Virgin Chester services

calc7 · 10 Feb 2012

I understand that these are a good stream of revenue for Virgin. But, if given the choice, would they put some of the Voyagers on Manchester or Birmingham services instead?

I travel from London to Milton Keynes at least thrice a week. On the return, typically between 5pm and 7pm, I try my best to get on the xx02 (ex-Chester/N Wales) service (for coach D as the regulars will be attest to). Even when it's only a single SuperVoyager, it's rarely more than 2/3-full.

Today I got the 1747, ex-MAN. It was completely rammed. Whenever I get a Manchester or Birmingham service, in spite of their trebled frequency and more standard seating compared to the Chester Voyagers, they're noticeably a lot busier.

Hence: the question in the first paragraph.

Enlighten me.

RailUK Forums

radamfi · 10 Feb 2012

People used to criticise the 3 tph service to Manchester and Birmingham as excessive and unnecessary. Maybe that's not the case any more.

To be pedantic, Euston to Birmingham has been at least 2 tph since BR. Euston to Manchester was converted from 1 tph to 2 tph about 8 years ago.

Michael.Y · 10 Feb 2012

Possible mitigating factor:

My ex-HHD 1239 ATW 3-car 175 was rammed full and standing until we were delayed by an ill pax at LLJ. All the Londonbound Irishmen and women were requested to change and take the Llandudno-Manchester ATW service while we waited for medical assistance. It may have been that the aforementioned replacement service did not arrive in Chester until 1449, not in time for the Londonbound pax to make their connection with the Virgin service at 1435, and/or many chose to remain on the train until it arrived in Manchester to make a connection there rather than wait 45 minutes in Hollyoaksland.

According to everyone's new favourite website, OTT, this train arrived Manchester 1552, and your train departed Manchester 1615. Seems like this is what happened.

driver_m · 10 Feb 2012

None of the guards at Manchester and a number of drivers at Manchester dont sign Voyagers, so thats the reason why you'll not get them on Picc-Eustons. There have been occasions in the past when they've worked on a sunday but at the mo, extremely unlikely.

Welshman · 10 Feb 2012

calc7 said:
I understand that these are a good stream of revenue for Virgin. But, if given the choice, would they put some of the Voyagers on Manchester or Birmingham services instead?

I travel from London to Milton Keynes at least thrice a week. On the return, typically between 5pm and 7pm, I try my best to get on the xx02 (ex-Chester/N Wales) service (for coach D as the regulars will be attest to). Even when it's only a single SuperVoyager, it's rarely more than 2/3-full.

I suspect you're travelling against the flow.

When I've used the 0551 or 0655 from Holyhead, they've been full from Rugby/Milton Keynes respectively, and the 1610, 1710 & 1810 returns to North Wales have also been well-filled, despite the 1810 being a double unit, as it also conveys the Wrexham portion.

Ironically, rather than using Voyagers on the Birmingham-Scotland services, Virgin have recently been replacing them with Pendolinos on that route, to offer more capacity on the busiest services.

calc7 · 10 Feb 2012

Michael.Y said:
Possible mitigating factor:

My ex-HHD 1239 ATW 3-car 175 was rammed full and standing until we were delayed by an ill pax at LLJ. All the Londonbound Irishmen and women were requested to change and take the Llandudno-Manchester ATW service while we waited for medical assistance. It may have been that the aforementioned replacement service did not arrive in Chester until 1449, not in time for the Londonbound pax to make their connection with the Virgin service at 1435, and/or many chose to remain on the train until it arrived in Manchester to make a connection there rather than wait 45 minutes in Hollyoaksland.

According to everyone's new favourite website, OTT, this train arrived Manchester 1552, and your train departed Manchester 1615. Seems like this is what happened.

Could well have been a factor - though there was also your usual contingent of Mancunians and businesspeople.

But it's not just tonight that this crowding occurred. I am so wary of the xx19 ex-BHM and xx47 ex-MAN services that I will stay at work a bit longer to get the xx02 ex-CTR!

Welshman said:
I suspect you're travelling against the flow.

Without a doubt. Usually a train from Euston between 8 and 9.30, and the return between 5 and 7. But whereas the Manchester and Birmingham services are swelling, the Chesters (which also stop at Crewe) are very rarely standing room only.

pemma · 11 Feb 2012

calc7 said:
Today I got the 1747, ex-MAN. It was completely rammed.

radamfi said:
People used to criticise the 3 tph service to Manchester and Birmingham as excessive and unnecessary. Maybe that's not the case any more.

