Virgin Trains East Coast franchise to end 24 June 2018 and is temporarily re-nationalised

[transmanche]

I'm sure I have read somewhere that at the time it was "hoped" that the intercity operators would opt to use the INTERCITY brand voluntarily alongside their own to create an "intercity network". Not sure whether it was actually a real suggestion or just wishful thinking?

Some did.

Great Western certainly did by using a 'providing INTERCITY services' tagline and using the INTERCITY logo on HST carriages.


09 014 Bf London Paddington, 43 186 Great Western. CC BY-SA 4.0, by Falk2, from Wikimedia Commons

 

[Bletchleyite]

The mistake was I believe to charge for it!

 

[SamYeager]

The big problem I see with the livery staying the same is when a TOC has acquired a pretty poor reputation. Whereas in the past the new TOC would change the livery to make it clear that the operator had changed now existing and prospective passengers will not see any difference. Since any changes to equipment, timetables and personnel recruitment will all take a while to take effect then any new TOC will have issues increasing ridership.

 

[Robertj21a]

Grey Green taking over the 24 was a massive moment for bus tendering, as it was the first high profile central London route to be operated by a non red bus. EVERYONE could see that something significant was happening with this bus route. The rules then changed so that all buses then had to predominantly red (80%? allowing coloured stripes and swirls etc) and then all red, indeed like London Overground or the DLR, I imagine many people don't realise that it's a private operator actually running the service

The red London bus is much more symbolic though than train liveries, especially as the previous sector liveries before privatisation were relatively recent anyway.

The real significance also being that the frequent route 24 buses, in Grey Green colours, went straight past the Houses of Parliament - and still do so, albeit now all-red.

 

[WelshBluebird]

The big problem I see with the livery staying the same is when a TOC has acquired a pretty poor reputation. Whereas in the past the new TOC would change the livery to make it clear that the operator had changed now existing and prospective passengers will not see any difference. Since any changes to equipment, timetables and personnel recruitment will all take a while to take effect then any new TOC will have issues increasing ridership.

Maybe that is more "fair" though?
As you say, any actual real changes will take a while to come into play, so really isn't it better that a new ToC get's judged on that rather than what nice shiny paint job they do?
Changes to reliability and reputation can happen during a franchise period too, for both good and bad (FGW / GWR are a great example of that, a very poor reputation that they managed to change around, but they have now sadly started to split again). You don't need a whole new rebranding to do that.

 

[Chrism20]

I seriously hope that once Virgin are gone someone seriously looks at the advance fares on some of the peak time services.

Over the last few months I think I’ve caught the 1700 off Kings Cross half a dozen times and whilst most times it’s reasonably well loaded it’s definitely not what I would call busy.

I’m on it tonight and checked online last night and it looked reasonable well loaded. The reality is half the seats that looked booked online yesterday aren’t actually booked (no res labels) and first class is about half full and from the number of people I saw walking up the platform standard doesn’t look busy either.

I know we are on the back of a bank holiday but had they not been charging £200 for an advance single on this service it would have been significantly busier than this.

 

[SaveECRewards]

Just had an email to say a seat sale is now on 150k tickets reduced until Midnight this Thursday (31st) for travel between 18th June and 20th July inclusive

The seat sale is targeted! According to a reliable source 664k people were the target but the allocation seems to be random (I've heard both regular and occasional users getting the email and others not).

So unlike their 'sale' in February this isn't just aimed at occasional users but calling it a sale but limiting participation has already angered some.

You see a sale, you like the offer, you tell your friends, they try and use it and can't. Word of mouth is usually a good promotional tool but in this instance it'll just annoy people.

If the offer isn't open to all then it should be worded differently - e.g. you've been selected to access these bargain fares.

Also, some people on Twitter said they received the email but it wasn't working for them.

They're determined to go out more resented than National Express. At least NXEC offered their final sale to everyone. Probably annoyed East Coast but it did mean most people's last memory of NXEC was a good one.

 

[route:oxford]

Can you name ANY other TOC that's protested losing their franchise on social media channels? It's not promoting your business in the traditional sense, it's putting social media staff who would be due to be TUPEd over to the new operator in an awkward position.

Simply because, in your opinion, no other operator has done something doesn't mean to say it is illegal.

Promotion is promotion, and it is definitely within the 50 year tradition of Virgin Group to promote themselves by every means they possibly can do.

Forget "awkward positions", you do the work for the people who pay your salary. No tribunal is going to find in your favour if you were to refuse to key promotional messages about your current employer just in case they had a different employer tomorrow. Unless you hadn't noticed, they weren't TUPE'd over.

