Virgin Trains

Ownership

Virgin Trains is jointly owned by Virgin Management (51%) and Stagecoach plc (49%). The two shareholders manage Virgin Trains through a joint board called Virgin Rail Group.

Virgin Rail Group currently holds the West Coast passenger rail franchise, which it operates as West Coast Trains Ltd. under the brand name Virgin Trains.

What we do

We provide fast and frequent services between London and major destinations in the midlands, north-west England, north Wales and Scotland.

In the year to February 2009 passengers made 22.6m journeys on our trains.

Our services

We have 73 modern tilting trains which run at up to 125 mph, covering a total of 15 million miles a year over five routes:

London – Birmingham/Wolverhampton
London – Manchester
London – Liverpool
London – North Wales
London – Glasgow
Birmingham – Glasgow/Edinburgh

Our trains have enhanced mobile phone reception, wi-fi facilities, a shop selling food and other journey requirements and accessible toilets. We serve complimentary food and drink in First Class, and our menu is sourced entirely from British produce, which can be traced from farm to plate.

Some typical journey times from London:

Birmingham 1h22m
Manchester 2h05m
Liverpool 2h07m
Holyhead 3h38m
Glasgow 4h32m

On our busiest routes – Birmingham and Manchester – we run trains every 20 minutes.

Our stations

We serve 43 stations, and manage 17 of these.

We offer First Class lounges at nine of our stations with complementary tea and coffee and a comfortable wi-fi enabled working environment.

The stations we manage all offer parking facilities, though a number will be closed during 2009 as part of a rolling building process which will see 4000 extra spaces constructed.

Our people

We have 3300 staff, including 550 drivers, 873 station staff and 1261 on-board staff.

Our people are a major resource and contribute hugely to ‘the Virgin difference’ we aim to deliver. A dedicated Talent Academy at Crewe develops our staff’s abilities.

Virgin Trains achieved Investor in People accreditation in 2007.

Our environment

Our Pendolino trains are environmentally friendly, emitting at least 76 percent less CO2 than cars and 78 percent less than domestic flights on average. They also have regenerative braking, which means that every time the driver applies the brakes electricity is returned to the National Grid - generating enough electricity each year to provide power 11,825 homes for a year.