A train leaving Manchester at 16:15 for London being busy at Milton Keynes does not mean it is busy throughout. A lot of the Virgin services leaving Manchester between 16:00 and 18:00 are carrying commuters to Macclesfield, Wilmslow, Crewe and Stoke, opposed to being packed with London passengers.

The train mentioned was on a Friday evening - Friday evenings tend to have busier trains than Mon-Thurs evenings.

There are still plenty of off-peak Pendolinos leaving Stockport southbound and arriving at Stockport northbound with very few passengers on.

dk1 · 11 Feb 2012

I recently read that some peak Euston-Manchester services have a average load of 44%. However due to the high fares that can be commanded on these trains they are very lucrative for Virgin.

A few weeks back i was waiting for a southbound service at Crewe when the 10.10 to Manchester stopped (08.40 ex-Euston). Although first class was lightly loaded, standard class was very busy. This suprised me as 08.40 is still quite early on a saturday & train was non-stop to Crewe so all London traffic.

pemma · 11 Feb 2012

dk1 said:
A few weeks back i was waiting for a southbound service at Crewe when the 10.10 to Manchester stopped (08.40 ex-Euston). Although first class was lightly loaded, standard class was very busy. This suprised me as 08.40 is still quite early on a saturday & train was non-stop to Crewe so all London traffic.

I've noticed that southbound on Saturday mornings the London via Crewe services seem to be better utilised than the London via Stoke services and the reverse seems to be true northbound (in the afternoon.) Maybe that's due to connections available.

dk1 · 11 Feb 2012

jcollins said:
I've noticed that southbound on Saturday mornings the London via Crewe services seem to be better utilised than the London via Stoke services and the reverse seems to be true northbound. Maybe that's due to connections available.

Maybe. You would think Stoke would be busier but then they do get 2 Euston trains an hour to/from Manchester.

185 · 11 Feb 2012

1747, ex-MAN on a Friday.... always rammed.

pemma · 11 Feb 2012

dk1 said:
Maybe. You would think Stoke would be busier but then they do get 2 Euston trains an hour to/from Manchester.

Stoke gets also 4 fast trains per hour to Manchester, so the Stoke-Manchester passengers get plenty of choice.

With Saturday trains you really need to see the same train on different weeks to be able to judge whether the train is usually busy. If there was a Man City v Tottenham match at 12:30 one Saturday then I imagine the London-Manchester trains that morning would be a lot busier than usual.

34D · 11 Feb 2012

Welshman said:
I suspect you're travelling against the flow.

The demand for against the flow Euston to MK is phenomenal - to the extent that some northbound/down morning trains are genuinely SRO.

Why these people don't either move to MK or get jobs in London I do not know.

Nym · 11 Feb 2012

34D said:
The demand for against the flow Euston to MK is phenomenal - to the extent that some northbound/down morning trains are genuinely SRO.

Why these people don't either move to MK or get jobs in London I do not know.

The're southerners? *hides*

Or it could be the case of peeps travelling between offices, I know a fair few companies that keep their top brass in London to have a nice shiney address and building, but actually carry out a lot of their ops outside of London, even some as far afeild as Manchester (Trafford Park) where office space is MUCH cheaper.

dk1 · 11 Feb 2012

jcollins said:
With Saturday trains you really need to see the same train on different weeks to be able to judge whether the train is usually busy. If there was a Man City v Tottenham match at 12:30 one Saturday then I imagine the London-Manchester trains that morning would be a lot busier than usual.

Hust goes to show that the all day frequency on this route is such a winner.

xtradj · 11 Feb 2012

thread makes no sense

if OP states voyagers are not full, yet pendos are on the manc to euston

why would virgin swop them round?

calc7 · 11 Feb 2012

xtradj said:
thread makes no sense

if OP states voyagers are not full, yet pendos are on the manc to euston

why would virgin swop them round?

Not swap them, run fewer Chester services (if the franchise allowed them to) and divert the units onto Manchester or Birmingham runs.

jcollins said:
A train leaving Manchester at 16:15 for London being busy at Milton Keynes does not mean it is busy throughout. A lot of the Virgin services leaving Manchester between 16:00 and 18:00 are carrying commuters to Macclesfield, Wilmslow, Crewe and Stoke, opposed to being packed with London passengers.

The train mentioned was on a Friday evening - Friday evenings tend to have busier trains than Mon-Thurs evenings.

There are still plenty of off-peak Pendolinos leaving Stockport southbound and arriving at Stockport northbound with very few passengers on.

