Why does everybody hate XC?

[Drsatan]

I agree and in the longer term Mark 3 coaches could have been cascaded from the WCML. The issue is though that it was a franchise commitmet to replace the trains and also in this image obsessed society we have today a Voyager is more likely to impress people from the outside than a 40 year old train.

Passengers don't necessarily care about image, it's the quality of the trains which matters. I think most passengers prefer HSTs to Voyagers for many reasons precisely because they are more comfortable: no engine noise under the floor, the air con doesn't stink of **** etc.

I agree with you that Mk3 coaches should have been cascaded from the WCML (which is what BR wanted to do if IC250 was introduced) since it would have been natural to use them on other services rather than withdrawing them outright.

Oh, and I thought XC was supposed to refurbish its Voyagers. Have they breached YET another franchise commitment? I traveled on one from Taunton to Bristol TM last Saturday and they're getting ridiculously tatty and rattly inside. They're very poor value for money on the routes they operate.

 

[transportphoto]

I have been reading this topic and thought I would air my opinions
XC is a TOC, like every other, they have been 'dumped' with the stock they have the vast majority is Cl221 from Virgin but also includes Cl170's and HST's.

XC have a vast area that they have to cover, XC have completed a very good refurb of their Cl170's and have made them a very comfortable environment to travel in.

Yes, they can be expensive but this is easily avoided using 'split tickets', today travelling between Birmingham and Stansted a member of staff boarded offering leaflets with 10pc discount codes on for redemption against XC priced Advance Purchase tickets from their website.

 

[Zoe]

Passengers don't necessarily care about image, it's the quality of the trains which matters. I think most passengers prefer HSTs to Voyagers for many reasons precisely because they are more comfortable: no engine noise under the floor, the air con doesn't stink of **** etc.

You could ulitmately put some of the blame on the Director of Passenger Franchising then that accepted the bid from Virgin with a commitment to completely replace the fleet.

 

[Drsatan]

Yes, they can be expensive but this is easily avoided using 'split tickets',

But the average passenger doesn't know this. Not everyone who travels by train is an expert in the intricacies of the fares system of the UK. And neither should it be necessary to know all about split tickets and other loopholes to achieve the best deals.

Or, simply avoid traveling on XC. Last month I traveled from Exeter St Davids to Birmingham Snow Hill without using XC.

 

[MCR247]

Not sure if that would be possible if the jigs required for production have been destroyed. That's certainly the reason why no more Desiros can be made for SWT and others

You have been misinformed about that. More 350/450s (and 360s?) can be made as they are 20m long and the 23m jigs have been destroyed which is what 444s needed

 

[222007]

Oh, and I thought XC was supposed to refurbish its Voyagers. Have they breached YET another franchise commitment?

There was a basic refurb done in that the shop was removed and some additional seats inserted this was the level of refurb the franchise required. A lot of what the public believe is not always accurate

 

[TGV]

I'm taking another journey on XC tomorrow, so I'll compare it with my previous journey and see if it was a fluke or not. Will report back on this slightly unscientific but relevant test tomorrow!

 

[Geezertronic]

XC is a TOC, like every other, they have been 'dumped' with the stock they have the vast majority is Cl221 from Virgin but also includes Cl170's and HST's.

They actually have all the 220s (34 sets) and 23 x 221s in addition to the 170s and HSTs

 

[starrymarkb]

You have been misinformed about that. More 350/450s (and 360s?) can be made as they are 20m long and the 23m jigs have been destroyed which is what 444s needed

Though I suspect if you said to Herr Siemens I want 50 5 car 444s he'd build new jigs from the original designs which *should* be archived.

 

[Ivo]

Yes, they can be expensive but this is easily avoided using 'split tickets', today travelling between Birmingham and Stansted a member of staff boarded offering leaflets with 10pc discount codes on for redemption against XC priced Advance Purchase tickets from their website.

There is another argument about this as well. If you split a typical XC ticket, the resultant tickets will often not be priced by XC. If you choose Bristol to Birmingham for instance, splitting at Cheltenham means that only the fare north of Cheltenham is priced by XC; south of Cheltenham (half the journey remember) is valued at nearly £10 less. The difference? FGW price the journey south of Cheltenham.

