Serco for Sleeper

[Chris125]

Therefore it's likely that the driving would still be subcontracted to a company having greater numbers of staff on the ground. For rather similar reasons traction would probably also be outsourced, with the class 88s bringing DRS into the frame as candidates alongside DBS and Freightliner.

Or GBRf, which I think has been suggested is a partner in SERCO's bid - 73/9s to Fort William perhaps?

Chris

 

[gordonthemoron]

I would have thought that the only sensible options are

1. keep it as it is
2. scrap the lowland sleeper
3. scrap the lot

 

[Pugwash]

I would have thought that the only sensible options are

1. keep it as it is
2. scrap the lowland sleeper
3. scrap the lot

For me scrapping the lowland sleeper and extending the Services North ( possibly to Oban,Mallaig and the Kyle of Lochalsh) would be a good option.

Edinburgh is 4 hours on the train, Glasgow 5. Hotels like Travelodge and Tune mean that a Hotel in London ( or a Hostel ) can be reasonably priced and both cities have many flights to London.

The real advantage of the sleeper is for places that do not have an airport locally.

 

[LNW-GW Joint]

This isn't being handled by the Government - the Scottish government is responsible for the sleeper franchise and for Scotrail.

True, but in this case the UK government has offered the Scottish government £50m to support the new service.
No doubt we'll soon see what that means.

 

[ER158715]

For me scrapping the lowland sleeper and extending the Services North ( possibly to Oban,Mallaig and the Kyle of Lochalsh) would be a good option.

Edinburgh is 4 hours on the train, Glasgow 5. Hotels like Travelodge and Tune mean that a Hotel in London ( or a Hostel ) can be reasonably priced and both cities have many flights to London.

The real advantage of the sleeper is for places that do not have an airport locally.

Problem you have with Kyle and Oban is lack of trade on them. At best Kyle has only a couple of days during the week that passengers transfer onto the sleeper and I recently used the SB Fort William sleeper and was only person originating in Oban, spoke to attendant and this is normal. Whilst there may be an argument that if portions originated in these places, folk would use them, I have my doubts.
Quite what the future post May 15 holds, we'll find out soon enough but I hope it doesn't affect any of the staff (either Maintenance or On Board) who are all fantastic.

 

[Essexman]

The sleeper allows me a full day of meetings in Glasgow / Edinburgh without having to get up at 4am to fly. It is too far to do for the day by train plus too expensive to get a peak hour service from London. I use it regularly for work and if it was scrapped would travel to Scotland less often.

 

[Bodiddly]

It all depends how they are advertised. At present the service is quite poorly promoted and seems to be aimed more at people wanting to travel cheaply to/from Scotland and not too concerned by the facilities on board.

Re-invented as a 'hotel on wheels' the service could well attract a lot more users. I'm sure there are plenty of Scottish businesses who would rather send their staff on the sleeper than pay for a flight and a hotel in London and families who would rather have the comfort of a large sleeper cabin than cramming with bags onto a Pendolino for holidays in London.

Agree with this, the sleeper marketing is completely inadequate for what should be a prestigious service. The stock is mostly in good condition (apart from the Mk2's) and if the lifespan could be extended, the mk3's would run quite easily for the duration of the 15 year franchise. The problem the sleeper has is it never going to be profitable no matter what. There is far too much in the way of logistics that follow this service. The highland service needs 4 locos per service per night, each needing several drivers. Add to this attendants, cleaning, maintenance track access etc etc, It all adds up. I think I read once that each service requires a £17000 subsidy per journey! The word on the grapevine is that the bid made by First is so disparaging, they don't want to continue with the sleeper so this is why there could be some truth in the Serco bid. To re market the sleeper as a hotel on wheels would take a huge amount of cash and I can't see where the return for the investment could be made from the sleeper.

HS2 take a big chunk of the business case for the sleeper (especially the Lowland) and any future expansions of high speed rail to Scotland will do the same for the Highland.