I find this argument somewhat self-defeating.
The three Virgin MK services each hour are as following:
xx02: CTR - CRE - MKC - EUS
xx19: BHM - BHI - COV - MKC - EUS
xx47: MAN - SPT - SOT - MKC - EUS

So the ex-CTR SuperVoyager is one of the only two Crewe services each hour (the other being one of the Manchesters) and is rarely more than 2/3 full. Whilst I agree not all traffic will be coming from Manchester; out of the first three stops there was more than enough to fill the train before MK.

dk1 · 11 Feb 2012

xtradj said:
thread makes no sense

if OP states voyagers are not full, yet pendos are on the manc to euston

why would virgin swop them round?

I thought that but those who seem a tad brighter (& a tad more vocal) said nowt so neither did i.

paddy1 · 11 Feb 2012

I do not think that the London flows to/from Stoke are as high as one would expect, given the population of Stoke urban area (some 400k).

Having travelled on a number of off peak services at different times of the days over the past few years from Euston to Stoke, I have never seen more than a handful of passengers disembark at Stoke, with the majority continuing to Stockport/Manchester.

On a peak weekday arrival at Stoke from Euston a few weeks ago, I counted 26 passengers disembarking at Stoke with, again, the majority continuing Stockport/Manchester. At around the same time, I noted that only about 6 passengers boarded at Stoke for a non stop to Euston.

The top 10 over 50 mile WCML flows to/from Euston based on 2009/2010 are as follows:

1. Manchester Picc. 2.8m
2. Birmingham NS 2.4m
3. Liverpool LS 1.3m
4. Northampton 1.15m
5. Coventry 976k
6. Birmingham Int 801k
7. Rugby 551k
8. Stockport 526k
9. Preston 511k
10.Glasgow Cent. 507k

Stoke does not figure in the top 10 highest flows, and I do not know where it stands in relation to flows to/from Euston to Crewe, or to places in the top 10.

Greeby · 11 Feb 2012

34D said:
The demand for against the flow Euston to MK is phenomenal - to the extent that some northbound/down morning trains are genuinely SRO.

Why these people don't either move to MK or get jobs in London I do not know.

Probably helps that in the EUS-MKC direction commute, the Virgin Only SDR is actually worthwhile, as opposed to the other way round where the gaps in service mean that in terms of retailing, asking for peak means Any Permitted and not to bother with Virgin Only.

pmgarvey · 12 Feb 2012

paddy1 said:
The top 10 over 50 mile WCML flows to/from Euston based on 2009/2010 are as follows:

1. Manchester Picc. 2.8m
2. Birmingham NS 2.4m
3. Liverpool LS 1.3m
4. Northampton 1.15m
5. Coventry 976k
6. Birmingham Int 801k
7. Rugby 551k
8. Stockport 526k
9. Preston 511k
10.Glasgow Cent. 507k

Stoke does not figure in the top 10 highest flows, and I do not know where it stands in relation to flows to/from Euston to Crewe, or to places in the top 10.

Bloody hell, considering populations that means everyone in Rugby doing near 10 trips a year!

LNW-GW Joint · 12 Feb 2012

The VHF planners sought to get Pendolino capacity where it was most needed - hence 3tph MAN/BHM etc - and to reduce stops to get faster journey times - hence non-stop EUS-WBQ etc.
They were left with a gap at Crewe (only 1tph), and also needed to serve Chester/North Wales better so chose the Voyager option giving 2tph CRE and 1tph CTR.
The MKC stop is a very useful link in the overall timetable.

You might wonder why the 221s do not continue to Liverpool rather than Chester, but my observations of old frequently indicated more people leaving LIV trains at Crewe (when they stopped there) for CTR/North Wales than stayed on the train to LIV.
Mixing 390s and single 221s on a route isn't going to help the marketing of the service, and there isn't the capacity to double them up all day.
The 221s CTR-CRE also replaced an ATW shuttle with a through train.
If they ran to MAN/LIV you would need more 221 stock (and the ATW shuttle).

I would say the CTR-EUS trains have certainly grown the market, but I agree that off-peak they are not usually full (but nor are most services).
Also remember that North Wales is not so much a day-trip market as MAN/LIV, and can be surprisingly busy at some hours (students, ferries, conferences, holidays, weekends etc) with one-way traffic.

As the 221s seem to have 4 minutes recovery time between EUS and CRE I think an additional stop at, say, NUN might be practical, although this would put the LM Trent Valley service out of joint.
Some peak trains already stop there.

calc7 · 12 Feb 2012

pmgarvey said:
Bloody hell, considering populations that means everyone in Rugby doing near 10 trips a year!

Probably forgetting Daventry, Hinckley, Bedworth, some parts of central Warwickshire and potentially east Coventry.

pemma · 12 Feb 2012

calc7 said:
I find this argument somewhat self-defeating.

