LNER

Railways, trams, buses, etc.
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blackprince
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Joined: Tue 04 Sep, 2007 2:10 pm

LNER

Post by blackprince »

Just wondering what people think of the East Coast Main Line franchise coming back into public ownership? Its a bit ironic naming the renationalised company LNER - after one of the big 4 private companies. What goes around comes around -Corbyn only wants to take us back to the 70's this seems to be a step back to the 40's :)
I only ever use the WCML these days but haven't found it too badly run by Virgin, so a bit surprised they couldn't run the ECML franchise successfully.
It used to be said that the statue of the Black Prince had been placed in City Square , near the station, pointing South to tell all the southerners who've just got off the train to b****r off back down south!

jim
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Joined: Sun 17 May, 2009 10:09 am

Re: LNER

Post by jim »

here is a story behind this that gets little publicity. The franchise was bid for on the understanding that funding would be provided by the Government for the design and building of new trains and power which could run at higher speeds with greater seating capacity and with greater economy, which inturn woud have allowed for more frequent services, all of which would hav created greater income. For various reasons this did not happen, leaving Virgin with a massive unexpected income shortfall, which meant that the franchise could not pay it's way. They had no option but to leave the contract.

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chemimike
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Joined: Fri 14 Mar, 2008 7:23 pm
Location: Reading

Re: LNER

Post by chemimike »

If it is run by any of the currently available accountancy companies then the whole thing will be a deciet, as all are basically crooked

dogduke
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Joined: Thu 03 Jan, 2008 6:47 am

Re: LNER

Post by dogduke »

Stagecoach own 90% of Virgin Trains.
Privatisation of B.R. was a bad idea and was very badly done.
This why we are in this state today.
Passenger numbers I believe have dropped recently leaving Virgin in a position where it is affectung profits.
The rolling stock and locomotives are leased to the train operator.

The term LNE was used by Railtrack/Network Rail for one of their operating areas.

Virgin and National Express. are both victims of their own greed and were nothing like GNER when they ran the service.
Their only problem was that their parent company Sea Containers Ltd went bust
Consciousness: That annoying time between naps.90% of being smart is knowing what you're dumb at.

Bracken
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Joined: Tue 30 Jun, 2009 8:32 am

Re: LNER

Post by Bracken »

It will be interesting to see if they change the train livery.The apple green that the locomotive that Flying Scotsman was painted would be a refreshing change.There are some terrible train liveries around so lets hope something sensible if anything is chosen.

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mhoulden
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Re: LNER

Post by mhoulden »

The pre-Virgin ECML livery was deliberately fairly bland so whoever took over could do what they wanted with it. I vaguely remember they had another livery between being publicly owned and GNER taking over them. It was based on the rising sun. All I could find was this cap badge: Image

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