It may, at least in the case of a class 185 type unit, have also have been too early. As a quick scan through the wiki article about Desiro's appears to have them starting in Germany in 2000 as a 75mph DMU's. As such, there may not have been enough development time to produce them as a UK unit with suitable speeds.
Fair points, but there should have been something possible along the lines of 100mph DMU without tilt and without "commuter" doors.
Call it a Turbostar with different door positions, or a 100mph 158, but XC's problem is that they are lumbered with stock weighed down with bells and whistles that weren't necessary (tilt, 125mph speed) which means nothing else can be used on the franchise now.
If they'd had something like a 175/ 185 then it might have been easier to place a follow on order, or at least order other stock capable of matching those times. Just because Virgin upgraded the franchise from 95mph loco hauled to 125 DMUs doesn't mean it was inevitable - XC would have worked with 100mph stock.
Still shocking that they were able to replace eight coach trains with five
I was about to say that just wouldn't happen now but aren't some of the ieps going to be five cars
IEP will be significantly better than Voyagers - it won't even be the same ball park - the 26m coaches will mean many more seats than the equivalent number of Voyager coaches.
Which just underlines the fact that the whole tilt on XC thing was an utter shambles. It was a complete waste of money, which could and should have been better spent on providing more 5-car sets.
Yes.
Virgin made it too complicated - the narrow tilting trains sounded like a worthy trade off at the time but something simpler would have worked okay.
This is what people need to remember. If a sector is loss-making it's very hard to justify more stock!
True.
But XC got stuck in a vicious circle of being unable to add more seats to get passenger numbers up (because they had such bespoke trains that they couldn't order anything on the market that was capable of matching Voyager times, and the nature of the franchise means that you can't rewrite the timetable in the way that a C2C or Chiltern might).
The only way they can find more seats now would be to wait for the MML to be wired in the 2020s for the 222s to be "spare" or to wait for the IEP production line to have some spare capacity to order some.
The numbers just keep going up and up... All these 8 car formations of elderly Mk2s that never seemed to make it anywhere near Oxford.
Nobody seems to mention the 2 car 158s that were replaced by Voyagers...
Every time the tale gets told, the fish was a little bit bigger
Today's "youth" could be forgiven for thinking that the old Cross Country was always eight coaches (HST and loco hauled), with no space wasted with buffets/ guard space etc.
It reminds me of the "BR used to run sixteen coach trains on the WCML" debate (about whether IEP was a step forward or not).
Was there not a XC service that started in Taunton, that travelled up via Swindon, Cheltenham to Birmingham that had class 158 trains used on them?
There certainly were 158s from Swindon to Birmingham that way (Swindon - Birmingham being a contender for the "biggest places without a direct service" nowadays), but I don't remember it coming from Taunton?
I thought they were Pompey Liverpool, The Blackpool went to Birmingham International and terminated, that always seem to be a HST.
My memory may be playing tricks, but I think there were even Glasgow - Liverpool - Portsmouth 158s at one stage (stick Granny on it because a direct service is more important than a fast journey). I don't think I'd have the timetables to check though.
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