Philip Haigh
As the final curtain falls on VT’s West Coast franchise operation after more than 20 years, PHILIP HAIGH looks back at two decades that were never boring
Arrivederci Virgin Trains.
THERE were two dress rehearsals for Virgin Trains’ loss of the West Coast franchise. In the first (in 2007), it lost CrossCountry. In the second (more recently in 2018), it lost East Coast.
But it’s the disappearance of the flagship London-Glasgow route, with its frequent services to Birmingham and Manchester as well, that must have hurt Sir Richard Branson. The trains were one of the last public faces of his empire, with only the airline now flying the brand with any obvious style.
His train business was a 51:49 split with another entrepreneur, Stagecoach founder Sir Brian Souter. They created quite a double act in West Coast’s early days, when there was a launch or some other high-profile event.
These events were not to everybody’s taste - some found them too brash. But they certainly created interest in Virgin Trains and fixed attention on what it was trying to do. Branson may have launched West Coast with a ‘Mission: Impossible’ tagline, but Virgin was trying to bring a revolution to the railways.
Virgin tapped into a latent enthusiasm for railways that erupted with privatisation. Over on the East Coast route from King’s Cross, GNER was bringing style back, but the subtlety of its approach was never to be Virgin’s. Even in freight, EWS (under Ed Burkhardt) was bringing optimism in place of doom-laden warnings from those against privatisation.
There was plenty of optimism… and it was catching. Virgin’s West Coast bid planned a fleet of 40 140mph tilting trains that would run initially at 125mph from 2001, enabling dramatic cuts in journey times.
However, that was the future and Virgin still had to survive its present with an ageing fleet running on ageing infrastructure. RAIL’s Comprehensive Guide to Britain’s Railway recorded in 2000: “Virgin took over the West Coast operation at a time when staff were demoralised and the whole business had been neglected… passenger expectations were high, but in reality all that had happened was the trains had received a coat of paint.
“Management was more focused on the new train order and the message was things will get better when the new trains arrive. This philosophy was a disaster. With no real focus on current day-to-day operations, performance and reliability nosedived further. Public confidence and satisfaction hit rock bottom.
“This was not helped by Virgin’s idea that a railway could be run like an airline with passengers booking seats in advance. There was an outcry that cheap walk-on tickets were being withdrawn.”
These weren’t the only problems Virgin was wrestling with.
It had done a deal with track owner Railtrack to upgrade the West Coast Main Line. The jewel of this agreement would be two tracks dedicated to 140mph trains between London and Crewe. This would allow Virgin’s new tilting stock to ‘stretch its legs’ and deliver the faster journeys Branson promised. For the rest of the route, 125mph would be the new, improved limit.
Railtrack planned to use moving block signalling for the 140mph lines, but this proved to be a step too far for the technology of the day (as it still is today, 20 years after Railtrack dropped the idea).
Railtrack’s other challenge was more mundane but just as impossible. How could it fit all the West Coast’s traffic onto the two remaining lines if Virgin had exclusive use of the fast lines? It couldn’t.
Then there was the work needed to modernise the route to make it fit for 125mph. Costs soared, and the upgrade project rightly attracted many of the wrong headlines.
Stir in the network’s nervous breakdown following Hatfield’s fatal broken rail in October 2000, when thousands of speed restrictions were imposed across the country, and Virgin’s situation became very much worse.
The problems were not Virgin’s alone. It had promised to turn West Coast from being a subsidised operation to one that contributed to government coffers. When first let in 1997, the switch was planned for 2002-03 with a £3.9 million payment that year and a £52.7m payment the following year.
What actually happened was that government had to pay £517m over those two years to West Coast, to keep it running.
Run it did, and eventually Network Rail completed the West Coast upgrade - including remodelling at Proof House Junction (Birmingham), Euston and Rugby, as well as new stretches of four-track railway and comprehensive track renewals. Power supplies were boosted and signalling upgraded, but it was a hard slog.
Once it was done in 2008, it allowed Virgin to launch its ‘very high frequency’ timetable from
2009. This gave Manchester and Birmingham services to and from London at 20-minute frequencies and cut London-Glasgow journeys to 4hrs 10mins.
Longer trains followed as passengers reacted to the improved timetable, cheap tickets and faster services, although the Department for Transport skimped on the option of lengthening all the trains.
By this time, Virgin was running West Coast on a revised deal that gave it a subsidy of nearly £1.3bn over the five years to 2012 (at the same time as paying Network Rail £2bn in access charges).
The operation settled to become reasonably reliable. And while its peak fares always attracted attention, those advance purchase tickets that had initially been resisted proved popular in filling seats. Virgin’s deal was due to end in 2012, and so it and other competitors bid for the new deal on offer.
To Virgin’s shock, First won.… but not for long. The DfT found errors in the way it had handled and assessed the bidders’ plans, and reversed its decision under the threat of legal action from Virgin.
So, Virgin took what would be another seven years running West Coast services, before it lost 2018’s bid to (again) First, this time bidding with Trenitalia. This time it really had lost and so now passengers must become used to Avanti West Coast rather than Virgin West Coast.
Avanti has a tough act to follow. Today the word ‘transformational’ is bandied around too often and too carelessly. Yet it accurately describes Virgin’s effect on the West Coast franchise that it took over from British Rail in 1997.
From that standing start, it had tilting Class 390 Pendolino EMUs running from 2002 (and introduced 125mph Class 220 and 221 Voyagers). Compare that with the decade it took the DfT to procure Class 800 trains for Great Western and East Coast services.
It wasn’t just the working tilt that was new (banishing the failure of British Rail’s APT in the 1980s). Virgin was also the first to carry passengers in the front vehicles of trains at 125mph.
Look at the way Virgin took those advance purchase tickets and made them normal. The way it switched to internet sales. And the way it persevered through some incredibly difficult years. Virgin grew the market for rail, starting with around 13.2 million annual passenger journeys. In 2018-19 that figure was 39.5 million.
Whether the world was ready for Brian Souter to appear dressed as a schoolboy at the December 1999 unveiling of Pendolino ( RAIL
373), supported by Branson as Santa Claus, is debatable. Whether toilets talking about sweaters and goldfish were wise is likewise debatable. But taken as a whole, from start to finish, Virgin Trains has delivered the ride of a lifetime. Its sheer determination and (yes) its brass-neck will be missed.
Arrivederci Virgin Trains. Ciao Avanti.