I did say a lot, not all, of the Virgin services leaving Manchester in the evening peak are carrying more local commuters, than London passengers and did also point out that long distance travel is much higher on Friday evenings than on other days of the week.

Not swap them, run fewer Chester services (if the franchise allowed them to) and divert the units onto Manchester or Birmingham runs.

For which they are no paths to do. If they used Voyagers for other London services it would make more sense to do what some of the open-access operators are proposing and do Blackpool-Euston or Huddersfield-Stockport-Euston. The former would allow some of the commuter traffic to move off the Glasgow services and the latter could mean some of the busier Manchester-London services could omit Stockport.

paddy1 said:
The top 10 over 50 mile WCML flows to/from Euston based on 2009/2010 are as follows:

1. Manchester Picc. 2.8m
2. Birmingham NS 2.4m
3. Liverpool LS 1.3m
4. Northampton 1.15m
5. Coventry 976k
6. Birmingham Int 801k
7. Rugby 551k
8. Stockport 526k
9. Preston 511k
10.Glasgow Cent. 507k

Stoke does not figure in the top 10 highest flows, and I do not know where it stands in relation to flows to/from Euston to Crewe, or to places in the top 10.

Remember those are total figures. On some morning Manchester-London services there are more people waiting to board at Stockport than they are already on the Pendolino arriving from Manchester. Obviously, that doesn't apply all day.

I also imagine those figures involve some guess work. If I buy a Bolton to London ticket it's probably assumed that I board the Virgin service at Manchester Piccadilly, when I could in fact go via Wigan or change at Stockport.

bengolding · 12 Feb 2012

LNW-GW Joint said:
As the 221s seem to have 4 minutes recovery time between EUS and CRE I think an additional stop at, say, NUN might be practical, although this would put the LM Trent Valley service out of joint.
Some peak trains already stop there.

In an ideal world this would happen and an extra stop at Nuneaton wouldn't conflict with the xx20 from Euston. But I doubt 221s can run from Nuneaton - Crewe non-stop in 35 mins to keep with the current imings - they barely do it in 40 - just look at the poor punctuality of the 2x221 06:53 south from Crewe. An additional stop would mean there would no longer be a headline sub-2 hour Euston-Chester journey time, which would be disastrous for Virgin PR!

Wath Yard · 12 Feb 2012

The original question posed in this thread demonstrates why the new style franchises that give the franchisee a certain amount of flexibility to cater for demand but still specify a minimum service requirement are a good idea. When ICEC is eventually tendered I'm sure the potential franchise holders would love to abandon the Inverness and Aberdeen services and introduce a third tph to Leeds or extra services to York or Newcastle. The question isn't would they but should they be allowed to, and the answer is no.

The Planner · 12 Feb 2012

LNW-GW Joint said:
As the 221s seem to have 4 minutes recovery time between EUS and CRE I think an additional stop at, say, NUN might be practical, although this would put the LM Trent Valley service out of joint.
Some peak trains already stop there.

No because it is engineering recovery time, stop it at Nuneaton and the 4 minutes still has to be there.

calc7 · 12 Feb 2012

Wath Yard said:
The original question posed in this thread demonstrates why the new style franchises that give the franchisee a certain amount of flexibility to cater for demand but still specify a minimum service requirement are a good idea. When ICEC is eventually tendered I'm sure the potential franchise holders would love to abandon the Inverness and Aberdeen services and introduce a third tph to Leeds or extra services to York or Newcastle. The question isn't would they but should they be allowed to, and the answer is no.

Indeed - it would be a case of robbing Peter to pay Paul (and probably make more money!) In the end it comes down to politics - it would be most value adding to put the stock on Leeds/York services but it'd kick up a political storm.

paddy1 · 12 Feb 2012

pmgarvey said:
Bloody hell, considering populations that means everyone in Rugby doing near 10 trips a year!

I think with Rugby, and Northampton as well, there a a large number of commuters making the trip everyday using season tickets, much more so than any of the other places in the top 10 flows. As well as this, as another contributor has also pointed out, Rugby's catchment area for trains to London extends well beyond the town itself to places that either lack a direct train to London or have no rail link at all.

Stats · 12 Feb 2012

Wath Yard said:
When ICEC is eventually tendered I'm sure the potential franchise holders would love to abandon the Inverness and Aberdeen services and introduce a third tph to Leeds or extra services to York or Newcastle.

DfT's plans are for 3tph to Leeds and Newcastle in the 2018 timetable recast so the new franchise operator won't need to abandon the Inverness and Aberdeen services.

Virgin Chester services

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