voyager- impressed

[DarloRich]

Not many people use them for the entire route though. Many people use Cross Country for regional journeys.

I dont! I would also disagree that there are not many people using the service for long distances.

 

[Wolfie]

arrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrggggggggggggggggggggggghhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

YOU CAN NOT POLISH A TURD!

you can change the bloody carpet all you like but they still rattle true, they are still uncomfortbale a matter of perception and they are still too smallnot long enough - solved by doubling up - or too small inside - a function of the ability to tilt? both arguable.

Try a long run, say Edinburgh - Plymouth and tell me you like them. :roll::roll:
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I shall be impressed when they are destoryed. Or at least moved on to more suitable services away from me!

that isn't a rant it a factual observation!

I just do not think they are appropriate for the services upon which they are used.

There is a logical disconnect between your first sentence which itself is at least partially arguable - see my bold comments - and your second sentence which is your belief "I....do not think" which others might not share!!!

 

[starrymarkb]

Not everyone in the South West lives in Exeter though. For some it can be a long journey just to get to Exeter.

Or Bristol which is where I tend to drive to as the flight times are more convenient (3x Daily as opposed to 3x Weekly from EXT).

Though from further west you'd still be looking at a similar increase in journey time whether by train or air (if flying from Bristol or Exeter, not sure if you can go NQY to GLA via MAN).

 

[DarloRich]

There is a logical disconnect between your first sentence which itself is at least partially arguable - see my bold comments - and your second sentence which is your belief "I....do not think" which others might not share!!!

People are quite welcome to hold their own opinions, however wrong they may be.

Personally I don’t hold opinions, merely facts, so therefore anyone disagreeing with me is wrong!

Sorry; but no one will ever convince me of the righteousness of the Voyager. It is not as good as the train it replaced.

 

[142094]

That's not really a rolling stock issue though, as demonstrated by the rather better catering on the Virgin Voyagers.

Is there space on a current XC Voyager to install a proper buffet? Probably, but not without reducing the number of seats even more, and the last thing a Voyager needs is less seats.

 

[Schnellzug]

Is there space on a current XC Voyager to install a proper buffet? Probably, but not without reducing the number of seats even more, and the last thing a Voyager needs is less seats.

Well that's the thing, isn't it, a classic case of damned if they do, damned if they don't. People used to complain that Virgin's "Shop" was a waste of space, so XC convert it to provide more sears, and then complain that there's not a buffet ....

 

[shaun]

Voyagers aren't bad trains, they're just on the wrong lines. If they were running the same routes Class 170s, they'd be praised by most. Personally i detest them for replacing HSTs as they are inferior in many ways, but i wouldn't complain if one turned up on a Cardiff - Notts journey for instance.

Quite intrigued by the 'refurb', although new seat covers would've been nice.

 

[Robinson]

Well that's the thing, isn't it, a classic case of damned if they do, damned if they don't. People used to complain that Virgin's "Shop" was a waste of space, so XC convert it to provide more sears, and then complain that there's not a buffet ....

Well I wasn't one of those who complained that Virgin's shop was a waste of space...

Speaking of wastes of space though, the last couple of times I have been on XC Voyagers the luggage rack where the shop used to be has often been rather under-used. Perhaps for the same reasons that they claimed the shop wasn't being used (people want their luggage within sight and not the other side of the door)?

 

[sprinterguy]

not long enough - solved by doubling up

Doubling up of services though does not detract from the fact that the units themselves are too short. Long distance Inter-city train services should not be split into separate portions (Try not to recall the APT-P here, shush ): It limits passenger circulation, causing imbalances in passenger loading rather than passengers distributing themselves more evenly throughout the train after it has started moving, and also causes inefficiencies in staffing.

- or too small inside - a function of the ability to tilt? both arguable.

It is not just the tapered body profile of a Voyager (which I don't think is particularly pronounced or noticeable anyway, admittedly) that can lead them to appearing "small" inside: As well as the short overall length of the entire train, the carriages themselves have been poorly designed to make good utilisation of the available space. The passenger doors are located a considerable distance inboard of the vehicle ends. This allows the vehicle ends to taper inwards, which has probably admittedly allowed the main length of the Voyager vehicles to be slightly wider than they otherwise would have been, but is a substantial enough distance to essentially reduce the useable space between the passenger doors to that of a 20 metre carriage rather than a 23 metre one. And on top of that, each carriage, except the vehicle with "The Shop", then has a capacious disabled toilet fitted, eating into the remaining available space for passengers when only one in each driving car probably would have sufficed.

 

[Lrd]

I'm under the impression that most passengers tend to choose who to travel with because of their cheap fares/where they want to go, they don't choose who to travel with based on what food they can get (first class passengers exempt from this), a lot of people tend to bring their own food on board because it is probably cheaper.

Whatever catering is provided on the Voyagers is redundant in these arguments, if there was a shop, passengers wouldn't leave their seat or carry luggage with them, if there was a trolley, there wouldn't be a big selection of food anyway. This is the same for any piece of rolling stock.

Voyagers are decent, fast, trains that are quick off the mark, with actually quite comfy seats (better than the bits of wood on some Electostars/Desiros). The only downside is that they are too short.

 

[142094]

Comfort is a subjective thing and if a passenger who doesn't travel by rail often, but gets on something like a Voyager, they probably will not be encouraged to travel again. Likewise, a regular traveller will get to know what type of stock/service they enjoy, so will continue to do that.

People say that most people on Voyagers only make short inter-urban trips, but does anyone have figures that can give a rough idea of who travels where, and what distance they travel? Probably not.

