The operation that Virgin inherited from BR was a fairly ramshackle operation - lots of places were "on the map" but with little practical service. It was a bit like the National Express coach "network" is today. So you could get from one city to another city but there might only be one train a day, so not much use unless you were the kind of "time rich" person able to wait until then - places like Brighton have subsequently lost their cross-country services but it probably wasn't of much use to everyday passengers, given the limited service.
It's amazing in hindsight just how optimistic/ far-fetched/ ambitious Operation Princess was (delete as applicable).
Not just the effective doubling of the "core" from Birmingham to Bristol/ Newcastle/ Reading/ Manchester but also the extensions beyond there - bi-hourly trains to Dundee, bi-hourly extension of Bristol services to Cardiff - plus through trains to the likes of Swansea.
The whole Princess operation was also an enormous Orcats raid on the revenue streams of existing operators which used full length trains, whether former ER on Doncaster to Aberdeen, or former WR on Bristol to Penzance, etc. When first introduced there were further such streams as well. Of course, some of the established traffic on these flows transferred to the service.
It certainly turned XC from an occasional operator (with random timed trains) on some routes to being a major player (with a clock face timetable)
e.g. Edinburgh to Newcastle went from three journeys a day (that were effectively early morning/ late evening depot runs, much like the EMR services from Neville Hill to Sheffield/ East Midlands)... to an hourly service all day long.. the "fast" service from Leeds to Sheffield was only a few a day (given that there was only about one train per hour from Newcastle to Birmingham, albeit unevenly timed, and some of these went via Doncaster, some of them went via Leeds *and* Doncaster - so fairly few running fast from Leeds to Sheffield)... to a simple hourly service... so XC became a main provider - and quickly swamped!
I think people forget how bad a lot of other TOCs were at the time, just a few months after the Hatfield crash which meant timetables ripped up to accommodate a large number of speed restrictions... and how little "modern" stock there was... (and also how poor the long distance frequencies were on other TOCs - e.g. Leeds and Manchester just had one train per hour to London... Reading to Oxford was dominated by three coach Thames Trains 166s)... 2001 was probably about the "lowest" that the railway got (you've got to bear in mind that there was a thousand day gap between orders for new trains in the UK)... so an hourly (or half hourly) XC service with nice modern accessible trains became
very attractive (whilst a 158 was about as modern as you'd get on a number of provincial routes) - no wonder passengers moved to XC from other TOCs
Maybe if the transformation to "Princess" had happened a few years later, when other TOCs had improved their capacity and upped their game, XC's new timetable wouldn't have been as swamped by additional passengers as it was. But the levels of non-XC service on routes like Bristol - Exeter or Leeds - Sheffield or Oxford - Reading are significantly better than they once were.
It's also why all three toilets on Voyagers are universal. One for each proposed class, taking up scarce space.
That's the version that gets repeated, but (given that we complain about TOCs cramming in as many seats as possible etc, it's no bad thing to provide accessible toilets for passengers in most coaches - I think that the amount of accessible toilets is
underprovided in other trains in comparison
The colour zoning thing predates the Voyagers / Pendolinos and was implemented really stupidly. It was trialed at Lancaster with FOUR zones (not three) and the yellow platform strip replaced with the four colours, along with matching signs. This was pre-pendolino, may even have been pre-virgin. Announcements stated which zone each coach was in - and which zone had empty seats. I've a feeling it was also trialed at Preston.
Anyway, someone decided it was a good idea to roll out nationally - but as three zones using signs to denote the areas. But it was unclear if the new signs marked the centres or the ends of the zone. Also the old signs and the platform edge stripes were left in place, total chaos.
From memory the four colours were gold, pink, blue, yellow but I may have misremembered
It was a good idea
in theory.
Dwells on Metro services can be pretty quick but dwells on InterCity services can be horrendous - single/narrow doors being one factor but made worse by the fact that passengers are wanting the specific coach that their seat reservation is in and unsure where to stand.
Put yourself in the shoes of an average member of the public. They know that they need "Coach C" but have no idea where that's going to be on the train - there may be no information at the station you board at, at best there may just be something on the screen saying "Please Note That First Class Is At The Rear" but that may be of no use (for all you know, First Class may be Coach A or Coach Z)... so once the train arrives, you then need to anxiously dash along the platform to find the right door... meaning the dwell is longer than it should be (and that passengers are put off travelling - at least with boarding a plane it's obvious what to do)... so having something to try to get people standing in the correct place seems a positive - it's just that it needs to be pretty consistent across the country
I think the problem with thatis that XC has always been supposed to be an InterCity-quality service. Those of us who experienced 170s in their time on the Midland Main Line could never see them as IC stock, either in terms of performance or of comfort (save for the few first-class seats provided by the follow-up order). Otherwise, dreadful trains, especially if you ended up sitting in standard class in a wall-side seat.
The MML ones were introduced for brand new services, and (due to the timetable) only really much use for "local" journeys where a 170 would be acceptable (e.g. Kettering to London)
