Farewell East Coast. Hello Virgin Trains East Coast.

[whole diary]

[LiskeardRich]

As reported before, Virgin Trains itself is 51% Branson and 49% Stagecoach, making the true "Virgin" exposure of East Coast 5.1% overall.

The flip side being, there is a large percentage of his businesses outside of his control that could harm the whole Virgin image.

This is not correct. Virgin Trains- The company running the west coast is the 51:49 split you mention
Virgin Trains East Coast is a 10:90 split.
East and West are too separate companies, and the share of one has no link to the share ownership of the other.

[Brucey]

Since privatisation, I wonder how many millions of pounds has been spent on repainting trains every few years?  The concept of the ScotRail branding (same logo and colour scheme regardless of operator) is surely a much more cost effective way of thinking.

[Jason]

Been a lot of unhappy East Coast customers, myself included, who were members of the excellent East Coast Rewards which has been replaced by Nectar.

I'm a very regular user of East Coast services and am sitting on quite a pile of reward points at the moment.
I've yet to fully run through the options available to me prior to the September cut off date but it doesn't sound good from the above.
It remains to be seen what things are like on-board. I shall find out on Friday.
Trying to peruse bookings at the moment takes me straight to
http://tickets.eastcoast.co.uk/core/overload.gif

[ChrisB]

I now have big concerns for the future for ICEC and ICWC^▸ (InterCity West Coast). Both currently operated by Virgin... Where is the incentive for competition? Not to mention Megabus and Stagecoach' Scottish Coach Services...

Competition Commission is now happy, having extracted guarantees for VTEC....I think you'll find these undertakings on the CC website, I assume

[Fourbee]

Just got an email saying the following points are about to expire next month:

(then blank)

The points in the account are nowhere near 2 years old (which I thought was the expiry date), but have converted them to Nectar points as I'm probably not going to use VT^▸ (Virgin Trains - former franchises) East Coast before the end of September anyway.

[JayMac]

The full new livery on the 1100 KGX-EDB today:


...passing Retford:


...and a video of the service passing Peterborough:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GNIHi4KvhKY

Looks okay but I still much prefer the original Class 91/225 set livery:

[grahame]

The full new livery on the 1100 KGX-ABD today:

Silly question - electric to ABERDEEN ??

[JayMac]

Not a silly question, just a silly mix-up. Got my EDB and ABD confused. 

The service was 1S13 1100 King's Cross -  Edinburgh.

I've amended my post.

[bobm]

This is bona fide nuts. If you're going to distinguish between the two franchises, call one "Virgin Trains East Coast" and one "Virgin Trains West Coast". Not "Virgin Trains East Coast" and "Virgin Trains".

Interestingly this evening the iTunes store has offered me an upgrade to the National Rail Enquiries app.

Two of the stated enhancements are
East Coast becomes Virgin Trains East Coast
Virgin Trains becomes Virgin Trains West Coast

[paul7575]

This is bona fide nuts. If you're going to distinguish between the two franchises, call one "Virgin Trains East Coast" and one "Virgin Trains West Coast". Not "Virgin Trains East Coast" and "Virgin Trains".

Interestingly this evening the iTunes store has offered me an upgrade to the National Rail Enquiries app.

Two of the stated enhancements are
East Coast becomes Virgin Trains East Coast
Virgin Trains becomes Virgin Trains West Coast

The existing 'West Coast' Virgin site now refers to tickets being marked/routed 'Virgin Trains West Coast (VTWC)' - which I think is a very recent alteration.   This should avoid Richard Fairhurst's anticipated problem as existing tickets get used and new ones printed.

But you'd expect the TOC^▸ (Train Operating Company)'s public name to follow as well, surely?

Paul

[JayMac]

The only potential for confusion is, I think, at the stations both Virgin TOCs^▸ (Train Operating Company) serve. That's Edinburgh, Haymarket, Motherwell and Glasgow Central.

There's also a very small risk of someone going to the wrong London Terminal with an operator specific Advance Purchase ticket which will have 'London Terminals' as the origin, but that's mitigated by the reservation coupon which has either 'Euston' or 'King's Cross' on it.

Standard Class walk-up tickets between London and Glasgow/Edinburgh and beyond are either routed 'Any Permitted' so valid with either VTWC or VTEC, or 'Via York' which is quite clear.

Caveat emptor I say.

[Surrey 455]

I'm confused. I thought that new franchises now had a standard livery with just the operators logo attached ie Thameslink and possibly Abellio. Did I imagine reading / hearing about this?

[Rhydgaled]

I'm confused. I thought that new franchises now had a standard livery with just the operators logo attached ie Thameslink and possibly Abellio. Did I imagine reading / hearing about this?

ScotRail (one of Abellio's franchises, or will be, can't remember when First ScotRail ends) has a standard livery, but England & Wales haven't followed suit. Abellio Greater Anglia I think may have been told to adopt a simple livery however as it was a very short franchise.

The full new livery on the 1100 KGX-EDB today:
Looks okay but I still much prefer the original Class 91/225 set livery:

A class 91 in Swallow livery is VERY hard to beat. As for the new Virgin EC livery, while not as good as Swallow, the livery on the coaches is quite good (although there's too much red on the buffet car) but I don't like the loco and DVT^‡(resolve) livery at all.

[Jason]

I've yet to fully run through the options available to me prior to the September cut off date but it doesn't sound good from the above.

Having reviewed the options I can understand the disgruntlement. The new scheme is pants. The three options that I can see are:

1) Spend my reward points on 5 first class single tickets with enough change for 1000 nectar points (worth ^7.50 before the end of the month)
2) Convert my reward points to nectar points and thence to evouchers with a value just shy of ^100
3) Cash them in for a ^21.81 evoucher valid for any train company. Whoopee!

[grahame]

I've yet to fully run through the options available to me prior to the September cut off date but it doesn't sound good from the above.

Having reviewed the options I can understand the disgruntlement. The new scheme is pants. The three options that I can see are:

For those of us who rarely travel on the East Coast Main line, what was the comparative award available for the same number of 'point' under the old scheme?