They do run Voyagers from Birmingham to Glasgow/ Edinburgh. Voyagers are badly needed on XC (and elsewhere, given reliability problems with 180s). However, if the line from Crewe to Chester were to be wired then Virgin could get rid of all their Voyagers, apart from a token daily service to Holyhead.
As I've argued on another thread, the logical way to do this would be to run London - Wolverhampton - Shrewsbury - Wrexham - Chester - Holyhead, thus giving these towns *a* London service (whilst additional Pendolini are ordered for Birmingham to Glasgow/ Edinburgh and for the hourly London - Chester service)
If you are ordering Pendolinos anyway, why keep a few Voyagers for a single London service via Wrexham? Order a few more, and you can keep the Holyhead service. There seems to be a surplus of VT 57s, since they spared 4 for ATW who won't be needing them from December if the 67s take over. Just attatch one to the Pendolino and drag, they can do it once a week why not every day. It is a 3hr 20min round trip, from Holyhead to Chester and back. You'd have to add dwell at Holyhead but one loco should therefore manage a service every 4 hours, so for a 2-hourly service 2 locos would surfice. It'd probablly result in a change to the spacing of the services and perhaps an overall reduction in London trains but it would release ALL VT's Voyagers and certainly allow more than a token one direct train per day.
The only sea/rail train left is the 0630 Summer Sunday ex Chester(ATW) which allows a few hours in Ireland & a return arriving back via the Sundays only 2150? ex Holyhead, this train is the last & latest running departure out of Holyhead in the entire week.
Sounds daft to me. Fishguard is a much smaller port, yet the railway has survived solely on Irish traffic for many, many years. I can't see locals using the Fishguard service at the moment, it is hopeless for them, that's what the extra services coming in September will hopefully address. Despite this, when I did the route, the daytime train wasn't too badly loaded. Maybe the lack of rail-sail passengers at Holyhead is due to train times not connecting with ferries? Granted, Fishguard has been cut from an
INTERCITY 125 to a Sprinter, but there are still a few rail-sail passengers unless locals have invented a time warp to allow the one daytime train to actually suit them.
Being realistic, flying people from Dublin to London is not sustainable...........the EU have plans to come down HARD on this type of route.
Forget 'this type of route', the whole plane culture and car culture is unsustainable. Forget the EU, our own government need to come down hard on aviation, by introducing massive landing or take-off taxes, applicable to all non-military aircraft including frieght. If it doesn't kill of aviation, at least it would raise some much needed money to pay to de-carbonise or electricity supply with a large number of submerged tidal stream turbines supported by a smaller number of further hydro electric schemes, wind farms and nuclear power plants.
...but then you could argue that people travelling long distance every day isn't sustainable.
I could go into how humanity itself in its current state is unsustainable, but that isn't the topic of this fourm.
I'll tell you where those spare trains are coming from. Last week I came across ATW asking network rails maintenance engineers would they object to them running SEVERAL class 67 locos along with a MK2/3 DVT sets to run at MU speed differentials along the marches route from next may. I seen it all in black and white!!
Mark 2s!! I thought the 67 + DVT sets on the WAG expresses where supposed to consist solely of mark 3 stock. Does this mean the existing stock for WAG1 will be used, with the 57 exhanged for a 67 and a DVT added?
Are the 57s already cleared to run at MU speeds, or is this why WAG2 on the supposedly slower route via Wrexham isn't really slower than WAG1? If the 57s are cleared, perhaps we could see them on WAG 2 from December until May? If not, I hope ATW pay back the money WAG paid for
LHCS on WAG2 from December.
This mention of mark 3s and DVTs brings us back closer to the topic of the WSMR stock and my earlier, still unanswered, questions:
I really regret missing out on a ride on WSMR, I was planning to do it this summer but then they stopped running the service. It is a little more difficult to get a ride on the stock now as it no longer runs into Wales. If it looks like these sets will be removed from service for another refurbishment soon (including the power-door fitment) how long have I got before they reduce the number of Moor Street - Marylebone turns using the stock to allow a set to go in for refub?
A little aside,
what's going on here? Obviously, there is a Wrexham & Shropshire liveried mark 3 DVT in the foreground but what's that in the background? Looks like the Irish mark 2 DBSO to me. Does somebody out there share my opinion that the 6 remaining DBSOs (ie. the ones that aren't with Network Rail) should be re-activated to get those stored Arriva Trains Wales mark 2s out into service, and has forked out the money to do just that?
Sorry I'm having to ask this a third time, but having missed out on what was possibly the best train service in Britain I'm really keen not to miss out entirly on experiencing at least part of the experience.
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