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Alliance Blackpool service to be run by Grand Central and start in 2021

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Realfish

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I think they'd be better off running to Lancaster, Oxenholme, Penrith and Carlisle, linking those places (and Preston) with some of the stops which the Virgin/Avanti Glasgow service skips: MKC, Nuneaton and Stafford.

Whether it be Blackpool or, as you say, further north, the omission of Stafford from the proposed service is a disappointment. While Nuneaton will provide southbound revenue and satisfy demands for more London bound services, Stafford is similarly poorly served, with direct northbound services, and from the WCML north. I understand Stafford and Lichfield, as well as Tamworth and Nuneaton were to have been calling points, presumably when it was envisaged tilt would be available. Not now.
 
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paul1609

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I often find now that for London to the North West trainsplit usually offers me either LMR advances to Crewe and onward on the ultra cheap avanti advances or very cheap avanti advances to Manchester Picadilly and a connection from there. Im never paying much more than £20 and my next trip to Blackpool on the 22nd is under a tenner (all fares are railcard discounted). The slightly longer journey and one 15 min connection at Crewe or Manchester is always going to win for me. The only way that Grand Central are going to attract my business are Off peak return fares at around £40 and I cant see thats going to be profitable for an open access operator. Its a very different environment competition wise to the ECML.
 

Essexman

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I will definitely use these services when I can. I try to avoid nauseating Pendolinos as much as possible.
 

The_Train

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Whether it be Blackpool or, as you say, further north, the omission of Stafford from the proposed service is a disappointment. While Nuneaton will provide southbound revenue and satisfy demands for more London bound services, Stafford is similarly poorly served, with direct northbound services, and from the WCML north. I understand Stafford and Lichfield, as well as Tamworth and Nuneaton were to have been calling points, presumably when it was envisaged tilt would be available. Not now.

I do feel that Stafford is badly served northbound by WCML services. Off the top of my head I think we get a service to Holyhead which is one of the first workings in a morning, an early evening run to Blackpool, a later run to Holyhead/Chester and then an evening (I think around 9ish) working to Manchester but every other service through the day works into Liverpool and there is a notable difference between numbers waiting for the London bound trains and those waiting on P3 for the Liverpool trains. I was thinking just last week that even just alternating between Liverpool and Manchester services calling at Stafford would offer a little variation and an alternative to a XC voyager to Manchester.

So yes it would have been nice to have the Grand Central services stop at Stafford, especially had they run further north, but I guess the argument will always be that Stafford has an easy connection at Crewe
 

cle

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But they wouldn’t get that as an open access operator. The point is that this route is to and from Blackpool as a convenient place to operate it based on what would be approved. Blackpool won’t be what is driving the tickets sales in either direction. Preston and Euston are the main two markets here and this is designed to grab a share of what is a busy and currently expensive route compared to the Manchester to London services. It will add some capacity and presumably, if they get their pricing right, will attract some business and leisure sales over to them from Avanti.

Revenue from Blackpool, MKC etc will be a nice bonus for them, but London / Preston will be what makes the operation a success or a failure.
But there is competition to Blackpool, as Virgin/Avanti run there too. If anything, running to Cumbria is more interesting as there are other operators too, operating a mix of stopping, fast and skip services - so more scope to play on price, or to differentiate on new destinations and connections (Stafford, Trent Valley, MK) which aren't currently served.

All of these possibilities will add up to a sum of their parts. London-Preston is a reasonable flow, but it isn't London-Manchester or Leeds, or even York, and can be often overstated on here. Direct Blackpools are a chunk of it, as are better Manchester-Scotland and new Liverpool-Scotland services (both routes).
 

philthetube

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assuming that what you say is correct then the number of hotels in Blackpool tells you that many people use alternative travel arrangements to get there. Train?
 

swt_passenger

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Define confirmed? they were offered ages ago. Just because they aren't in the downstream systems doesn't mean they aren't there.
They’ve also previously reached the stage of appearing in RTT, although subsequently hidden again, and a proposed all day timetable has been made public before now. Both were mentioned earlier in this thread.