 

[SaveECRewards]

Simply because, in your opinion, no other operator has done something doesn't mean to say it is illegal.

Promotion is promotion, and it is definitely within the 50 year tradition of Virgin Group to promote themselves by every means they possibly can do.

Forget "awkward positions", you do the work for the people who pay your salary. No tribunal is going to find in your favour if you were to refuse to key promotional messages about your current employer just in case they had a different employer tomorrow. Unless you hadn't noticed, they weren't TUPE'd over.

I never said illegal, but it does seem that it's something that's generally not done, whether it's because others don't want to wind up the DfT I'm not sure.

The people who worked in the VTWC social team and those responsible for platform announcements would have probably thought in all likelihood they'd be TUPEd over to FirstGroup. Whether it's allowed or not it does seem a bit immoral to get the staff to send out messages against their likely future employer. Imagine if they tried the same approach on the East Coast and made the social media team tweet out messages of doom and gloom about LNER, I'm sure many would have felt awkward having to do that.

 

[Clip]

If you want to know the offers from BP then you'd have already signed up for Nectar or opted into BP marketing from another source if you didn't want to join Nectar.

VTEC encouraging people to sign up for a loyalty scheme that promotes the benefits of driving is at odds with their marketing messages comparing train to car. Perhaps they should have had a loyalty scheme that encouraged train use.

we get you dont like nectar as you seem to have mentioned it a few times but you need to understand that others do and the emails about offers are handy for those of us who have a nectar account and may not be using virgin trains east coast for their travel needs.

 

[Mutant Lemming]

Why were railways grouped into four roughly geographical companies back in 1923 ?
Would this not work better today instead of the franchise system ?

 

[Elecman]

Why were railways grouped into four roughly geographical companies back in 1923 ?
Would this not work better today instead of the franchise system ?

That was John Majors idea of Privatisation until it was hijacked ny others into the farce we have today

 

[Mutant Lemming]

That was John Majors idea of Privatisation until it was hijacked ny others into the farce we have today

ah !...so no chance it would have worked either then.

 

[LNW-GW Joint]

Why were railways grouped into four roughly geographical companies back in 1923 ?
Would this not work better today instead of the franchise system ?

There were several different models for grouping.
I wouldn't really call what happened more than vaguely geographic.
It was mostly based on the railways which already had close working relationships (eg GN, NER and NB for LNER, and LNWR, Midland and Caledonian for LMS).
The idea was also to retain significant competition on the main flows to London (eg from Scotland, Manchester, Leeds, Birmingham).
But some railways were very hard to place (eg GC, Cambrian) and it was largely pot luck where they ended up.
The LMS was eventually considered "too big", so the GC went to the LNER and the Cambrian to the GWR.

The LMS and LNER intertwined in the east midlands and west/south Yorkshire and through Scotland, and so did GWR and Southern in the west country.
LMS penetrated far into GWR-land at Bristol and Swansea. In return GWR reached Chester, and the LNER reached Wrexham and Stafford.
The LMS reached Goole and Shoeburyness.

BR eventually imposed geographic Regional boundaries after nationalisation (but it took them until 1963, and threw up many operating anomalies).
BR's sectors then unpicked all that in the 1980s, creating Intercity, NSE and RR, across Regional boundaries.
Privatisation then split the sectors into smaller pieces and franchised them out separately.

Meanwhile Railtrack/Network Rail has struggled with its structure since being separated from BR in 1993.
It currently has 9 Routes, some of which do not map well onto the franchises.
There are now trends to integrate franchises with NR routes (LNER being one), but it is a slow process.
Freight and franchises like XC, TPE and Thameslink will cross any geographic boundary you draw.
And where will HS1 and HS2 fit (not NR lines)?

 

[Roy Badami]

The big problem I see with the livery staying the same is when a TOC has acquired a pretty poor reputation. Whereas in the past the new TOC would change the livery to make it clear that the operator had changed now existing and prospective passengers will not see any difference. Since any changes to equipment, timetables and personnel recruitment will all take a while to take effect then any new TOC will have issues increasing ridership.

It's not uncommon in circumstances such as these for business to prominently advertise that the they are under new management

 

[47271]

Well, the Scotrail identity was a constant between First Group and Abellio and a fat lot of good that's done the reputation of Scottish internal services since 2015. It certainly hasn't shielded the hapless Abellio from any public criticism.

I'm not arguing against the maintenance of the same brand when the operator shifts by the way, frequent changes of name encourages the public view that we're being conned by a bunch of fly by night chancers (as indeed we were by VTEC) but we shouldn't expect consistency to in itself do anything other than to provide a constant for people to moan about.

