please can we stick to BR and intercity thanks
You asserted that things were better under BR, what sort of thread would it be if people can't argue for both sides?! And me123 made a good post to compare what may or may not have happened under BR.
Many of your arguments seem to be about liveries and comfiness of seats which are relatively inconsequential and open to personal opinion. The real issues should be reliability, frequency and speed of services.
There's a place for rose-tinted reminisces of course, I loved the old days from an enthusiast's point of view. I don't know how old you are so don't know how much of BR you experienced, maybe you could tell us more about that? I remember some fairly poor standards of rolling stock and reliability under BR.
Questions:
- Would the entire West Coast fleet have been replaced under BR and the West Coast upgrade have taken place, thus allowing the step change in service levels afforded by VHF?
- Would the investment have been made to re-engineer the HSTs (before you say, that
is a good thing!) or would they be allowed to soldier on and get less and less reliable? Would they have been internally refurbished to such a high standard as "Mallard"?
- Would the railways have been costing the public purse more than they do now?
- Controversial maybe, but would the Cross-Country routes have had their ailing loco haulage continue longer and get less and less reliable. Virgin had appalling problems with availability of 47s in the post-privatisation years. Say what you like about Voyagers, they needed them and had the funds and commercial nouse to go and get them, even if the trains they got were flawed.
-Would off peak advance tickets be as cheap as they are now?
On the other hand, full restaurant services are increasingly rare, flexible fares are increasingly expensive, timetables were better integrated for connecting services under BR and as said elsewhere, trains would be held if a connecting service was delayed so passengers weren't left stranded. The endless pursuit of punctuality at all costs has put paid to that. Another positive was that the IC225 project was also pretty successful, though the East Coast electrification generally accepted to have been done excessively cheaply under state control.
So there are swings and roundabouts... just saying it's interesting to widen the debate.
EDIT: I will just add, it is totally wrong to say there was "nothing wrong" with the ex-BR locos Virgin inherited! There's a picture somewhere of a Railfreight liveried 56 hauling a Virgin XC rake of Mk 2s because of problems with 47s in the late 90s, when the locos were already well over 30 years old
yes i do know tht the pendolinos have made journeys faster but they can be very cramped and the seats are no where near as comfy as that of a Mk2 or a Mk3