It doesn't have that much of a future I'm afraid.

Then why is it a 15 year franchise then?

 

[HSTEd]

Because that takes us roughly to HS2 opening - at which point the Lowland Sleeper will be abandoned.

 

[duncanp]

The sleeper allows me a full day of meetings in Glasgow / Edinburgh without having to get up at 4am to fly. It is too far to do for the day by train plus too expensive to get a peak hour service from London. I use it regularly for work and if it was scrapped would travel to Scotland less often.

Agreed. I am going to use the sleeper to get from London to Klimarnock the weekend after next. I can maximise my time in Scotland, and minimise the time off that I need to take from work.

Coming back on Sunday night, I can leave Kilmarnock as late as 20:57 and still be in London for the next morning.

Having used it before, it certainly seems to be busy enough, at least on Friday and Sunday nights, but I guess on other nights of the week it may be less busy.

If the lowland sleeper were to be scrapped, then they would have to introduce earlier trains from Kings Cross, Euston, Glasgow and Edinburgh (there is already a 04:28 from Glasgow Central arriving Euston 09:07) but it would be difficult for anyone to get to the station in time to catch such a train.

With the referendum coming up in September, there may well be political reasons for retaining the service.

 

[Steve childs]

{quote}The word on the grapevine is that the bid made by First is so disparaging, they don't want to continue with the sleeper so this is why there could be some truth in the Serco bid. To re market the sleeper as a hotel on wheels would take a huge amount of cash and I can't see where the return for the investment could be made from the sleeper.

Yes iv heard this too that it loses so much money they did not put in a serious bid. They did (first) bid to make it look good for the main franchise. Correct me if im wrong but I think the official decision is announced tomorrow 21st May.

 

[Wiggler]

I think the official decision is announced tomorrow 21st May.

Was this announced today?

 

[NotATrainspott]

The Transport Scotland website says that the winning bidder will be notified in August 2014. Unless the other two bids are outrageously bad I think it's unlikely that they would have lopped off three entire months of the franchise programme.

 

[Masboroughlad]

Would there be scope for the operator to bring back Scotland to SouthWest/SouthEast (or other) services as an additional part of their business? Or is it as is and nothing else?

 

[higthomas]

Would there be scope for the operator to bring back Scotland to SouthWest/SouthEast (or other) services as an additional part of their business? Or is it as is and nothing else?

I doubt it really comes under this one, I doubt the Scottish goverment wouldn't pay for it, so I expect open-access would be the only option, and i think that pigs will fly before an open access operator thinks that's a good idea sadly.

 

[Oliver]

I doubt it really comes under this one, I doubt the Scottish goverment wouldn't pay for it, so I expect open-access would be the only option, and i think that pigs will fly before an open access operator thinks that's a good idea sadly.

That's because it isn't a good idea. No-one in their right mind would start a sleeper service unless they were promised a large subsidy, which Open Access would not get.

 

[Argosy]

For me scrapping the lowland sleeper and extending the Services North ( possibly to Oban,Mallaig and the Kyle of Lochalsh) would be a good option.

Edinburgh is 4 hours on the train, Glasgow 5. Hotels like Travelodge and Tune mean that a Hotel in London ( or a Hostel ) can be reasonably priced and both cities have many flights to London.

The real advantage of the sleeper is for places that do not have an airport locally.

That's just Fort William then.....and Stranraer

 

[WatcherZero]

Though to be fair OAO's can be a bit lighter with lower overheads and no fixed network costs, even still in the UK Doubtful. Orient Express on the continent is coming back though.

 

[Hadders]

Is there sufficient rolling stock to run any additional sleeper services?

 

[NotATrainspott]

Is there sufficient rolling stock to run any additional sleeper services?

