Great Western Coffee Shop

 XC will not be forced to provide food and drink to passengers on its service between Plymouth and Penzance.
http://www.thisisplymouth.co.uk/business/Rail-food-appeal-rejected/article-1569986-detail/article.html

One wonders what 'at seat catering on all routes, for all passengers, not just first class' meant in Arriva's press release (http://www.arriva.co.uk/arriva/en/media_centre/press_releases/2007/2007-07-10/) in June 2007, following the award of the franchise to them.

Surely 'all passengers' includes those travelling from PLY-PNZ?

'Lies, damned lies, and statistics press releases', possibly?  ::)

Yup, Chris you're probably right. Same press release mentions Wi-Fi as well. Only time I pick up a Wi-Fi signal on a XC Vomiter (when I actually make the mistake of travelling on one!) is when I'm sat in a station soaking up 'dwell time'.

Arriva have killed cross country, you just had to look at the empty HST's going to Newquay this summer! you can never get advance purchase tickets for long distance journeys and their walk up fares are rediculous!

Same applies Edinburgh to Aberdeen and Glasgow, though they have just taken on First Class Hosts at Edinburgh to provide a better service NCL - EDB.

Most of the Reading/Bournemouth Voyagers are pretty full though - especially from Oxford northwards. Yes, they're only 4 or 5 carriage trains, but is it a case of Arriva happily resting on their laurels knowing there's enough custom to fill what they've got? I have been pretty disappointed with that franchise so far.

Another economising move of Arriva's is to withdraw 2 of the five HST sets from the December TT change, apparently.

(Dunno this for sure, but the Fact Compiler's blog is usually spot on)

I've heard there's one less diagram but retaining all five HST's

They only have four diagrams normally, except for Friday evening during the summer when an additional train ran south to position itself for a Saturday morning service from Newquay.

So four diagrams from 5 trains is in fact the normal situation. What has changed is that each set has had coach D removed.

Paul

I guess that following the economic downturn there is no longer a need for Arriva XC to '...provide 35% more seating in the critical evening peak on principal routes by June 2009...' which is partly why the HST's were introduced in the first place. I wonder if shortening the HST's to 2+7 means that AXC fall below this franchise commitment? Or maybe winter loadings allow it without breaking the franchise commitment. It'll be interesting to see whether they return to 2+8 next May.

interesting to see HSTs used so flexibly with coaches added or removed as demanded.  Makes a lot of sense, but everyone else uses HST as fixed semi-permanantly coupled sets so I had always assumed that reforming them was more trouble that it was worth. 

Aviva do seem to have desroyed their long distance markets with poorer service, timetabling slack, lack of cheap tickets and a pricing policy that makes travelling via london often better, quicker and sometimes cheaper. 

The people who run TOCs are not stupid so I assume that it has been done deliberately so as to concentrate on shorter flows in their "core" route which must be easier to resource.

IMHO, Virgin started the downwards spiral of long distance cross country services when they introduced the god-awful Voyagers, but at least they kept them full with cheap AP fares that undercut the alternatives.

It's difficult to pin down, but according to the XC franchise ITT as issued, the requirement was to provide the extra seating through the west midlands (in the peaks only) by June 2010.
This seems to be why they can reduce the HST lengths at the moment, but they ought to be reinstated for next summer.

Paul

It's not a major hassle - and worth it if the change is for several weeks. But it's not really a practical idea if, say, FGW were to decide to get rid of a 1st Class coach and replace it with a Standard class coach for the Saturday and Sunday holiday rush. Perfectly possible (and a good idea) in theory, but a hell of a lot of work in the depots overnight on Friday and Sundays in practice.