If ES and partners should be successful with the East Coast franchise they may be able to supplement the current fleet with Nols........
There is just no need to do that. A brand new fleet of trains is already on the way for the ECML.
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...If Keolis / Eurostar won the East Coast franchise it would be nice if they could use these sets to run trains from maybe Leeds or York and try test services to Paris, in a similar fashion to the London to South of France service in 2013.
I'm pretty sure there is a connecting line from the East Coast mainline that can take the train into St Pancras and pick up passengers from London to fill any remaining capacity......
Disregarding all the other factors working against that idea (border control, security, line capacity, train paths, OHLE issues, expensive infrastructure changes etc, etc), there is the crucial issue of viability.
With your suggestion, they would have to run the trains at least half empty to make a call at SPI worthwhile. As the market from Leeds would be quite small and the bulk of the demand is from London, they might have to reserve more than two thirds of the train for passengers boarding at SPI. Therefore the trains would run between Leeds and London with less than a third of the seats occupied.
There is no way that sort of operation would be viable.
Even at two thirds full it wouldn't be economically viable and then the call at SPI would also not be viable. It's a lose lose situation.
Ah! some will say; allow the carriage of domestic passengers on the Leeds - London leg.
OK, so all the international travellers disembark at SPI for border and security clearance?
What's the difference then , between that and the current operation, where there are frequent trains all day between Leeds and London and passengers can connect with frequent Eurostar services at the KX/SPI interchange.
In other words, the Leeds - Paris market, whatever it amounts to, is more than adequately served today, by frequent connecting services, all day, 7 days a week.
Considering the question of the existence of a sufficiently large market to justify running dedicated Leeds (or any other regional city) to Paris services.
All indications are that the market is not there for such services.
Even if you ran one train a day, that would be of little use to business travellers, where frequency and flexibility of travel are paramount. Without business travellers paying the premium fares, any prospect of a service is dead before it starts.
The air market for Leeds - Paris has struggled to support airline services between the two cities.
In years gone by, BMA stopped flying the route for a number of years, before restarting it under their later BMI guise. BMI Regional (as was) used 50 seat regional jets. They eventually pulled out.
In recent years and currently, low cost carrier Jet2 fly the Leeds - Paris route, but can only get enough passengers to run a single flight, four days a week. Not even a daily service, let alone two or more a day.
Four flights a week doesn't even fill one NoL train !!!!
Eurostar are a purely commercial company. If they see potential they will look at the opportunities with great interest, as is the case with their current expansion proposals. They have no plans for UK regional services at the present time.
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Just a thought but I wonder if Eurostar has been sneaky and ordered shorter or splitable trains with this follow on order of 7?
Play DB at their own game for the markets where a long set isn't justified.
The extra 7 trains are the same as the first 10.
Regards the DB example, do you mean their general use of joining and splitting, or that which was proposed for their now stalled plans to operate to London?
After putting the proposed start date back twice they've kicked London services into the long grass for now, with no start date in prospect and a likelihood it won't be until the end of this decade, if ever.
.... If Eurostar doesn't want them, it's in our interests to force them to be made available to someone who does.
Our interests?
Why? Although now privately owned assets, they will have virtually no asset value.
Who owns them anyway?
Were they transferred to the new Eurostar company, with the 28 Three Capitals sets, back in 2010, or did they remain in LCR ownership?
...As UK gov is still a shareholder for the time being, it should be forcing the issue.
Although the UK government is currently a 40% shareholder in the stand alone Eurostar company, they are putting their shareholding up for sale. I doubt they have much interest in a small fleet of old trains, that have little or no capital value.