The reputation of a franchise will rise or fall on how effectively it's delivered in the here and now: in my view Virgin managed to whip up a storm over nearly losing the West Coast in 2012 not because they were Virgin but because they generally do the business on the Euston routes and were understood to have given birth to the Pendolinos ten years beforehand.

Obviously it was never going to happen, but given their strong reputation, if East Coast had mounted a similar campaign when they knew that they were about to be taken off the case in favour of a private operator then I suspect that it would've got the same public response.

 

[Intercity 225]

Given the background colour of the LNER corporate branding, which is the same red that Virgin use I suspect that not much is going to change quickly except delete Virgin, insert LNER.

Can you show me where I can see this new LNER corporate branding please?

 

[transmanche]

Can you show me where I can see this new LNER corporate branding please?

www.lnerailway.co.uk

Source: thetrainline.com

 

[pt_mad]

The DFT/government seem to want it both ways. They're now talking about generic brands becoming the norm and being passed on. But if brand consistency is what they're after, why don't they insist that all of the traditional intercity routes brand the same, rather than GWR, LNER, VTEC, GA, EMT etc. There's not much brand consistency there. Wouldn't it be more sensible to brand the network under say 4 brands as discussed earlier and just let the private companies run the train service then?

There's still people that think Virgin are the only company to run intercity services. And that if it's not a Virgin train then it can't be high speed.

Some posters suggested that the public don't really care who runs the service and would rather have a consistent long term brand like the London buses.
But to passengers on the WCML it seems that who runs the service is very important. As I've heard many a passenger whilst waiting at stations say ''oh, it's not a Virgin service, it's the slow one, I thought it was a Virgin one" .And they have dismissed the competition due to having high regard for the Virgin Intercity image.

What will they say in 5 years time, 'oh, it's an LMS service, I thought it was a Virgin one, I wanted the fast Virgin one'.

A lot of that type of thought process has come from having Virgin run west coast and XC at the start and the public perceiving that they had the manopoly on the old intercity network.

 

[SaveECRewards]

The DFT/government seem to want it both ways. They're now talking about generic brands becoming the norm and being passed on. But if brand consistency is what they're after, why don't they insist that all of the traditional intercity routes brand the same, rather than GWR, LNER, VTEC, GA, EMT etc. There's not much brand consistency there. Wouldn't it be more sensible to brand the network under say 4 brands as discussed earlier and just let the private companies run the train service then?

There's still people that think Virgin are the only company to run intercity services. And that if it's not a Virgin train then it can't be high speed.

Some posters suggested that the public don't really care who runs the service and would rather have a consistent long term brand like the London buses.
But to passengers on the WCML it seems that who runs the service is very important. As I've heard many a passenger whilst waiting at stations say ''oh, it's not a Virgin service, it's the slow one, I thought it was a Virgin one" .And they have dismissed the competition due to having high regard for the Virgin Intercity image.

What will they say in 5 years time, 'oh, it's an LMS service, I thought it was a Virgin one, I wanted the fast Virgin one'.

A lot of that type of thought process has come from having Virgin run west coast and XC at the start and the public perceiving that they had the manopoly on the old intercity network.

Of course it also depends where you lived. Someone from the north east 15 years ago would associate GNER with the quality InterCity fast trains and Virgin (XC) with the short smelly trains with the limited catering.

I do agree though that amongst those that don't travel by train or those in areas without an InterCity service a lot of people seem to think Virgin is the fastest.

 

[pt_mad]

I reckon hoards of occasional leisure travellers will be asking after Virgin on the West Coast for several years after the name Virgin Trains is gone from the branding.

I don't know if they'll perceive the same prestige from say an LMS brand on the WCML. Anyway off topic from the ECML.

If LNER is the long term brand, they may build up a great reputation under direct control and if the operator is transferred to a private franchise later it may go completly unnoticed by most. And if that franchise gets into serious financial trouble then LNER may have a bad name and brand but will still be required to be the brand even if there's another takeover?

Over on the West Coast they have London Northwestern Railway' and I'm not sure whether that brand is owned by the DFT or Abellio. If it's the latter chances are they will have to have a name change again should it change operator after 2026. And they may be running out of historical names!

 

[mpthomson]

I have heard this since the last general election, how the government will fall by Christmas... I have yet to hear a coherent argument about how it will actually happen. The Tories and the DUP will stick together, you can see at the moment how the fear of a general election is slowly forcing messy compromises within the Tories over brexit. Corbyn's recent visit to Northern Ireland has also reminded the DUP why they must support the government until 2022. Unless a general election is actually called early that is when it is.

