Great Western Coffee Shop

I have found this petition campaigning against Virgin Trains putting 50 W&S jobs at risk.

The creator makes a good point that VT should perhaps look at other WCML places without direct trains. (e.g. Blackpool)

http://petitions.number10.gov.uk/NoVirginTrains/

I have signed, as I feel what VT are doing is unreasonable, and won't benefit the area.

W&S are now worried about the plans.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/wales/north_east/7987910.stm

Keep up, Virgin have dropped their plans to serve Shrewsbury!

When?

Today.

Had never heard of W&S before today

An understandable comment, in that they don't reach down to our area of the South West - but they are a very credible service provider: see http://www.wrexhamandshropshire.co.uk/  ;)

I am informed by a former forum member that the First class grub is the best meal by miles on a train, and free! FGW take note ;)

About 2 months ago I had the pleasure of sampling the complimentary First Class Meal. An absolute pleasure it was too ;D

They had vegetarian options, food served on proper plates/cutlery, Tea was brought in a teapot and china cup to drink out of.

The only thing about W&S i'm not too keen on is that there is no toilet in FC. A trip through the Buffet Car to STD however solves the problem ;)

Confirmation of Virgin's withdrawal ... BBC News (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/wales/north_east/7992388.stm)

This is excellent news.

Now they must start a campaign to stop ATW... If Arriva can spare those 158s, they can run an hourly Aber - Shrews service!

As the king of publicity stunts, Beardie Branson can recognise bad publicity when he sees it - plus I suspect they were worried that they would be asked by ORR to drop their competition protection exemption from Birmingham and Wolverhampton in return for approval of these trains. If that protection had three months to run, they might have bitten the bullet, but with three years to run they probably did their sums and decided business as usual would be better financially.

ATW's plans simply aren't in the same category. Virgin was proposing a proper high-quality express service - a head-on challenge to W&S. ATW is offering, er, class 158s. And why shouldn't Aberystwyth, Newtown and Welshpool have a direct London service? Or are they the Hanboroughs of mid-Wales?

Aber, Newton and Welshpool have a 3 tph connexion at Birmingham International onto a train which takes about 1 hour 10 minutes to reach Euston. (and has advance fares at a fiver)

The stock would be better utilised in providing a regular hourly service along the Cambrian main line. The Cambrian Line user group think this as well! This would benefit the stations a lot more than a handful of trains extending to London, mangling up the Chiltern service and steal passengers off W&S and CH.

Obviously, there is no reason why W&S shouldn't run trains from London to Aber. That would be fair/ make sense.

Or they could give the 158s to FGW!

It would be more likely the case of 'give us our 5 150s back FGW' so they can release the 158s needed to run this service, something I don't think Dft is going to allow to happen bearing in mind that many Cardiff-Portsmouth three car 158s are now full. Going back to 2 carriages is not an option just so ATW can run a service which is handy but not essential. You also have to ask the question would people be prepared to travel on a 158 all the way from the North Wales coast when you can change for an IC service from Virgin or W&S to get to London.

I love the way that you believe Worcester is entitled to some sort of special train service, yet when places that have no direct London service whatever are offered the prospect of one, you're up in arms about it.

And for someone who is obsessed about the smell of toilets on Virgin's trains, why are you so keen on putting the people of Mid-Wales on them?

How is this in any way a threat to Chiltern? A couple of trains a day, set against two or three Chiltern services every hour at the places they are suggesting stopping en route? Just to remind you, you just posted this about West Midlands-London:


Yes, I'm sure poor weak little Chiltern will be quaking in their boots. And it wasn't nothing, as BR NSE was running Turbos to Birmingham from 1993.

As for W&S, it is half-owned by Chiltern/DB, while the brains of the operation, Renaissance Railways, plan thoroughly and I'm sure would have looked at running to the coast, since their key targets were always Shrewsbury and Telford, but instead opted for Wrexham, though their service cuts suggest it's hard to break people's 40-year habit there of travelling via Chester.

But if ATW want to take a chance on it, then why not? And there are obvious pathing issues on a single-track route - ATW avoid this by running as part of the existing service.

It's got nothing to do with being fair. W&S took a commercial risk. Virgin may have backed off, but they had a bad reputation in Shropshire to start with and were only trying to grab traffic from Shrewsbury and Telford - note they have abandoned the plan in its entirety, all the stuff about Walsall was a sideshow.

The five ATW 150s are for strengthening Valley Lines services. Once ATW has finished 158 overhauls and fitting ETCS for the Cambrian resignalling, they will have enough sets in traffic to run this service. At present a 150 is covering for 158s in works.

