swt_passenger
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Yours is the first mention. First‘s own PR only states ‘at seat catering’...
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East Coast Trains: What are your hopes, fears and predictions?
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I had seen somewhere they would have a buffet which of course is a dirty word to First. It does state on Wikipedia on board buffets but looking at it again that can't count as reliable I suppose.
If it's a dirty word, why would they provide one?
Voyager lad
Member
Bit of a random thought, but would there have been much of a case to run the service beyond Edinburgh on to Glasgow Queen St? Say calling at Edinburgh Park, Falkirk High and Lenzie? It would create new links between those stations as well as giving Glasgow a much quicker service on to the East Coast? Whilst the existing change at Waverley isn’t a massive issue, creating new through journeys could attract more passengers. I’d personally use it at least twice a week between Lenzie and Morpeth, a journey that usually involves 2-3 changes
91103eastcoast
Member
I don’t think there would be space on the Edinburgh-Glasgow via Falkirk route for it to run beyond Edinburgh, I think platform availability at Queen Street would be an issue too.
Id suggest that the business case wont be set towards encouraging Scotland to Morpeth tickets which take up a possible Edinburgh to London seat and that the costs of any extension would outlay. Personally if I was running it I wouldnt even accept National Rail tickets if I didnt have to.
It’s probaly fair to say that you would be the only passenger regularly travelling Lenzie to Morpeth; as for the suggestion generally it would be almost wholly abstractive from Scotrail, there aren’t the paths to do it, and First East Coast would need another unit for relatively little additional (abstracted) revenue.
You'd probably need at least one extra set to maintain the London frequency, and have to take over a Scotrail Express path. And though the two-hourly frequency between the East Coast and Glasgow could do with being doubled, it's not nearly as big a market as that to Edinburgh. Either way it's unlikely to be something ECTL have a good commercial justification for doing, let alone something which the ORR would approve.
waverley47
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The maximum change time from south of Edinburgh to stations as far as Dunblane, Fife Circle and Glasgow is currently 30 minutes, with Queen Street a maximum of 14 minutes change. It's not a bad change.
The paths wouldn't match up, so you'd need to spend a good ten minutes sitting at Edinburgh in the down direction, not sure about the up.
You'd have to replace a ScotRail express (8 coaches, regular stopping pattern) with a five coach train, already half full and probably have an irregular stopping pattern.
There isn't time to turn around at Queen Street, nor the platform space for a long layover.
And the big one, it definitely wouldn't pass the primarily abstractive test.
The paths wouldn't match up, so you'd need to spend a good ten minutes sitting at Edinburgh in the down direction, not sure about the up.
You'd have to replace a ScotRail express (8 coaches, regular stopping pattern) with a five coach train, already half full and probably have an irregular stopping pattern.
There isn't time to turn around at Queen Street, nor the platform space for a long layover.
And the big one, it definitely wouldn't pass the primarily abstractive test.
On surge demand dates I suspect they'd be able to run at least some 10 car trains.
If we assume each set can do 3 single trips, and there are 5 each way that gives utilisation of 66% on a 5 unit fleet, so if heavy maintenance were planned taking account of these days, and potentially a hire in of one of Hull Train's sets then 2x 10 car formations running on any given day isn't implausible imo.
I can’t remeber the detail, but some diagrams can only do 2 single trips a day. Think they need four in service every day.
Of course not all diagrams will be typical 18+ hour diagrams, which probably makes up for the otherwise rather tight utilisation.
A fleet of 5 only really works when you have very reliable trains; you would have fewer 'wasted' units if all the 80x were one common, operator-agnostic fleet and Hitachi could provide any serviceable unit. Sadly 'tis not to be!
PG
Established Member
Shame no one at DfT thought about this, oogh 7/8 years ago!
Journeyman
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I don't think it would have worked even in BR days, when the HST was a standard train. Separate fleets were maintained for all the routes they were used on.
Yes but you didn't have separate subfleets within each route!
southern442
Established Member
I don't think this universal fleet idea would work necessarily, as the current fleets are tailored specifically to the routes they operate.
Bletchleyite
Veteran Member
I think that may have been the idea with the initial GWR sets, given things like the basic interior, but we know how well that went.
southern442
Established Member
I think given the variety of service the different 800, 801 and 802 fleets are needed as they have different strengths/weaknesses. The 803s are technically unique amongst the IEPs currently but there's no reason why a swap with an 801 for whatever reason wouldn't work if it were ever needed.
From may onwards i believe
Paths are in the May timetable, and will be public in a few weeks. However the service won’t be starting until much later in the year,
Thanks a lot. I’ll be interested to see them and how close to a peak time service they can get.
As I said upthread, I’ll be interested to see the journey times. Pathing them can not have been easy.
The track access decision by ORR (from 2016 or so) specifically refers to off peak services.
Yes - might there be a possibility of a pre-1030 arrival?
Unlikely I’d say. That implies a departure around 0600 and a good path.
Worth also noting the LNER "Flying Scotsman" is an 0540 departure and relatively lightly loaded from Edinburgh (but fills up at Newcastle), so such an early departure for ECT may not be fully commercially rational.
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