This is quite clearly illustrated by my extreme example a couple of pages ago, where the only ticket to exceed £5 is also the only one priced by XC. Speaking of which, does anyone know of any similar examples? There must be others out there.

 

[MCR247]

Though I suspect if you said to Herr Siemens I want 50 5 car 444s he'd build new jigs from the original designs which *should* be archived.

Thats true. If we made our mind up and ordered a load of units at once it would it be easier, like if they said to siemens

Can we have all of these trains based on the 444:
16 Class 344s (AC Electric 444s) 10 carfor London - Norwich
42 Class 184s (Diesel 444s) 6 car for TPE
9 Class 344s (AC Electric) 444s 5 car for Manchester - Scotland
15 Class 184s 3 car to replace TPE 170s
10 Class 184s 4 car for FGW
20 Class 184s 4 car for EMT Liverpool - Norwich
24 Original Class 444s 5 car for London - Portsmouth
20 444s with 1/3 2/3 doors specially for GatEX
30 Class 184s 5 car for ATW
12 Class 184s 3 car for ATW

 

[Class 33]

A lot of XC's fares are way overpriced. Bristol-Birmingham £41 return too expensive. Splitting the tickets at Cheltenham is the sensible way to get it down to a more reasonable £26. or if you have more time to spare(about 2 and a half hours or so in each direction), travel via Worcester and the fare is down to a bargain £17.

In the last few years when Virgin had the franchise, it was a little easier to get cheaper advance fares too. One example I remember was a Bristol-Birmingham advance return fare for £15 which was called the "Saturday Day Out" fare or something similar. And if I recall these were still available to purchase as short in advance as just a few days or so in advance of the travel date. It's a shame AXC don't do the same.

 

[tbtc]

Thats true. If we made our mind up and ordered a load of units at once it would it be easier, like if they said to siemens

Can we have all of these trains based on the 444:
16 Class 344s (AC Electric 444s) 10 carfor London - Norwich
42 Class 184s (Diesel 444s) 6 car for TPE
9 Class 344s (AC Electric) 444s 5 car for Manchester - Scotland
15 Class 184s 3 car to replace TPE 170s
10 Class 184s 4 car for FGW
20 Class 184s 4 car for EMT Liverpool - Norwich
24 Original Class 444s 5 car for London - Portsmouth
20 444s with 1/3 2/3 doors specially for GatEX
30 Class 184s 5 car for ATW
12 Class 184s 3 car for ATW

That's exactly what the railway needs; a co-ordinated bulk order of new stock, similar components, allowing the units to be build on a "rolling" process by a production line. It's cost prohibitive to build a diddy wee class like the 180s, but if the whole industry could sort itself out, it'd be able to procure carriages a lot lot cheaper, like the above proposal

 

[wibble]

24 Original Class 444s 5 car for London - Portsmouth

That will never happen!

 

[TGV]

Well I'm just back from 2 journeys on XC today. First one left and arrived on time, train (5 car super voyager) was clean and tidy again, no problems at all. I boarded the train only about 40 mintues into it's journey to York so it was fresh presumably on it's first diagram of the day. Busy though - we all got seats but it was heavily loaded for sure.

The return journey, I guess the train (again another 5 car voyager) had been in use all day and certainly had already been en route for about 3 hours prior to me boarding it and it was quieter than the morning train, but we all got seats. Some rubbish on the tables and under the seats, but nothing ugly - just discarded magazines and newspapers. Train arrived 3 late but arrived only 1 late. Only issue was the smell of the toilet in coach D, next to the luggage racks and bike area. The OUT train didn't suffer this, but that may have been because it was pretty fresh out of the depot into service.

Overall, I'd give their performance today 7/10. Dropped points because of the litter that's easy to rectify and the toilet smell that to be fair didn't intrude into the seating area - only round the vestibule and luggage racks.

