Have to laugh how the difficultly of the Central franchise can be used as an excuse of the very poor performance of Central Trains, but it's convieniently overlooked that Midland Mainline was the easiest Intercity franchise to operate, which might explain why it was the best performing. Also like the bit about continuous improvement of MML, well, when when you start from rock bottom there is no other way to go than up. That said, NX did oversee the best timetable ever on the MML (4tph Leicester to London, 2 fast 2 semi-fast), gave Loughborough it's first regular service direct to Derby (with connections for further north), and whilst the Turbostars were a mistake, at the time there wasn't anything better available. Also, can't forget the great desision to bring back loco haulage to the MML to cover for problems with the HSTs. Sadly though, I can't think of anything good to say about Central, other than that they had one of the best liveries to come out of privatisation, although it never came close to being on the entire fleet (not counting those in Centro livery). I can't think of a single improvement to services in the East Midlands since they took over other than the 3 car 158s and 170s, although diagraming was such a mess it was luck these turned up where they needed.