 

[sprinterguy]

Voyagers are decent, fast, trains that are quick off the mark, with actually quite comfy seats (better than the bits of wood on some Electostars/Desiros). The only downside is that they are too short.

Given that Electrostars and Desiros are outer suburban EMUs only, I would hope that it should go without saying that the seats on trains of the longest distance Intercity operator in Britain would be of a better standard than those found on an outer suburban EMU! Clearly seated comfort is a matter of personal preference, but in my opinion there’s not much to recommend the Voyager seating over the seats in LMs’ 350s in terms of padding, although the Voyager seats are at least superior in the amount of back support they provide, even if they still remain too narrow and have less than perfect pitch for Intercity services IMO.

They’re not awful or even all bad, but a more meaningful comparison would be with the superb (Although it is apparent that some members of this forum don’t think so) Primarius seating found on XCs’ HSTs and in East Coasts’ “Mallard” refurbed sets than with Desiros and Electrostars.
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Not many people do this though. The average journey length when the franchise was let was just 81 miles and I'm not sure a buffet would be justified for a journey of this length.

This statistic is borne out in practice as well: Crosscountry trains witness significant passenger “churn” rates at Bristol, Birmingham, Sheffield, Leeds/York (depending which way the train is routed), Newcastle and Edinburgh, where perhaps as many as 60 – 75% of the passengers on some services will alight and be replaced by others at these focal nodes.

However, at the same time, these 81 mile journeys are not by any means the be all and end all of Crosscountry passenger trips: I regularly witness a high proportion of passengers (myself included) travelling through from Birmingham to York or Newcastle, and there is also a smaller yet stable number of passengers who will make the journey all the way from Birmingham to Edinburgh with XC, as I have in the past thanks to cheap advance fares being available.

It is also very easy to envisage that there will be a considerable number of passenger trips between (1) Plymouth, Bristol and Birmingham; (2) Bournemouth, Southampton, Birmingham and Manchester; and (3) Sheffield, Newcastle and Edinburgh where Crosscountry are the sole or principal operator of direct services. All these journeys constitute considerably longer trips than 81 miles.

The Crosscountry network will convey some of the longest distance passenger journeys in Britain, with the exception of the London – Inverness service possibly, and does this regularly. The quality of the service offering of the Crosscountry network should not be rounded down to suit the lowest common demoninator, but instead should be factored up to cater for the needs of longer distance passengers travelling for three hours or more.

Taking the 81 mile average journey length statistic and applying it to the popular pairs of origins and destinations on the Crosscountry network (I don’t have precise rail mileages to hand at the moment), the average journey time to cover this sort of distance on a Crosscountry service is not dissimilar to some popular journeys made by the London-centric Intercity operators. Crosscountry popular O-D pairs shown below:

Newcastle – York: 90ish miles, 60 minutes
York – Sheffield: 60ish miles, 50/70 minutes
Sheffield – Birmingham: 80ish miles, 64 – 73 minutes
Birmingham – Bristol: 86 miles, 86 minutes
Birmingham – Oxford: 70 miles, 70 minutes

In contrast, East Midlands Trains operate a comparatively short distance end to end Intercity journeys between St Pancras, Nottingham, Derby and Sheffield (Plus a few extensions to Leeds), much shorter in terms of both distance and time than the Anglo-Scottish EC and WC operators and FGW services to South Wales and Cornwall, but yet a much more substantial catering provision and standard of first class service is available, as is a better standard of rolling stock, than that provided by XC.

There are some popular relatively short, in terms of time, journeys that are made on East Coast, EMT and Virgin West Coast services where some form of buffet and catering service is provided and available for use, and all using properly specified Intercity rolling stock rather than arguably Regional, short DMUs as Crosscountry do: These include Kings Cross – Peterborough (45 – 50 mins), St Pancras – Leicester (Generally 65 – 80 mins), Euston – Milton Keynes (30 mins), or even Rugby (48 mins), and Paddington – Bristol (80 – 90 minutes).

Plus many of even the end to end journeys on the London-centric Intercity operators will be shorter in terms of time, and sometimes distance, than a number of passenger journeys made on Crosscountry: Kings Cross – Leeds, St Pancras – Nottingham, Paddington – Bristol and Euston – Birmingham & Wolverhampton, and maybe Manchester as well, all work out far shorter in journey time than, say, a Birmingham – Newcastle journey.

 

[87015]

If the average journey within the franchise is 81 miles as stated above then the average journey on XC services proper (ie Voyagers) will be much longer than 81 miles - the ex-CT 170 services will account for lots of shorter journeys which would bring down the average considerably.

 

[SprinterMan]

I am at Bangor University, and most of the students here massively prefer a 221 over a 158/175 any day of the week (of course it's just "Virgin" and "Arriva" to them :P)
Adam

 

[ATW Alex 101]

To be fair, Voyagers are my favorite type of train I do like the vibration and sound of them pulling away from stations. What I also love is the sound when cruising. I don't see the problem in them TBF, I know people complain bout the legroom, but as a fairly tall 13 year old (5ft 11, no bull*****) , find the legroom adequate.

 

[142094]

Wait til you get to 6' 2" and then you'll start complaining

 

[ATW Alex 101]

Wait til you get to 6' 2" and then you'll start complaining

lol

 

[asylumxl]

I find the leg room adequate in reference to the above post...

 

[Zoe]

If the average journey within the franchise is 81 miles as stated above then the average journey on XC services proper (ie Voyagers) will be much longer than 81 miles - the ex-CT 170 services will account for lots of shorter journeys which would bring down the average considerably.

It was based on Virgin Cross Country.