 

[MCR247]

The thing with the toilet smell, is yes it was a design flaw but Virgin has actually done something about it and they have sorted it on super vomiters. I believe it also happened on 390s for a while and alstom said it was because they weren't intended for short turnaround times of around 20mins. But XC has not done anything about it

 

[TGV]

The thing with the toilet smell, is yes it was a design flaw but Virgin has actually done something about it and they have sorted it on super vomiters. I believe it also happened on 390s for a while and alstom said it was because they weren't intended for short turnaround times of around 20mins. But XC has not done anything about it

I didn't know it was a usual problem. The saloon door kept it out of the carriage but as we were waiting to exit the train in the vestibule - phew, man it was not nice.

 

[Pumbaa]

Best way to sort out the reservation screens would be to have "light on dark" for the "this seat is unreserved" message and "dark on light" for the "this seat is reserved between Station X and Station Y", so that you could tell a lot faster whether it was worth investigating or not.

My preferred system would be a light on dark, with red text indicating "seat reserved until Stafford"; orange text indicating "seat reserved from Stafford to Runcorn"; green text indicating "seat unreserved". Everybody loves easy to use colour differentiated systems!

Other than colour-blind people of course!
--- old post above --- --- new post below ---

The thing with the toilet smell, is yes it was a design flaw but Virgin has actually done something about it and they have sorted it on super vomiters. I believe it also happened on 390s for a while and alstom said it was because they weren't intended for short turnaround times of around 20mins. But XC has not done anything about it

Badly designed pipes behind the walls were found to be the eventual problems. They are also situated next to the Exhaust in all cases; this heats the pipes up, they become fatigued and thus smelly toilets. Air con intakes next to the toilet doesn't help matters. Solution is to replace pipes regularly with more durable materials. XC did this once since the solution was found, VT on the other hand have done this at least 4 times.

 

[MCR247]

Badly designed pipes behind the walls were found to be the eventual problems. They are also situated next to the Exhaust in all cases; this heats the pipes up, they become fatigued and thus smelly toilets. Air con intakes next to the toilet doesn't help matters. Solution is to replace pipes regularly with more durable materials. XC did this once since the solution was found, VT on the other hand have done this at least 4 times.

Sorry to sound stupid but do you mean Virgin have done this 4 times to ensure that the smell doesn't come back?

 

[Pumbaa]

The solution to the smell is to regularly replace the pipes to ensure they avoid becoming fatigued. Since early 2008, Virgin have replaced them 4 times, XC once.

 

[MCR247]

Oh ok, that sounds about right for CrossCountry

 

[Class 33]

As mentioned, the four/five unit Voyagers are often over-crowded between around Derby/Sheffield and Bristol. And there are posts on here saying that the HST's used on a number of the London Paddington-Oxford services are often less than half full. An idea then. Why don't Arriva swap some of their Voyager's for some of FGW's HST's? This would make sense. But easier said than done of course, and probably wouldn't happen. If the railways were nationalised again, there would be more chance of this happening.

If there are enough mk2 carriages available, perhaps they could introduce some Class 67 hauled services. I'd love to see that happen.

Either way Arriva need to try and sort the problem of over-crowding out somehow. Voyagers for long distance services are just not suitable.

 

[MCR247]

But where would the voyagers then be maintained? Or would you have late night Paddington - Burton runs?

 

[LE Greys]

I've often said that FGW should have hung on to the Dellas, that suited the Oxford Flyers just about right, as long as they doubled up in the peaks. The HSTs remaining spare could have gone to XC, and perhaps a few to GC as well. The biggest problem is that HT would not have been able to replace the 222s, so I'm not sure what would have happened there. Still, the XC HSTs aren't exactly up to spec most of the time, judging by availability figures. If they had a few more, they could cover all the long diagrams on the NE-SW corridor, and wouldn't have the 'small fleet' problem they currently suffer from.

 

[Aictos]

I was down at Paddington a few weeks ago one Friday evening and every HST leaving was rammed so putting Voyagers on wouldn't be good.

I don't know what it's like in the off peak but I'm grateful I wasn't using services that evening.

Anyway, Cross Country barely use their own HSTs so even if FGW did agree to some kind of swap I really cannot see Cross Country being able to use the HSTs day in and day out.

What needs to be done is build extra carriages for the existing Voyagers which include the means to run off the OHL which would be a far cheaper method then getting IEP involved so say 220015 is used for the trials using Reading to Newcastle as a sample route then Reading to Doncaster would be made using the diesel engines as a lack of OHL leads to this restriction and use the 25kV AC from Doncaster to Newcastle.

