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First Trenitalia (Avanti!) WCML branding, naming and livery

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Steddenm

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The 390 I was on today had debranded antimacastas, a plain silver slip mat on the table, unbranded sugar, salt and pepper, different water bottles and a VT-free first class menu.
 
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Bletchleyite

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On a train this morning, coach G had a lot of anti-maccassors (sorry don't know how to spell it) missing, no way of telling whether this was the result of theft or removal due to becoming dirty and no replacements.

A load were missing on the train I was on on Sunday too, I thought it was declassified for a short while.

But the grey and red wavy lines are still on waiting room windows.

I'm not sure those are distinctly enough Virgin to bother anyone.
 
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Might be 390156, but I had read somewhere in this forum that first train in Avanti West Coast might unveiled at London Euston on 9th Dec at the official launch, then operate the launch special. We shall see :D
 

M60lad

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Might be the wrong place to post this but will Avanti Trains be retaining and obviously rebranding all the Virgin Trains 1st Class Lounges at various stations?
 

Steddenm

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The only first class lounges that are mentioned in the franchise letter to staff were Euston, Manchester and Glasgow Central. Not sure what is happening at LIV, CRE or SOT.
 

scrapy

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Might be the wrong place to post this but will Avanti Trains be retaining and obviously rebranding all the Virgin Trains 1st Class Lounges at various stations?
Yes they will and adding one at Stockport and possibly Preston if the station ever gets a full revamp.
 

rdlover777

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looks like Avanti are getting some 80Xs https://twitter.com/Clinnick1/status/1202847640851034112

£350m deal for @HitachiRailEU to build 23 trains at Newton Aycliffe for @avantiwestcoast. The trains will be a mix of ten seven-carriage electric trains and 13 five-carriage bi-mode trains. They will enter traffic from 2022.

I must admit, the Avanti West Coast livery looks stunning on an IET

ELFffduXkAAjk6e.jpg
 

krus_aragon

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atacama40

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Apologies, an amateur poster here so maybe this is very well covered.

Have been using Virgin maybe 10-15 times a year the last 10 years or so for First trips from Telford/Wolverhampton to Euston... very happily in fairness save for Wolverhampton lounge closing a year or so back.

I booked a Euston First return for this coming Friday many weeks back. Two things I did not realise; 1. that we'd be in central London the day of the election results and 2. that Virgin would no longer be Virgin on this day!!!. In fact there was a third thing .... that there would be an election at all! :s

Just to ask more knowledge folk what we might expect to see different on the day? From what I gather very little. Read a lot of pages on the thread but could not gather so much. What I did learn ... is what an Antimacassar was :D

I ask just out of enthusiastic curiosity rather than any huge concern or technical study and as someone who still enjoys that particular service if no great fan of the Euston lounge which I always felt very utility like (generous in fact). Has that had any form of revamp?

Appreciate any information you may have,
 
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I just passed a debranded 390 (couldn’t get the number) with a white sticker over its nose cone. Any idea if this is related to the rebrand
 

RealTrains07

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The livery would look better without the white areas as that just looks bland and lazy and doesnt in my opinion fit well with the green and blue which both complement eachother nicely
 

TRAX

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The livery would look better without the white areas as that just looks bland and lazy and doesnt in my opinion fit well with the green and blue which both complement eachother nicely
If there wasn’t any white you wouldn’t have the green and blue you like stand out so easily.
 

vicktrick

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They’ve ripped most of the red benches on the platforms out at Coventry and replaced them with grey ones. Not exciting just wanted to post
 

Mathew S

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Apologies, an amateur poster here so maybe this is very well covered.

Have been using Virgin maybe 10-15 times a year the last 10 years or so for First trips from Telford/Wolverhampton to Euston... very happily in fairness save for Wolverhampton lounge closing a year or so back.

