Worst Franchise?

[Bletchleyite]

The mallard refurbishment of the coaching stock was also a significant improvement on what went before

I'd question that. Yes, the fake wood was nice and so was First Class, but the Standard seats were awful - who ever thought a seat base that sloped down away from the back was a good idea? This was fixed later by VTEC so they should get the credit.

I did generally find at times that GNER were very prioritising of First Class and treated Standard passengers like the dirt on their shoe. They also seemed to sell Weekend First with rather a sneer, how dare their superb First Class have proles only paying £15 a pop in there.

I don't think they deserve any of the credit they often get to be honest. I know Virgin West Coast were never everyone's cup of tea, but in my view they were, as an overall package, way better. XC of course was mistakes from start to finish though.

 

[ChiefPlanner]

A little unfair IMO. The county operation was pretty decent, if somewhat “plain vanilla”. The metro services always struck me as trying to make the best of what was available. When TFL took over they had access to a lot more money.

It was unfortunate that the metro routes passed through what were at the time some very troubled parts of London, but Silverlink’s operation was no different to many other London franchises.

They might win the award for most garish branding though.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: Yesterday at 20:34 ==



Wouldn’t disagree with that, however they were very unpopular on the Thameslink side.

I mentioned before of working for Silverlink ( I always preferred the name North London Railways) - the County services got most of the management attention , the Metro services , not much , but there were some excellent staff down there , and I went out of my way to give some attention there - first things was getting the 313 fleet into a decent cleanliness state by getting them deep cleaned and imposed a zero graffiti policy for them (we had spare sets due to the Railtrack inability to complete the Eurostar works which chopped up the NLL into a series of shuttles and it over ran by a year !) - the franchise had no measures for growth especially for station manning etc , and driver retention was always difficult especially when the offer was 4 round trips on the DC , other operators such as Chiltern and GNER were more than keen on recruiting trained drivers , and we suffered accordingly. So we recruited and trained some new drivers - and you can guess what happened to them !

However- some of the efforts was noticed by the media , especially the Times which kindly noticed that despite working in some challenging areas of inner London , real efforts were being made to improve things. Trust me - it was a challenge at times and I look back on it now as a great job , very grateful to get it by facing genuine redundancy when Crossrail 1 was scrapped ....however that was now a long time ago now !

 

[Tetchytyke]

GNER in particular benefitted from the recent BR investment, but made little investment of its own and its parent company went under.

GNER was making money for Sea Containers right until the end. The issue was that, once it became insolvent, Sea Containers couldn’t continue to underwrite the franchise.

Given what happened with National Express afterwards, they should have let GNER continue as a management buyout. They’d have done a lot better than NX did.

GNER did invest where they could but were hamstrung by a lack of suitable stock. They were so desperate for Mk3s at one point they were seriously considering converting sleeper carriages. They ended up with the 373s because they were the only way to get extra capacity, but obviously the 373s were less than ideal. It got better once the Mk3s from Virgin started to become available.

GNER deserve a mention for the way they happily ignored long running local train services so they could encourage passengers to use coach services to places like Hull

It was faster to take the coach from Bradford to Wakefield than it was to catch the local train to Leeds and change there. The idea never really took off because people didn’t want to take a coach instead of a train, but I don’t think it was such a bad idea.

I don't get the love for GNER. They did little bar paint the trains blue. It was just BR in a different colour, but adding an irritating insularity as you say. When they did refurbish, they installed seats with single piece cushions that sloped the wrong way, a terrible piece of design only fixed some years later by Virgin/Stagecoach.

The East Coast was very good under BR but GNER was still a step up in service. GNER were sensible enough to not try and break what was working.

The Mallard refurbishment wasn’t perfect, but the seats were still better than the original seating.

 

[Bletchleyite]

The Mallard refurbishment wasn’t perfect, but the seats were still better than the original seating.

Disagree. They were worse than even the IET collapsed seats - they caused me horrible back pain due to being totally the wrong shape. The closest thing to them still around is those awful collapsed Richmonds on North East 156s.

Enthusiasts loved GNER because it had dark blue trains with metal crests. But frankly, when I used it I found it to be rubbish. Virgin on the other hand developed a modern railway and pioneered lots of new concepts like Advance single fares, though it did do some silly things like the "colour zones" thing for classes (though the whole idea wasn't that bad, it later resurfaced as Standard Premium).

 

[Tetchytyke]

I did generally find at times that GNER were very prioritising of First Class and treated Standard passengers like the dirt on their shoe.

I disagree here. Standard class got improvements- the trolley in addition to the buffet car was a good one. GNER’s first class offering was actually pretty average, tea and biscuits and everything else had to be paid for.

If you want to see what treating standard class passengers badly looked like, I refer you to NXEC. And if you want to see what treating first class passengers badly looked like, I refer you to Virgin East Coast: David Horne cut everything that could be cut (his first move was to replace the wine glasses with smaller glasses- sums up how pathetic his attitude is) and now I’m not sure why anyone would pay for LNER first class.

 

[Djgr]

First North Western always seemed to have a much bigger focus on introducing/running their London services then they ever did with the "day job" of long standing services in North West England/ North Wales, but they be my hazy memory, maybe the contract required them to? Unsure

My memory is that this was a vanity project.