 

[Class 33]

Another plan to help ease the problem a little would be to extend some of the xx:37 services from Nottingham beyond their normal terminating point of Birmingham New Street, to Bristol Temple Meads. And also have some Bristol-Nottingham services. Each of these additional services would run during the busiest times of the day. The services would be formed of Class 170 3-car units or Voyagers. Whilst some additional HST's would be used on the longer routes in place of the normal four/five coach Voyagers.

The timetable for the southbound Nottingham-Bristol services would look something like this:

Nottingham 1637
Beeston 1643
Long Easton 1651
Derby 1702(a) 1706(d)
Willington 1714
Burton-on-Trent 1720
Tamworth 1731
Birmingham New Street 1754(a) 1800(d)
Bromsgrove 1820
Cheltenham Spa 1845
Gloucester 1857 (a) 1907(d)
Bristol Parkway 1935
Bristol Temple Meads 1945


Northbound service:

Bristol Temple Meads 1515
Bristol Parkway 1525
Gloucester 1553 (a) 1612 (d)
Cheltenham Spa 1625
Bromsgrove 1650
Birmingham New Street 1715 (a) 1719(d)
Wilnecote 1735
Tamworth 1739
Burton-on-Trent 1751
Derby 1805(a) 1810(d)
Long Eaton 1819
Beeston 1826
Nottingham 1833

Of course though, they would need some extra trains for these services. So all easier said than done.

 

[MCR247]

Not much point though, because if more HSTs are used it should be so more voyagers can be doubled

Anyway, Cross Country barely use their own HSTs so even if FGW did agree to some kind of swap I really cannot see Cross Country being able to use the HSTs day in and day out.

They would use them more if they didn't have expensive mandatory bogie checks coming up. I think the voyagers are on wet lease so they don't pay for maintenance, but HSTs are on dry lease so they pay for everything.

 

[Class 33]

I remember reading somewhere on one of these threads, someone asking which particular services are operated by double Voyager sets.

I can confirm the Monday's-Friday's 1125 Plymouth-Dundee service is a double set.

I don't know which other services are formed of double Voyagers. But if anyone knows, please post the details here.

I'm certainly no fan of the Voyagers and try to avoid travelling on them if I possibly can if I'm travelling up to the Midlands or beyond. But if I have to get them, I'd at least rather get on a double Voyager set which has more seating than a packed out single Voyager set!

 

[leedstraindude]

I remember reading somewhere on one of these threads, someone asking which particular services are operated by double Voyager sets.

I can confirm the Monday's-Friday's 1125 Plymouth-Dundee service is a double set.

I don't know which other services are formed of double Voyagers. But if anyone knows, please post the details here.

I'm certainly no fan of the Voyagers and try to avoid travelling on them if I possibly can if I'm travelling up to the Midlands or beyond. But if I have to get them, I'd at least rather get on a double Voyager set which has more seating than a packed out single Voyager set!

The 1125 Plymouth - Dundee only runs as a double set between Temple Meads and Newcastle.

The following services run as doubles during the week that I know of (On lines I work!)

0703 New Street - Edinburgh (Mon-Thursday only)
0803 New Street - Edinburgh (Mon-Thursday only)
1308 Edinburgh - Plymouth. Splits to a single unit at Temple Meads. (Mon-Thursday only, Runs as a HST Fridays only)
1408 Edinburgh - Plymouth. Splits to a single unit at Temple Meads.


I think theres a double set used on the Manchester - Bournemouths too but I dont work them so couldnt tell you what!

 

[tbtc]

The 1125 Plymouth - Dundee only runs as a double set between Temple Meads and Newcastle

That's sensible use of stock - I wish they had more Voyagers to double up the core Bristol/ Reading - Manchester/ York section.

However, I made that mistake on the 11.25 Plymouth service earlier this year (from Sheffield to Leuchars) of sitting in the front "northern" section (knowing it'd probably be "split" at Newcastle, as usually happens), only to find it entering Newcastle on the "Sunderland" lines, so my unit was the "southern" on arriving in Newcastle Central, and I had to jog up the platform to get back on again - serves me right for trying to be clever!