And however much you get the hump, if ATW want the 150s back, even DafT would find it very hard to argue against the letter of the leases ATW have on them if they get the courts involved - especially as Arriva's lawyers would turn up with all the pronouncements DafT has come out with about how it has nothing to do with rolling stock allocations!

I've got no problem with Aber having a direct service, it is just the effect the service will have on W&S and Chiltern.

There are going to be less regular travellers than Worcester anyway. There are excellent connexions at B'ham Int, and I expect people will start using them. The Cambrian Line user group thinks this is sufficient, and like me think that Mid-Wales would benefit far more with an hourly service.


Not sure what you're saying. W&S don't run Voyagers. ???

Re: Chiltern: they have more than doubled passenger numbers. The NSE service was unreliable and slow on single track - BR was mothballing the route. I doubt any people used the train from Moor Street to Marylebone.

I suppose W&S running into Mid-Wales would cause pathing problems. But it would enable them to increase services to London as part of a more "standard" timetable (or splitting existing trains) and providing the direct service at the same time.

Oh please...

What effect on Chiltern? From a whole two trains a day each way? There may well be an argument to be had about the timings of the train Arriva want to run from London at 12.15, just ahead of W&S, but the others are well spaced out and a 158 is no Mk3.


No, they don't, but you are saying that excellent connections are available at Birmingham from ATW into Virgin services - using Pendolinos, which also have smelly toilets. Whereas, unless you enjoy sitting around at Shrewsbury for about half-an-hour, connections from the coast trains to W&S services are nothing to write home about, while the other way, they miss a connection by about 10 minutes, or there isn't one.

... that would be why they carried out an extensive modernisation programme on the Chiltern lines under NSE in the early 1990s, with new signals and new trains, with ATP, after ditching the plan to close Marylebone. Obviously, they wanted Birmingham-London passengers to go to Euston but it was perfectly possible to go to Marylebone on NSE if you wanted (this was the time they tried out Birmingham Snow Hill-Worcester-Cotswold Line-Paddington services) and at that time there were XC trains from Birmingham to Paddington via Oxford as well. Laing Group chose to bid for the Chiltern line at privatisation because they could see there were good foundations to build on, which they did, but to make out that BR did nothing to assist this process is just wrong.

W&S don't want to go to the coast. And even if they did, they would be charged a small fortune by Network Rail to run class 67s west of Shrewsbury, if they allowed them at all, given the effect they have on track.

Very complimentary article, in today's Observer, about the service. Full page in main paper, will do W&S the world of good and make uncomfortable reading for Sir Richard.
Comparison with Titfield Thunderbolt rather fun... 8)

This perhaps?

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2009/apr/12/train-travel-virgin-wrexham-shropshire

Thanks DM...my post was a bit lazy :-[

Having experienced W&S myself, while I agree with everything that is said about the quality of the onboard service and the trundling through Birmingham, it's a bit much that he completely sidesteps the recent service cuts and why they have made pretty drastic changes in the fare structure and is vague, to put it politely, about the Virgin proposal, making it appear it was announced and then dropped within a matter of days, when it has been on the table since late February - and makes out that Virgin gets ^35m a year for services to Shropshire, when that is the sum for its entire WCML operation.

I'm sure there are plenty of very friendly and helpful Virgin conductors too, never mind all the ones that posters on this forum encounter on FGW services.

It's very easy to cast Branson as a corporate baddie - and I regarded the Shrewsbury service as a pretty cynical scheme myself - but his services aren't the ones where restaurant services are being killed off (albeit that at-seat meals are confined to first class) nor are they running from one end of the country to the other with trolley catering - which FGW has decided won't work on far shorter journeys in this part of the world. And I'm not sure some other operators would have stuck it out through the route modernisation scheme.

The Virgin service to Chester and North Wales is now the best offered in years, 3tph on the Birmingham and Manchester routes speaks for itself. This is a company that has done good things for the railways - if only they could get someone in who knows how to design a decent toilet flushing system.

And if they really do have a Voyager or two spare, then I'm sure the citizens of Blackpool would be delighted to see them a couple of times a day.

I agree with Willc - I think VT are the only TOC enhancing their dining service. Other operators should follow suit: Provide high quality food with decent china, free to First Class passengers; and provide a buffet car for second class passengers.

As well as this, Virgin West Coast have done lots of good things to the rail network; being, for example, one of the only companies decreasing journey times, not adding slack/stops to them; (ignoring their XC franchise) and of course using tilting.

Thanks to the VHF timetable, Britain now has the highest frequency train service linking its top cities in the world.

Unfortunately, the bad things (new trains) have caused hatred. The VHF timetable will only work - as Christian W says - if walk up fares are reasonably priced.