Quote:
|
Originally Posted by nidave
You have to remember what Virgan started with when they got the trains franchise - a underinvested old network with bad rollingstock, they had to invest billions anbd wait a while before the service was decent - afik they were not going to use the virgin brand to start with as everything was in such poor shape. Richard Branson decided to use the Virgin brand and build up a reprutation from less than scratch and knew there would be a huge dip in people trusting the brand based on Virgin Trains performance. They have slowly inporved things over time (this comes from a decent user of Virgin trains on the East cost main line).
They have the money and Richard looks like he is prepared to inprove things over time. This can only be good for customers, if he is willing to put billions into the infrastructure and customer service. But as will everything time will tell.
|
Actually, I understand that. However, the problems I have had with virgin trains have not been caused by engineering work, or past underinvestment in the service. Generally they have been caused by virgin devoting over half the train to first class, then massively overbooking the second class (in fact, the last journey I had on a pendolino, this is exactly what happened and there wasn't even enough room to stand).
Oh, and Virgin is more heavily subsidised than BR was.
However, this is getting a little off topic.