Official/unofficial reasons why Virgin trains between Manchester & London & vice versa take 4 hours @ weekend?

Question

It's been this way for years, and I suppose the answer is engineering work to upgrade the West Coast Mainline, but I'm skeptical. Today, from London to Manchester we were running 20 minutes early, going via (but not stopping at) Birmingham International Airport, Coventry, Sheffield etc. so we had to slow up because we were going EARLY! Then, we managed to arrive at our destination 20 minutes late (as if the journey at the weekends weren't prolonged enough from the weekday 2.25 hours average) because of problems with barriers, apparently. I just have the feeling that this is the status quo and Virgin have little incentive to change, though perhaps I'm wrong. In any case, it's a disgrace that a return ticket over the weekend, unless booked way in advance will cost you £60 for such an apparently needlessly slow journey (and the prices for trains are to rise by as much as a third again in January!)

Thanks for any answers.

Answer 1

Look around when the train is going slow or when it starts up after an unexpected delay.  Do you see workmen's vehicles?  Yellow or orange funny looking machines? Men with hard hats?   Then they're working on the track.

Are you detouring on an unusual route?  Then there's something wrong with the main route, i.e. construction. They won't stop at stations on a detour route, they don't have time - detours make trains late.  No one would have gotten on or off anyway, as no one expected the train to stop there.

So pay attention to what's going on and you'll get your questions answered better than any of us could.

Answer 2

Officially, as you say, it's because of engineering work... Unofficially, what often happens is that the engineering work is planned for certain weekends, but even when for some reason it can't take place (i.e the new rail hasn't arrived, shortage of staff, etc.) the train schedules have already been published so the diversions and slow running still happens, even though there's really no need for it.

I'm fairly sure that as soon as the work is done the timetable will be speeded back up - after all it doesn't do any good to Virgin's image to have a 2 hour journey taking twice that, so their Public Relations department will be keen to end it.

The 'barriers' problem was probably a Level Crossing equipment failure - meaning a wait for Rail Technicians to come and sort it out or for a man with a red and green flag to be put in place.

I really find travelling by rail at weekends a pain in this country - but things may be changing soon as a new system of overnight weekday track renewals will hopefully be introduced. Might mean fewer weekend closures, diversions and worst of all, buses...

Answer 3

Not the fault of Virgin.

At weekends, National Rail (that is the bit of the railways owned by the Government), dictate that additional time is built into the timetables for planned (and, sometimes, mythical) engineering works.

If the franchises had followed the advice of the professional transport operators and incorporated vertical integration (that is where the train operating companies are responsible for track upkeep, as on the Isle of Wight), then such un-necessary delays would have been minimised.

As it is, there is little incentive for the Government or National Rail to change their current practices.