Virgin Voyager news

[TheBigD]

When VT lost the XC franchise was it not an agreement that the 5 car voyagers and the 4 car they kept had to be handed back in 2012 when the VT francise ended and XC were to reinstate HST'suntil this date?

Are you sure about this? I thought the 2012 date referred to the maintenance contract was with Central Rivers (Bombardier).

After this date it will be up to the TOC who maintains them and where.

I could well be wrong though!

 

[D6975]

Swap the standard class driving carriage from the spare pair for a first class driving car out of one of the five carriage units: Result, one five carriage Vomiter of all standard class seating which is semi-permanently coupled to the pair of first class driving carriages. First class passengers have their very own exclusive two carriages separate from the standard class accommodation and you don’t need any extra staff as first class has its’ own attendant.

I like that bit like a mini Blue Pullman
More practical perhaps would be just to reseat one coach to make the spare completely standard class and tag it onto another set.
Another possible use for the unit would be to operate it Edinburgh-Carstairs to provide extra connections down the WCML.

I'll get me coat....

 

[jopsuk]

I'm guessing that rebuilding the driving cars into intermediates would be too much work?

 

[MCR247]

I'm guessing that rebuilding the driving cars into intermediates would be too much work?

No point, there is two spares which is good for the amount of suicides etc and tree incidents there is ATM

 

[Dreadnought]

60794, the coach to be transferred to 221143, is a MSRMB which has the 1st/standard hybrid seating and a buffet area. With such a short time left on the franchise would VT or the DfT pay for it to be converted to a standard trailer or is this set going to run round with 2 buffets in it?

 

[RobShipway]

I like the idea of the two remaining Class 221 driving cars being used with a pantograph for testing, which makes me thing that maybe the IEP investment might not go to Hitachi after all? Maybe use the driving vehicles for a Bombardier/Siemens combined test train?

 

[northwichcat]

They could couple the two spare driving cars together to make a mini voyager!

That may be a joke but I think the hourly Crewe-Chester shuttle is ideal for those two driving cars to be used on. The shuttle together with the Chester-London service provides a half-hourly Crewe-Chester service and the shuttle connects with the Manchester-Crewe-London services, so the quality of rolling stock would be consistent. The shuttle can be speeded up as currently it is timed for 75mph running and it would allow a Sprinter to be cascaded elsewhere.

 

[MCR247]

What is wrong with just having two driving spares in case one gets damaged? What happens if one of the driving cars in needed in an emergency? You just axe the service? What would the press say? Hardly ideal

 

[ainsworth74]

Yeah I've been thinking that myself that actually having a pair of Driving vehicles might be quite handy to have around. Granted it's not ideal having them out of service but at least this way if something should happen it would hopefully be possible to swap out the damaged driving vehicle with one of the spares and keep the rest of the set running.

 

[87015]

What is wrong with just having two driving spares in case one gets damaged? What happens if one of the driving cars in needed in an emergency? You just axe the service? What would the press say? Hardly ideal

Because of a fleet of trains that is inadequate in the first place is going to have two vehicles out of service? A net loss in seats is pretty poor in the current climate.

 

[MCR247]

But why not just keep them as spares?

 

[Crossforth]

If you added the two coaches onto the end of another service to make a 7 car unit semi permanently coupled, then it is in service so giving extra seats but at the same time, if something happens to another unit's driving car, it can be taken out of service to cover for that driving car without severely affecting services

 

[MCR247]

That would be a good idea, put it on the busiest BHM - EDB/GLC diagram when possible and that could work. The only downside would be having to have two guards

 

[TheBigD]

Because of a fleet of trains that is inadequate in the first place is going to have two vehicles out of service? A net loss in seats is pretty poor in the current climate.

Currently there are 16 x5 and 2 x 4, a total of 88 vehicles diagrammed to be in use.
When reformed there will be 18 x 5 diagrammed, a total of 90 vehicles.

This plan will mean that an additional 2 vehicles are diagrammed to be in service.

 

[87015]

Currently there are 16 x5 and 2 x 4, a total of 88 vehicles diagrammed to be in use.
When reformed there will be 18 x 5 diagrammed, a total of 90 vehicles.

This plan will mean that an additional 2 vehicles are diagrammed to be in service.

Would seem more sensible to use the currently 'spare' extra unit to strengthen Scottish services then, only diagramming 18 from 21 is pretty poor for modern units. Although if 18/21 is because they can only get 18 units into service reliably, how is 18 out of 20 going to work from December?

 

[Pumbaa]

I'm guessing that rebuilding the driving cars into intermediates would be too much work?

Yes - biggest issue is the lack of compressors. Currently these are located in the trailers only. Also the main computer centre is in the MSRMB and thus needs at least one of these sandwiched between the two driving cars for it to work anyway. It is pretty much unfeasible to re-engineer them as a 2-car set.

Oh and no-ones mentioned this yet, but this is simply a proposition. It may not actually happen and requires DfT to sign it off and give it a go ahead. I personally don't see this going through - DfT don't want changes made with only a year and half left to go, and Virgin don't want to stump up the cash themselves.

 

[Crossforth]

ah, I didn't realise that :?

 

[swt_passenger]

Yes - biggest issue is the lack of compressors. Currently these are located in the trailers only. Also the main computer centre is in the MSRMB and thus needs at least one of these sandwiched between the two driving cars for it to work anyway. It is pretty much unfeasible to re-engineer them as a 2-car set.

