Particularly if urban folk move to little electric cars then maybe the market is delivering boxes to your home, which are then collected and taken to Fort William (by the train or by lorry). You travel on the sleeper with an overnight bag and turn up to find a family sized hire car and a crate of your stuff waiting for you.
It would be expensive but if it’s convenient enough then there are lots of rich folk in London who like a bit of greenwash!
Electric car - that triggers a thought. Ones own electric car will probably not have the range and so a Motorail service could be an option if taking ones own car to Scotland or wherever. I just brainstormed about deepest Europe - lets face it there is already a UK Motorail service - to France.
Who said it was going? The current prices (to the customer) are still less than half what it actually costs for them to be on the train - that's still a great deal in my book.
Also the small matter of a 15 year franchise (and associated contracts on the back of it) with a decade still to run on it.
The hosts do have places to rest - the dispute is the staff don't feel they are adequate and the management think they are.
This previous post gives a good 'inside' view of the issue I believe:
https://www.railforums.co.uk/threads/caledonian-sleeper.176365/post-4775983
To avoid alarm. I was not meaning to say CS is going to cease - apologies. I was just pondering the consequences of what is a merely a possibility.
Thanks for reminding me of the post - only read it a little while ago
. It is the most info we have and I had already forgotten it. I have been catching up on a lot of threads this weekend !.
Completely agree with you Peter re unions, I wasn't seeking to apportion blame, just to point out that in such a loss-making venture, closure is a real possibility. Would industrial action be in the interest of RMT's members? - particularly if CS staff would prefer to retain their jobs with existing Ts & Cs, rather than being made redundant if the sleeper were to finish. So while RMT's intent in improving facilities for CS staff is reasonable (although their approach is less so), if agreement can't be reached (and yes, it takes two to tango) and the sleeper were to close, everyone would lose.
I have heard stories of how industrial action at Longbridge (car factory for Austin, then British Leyland, on South side of Birmingham) was a regular bringer of stress and hardship to the locals. A strike is never a nice thing and it is open to debate how necessary some are. There is a point that maybe the staff value their current Terms and Conditions. If the subsidies were spent on something else would they get better or worse in an alternative employment (ignoring the dark cloud of Covid-19).
A big example of workers struggles was the miners strikes. A long and very very bitter struggle to avert the end of gainful employment for the majority of people in many towns. With hindsight it was a futile waste - inevitable as cheaper coal from open cast mines flooded in from abroad. Nowadays if I wanted to open a traditional mine (with an underground seam) I doubt many people would want to work it - I even wonder how Health and Safety would allow it !.
But the scars are still there of communities that no longer had a reason to exist. I lived in Kent at the time and even the small mines in Kent showed us what the consequences were. Closer to home we lost our Naval Dockyard - Chatham. What surprised us was that most of the industry in the Medway towns then folded - because of course their bread and butter had gone. One can argue it is progress but it takes generations for a community to recover. I was at college at the time so not always in lectures midday. I noticed how the demographic in the shopping centre changed on weekdays from being mainly housewives to being housewives but many with their husbands.
Gone off on a bit of a tangent but what I am driving at is. It is one thing deciding something is un-sustainable and pulling the subsidy plug. But I just hope the social consequences are considered AND then effort and money would be put into nurturing replacement employment. In the case of CS there is no real evidence to say it is doomed but if it is....