Inside story: Virgin Trains

Virgin trains are a train operating company that operate service on the West Coast Main Line from London to Scotland Via Crewe and Preston. They also operate services to Manchester Piccadilly, Liverpool Lime st, Birmingham New St and Edinburgh.

Virgin trains operates a fleet of Class 390 Pendolinos and Class 221 Super Voyagers. These formed the fleet until the Grayrigg crash when a Class 90 was hired with Mk3 carriages to cover for the missing Class 390.

The pendolinos have recently undergone an upgrade to see most of them lengthed to 11 carriages. This is all part of their 10 year overhaul.

Virgin Trains was in the spotlight in 2013 with the franchise system collapse after the contract to run the WCML franchise was awarded to First Group.  After Virgin appealed the whole UK railway franchising system collapsed and that leaves us where we are today.

Next Weeks Inside story will be about Heathrow Express and Heathrow Connect.

^TB

Inside story: Southern.

Southern are a Train Operating Company.operating in the south and southeast of the UK. They operate services from London Victoria and London Bridge to places such as Dartford, Brighton, Portsmouth Harbour, Southampton central and Littlehampton. Southern all operate most of the local services in the South London Area. These are shared with South West Trains and London Overground.  Southern also operate a service from South Croydon to Milton Keynes Central via Kensington Olympia, This is the only time Southern Class 377’s operate under Overhead Wires and operate North of the Capital.

As a part of the southern franchise the Gatwick Express services are run by southern. There is also plans for the thameslink services to be transferred to southern in 2016.

Southern's train fleet are formed of, Class 377s, Class 455s, Class 456s, Class 313s and Class 171s.

The Gatwick Express stock is formed of Class 442s.

There are currently plans for the new Class 377/6’s to be introduced by Mid 2014 when the Class 456’s are transferred to South West Trains.

Next weeks Inside Story will be about Virgin Trains

^TB

S stock Update.

As now there is 85 of the S stocks running on London Underground Sub - Surface  lines, I think now is a good time to ask you, The readers of the UK Rail Blog what you think of the trains. The trains apart from having a few teething problems with the S8 stock have been very reliable. The Trains now complete the whole of the running for the Metropolitan Line, Most of the running for the Hammersmith & City Line, Some of the running on the Circle Line and are currently being tested on the District Line.

Personally I feel that the trains look very nice and perform well. There is a number of nice features and I quite like the walk though carriages.

However this post is not what I think of then but What you think of them? Therefore I am going to ask you these three questions, If you could reply in the comments section at the bottom that would be great.

What do you think of the New S stock overall?

Do you think they are worth the Investment?

What do you think is the best / Worst feature of the S stock?

^TB

First Great Western Franchise Extension.

From the 12th October 2013 First will begin to operate the Great Western franchise extension. The extension is for 21 months and will take us up to 2016. This will see a number of changes take place under First. The first of which is the opening of the New Reading station and the Fly over. Then the beginning of the new electric train service on the Great Western Main Line to Oxford and then on High speed services to the south west.

As part of the new Franchise extension First will be implementing WiFi onto all of its High speed services and onto Thames trains services towards the middle of 2014. This strategy to get more passengers using the service and to allow them to still be connected on-line is a good plan which is already working on their Class 180 fleet. The WiFi will be free to use and covers the whole of the train. All you will need to do is give an email address to confirm the login details.

The refranchising process will begin in mid 2015 to start in 2016.

^TB

100th Post

Just to let everybody know this is the UK Rail Blog’s 100th post.

In this post I would like to remind you about our Twitter Page : https://twitter.com/UKrailwayblog

And Our Facebook page : https://www.facebook.com/ukrailblog

^TB

Inside story : First Scotrail.

First Scotrail is one of only 3 Train operating companies in Scotland, The others being East Coast and Virgin trains who operate services south towards London. First took over the scotrail franchise in 2004

Scotrail serves a number of places such as Perth, Inverness, Dundee, Edinburgh, Aberdeen, Oban, Fort William, and Local services in the Glasgow area. First Scotrail also operate the Iconic Caledonian Sleeper service From London to Scotland, This is 1 of only 2 left in the UK. (The other being the Night Riviera sleeper run by First Great Western between London and Penzance). First Scotrail also run services over the breath taking Forth Rail Bridge on the Fife Circle Line.

First Scotrail's fleet consists of Class 150s, Class 156s, Class 158s, Class 170s, Class 314s, Class 318s, Class 320s, Class 334s and Class 380s. First Scotrail’s fleet also consists of Class 67s and Class 90s for hauling the sleeper services and Mark 1/2 carriages for the sleeper stock.

Unlike most Train Operating companies, First scotrail is controlled and subsidized by the Scottish government and not told what to do by the Department for Transport.

Next Weeks Inside Story will be about Southern Railways

^TB

HS2

HS2 is a planned High Speed Railway to run between London Euston and The midlands, Northern England and Scotland. Construction of the line is scheduled to start in 2017 and the first phase to Birmingham will be complete by 2026 and the second phase to be completed by 2032. Running to Leeds and Manchester with links to the existing West and East coast main lines to Edinburgh and Glasgow.  

Phase 1 planned route.

Phase 2 planned route.

High speed rail in the UK.

Trains are planned to be able to reach speeds of 250 mph and will use the 25kv Overhead electrification system.

The railway is currently planned to cost £50 Billion but some organisations including the Labour party (Who are threatening to pull the plug) are saying it may cost up to £80 Billion. There are a number of campaigners saying that this money should be used to upgrade the existing infrastructure. 

I personally feel that this project would show off what this country can do and bring massive economic boasts to the Midlands, Lancashire and Yorkshire.

^TB

Eurostar Bid for the East Coast Main Line!

The companies that own Eurostar have made a bid to the Department for Transport to run the East Coast Main Line franchise from 2015. This could see a new company in the bidding. Virgin Rail have also bid for the new franchise.

^TB

Inside story: South West Trains.

This weeks Inside story will look at the working of South West Trains. South West Trains are the most used Train Operating Company on the entire network (Passenger wise). South West Trains also operate from the two busiest stations Clapham Junction (for number of trains) and London Waterloo (Number of Passengers). The companies stock mostly run off 750v third rails.

The company serves the Following station from London Waterloo; Dorking, Shepperton, Woking, Guildford via Cobham and Epson, Windsor and Eton Riverside, Reading, Portsmouth Harbour via Basingstoke and Guildford, Poole, Weymouth, Salisbury, Exeter st Davids and Bristol Temple Meads. They also operate trains on the kingston and Hounslow loops.

The stock the company uses is divided into 3 categories (Depending on the liveries) the Express White Trains which are Class 158/159’s operating to Salisbury, Bristol and Exeter and Class 444s which operate to Portsmouth and Weymouth. The Blue which are Class 450s and Class 458s and these operate to Reading, Basingstoke, Portsmouth, Poole, Weybridge and some services in the London suburban area. All other services out of London Waterloo are served by Class 455s

South West Trains also own Island lines on the Isle of wight using class 483s.

South West Trains are currently expanding their fleet with lengthening trains by using the Class 456s to make 10 carriage trains and using the former class 460 carriages to make 5 Carriage Class 458/5s. These steps are being taken to improve the capacity of the routes. South West Trains also want to open the platforms 20 - 24 of the old Waterloo International to domestic passengers to ease the problems at Waterloo with train slots.

Next weeks inside story will be about First ScotRail.

^TB