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Video: Edinburgh to London in 8 minutes

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PeterY

PeterY

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Interesting to watch but I found it slightly too fast.
 
QueensCurve

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absolutelymilk said:
Virgin have released this nice video

https://www.globalrailwayreview.com/news/61372/edinburgh-london-8-minutes/

showing the sped-up journey along the ECML. I was struck by the large amounts of double/triple track between Peterborough and Huntingdon despite no obvious obstructions. Have there ever been plans to increase the number of tracks here?
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London to Brighton in 4 minutes would roughly correspond to London to Edinburgh in 15-30 minutes, by time or distance respectively.
 
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SaveECRewards

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It's mentioned on the VTEC website too: https://www.virgintrainseastcoast.com/news/virgin-trains-accelerates-journeys-film/

There's also a London-Glasgow video for the west coast.

Typical Virgin trying to take credit for things that they had no control over:
Virgin took over the east coast route in 2015 and is now planning to bring regular Edinburgh-London journey times to around four hours, every hour, following introduction of its new fleet of state-of-the-art Azuma trains.
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The only thing they can take credit for is the 'Azuma' name.

Over the past two decades, Virgin has become famous for speeding up intercity journeys on the west coast route, where it accelerated the Glasgow-London journey time from more than five hours to 4hr,29min following introduction of its Virgin High Frequency timetable in 2009.
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More to do with Network Rail I'd suggest. I think the APT was quicker and the original plan was to have the Pendolinos reach their top speed of 140MPH so it's not much of an achievement.
 
gazthomas

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I find it a bit too fast too. Mesmerising music! Also, any idea why they cut the stations out? People? Dwell times slowing the film down?
 
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The Planner

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absolutelymilk said:
showing the sped-up journey along the ECML. I was struck by the large amounts of double/triple track between Peterborough and Huntingdon despite no obvious obstructions. Have there ever been plans to increase the number of tracks here?
Click to expand...

Pretty sure there is a scheme to extend the 4 track north of Huntingdon in the pipeline towards Woodwalton.
 
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mrcheek

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Searle said:
Whose terrible idea was it to cut away and back at each station? It's so jarring >_<
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I'm guessing its to avoid the issue of showing any people without having gained their permission
 
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AlterEgo

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mrcheek said:
I'm guessing its to avoid the issue of showing any people without having gained their permission
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They don't need their permission. A station is a public place.

Not sure why they chose a southbound service as that inevitably comes with some direct sunlight affecting the video for some parts of the journey.

And weren't there a lot of bugs on the windscreen??
 
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Taunton

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The Festiniog Railway did a comparable one in the 1960s, Portmadoc to Tan-y-Bwlch in 2 minutes. It showed them firing in "radioactive" coal to the loco before the start :roll:
 
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SaveECRewards

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jon0844 said:
Not a problem if Jeremy Corbyn had been on one of the stations of course.
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Whatever you think of Corbyn - I do think the video he did was stupid regardless of whether he got a seat or not as nationalisation won't magic up more seats - after all East Coast used the same trains.

Some say the timing was to detract from BA getting some good publicity (as it was on the same day BA were flying Team GB home), some say he wanted to lend a hand to Owen Smith in the leadership election. But the fact is, some trains are over crowded and some people have to sit on the floor or stand.

The timing of this was done just before a bank holiday weekend where many people have to stand on trains because they didn't reserve a seat. It meant even more anger than usual was directed at the social media teams (and possibly staff on board if they could be reached) because the Corbyn incident was fresh in people's mind.

Without Branson's interference only a few Guardian readers would have known about the video.
 
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