43319 on hire to XC

[59CosG95]

Heads up: CrossCountry are hiring VTEC's 43319 today for a brief undetermined period. It's on today's 1V60 and 1S53.

 

[Dhassell]

Would it be on the front/back?

 

[AndrewE]

Would it be on the front/back?

Both (alternately) I imagine!

 

[59CosG95]

It'll be alloxed on the North end.

 

[83G/84D]

Heads up: CrossCountry are hiring VTEC's 43319 today for a brief undetermined period. It's on today's 1V60 and 1S53.

Could you please detail what trains 1V60 & 1S53 are, for anyone who may not know. Thanks.

 

[yorkie]

1s53 will be departing Birmingham New Street shortly, it's the 1703 BHM to Edinburgh (via Leeds). The VTEC power car should be leading (it was on the rear to BHM)

 

[alexl92]

I didn't realise VTEC had spare power cars - I thought VTEC hired spares in from EMT occasionally?

 

[43094]

24 hour hire due to lack of available XC power cars.

 

[59CosG95]

Could you please detail what trains 1V60 & 1S53 are, for anyone who may not know. Thanks.

For today: 1V60 was the 1105 Edinburgh-1602 B'ham New St, and 1S53 was the 1703 return, which gets into Waverley at 2210 tonight.

 

[Spankthemonkey]

For today: 1V60 was the 1105 Edinburgh-1602 B'ham New St, and 1S53 was the 1703 return, which gets into Waverley at 2210 tonight.

Friend of mine was on board, said it caused mighty confusion in the North East as a tonne of passengers all got on expecting to get to Kings Cross! Poor old TM has his work cut out by all accounts.

 

[43096]

Friend of mine was on board, said it caused mighty confusion in the North East as a tonne of passengers all got on expecting to get to Kings Cross! Poor old TM has his work cut out by all accounts.

So because ONE vehicle of a train says "Virgin" and the rest say "Cross-Country", and the departure screens says "Birmingham" it causes people to get confused?

They say normals are stupid. Case proven.

 

[Spankthemonkey]

So because ONE vehicle of a train says "Virgin" and the rest say "Cross-Country", and the departure screens says "Birmingham" it causes people to get confused?

They say normals are stupid. Case proven.

Lol, it's a side effect of successful branding campaigns.

 

[DarloRich]

A nice trip from Wakey to Derby this afternoon enlivened by an HST set incorporating a foreign off comer.

It pulled into Wakey just minutes after the blue 90 headed for Kings Cross.

 

[FQTV]

So because ONE vehicle of a train says "Virgin" and the rest say "Cross-Country", and the departure screens says "Birmingham" it causes people to get confused?

They say normals are stupid. Case proven.

In fairness, at York, the set pulled in at the South end of Platform 3, well along from where the vast majority of passengers stand, close to the central facilities.

VTEC had gone to custard, owing to leaves on the disabled toilets or whichever unreserved combination of excuses had been produced by their random generator yesterday, leading to long delays and platform changes.

To the already hassled, all that they might have been able to see from the central part of the station, or the footbridge, was a VTEC power car with a very obvious logo, and a couple of dirty carriages curving away from them into the distance.

It didn't help that the PA was missing off the beginning of some announcements, and on one occasion the announcer mis-announced the train as VTEC.

 

[najaB]

In fairness, at York, the set pulled in at the South end of Platform 3, well along from where the vast majority of passengers stand, close to the central facilities.

To the already hassled, all that they might have been able to see from the central part of the station, or the footbridge, was a VTEC power car with a very obvious logo, and a couple of dirty carriages curving away from them into the distance.

Fair enough, but when they walked over the carriages will all have been the wrong colour and have a different company's name on them. Guess that's a good example of confirmation bias and belief persistence at work.

 

[pdq]

The general public don't, as a rule, take notice of branding. Just today, my wife and 3 of her colleagues managed to board the Hadfield Northern stopper from MAN rather than the TPE to York ahead of it. When I asked how come she didn't notice it was a commuter train with 3+2 seating etc, she simply pointed out that she pays no attention to that kind of thing.

 

[fgwrich]

Don't forget that a lot of people will still see the majority of the Voyager fleets as operated by Virgin than Arriva XC as well. Possibly because the passenger or passengers have used them in the past as Virgin Voyagers, or because the interior is still almost as Virgin had them (despite the XC Stickers stuck inside). I still hear plenty of people making complaints about the Virgin trains service through Reading / Basingstoke, despite Virgin not having operated through either of those places since 2007.

 

[Mugby]

I thought XC had 5 or 6 HST sets of which they only use 3 or 4. What happened to their own spares?

 

[sprinterguy]

I thought XC had 5 or 6 HST sets of which they only use 3 or 4. What happened to their own spares?

Crosscountry lease five HST sets and operate four on a Sunday. Three power cars were unavailable due to maintenance requirements.

 

[DarloRich]

I thought XC had 5 or 6 HST sets of which they only use 3 or 4. What happened to their own spares?

they were broken down I assume. Good on them for taking steps to run a service.

 

[johnnychips]

The general public don't, as a rule, take notice of branding. Just today, my wife and 3 of her colleagues managed to board the Hadfield Northern stopper from MAN rather than the TPE to York ahead of it. When I asked how come she didn't notice it was a commuter train with 3+2 seating etc, she simply pointed out that she pays no attention to that kind of thing.

Women, eh?

(Ducks for cover!)

Did she find her mistake out and get off at Picc, or find herself rather underwhelmed by the lack of city walls at Hadfield?

 

[pdq]

Women, eh?

(Ducks for cover!)

Did she find her mistake out and get off at Picc, or find herself rather underwhelmed by the lack of city walls at Hadfield?

Apparently someone heard them chatting about Leeds and broke it to them that they were on the wrong train. They got off at Ashburys and headed back.

 

[AndrewE]

Apparently someone heard them chatting about Leeds and broke it to them that they were on the wrong train. They got off at Ashburys and headed back.

They were lucky that they jumped off at a station with a service back in - it would have been a different story if they were going out NW and had got off at Kearsley - nothing for 12 hours!
A

 

[bb21]

VTEC had gone to custard, owing to leaves on the disabled toilets or whichever unreserved combination of excuses had been produced by their random generator yesterday, leading to long delays and platform changes.

You do realise that leaves present real problems across the network, so are not just feeble excuses, don't you?