Elections can't be 'called' any more, there are now fixed term 5 yr governments. The only exception to this is if the government fails a confidence vote in HoC, or a vote by 2/3rds of MPs for an early election. Even with Brexit divisions either scenario is simply not going to happen while JC remains 'in charge' of Labour. The next election will be in 2022 as planned. An early election is a Labour party fantasy.

 

[mpthomson]

I heard one suggestion that Theresa May could call a General Election as early as Autumn. Some MPs are already starting to prepare to seek re-election; I heard last week of one who’s already printing his campaign leaflets.

Back on topic: As much as I’d love to see the DfT get rid of Virgin Red altogether, the fact is that the fleet has just been refurbished with many interior seats in red. It would probably not make sense to create a new branding and colour (even though I’d love to see the branding changed to a shade of blue) just yet because the interior would still be red.

Theresa May can't call an early election, it doesn't work like that.....

 

[WelshBluebird]

Elections can't be 'called' any more, there are now fixed term 5 yr governments. The only exception to this is if the government fails a confidence vote in HoC, or a vote by 2/3rds of MPs for an early election. Even with Brexit divisions either scenario is simply not going to happen while JC remains 'in charge' of Labour. The next election will be in 2022 as planned. An early election is a Labour party fantasy.

Theresa May can't call an early election, it doesn't work like that.....

Technically correct, but she did manage to call an early one last year don't forget. All it needs is a majority vote in parliament. In that situation, the Tories would put their lot under a three line whip to get it voted through. And Labour would vote for it too (because otherwise they'd be rightly accused of keeping a Tory government in charge).

 

[jyte]

If T-May wants an early election, she'll get an early election.

I'm 90% sure she doesn't want an early election.

Anyway this thread is drifting off topic.

 

[mpthomson]

Technically correct, but she did manage to call an early one last year don't forget. All it needs is a majority vote in parliament. In that situation, the Tories would put their lot under a three line whip to get it voted through. And Labour would vote for it too (because otherwise they'd be rightly accused of keeping a Tory government in charge).

It requires a 2/3rds majority, not a simple one. After the last scare it isn't going to happen again. Anyway, back to topic.

 

[HH]

Of all the private operators since privatisation, Virgin Trains West Coast are the one with most brand image, and who indeed changed things the most.

A complete change of rolling stock, indeed very different rolling stock to what was there before (using a neutral term), the in train entertainment, the "wacky" toilets etc and with the Virgin brand imagine at the forefront

With most other routes, the changes were far smaller, and the brand far less to the forefront. I doubt any of the operators operating the London "commuter" franchises would be that bothered if they had to use a DfT approved livery

Within the industry the general perception was that the only brand that was worth a damn was Virgin, and that was because it was associated with things other than rail. I hear that one of the mistakes made on VTEC was overvaluing the Virgin Brand (i.e. they thought they'd sell more tickets based solely on it being a Virgin company than they actually managed). Possibly the Virgin brand has been damaged, possibly they just thought it was worth more than it is, or maybe EC passengers are less open to Virgin style marketing than WC...

 

[IanXC]

Some did.

Great Western certainly did by using a 'providing INTERCITY services' tagline and using the INTERCITY logo on HST carriages.


09 014 Bf London Paddington, 43 186 Great Western. CC BY-SA 4.0, by Falk2, from Wikimedia Commons

Of course, Great Western Trains was a management buy out by the ICGW management team, so I'd suggest they were always much more likely to perpetuate the brand they had been working with for many years. (Inter-City of course being a GWR named train).

 

[Bornin1980s]

I much preferred the Great Western 'merlin' to the horrible Firstgroup coulours that came afterwards! I'm sure glad that franchise (and TPE) are now generic.

I was certainly surprised to read of Virgin's brand recovery on the West Coast. You see, I can remember when it Britain's most notorious franchise, running away with the compensation after years of unreliable running and a failed 140mph upgrade (even the pendolinos were said to be too little, too late).

Might that be one reason the brand didn't succeed on the east coast - a name from the bad old days?

 

[Joe Paxton]

...
If LNER is the long term brand, they may build up a great reputation under direct control and if the operator is transferred to a private franchise later it may go completly unnoticed by most. ...

Perhaps worth noting that there has already been a state-owned TOC that became a private franchise and kept the same branded name - Southeastern.

(Govia did slightly amend the brand, but this was done gradually and the change was evolution rather than revolution.)