|
Re: Virgin Trains loses West Coast Mainline franchise
I'm an infrequent rail traveller, but have in the last few years experienced main line services run on the East Coast Line, West Coast Line, and most recently towards Cardiff. By far the best services were those by Virgin Trains.
Virgin Trains, with it's Pendolino stock is at the forefront of mainline services. Of course they have been able to take advantage of the upgrades and investment in the west coast line to introduce that stock. I'd also suspect that there were incentives in the franchise to develop the Pendolino trains.
It would seem unfair that Virgin Trains do a lot of the groundwork in uplifting services, only to loose out to another operator, who will no doubt inherit the modern stock and reap the rewards for potentially less development effort.
It should be noted that many of the new franchise services improvements to come, are also only possible because of already announced improvements to some of the rail infrastructure, such as electrification of the line to Blackpool from Preston.
|