So my gut feeling is they’ll reappear exactly as before when and if the rolling stock and traincrew is sorted out.

But they haven’t actually got a brilliant track record when it comes to starting on the date that they originally applied for?
 

Southern Dvr

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Scrapy - it's called "Abstraction" and that now has as much relevance to Open Access business plans as running steam engines, thanks to the overwhelming move to Dedicated Tickets, which has cut the ORCATS sharing out of revenue on major IC flows to near peanuts.

They will have to compete on service, price and accessibility or they will be out of business pretty quickly.

They can ORCATS on London to Milton Keynes & Nuneaton tickets from LNWR & AWC as those are I suspect still quite well served by the turn up and go ticket buyers. How about Preston to Blackpool, are there many ‘Northern Only’ fares?

There is something of the ORCATS Raid about this one.
 

swanhill41

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I live in the FY post code area.,so have some knowledge of traffic profiles.
BPN ...Is not a high value location outbound or in bound...Tends to be a station used by people going to Manchester Airport,Yorkshire and Manchester itself...Not in large part high income....General holiday traffic is a mix of coach tours to the Britannia Hotels,which are low value very poor hotels...Whilst working on rail replacement over years it was very noticeable the type of customer which used the station.
Poulton is the probable jewel in the crown...Has a turnover,not footfall,that is higher than would be thought the case...Why...The catchment area for station is of a high end business type traveller,who would be attracted to a direct service to London or and MK....Kirkham also could be of interest as well.
Note Pendos do not stop at these at these two later stations,due to their lengths,even as 9 car formations
 

nuneatonmark

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Have GC confirmed their launch date from Blackpool yet?

As far as I am aware Grand Central have not formally confirmed that they are not starting services at the May timetable change, as planned, but given the lack of firm news, it looks pretty unlikely they will start then. I am expecting an update from Grand Central along the lines of 'Service start delayed to X' sometime soon.
 

Southern Dvr

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Their stock isn’t ready, they’ve got one repainted loco and not done any test runs. There also are no paths in RTT for them so it’s a safe bet it will be July at earliest I suspect.
 

paul1609

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I'm going to Blackpool on Saturday from Euston £9.80 with a railcard coming back from Windermere on Monday £15.95 both using LNR trent Valley services good luck competing with that.
 

ainsworth74

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There also are no paths in RTT for them so it’s a safe bet it will be July at earliest I suspect.

The paths have been in RTT previously so I'm sure they could be put back in to industry systems very very easily and at short notice.
The locomotive looks bloody fantastic though!

I'm not personally a fan of the way that the stripe down the side is disjointed from the yellow on the front...
 

paul1609

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wow a 6hr trip! Fantastic....
Euston to Blackpool North 4 hr 11 mins, Windermere to Euston 4 hr 44 mins comparing to the Grand Central times of just over 3 hours to Blackpool.
Given price v time for my circumstances that means Id only be interested in Grand Central Advances of £20 or below for Blackpool.
I wonder if the Arriva loss of the Northern Franchise will effectively kill this plan? Somebody obviously has to bankroll the set up costs.
 

scouseyb123

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Euston to Blackpool North 4 hr 11 mins, Windermere to Euston 4 hr 44 mins comparing to the Grand Central times of just over 3 hours to Blackpool.
Given price v time for my circumstances that means Id only be interested in Grand Central Advances of £20 or below for Blackpool.
I wonder if the Arriva loss of the Northern Franchise will effectively kill this plan? Somebody obviously has to bankroll the set up costs.

So massive time difference then? Pretty erroneous to compare a direct train journey with a train journey that probs involves a couple of changes travelling at a snail’s pace to save a few quid.
 

ainsworth74

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I wonder if the Arriva loss of the Northern Franchise will effectively kill this plan? Somebody obviously has to bankroll the set up costs.
I'm not sure how losing Northern impacts on this outfit? If anything it probably helps as Arriva no longer have the financial liability that Northern represented to worry about!
 

50039

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LN was used previously back when these services were visible on RTT in early January.
There seems to be 3 round trips in RTT for Saturday.... intriguing - LN isn’t in the drop down list for searching - what does it mean?
 
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