I would doubt it. If the winning bid includes new stock then there will have to be a production line opened and that will be the last time that sleeper coaches will ever be ordered in the UK. It's very probable that the carriages would be designed to be converted to standard LHCS/MU usage once the market for any possible sleeper market has dried up completely. HS2 to Scotland theoretically could allow journey times as short as they are to Manchester and Leeds today and a Birmingham-Bristol HS line would murder any possibility of an XC sleeper returning.

 

[marks87]

Looks like there could be an announcement tomorrow:

David Miller
‏@BBCDavidMiller
On the sleeper tonight? Transport Scotland promise exciting news tomorrow. Details to come on @BBCScotlandNews by the time you reach Euston.

David Miller is BBC Scotland transport correspondent.

 

[Argosy]

Looks like there could be an announcement tomorrow:



David Miller is BBC Scotland transport correspondent.

Just been announced on Reporting Scotland 0655, it's SERCO.

 

[VauxhallandI]

This isn't being handled by the Government - the Scottish government is responsible for the sleeper franchise and for Scotrail.

It is European Procurement Law that dictates that previous experience cannot exclude you from entering future competitions.

If the bidder then puts forward successful examples of experience in it's PRe-Qualification you cannot introduce prior knowledge of other work to exclude them.

 

[Masboroughlad]

On Serco website now. Includes details of the order for new trains. Sounds good.

(First will be itching to get a franchise under their belt given the last two awards)

 

[LNW-GW Joint]

On Serco website now. Includes details of the order for new trains. Sounds good.

http://www.serco.com/media/pressreleases/SercoselectedfornewCaledonianSleeperrailfranchise.asp

Nothing to see on Transport Scotland's site yet.
While a positive development for users, nothing is disclosed about operation, or the number of vehicles being ordered from CAF.
The picture looks like a DMU. Or is it bi-mode? Or an EMU loco-hauled off the wires?

 

[amcluesent]

Good result for Soames coming in as CEO from Aggreko. Would be nice if Serco shareholders got a discounted upgrade to FC.

 

[telstarbox]

BBC article - http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-scotland-business-27599963

More than £100m will be invested in new rolling stock by the summer of 2018, part-funded by a £60m grant from the Scottish government.

Serco is promising improvements including en-suite berths, "pod flatbeds" and a brasserie-style club car.

The rolling stock will be built by CAF, which also built Edinburgh's new trams.

 

[NotATrainspott]

http://www.serco.com/media/pressreleases/SercoselectedfornewCaledonianSleeperrailfranchise.asp

Nothing to see on Transport Scotland's site yet.
While a positive development for users, nothing is disclosed about operation, or the number of vehicles being ordered from CAF.
The picture looks like a DMU. Or is it bi-mode? Or an EMU loco-hauled off the wires?

That's a picture of the Dubai Metro which Serco are also responsible for running.

EDIT: Also, Serco have introduced Pod Beds to NorthLink Ferries so I very much imagine this is what sort of thing will be used:

 

[DownSouth]

Good thing that the loading gauge is incompatible, if they would fit I'm sure Serco would have no qualms about taking some of the excellent Budd Company sleeper cars from their GSR operation in Australia to use for Scotland.

They may take some of the GSR managers though - while the majority of the income on the GSR trains comes from providing a high-value service to tourists, all three trains also have stops at various rural towns subsidised by the state governments to have it serve as a hybrid of a hotel-on-wheels and a useful public transport service on the same train - I've previously used both the Indian-Pacific and The Overland as conventional public transport. This is exactly the kind of operational experience they'll be looking for to run the Caledonian Sleeper and start adding value to the travel experience.

 

[cf111]

Might be impossible to answer at this point, but will the Sleeper franchise still be a part of National Rail in that you could still go up to any ticket office and purchase a ticket for the service from there.

New trains is a major plus, because some of the Sleeper stock is seriously starting to show its age. They are very well looked after but there's a limit as to what can be done to fix them up I suppose.

 

[jopsuk]

One would assume the franchise will still be on the same ticketing system, I'm not sure why you would think it might be otherwise?