Oh and no-ones mentioned this yet, but this is simply a proposition. It may not actually happen and requires DfT to sign it off and give it a go ahead. I personally don't see this going through - DfT don't want changes made with only a year and half left to go, and Virgin don't want to stump up the cash themselves.

So you are suggesting the Rail News article is premature? It seems to me they make a statement, eg that all Voyager diagrams will be 5 car from 12th December, not that they might be.

 

[Pumbaa]

So you are suggesting the Rail News article is premature? It seems to me they make a statement, eg that all Voyager diagrams will be 5 car from 12th December, not that they might be.

Si - I'm also sceptical of RailNews itself. I realise Mr Webb has a lot of experience in both rail journalism and photography, but several of the stories published on that website are either premature or in some way void. To my mind, it simply seems like a revenue stream from the advertising.

I am however more than welcome to be proved wrong on that front.

 

[route:oxford]

Yes - biggest issue is the lack of compressors. Currently these are located in the trailers only. Also the main computer centre is in the MSRMB and thus needs at least one of these sandwiched between the two driving cars for it to work anyway. It is pretty much unfeasible to re-engineer them as a 2-car set.

Oh and no-ones mentioned this yet, but this is simply a proposition. It may not actually happen and requires DfT to sign it off and give it a go ahead. I personally don't see this going through - DfT don't want changes made with only a year and half left to go, and Virgin don't want to stump up the cash themselves.

That's a shame, although wasn't there a 2 car Meridian pictured somewhere recently?

 

[ainsworth74]

That's a shame, although wasn't there a 2 car Meridian pictured somewhere recently?

It was out for testing rather than in service, certainly did look funny though!

 

[eastmidschris]

It was out for testing rather than in service, certainly did look funny though!

Not testing just coupled waiting for it's trailers to be repaired. As mentioned above driving vehicles cannot run without trailers because of a lack of compressors which also puts paid to all the pie in the sky proposals above!

 

[ainsworth74]

Not testing just coupled waiting for it's trailers to be repaired.

Fair enough! Either way it wasn't doing anything productive

 

[TheBigD]

To me the other missed opportunity here is to swap 3x virgin 4 car Voyagers with 2x 5 car XC voyagers. That way we don't have 2 coaches gathering dust. Virgin have what they want and XC gain overall. They may be able to run another double voyager for example.

Don't know how practical it would be to renable the tilt on the XC sets and retrofit the shops however.

Just swap one of the 221/4's for 2 of the MSL vehicles from two of XC's 221/5's.

That way all you'd need to do was to reform the sets and reinstate the tilt on just 2 vehicles.

 

[Geezertronic]

Because of a fleet of trains that is inadequate in the first place is going to have two vehicles out of service? A net loss in seats is pretty poor in the current climate.

Considering VT claim that they do not need the set to be able to fulfill their diagrams, it is not really a loss is it? The only loss you can consider this to be is a spare unit. It's not as if the current diagrammed services are loosing seats? If anything, you could say that two diagrams will gain extra seats because 2 x 221s are being increased from 4 cars to 5 cars

 

[Peter Sarf]

When the original split of the Voyagers into the Virgin and CrossCountry fleets happened I noted that Virgin ended up with 221s i.e. only tilting units. But I wondered why Virgin ended up with 3 of the 4 four-car 221s units and the rest of their 221s five-car. As far as I remember Cross Country disabled the tilt facility on their 221s so they are effectively the same as 220s. So it would have made sense for Cross Country to have all the four-car Voyagers (all 220s and non-tilting 221s) and a proportion of the five-car units (non-tilting 221s). That would have left Virgin with ONLY 221s and only five-car ones. As has been said - that would make diagramming simpler for Virgin and no-more complicated than it already is for Cross Country.

BUT If the authorities could-not/would-not make a sensible decision like the above before re-liverying units and disabling tilt then why would they bother doing it now because it is harder and with so little time left to go.

My guess is that if anything happens Virgin will make the simplest changes they can to achieve a homogenous fleet and that they will do that without involving Cross Country. In otherwords they will merely mothball two Driving Motor coaches. Suggestions that the two coaches could be used will defeat the object of achieving a homogeneous fleet.

Isnt it lucky the Pendolinos are all the same length ? (doh !).

 

[brompton rail]

Why would anyone think XC would take any of Virgin's Voyagers?

XC don't WANT any more trains as they will have to pay out more! Otherwise they would have restored their HSTs to 8 carriages and run 4 of them on a daily basis. They are only using 4 sets from December because they have extended several Readings to Southampton. Anyone can argue that XC should have more trains ( including many who believe that 180s should go to XC) but the firm doesn't want any. Yes, many of their peak and weekend services are overcrowded but it doesn't seem to put passengers off, otherwise the overcrowding would diminish.

 

[MCR247]

They would use the HSTs more, but as they are on dry lease they have to pay for maintenance. I don't think they do with voyagers

 

[YorkshireBear]

They would use the HSTs more, but as they are on dry lease they have to pay for maintenance. I don't think they do with voyagers

why not get them on normal lease then :/

 

[ainsworth74]

I would guess that the owning ROSCO is quite happy with the present arrangement so why would it offer any other type of lease?