The average main course costs £15 onboard in the restaurant on GNER. York to London Kings Cross child's Value First GNER single is £34.50! (cheapest when available- £32.50!)- Far more compared to say VT Preston to Euston which is £15.50 child /£31 Adult !! For Manchester, minus around £5.
No, it's not "far more", the fare is roughly the same. £32.50 is for a GNER 1st Advance1. The £34.50 fare you quote is actually GNER 1st Advance4, which has a higher quota and allows child/railcard discounts as per 'normal' tickets. You can then knock 10% off by buying the ticket from the GNER site, so the cheapest ticket becomes £29.25 - marginally cheaper than Virgin.
So, in actual fact, your figures show that GNER are roughly the same as Virgin, your only complaint is that you can't get an (unwarranted, IMO) subsidised discount for the next few months until you turn 16
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At this stage(off peak child fares in all cases)
GNER- £15+£34.50 = £59.50 (and transfer across to Euston).
Erm, what do you mean by "transfer to Euston" - you are assuming King's Cross is less convenient than Euston and that Euston will be the ultimate destination of people arriving at KGX? I highly doubt that at all! Indeed, KGX is more convenient, with a far wider choice of lines to interchange to, as well as an easier interchange with the Met.
It's also a bit sneaky to equate a £15 meal on GNER with a "free" meal on Virgin, for several reasons:-
1. The GNER meals are higher quality, and you get what you pay for.
2. Virgin's "free" meals are subsidised by taxpayers - how is that a good thing? why should we pay for you to have a meal? Yes we pay a premium that goes almost directly to paying your subsidy so you can have freebies.
3. You are also assuming that you can get the cheapest virgin advance on a "Primo" train. How likely is this in reality?
VT- £20 from Preston on the 09:49, with the light breakfast included.
-or- £14 from Manchester.
= GNER via ECML ( including train to York) £60-£70, VT via WCML (including train to Manchester) £15-30 if that.
Not sure what you're saying here, what costs £60-70? If you're saying it would cost that for someone to go from Manchester, via York to London, then yes maybe it would - but there would be no sense in that.
You could compare Manchester-London with Leeds-London, as they are similar routes (although bear in mind Manchester is closer!), but if you want to compare from a common point use somewhere like Huddersfield, Hexham, etc - from places like this you'll find GNER is actually cheaper - at least on walk-on tickets (which is what most passengers, especially FC business-types will actually use).
Basically, your argument is that a 15-year-old who wants to get loads of 'free' meals at the expense of taxpayers is better off with Virgin than GNER. And, you're right, although there are very few people who would take advantage of that and I do have to question whether it's a good thing at all to be honest, and I certainly think that it is highly questionable whether it is fair - it's certainly not a level playing field between the West and East coast (and I'm not just talking about VT vs GNER, with the Great Northern franchise going to FCC who have to also try to pay a premium and whose trains are considerably more overcrowded than Silverlink. It's just ludicrous)