Robert Hampton

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23rd March 2013

Train of thought

Virgin Train at Liverpool South ParkwayOddly enough, despite being obsessed with railways, I don’t really mention trains much for the first year or so of the blog. I suspect I may have been trying to project an image of coolness, and I imagined railways would not fit in with that. One of the earliest train posts, in fact, is a fairly grim one – a brief mention of the Ufton Nervet derailment.

Railway safety (or the alleged lack thereof) is a common complaint in the media. Actually Britain’s railway is one of the safest in the world, but that tends to make the fatal accidents, such as the Greyrigg derailment, more newsworthy.

Subsequently, however, I’ve got over any lingering problems with coolness and I now blog about trains to the point of being boring. One development that excited me near the start of the blog’s life was the Liverpool South Parkway interchange, which was developed just a few stations down the line from where I live. I wrote about it in September 2005, when it was nearing completion, then a few months later in June 2006, when it opened. As was my habit at the time, the write-up of the day appeared on a separate page, rather than the blog itself. At first, the station’s usefulness was limited by the refusal of the regional operators to stop their trains there, but over the years more and more destinations have been served. The station is now a useful facility, and has been the starting point for many of my recent rail adventures.

lsp-certificateThe fractured nature of Britain’s passenger railway, with its multitude of franchises, means that every few years a new company will take over from the old. In practice this generally means that the trains are painted a different colour, staff get new uniforms and little actually changes on the ground. Such was the case with the Merseyrail network, when Arriva Trains handed over to the Serco/NedRailways consortium. Quite a few people were happy to see the end of Arriva, although subsequent events – including a damaging strike on Grand National Day in 2005 and a mysterious problem with the wheel lathe which led to days of disruption in 2007 – have dented the Dutch operator’s reputation somewhat in my eyes.

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15th August 2012

Branson’s Pickle
Posted by at 8.15pm | In the News, Trains | 3 responses

Virgin Train at Liverpool South ParkwayThe West Coast Main Line, linking London with Scotland via Crewe (with branches to Liverpool and Manchester) has faced big upheavals in recent years, with passengers enduring many years of engineering work to upgrade the line and its trains. It doesn’t seem like long since that work finished, but another big change is now on the horizon, as Virgin Trains – who have run the service since privatisation in 1997 – make way for FirstGroup.

The news that Virgin have lost the franchise to operate trains on the West Coast Main Line came as no surprise to anyone, as the news leaked out nearly a week ago. Still, the official confirmation at 7am this morning prompted a big response, including an angry reaction from Richard Branson.

There was a mass outpouring on Twitter, with hundreds of tweets to @VirginTrains commiserating with them about the end of their tenure, and many more heaping scorn on FirstGroup. It seems that Branson comes a close second to Jobs in nurturing brand loyalty.

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