They also had to be relieved of responsibily for managing Liverpool Lime Street.

 

[Harpo]

driver retention was always difficult

So we recruited and trained some new drivers - and you can guess what happened to them !

I said very early on that there should have been a transfer fee for any operator taking on a qualified driver. It would certainly have helped suppress the inflationary cycle of the wages bill.

 

[43096]

I said very early on that there should have been a transfer fee for any operator taking on a qualified driver. It would certainly have helped suppress the inflationary cycle of the wages bill.

Agreed, but it would never have been legal under "freedom of movement" legislation. There'd have been a "Bosman ruling" for train drivers had it happened!

 

[ChiefPlanner]

At least Silverlink were spared the potential disaster of the ex WYPTE narrow bodied 14x - they were subsequently sold to Iran I think. (late receipt of ex Central 150/1 was a blessed relief as the 117's were dying fast by then !)

 

[Pyewipecarshed]

Didn't think they were that bad on the WCML to be honest. They were at least managed locally.

Silverlink Metro was dire though.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: Today at 14:44 ==



I don't get the love for GNER. They did little bar paint the trains blue. It was just BR in a different colour, but adding an irritating insularity as you say. When they did refurbish, they installed seats with single piece cushions that sloped the wrong way, a terrible piece of design only fixed some years later by Virgin/Stagecoach.

I'd venture the original First TransPennine Express. They started by sticking ugly blue F-in-circle stickers on the Northern Spirit livery and went on to order a totally inadequate fleet in the 185s (yes, they're nice, but they were overcrowded from day one, and a cheaper fleet of e.g. 170s could have meant a larger one, the same error that happened with XC) and all that pervaded from top to bottom by an arrogant "We're Intercity don't you know" snootiness while their service was barely adequate in capacity terms to be a short distance commuter one. Absolutely awful from start to finish. At the time I avoided them at any cost, just as I avoid XC now.

In TPE's defence I believe the original request was for 55 4 or 5-car units, but the ever-helpful DfT would only authorise the expenditure for 51 3-cars.

In GNER's defence, it wasn't that their operation was unprofitable or that they were struggling to pay their agreed franchise payments (as affected the latter two), it was that their parent company was struggling so much they decided to just give up and refocus on their core business.

GNER were affected quite badly for a while by the poor reliability of the BR investments - organising the rebuild of the Class 91's while getting 90's, 373's and the 89 in as cover / expansion. The mallard refurbishment of the coaching stock was also a significant improvement on what went before, so I think it's a bit unfair to call them a failure.

I was never a huge fan of GNER. It took far too long to refurbish the mk4's (the ex-smoking cars being particularly disgusting inside), and the 91s were only refurbished after a series of very disruptive failures essentially forced them into action.

 

[Recessio]

Possibly not the absolute worst, but in relative terms it was shocking how quickly South Western Railway nosedived compared to how well South West Trains had been operating before it. (SWT being one of the best TOCs in the former NSE area that I have direct experience of).

For the absolute worst that I experienced, the Thameslink side of First Capital Connect (or "Worst Crapital Cockup" as my father used to call them) was diabolical. Also, it was just a terrible name... Not as bad as "One" though.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: Today at 20:47 ==

I mentioned before of working for Silverlink ( I always preferred the name North London Railways) - the County services got most of the management attention , the Metro services , not much , but there were some excellent staff down there , and I went out of my way to give some attention there - first things was getting the 313 fleet into a decent cleanliness state by getting them deep cleaned and imposed a zero graffiti policy for them (we had spare sets due to the Railtrack inability to complete the Eurostar works which chopped up the NLL into a series of shuttles and it over ran by a year !) - the franchise had no measures for growth especially for station manning etc , and driver retention was always difficult especially when the offer was 4 round trips on the DC , other operators such as Chiltern and GNER were more than keen on recruiting trained drivers , and we suffered accordingly. So we recruited and trained some new drivers - and you can guess what happened to them !

However- some of the efforts was noticed by the media , especially the Times which kindly noticed that despite working in some challenging areas of inner London , real efforts were being made to improve things. Trust me - it was a challenge at times and I look back on it now as a great job , very grateful to get it by facing genuine redundancy when Crossrail 1 was scrapped ....however that was now a long time ago now !

London Overground was a massive transformation for the Metro side of Silverlink - and I'm still a huge proponent of TfL getting further metro rail operations - but it would have been interesting to see what Silverlink could have done if they'd had anywhere near the same financial and political support that TfL later had.

 

[Failed Unit]

without a doubt I would have voted for Central trains, for the same reason that many others have mentioned. Some of the long routes to be honest were not so stupid. Grimsby Town - Chester via Nottingham & Leicester maybe not so good. However the split up really hurt the midlands. It was not the fact the ran direct services over massive length that were the problems, they were just badly managed that was the problem. I did actually travel on many Grimsby - Chester services (not the whole way that ran on time)

GTR are fighting hard to get the worse TOC ever award, But CT defiantly can win that trophie. Skegness - Manchester Airport on a 153 anybody?