EC Scottish trains plans

[silentone]

The Chieftan is fairly well loaded leaving London for stations north of Edinburgh and a number of those who are on from London do need assistance. The suggestion of transferring this service to Cross Country is just another great idea from the armchair managers sat at home here. (The same applies to the South bound trip)

I'm not sure how Cross Country could manage to send a voyager to Inverness when sending them forward to Glasgow seemed to be such a problem for many on here.

The point of retaining the Aberdeen & Inverness services were that these places had a direct service to London, it's not about whether you can get there by changing train. Lets leave this thing to the experts

 

[Failed Unit]

Would it really cause most users a problem if the Chieftain was to become part of Crosscountry and so only be available as far south as York/Doncaster.

The spare HSTs would then go to Crosscountry to provide a 2 hourly Scotland to Plymouth service (Aberdeen / Dundee / Inverness) with some extras used to run peak services around Edinburgh. I am not totally sure how the diagrams would work but surely it would improve things on the Crosscountry core as well.

Sorry to those that would lose direct London trains (or direct HST services be replaced by voyagers) but Virgin seem to cope with voyagers going "off route" on the WCML and I am sure a 5 car would be enough.

Thankfully the Scottish government would stop this downgrade to the service happening. Other ways should be found to solve cross countries problems than cutting useful links. The most simple to me would be to get the voyagers off the Birmingham - Scotland services and replace them with a new build if Pendo's.

The other problem is that east coast need the HSTs, the don't have enough 91 and mk4s anyway which is why some HSTs run 100% underwires diagrams.

I like Dave's idea of a 2nd diagram to Inverness.

If it left kings cross at 0700 it would arrive at Inverness about 1500, return at 1555 to be in London at just before midnight based on the current HSTs timings. Probably too early / late for London traffic but it may have quite a demand from York upwards. It would pass through Edinburgh at about 1130 northbound and 1930 southbound.

 

[ChrisCooper]

It's a shame they are too tunnel visioned with units to not look at a hauled option. I still maintain a 125mph electric loco could propel a coaching set with DVT from London to Edinburgh, where it would couple up with a 100mph diesel loco whilst the electric uncoupled, the diesel then dragging to Aberdeen or Inverness and then propelling back to Edinburgh using another driving trailer at the other end of the set, where the same loco swap took place. Auto couplers could allow the changeover to be done pretty quick and it's not like the HSTs exactly rush through Edinburgh anyway. You loose on acceleration from a stand, but that's not that important on Intercity runs, particularly as leaving many stations that these sort of service call at is restricted anyway. Platforms are long enough to take hauled stock, and coaches themselves can be higher capacity as they are not packed full of traction equipment as well as everything else. The same electric locos and coaches could also do the electric only runs, and the same diesels could be used as Thunderbirds or for diversions.

 

[monkey]

...I think this would be massive backward step. in climate where we have more direct connections to london with the open access operaters such as fHT and GC, it would be ridiculously regressive move.

Also I agree a lot of business travellers, who would use the first class offering would simply just get the plane...

 

[Invincibles]

Thankfully the Scottish government would stop this downgrade to the service happening. Other ways should be found to solve cross countries problems than cutting useful links. The most simple to me would be to get the voyagers off the Birmingham - Scotland services and replace them with a new build if Pendo's.

The other problem is that east coast need the HSTs, the don't have enough 91 and mk4s anyway which is why some HSTs run 100% underwires diagrams.

I like Dave's idea of a 2nd diagram to Inverness.

If it left kings cross at 0700 it would arrive at Inverness about 1500, return at 1555 to be in London at just before midnight based on the current HSTs timings. Probably too early / late for London traffic but it may have quite a demand from York upwards. It would pass through Edinburgh at about 1130 northbound and 1930 southbound.

If it is necessary for the Scottish government to step in then maybe that shows that it is not a commercially sensible train to run?

Maybe EC would not have enough trains as is, but there are plenty of ways to give them enough stock to run a service that would give equal ratios of passengers to seats on more services than having a 9 car HST to the north of Scotland and a 4 car voyager running through Birmingham in the peak.

Yes the answer is more new trains, but under the current stock system I think that there is room to cut the London to northern Scotland trains, sorry

 

[Failed Unit]

If it is necessary for the Scottish government to step in then maybe that shows that it is not a commercially sensible train to run?

Maybe EC would not have enough trains as is, but there are plenty of ways to give them enough stock to run a service that would give equal ratios of passengers to seats on more services than having a 9 car HST to the north of Scotland and a 4 car voyager running through Birmingham in the peak.

Yes the answer is more new trains, but under the current stock system I think that there is room to cut the London to northern Scotland trains, sorry

The Scottish government would step in because of the loss of the connection to London, just as the welsh government assembly did to keep the Holyhead service.

Who says the trains don't make a profit, they are well loaded. Can you prove the don't make a profit. Taking a HST from a well used train to bail out XC would be the wrong thing to do. Maybe XC should less trains north of Newcastle to double up Voyagers in the peak? They have a lot less passengers between Newcastle and Edinburgh that east coast have north of Edinburgh.

 

[brompton rail]

There seems to me to be no suggestion that the East Coast franchise is going to stop running the daily Inverness train. No HST's would be saved anyway.

Neither do I see anu merit in running a XC Voyager between Inverness and Plymouth by a slow and in direct route. Edinburgh to Birmingham is an hour quicker via the West Coast.

 

[route:oxford]

If it is necessary for the Scottish government to step in then maybe that shows that it is not a commercially sensible train to run?

So all it would really take would be for Transport Scotland to source a few 9 car SDO Dual-Power Meridians...

Then plan diagrams to deliver 2 return journeys between Inverness and London as well as a few internal peak services eg a 7am service from Perth to Edinburgh via Stirling continuing on to London.

It would be interesting to see how DfT would react to an arms-length Scottish Government controlled open access operator planning ORCATS raids in order to cross-subsidise a Scottish service.

 

[Failed Unit]

There seems to me to be no suggestion that the East Coast franchise is going to stop running the daily Inverness train. No HST's would be saved anyway.

Neither do I see anu merit in running a XC Voyager between Inverness and Plymouth by a slow and in direct route. Edinburgh to Birmingham is an hour quicker via the West Coast.

Very good point, the Inverness train is a set that would be sat a Craigintinny anyway which is the whole reason BR introduced the service in the first place! So if it was withdrawn the hst would still be needed anyway as there would be nothing to form the 1130 southbound service. The same with the Aberdeen services.

The other thing that some people forget is that under GNER they often used to no run these trains at weekends so the set could be used for non-electric diversions. The stopped because demand was too high.