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Virgin Pendolino normal or 11 car?

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TSR :D

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Is this information public? If so, can anyone tell me how to find it.

Note: I only need to know if the one I will be travelling on is 11 car.
 
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Crossover

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Or the screens at some stations say which it is. It's all part of the mystery of life :P
 

Robinson

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Or the screens at some stations say which it is. It's all part of the mystery of life :P

Not always correctly though - last time I was travelling from Euston to Glasgow I couldn't help but notice, looking out of the window at Preston, that the platform indicator was showing "9-coach Virgin Pendolino" - nope, it was 390141 :D
 

sprinterguy

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You don't know until you see it :)
There are set diagrams for the 11-car Pendolinos, which of course are growing in number as an increasing number of trains are lengthened. Regular experience of the services has been the only way for me to begin to unveil which services are formed of lengthened units: For instance, the 18:43 London Euston to Crewe is an 11-car Pendo from Monday - Thursday. As is the 16:33 Euston - Preston, Monday to Friday.

But the diagrams must be out there somewhere...
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Not always correctly though - last time I was travelling from Euston to Glasgow I couldn't help but notice, looking out of the window at Preston, that the platform indicator was showing "9-coach Virgin Pendolino" - nope, it was 390141 :D
And indeed, the other way round as well: The indicator boards along the route yesterday were reporting the 17:23 Euston - Wolverhampton as an "11-coach Virgin Pendolino", when in reality it was plain old 9-car 390035.
 
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ainsworth74

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No it's to cater for the massive growth in passengers on the WCML over the last few years. A happy side effect is that it provides extra capacity for the Olympics but it certainly isn't a project that has come about solely because of the Olympics.
 

sprinterguy

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No it's to cater for the massive growth in passengers on the WCML over the last few years. A happy side effect is that it provides extra capacity for the Olympics but it certainly isn't a project that has come about solely because of the Olympics.
They're making Stafford commuters cycle to London in order to cater for the massive growth in passenger demand on the WCML? :shock:

(I presume that you haven't actually clicked on the link below that post!)
--- old post above --- --- new post below ---
And indeed, the other way round as well: The indicator boards along the route yesterday were reporting the 17:23 Euston - Wolverhampton as an "11-coach Virgin Pendolino", when in reality it was plain old 9-car 390035.
The 17:23 Euston - Wolverhampton actually was an 11-car Pendolino this evening, 390136. There were a lot of late running arrivals into Euston on Monday evening - The stock for the 17:23 only arrived at 17:10 apparently, so I presume that there was a lot of "stepping up" of diagrams that meant that the rostered 11-car 390 got diverted onto a later departure.
 

ainsworth74

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They're making Stafford commuters cycle to London in order to cater for the massive growth in passenger demand on the WCML?

Look, in this age of austerity we have to take some more unconventional methods to meet passenger demand. If that involves using replacement cycle services then so be it!

(I presume that you haven't actually clicked on the link below that post!)

Err no. No I didn't. Mostly because I thought it was part of a signature rather than part of the actual post (and besides it's an odd place to ask a question about cycles on a thread about 11-car 390s).
 

DownSouth

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On some journeys it's quite possible that cycling would be a faster trip anyway, especially if there is some kind of disruption to the rail option.

It would probably take a major catastrophe for that to be the case for Stafford to/from London though, that's the length of a major stage of the Tour de France which would take even the world's best cyclists in excess of five hours.

There is a line near me which snakes around to climb the hills where cycling is faster going downhill for everyone, and for reasonably fit people going up the hill as well. Before gauge conversion ended the days of steam specials in the Adelaide area, there were a number of races where runners would take a 5 km course on the road going directly up the hill and attempt to beat a 520 Class steam loco (4-8-4 Northern) taking the 13.0 km railway route around the hills. The amount of altitude gained on that section is 220 metres with average gradients of 1.7% (rail) and 5.5% (road), so it's fairly tough work to cycle/run to the top of that bit.
 
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