I'm confused. It looks like he is getting on an airplane not a train. West coast of where?

Looking at it again, it's not not an airplane. I'm still confused.

West coast of the UK. He's run it for 15 years. Don

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Branson

 

Rusty

Another stupid decision from the British Government ...they haven't learn anything from company who promise the moon during the bidding process and then deliver crap...after the East Coast debacle thought they may have got the idea, obviously not.

 

Was Virgin Trains perfect, absolutely not but the winning bidder FirstGroup is far from being even remotely good on their other line.

 

Also just show how privatization of passenger rails don't work..

 

 

http://www.virgin.com/richard-...log/on-virgin-trains

 

 

Will miss seeing Sir Richard as an engineer....

 

 

 

Is it safe to say the guv popped his cherry?

Lafondue, I agree. Just look at Virgin Air and British Airlines. No comparison. Don

Over the years, Virgin Trains has acquitted itself rather well in the ever changing environment which is the privatized UK railway network. As Lafondue stated, the company is not perfect; however, it has developed a reputation of being service oriented and customer focused. Virgin's Voyager, Super Voyager and Pendolino equipment have provided good, reliable high speed service.

 

Gotta love those Virgin Class 57 "Thunderbirds"!

 

http://www.railfaneurope.net/p...57307_at_Crewe_2.jpg 

 

Bob  

It appears the situation may have changed a bit:

 

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2...-coast-rail-contract

 

http://www.guardian.co.uk/poli...-west-coast-mainline

 

Bob

 

 

 

False start. Back to the starting gate.

Can they really have Virgin again?

It appears as if Virgin will continue to operate the trains for the time being. Of all the train operating companies, Virgin has consistently earned some of the best ratings from the riding public. That, coupled with the fact FirstGroup has not exactly distinguished itself with the quality of its existing services, is what initially caused such an uproar when the announcement of the new WCML franchise was made. As inferred by Lafondue above, one would have thought all parties involved learned a valuable lesson from the ECML situation but that doesn't appear to be the case. 

 

Bob