In terms of increasing profitability - it seems strange to me if so many people are being turned away that there isn't any discussion of additional capacity.
Clearly there are some significant hurdles (such as not having the rolling stock to do it), but, as one example, during the festival / summer tourist season, attempting to run a third nightly train with some form of Edinburgh / Inverness split (or run one full train solely to Edinburgh and reorganise the split sets in some other way, for example some potential for Glasgow / Fort William to be the pairing, allowing Fort William seated passengers to travel all the way through.
I began collating some numbers in the below Google sheet, which is of course based on the little information I can find, at 2015 prices, of contract values etc. It has assumed all Mk5 vehicles cost the same (they don't). It assumed all trains are at 100% capacity (they aren't). I have entirely ignored the seated passengers, or any retail spend, and have divided costs purely by the sleeper coach capacity.
I have made the table editable, so do feel free to make my numbers better. It was more a thought process of, if I was to buy a new Mk5, and it ran 6 days a week all year, at 100% capacity, and had a 30 year lifespan, what would the cost, per berth, per journey be. That is interesting to me (if flawed for all the reasons above and probably lots of others I can't think of yet).
I followed the same process with the available figures for GBRF traction and contract details.
There are of course many numbers which I have no insight into, for example the costs of CS' own staff, their back office costs, the Network Rail access charges and lots of other things, and indeed the subsidy from Scottish Government in Serco days (when these contracts were awarded).
Summary Costs per Berth Per Journey For Additional Vehicles TOTAL,£45.65 CAF,£21.37 GBRF,£24.28 CS NR
docs.google.com
However, with the heavy provisos of all of the above, it doesn't seem entirely impossible to me that capacity could be added, and additional revenue generated, for which, whilst I would understand scepticism based on the subsidy currently given, nobody can have definitive understanding of the potential demand additional capacity would facilitate, since for various dates in August, using London - Edinburgh as an example, the Doubles are sold out for the entirety of the festival,
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and there is a night where Classic is also sold out,
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with various others already down to a handful of available rooms.
Based on the principle of "things change" - it doesn't seem unreasonable to me for a traveller to be able to book a room for travel in the coming days or weeks (as they might do for Avanti or LNER services, albeit at a premium for the short notice booking). However, using the same London to Edinburgh Example, there are a total of 5 remaining rooms in Classic for the entirety of the remainder of the Month of March, a further 13 sleeper journeys.
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