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This used to be the case with Virgin, certain services were booked 9 car or 11 car only and mostly ran as such.

Currently there are a few services the next day you can predict the length of.

Some patterns I've noticed are:
1S82 (16:30 ex Euston) forming 1R22 (04:28 ex GLC)
1S90 (17:30 ex Euston) forming 1M06 (05:33 ex GLC)
1S98 (19:30 ex Euston) forming 9M51 (08:00 ex GLC via Birmingham)
Can change of course but that's the pattern.

pokemonsuper9 said:

Having a look at the Wigan-London trains today, there are 21 11 car services and 9 9 car services.
I don't know how Pendolino diagrams work, and I don't use them frequently enough to notice any consistency (indeed, the service I use the most frequently, the 08:31 from Wigan via the West Midlands, varies between 9 and 11)

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I have a nagging feeling that the Scottish units interwork on Manchester routes during the day

Peter0124 said:

That is a good idea and should have been the case initially.
D also tends to be the last coach to fill up with reservations. Is it too little to late though, as everyone will have C in their head when needing an unreserved seat. Could take a while for people to get used to the change?

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I do not think this would be much of an issue as most platform screens display the seat reservation loadings for services and announcements are made both at the station and on the train. Pendolinos also have light reservation displays so it would be easy to see which seats/carriages are reserved once onboard.

Crossover said:

I have a nagging feeling that the Scottish units interwork on Manchester routes during the day

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They certainly do, the xx:53 from Euston is usually booked to form off the fast Glasgow arrival.

Similarly the Scotland-Birmingham-London goes back north as the xx:30 Glasgow fast. And the northbound via Brum usually comes off a Manchester arrival.

Keeping mostly 11 cars on Scotland/Manchester runs seems like the sensible decision.

Peter0124 said:

If on flexible tickets, I aim for 11 car services whenever possible and head for Coach G

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But as others have said, there is no obvious pattern to which services are 9/11 car.

Also, Scotland services aren't that frequent as it is, so it's not a simple case of "just get the next one", especially for Edinburgh and services via the West Midlands.

VT 390 said:

Some Birmingham services can be very busy and justify 11 carriage units.
Although I agree most services on this route between London and Birmingham would probably be a lower priority over other routes but with every other Pendolino service working through to Scotland (especially the Edinburgh services) should be 11 carriages.

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I agree. Even if a London - Birmingham service is very busy, it's almost never a long wait till the next one for most of the day.