I booked a Euston First return for this coming Friday many weeks back. Two things I did not realise; 1. that we'd be in central London the day of the election results and 2. that Virgin would no longer be Virgin on this day!!!. In fact there was a third thing .... that there would be an election at all! :s

Just to ask more knowledge folk what we might expect to see different on the day? From what I gather very little. Read a lot of pages on the thread but could not gather so much. What I did learn ... is what an Antimacassar was :D

I ask just out of enthusiastic curiosity rather than any huge concern or technical study and as someone who still enjoys that particular service if no great fan of the Euston lounge which I always felt very utility like (generous in fact). Has that had any form of revamp?

Appreciate any information you may have,
Other than a change of branding, I doubt you'll see any changes by next Thursday. Certainly, there won't have been any significant alterations to things like the lounges, or to the trains. I mean, First Trenitalia will only have had the franchise for 5 days at that point, they'll barely have had time to "move in".
 

Rick1984

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The livery would look better without the white areas as that just looks bland and lazy and doesnt in my opinion fit well with the green and blue which both complement eachother nicely
I'm with you on this, the blue and green with orange accent and no white would look lovely
 

atacama40

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Other than a change of branding, I doubt you'll see any changes by next Thursday. Certainly, there won't have been any significant alterations to things like the lounges, or to the trains. I mean, First Trenitalia will only have had the franchise for 5 days at that point, they'll barely have had time to "move in".

Thanks Mathew I sort of imagined that might be the answer.

And yet when an airline takes over a routing or airport or a hotel takes over a franchise, they always do this stuff up front. (speaks a man who who has spent far too much of the last 30 years in airports and hotels) ... the soft stuff that is, not the heavy lift and complex refit. You might have thought that very simple catering aspects, and the soft product could be added in and branded within days? Not seat refits and new hardware or software, just marketing impact stuff. And indeed even the lounges are so small and limited in scope that it's hard to see how any of them could take more than 5 days to implement from an F&P point of view.

And also parallel to the airline and hotel world, the intro phase usually has enhanced product even if the first few days. Like BA adding their first A380 to LHR-HKG ... they gave branded A380 sleep suits out in F. Childish stuff but very very common in those worlds and product.

Am I over simplifying the rail world? Just comparing to the one I work within. Either way I think you are right. Maybe the marketing machine is a little more old school.
 

Mathew S

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Thanks Mathew I sort of imagined that might be the answer.

And yet when an airline takes over a routing or airport or a hotel takes over a franchise, they always do this stuff up front. (speaks a man who who has spent far too much of the last 30 years in airports and hotels) ... the soft stuff that is, not the heavy lift and complex refit. You might have thought that very simple catering aspects, and the soft product could be added in and branded within days? Not seat refits and new hardware or software, just marketing impact stuff. And indeed even the lounges are so small and limited in scope that it's hard to see how any of them could take more than 5 days to implement from an F&P point of view.

And also parallel to the airline and hotel world, the intro phase usually has enhanced product even if the first few days. Like BA adding their first A380 to LHR-HKG ... they gave branded A380 sleep suits out in F. Childish stuff but very very common in those worlds and product.

Am I over simplifying the rail world? Just comparing to the one I work within. Either way I think you are right. Maybe the marketing machine is a little more old school.
You will, I'm sure, see what you've called "soft stuff" there change. Things like branding on water bottles, antimacassars, etc.
Other than that, well, not that much is actually going to change anyway in the short term.
 

ag51ruk

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And also parallel to the airline and hotel world, the intro phase usually has enhanced product even if the first few days. Like BA adding their first A380 to LHR-HKG ... they gave branded A380 sleep suits out in F. Childish stuff but very very common in those worlds and product.

You may possibly see the food on-board change next week (although the First Class menus were recently reprinted with no branding, so I suspect not until the next menu change) and maybe some small giveaways - branded ticket wallets, that kind of thing. But there is a big difference between producing sleeper suits for the max 14 people already paying several thousand pounds for a long haul F ticket on a plane, and what you can do on a busy rail line carrying tens of thousands of people every day.
 

RealTrains07

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Virgin trains name has disappeared from station and on board train annoucements

Very sad
 
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