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Virgin Trains: history

Virgin Trains operates the West Coast rail franchise. This was originally awarded to Virgin Rail Group (VRG) on 19 February 1997 for a 15-year term. Operations began on 9 March 1997.

VRG announced on 13 December 2006 that it had agreed formal terms for a restated contract with the Department for Transport (DfT) for the franchise. The franchise deal will run until March 2012, replacing the Management Agreement (Letter Agreement 2002) which had been in place since July 2002 following the collapse of Railtrack plc.

Virgin Rail Group was awarded the Cross Country franchise on 28 November 1996 and operations began on 5 January 1997. Virgin CrossCountry ran for over 10 years. As part of its franchise re-mapping, the DfT re-tendered the franchise in revised form and awarded it to Arriva Trains on 10 July 2007. Arriva began operating the franchise on 11 November 2007. The franchise re-mapping also involved the transfer of services between Birmingham and Scotland (via Preston and Carlisle) to Virgin Trains from 11 November 2007.

Virgin Trains introduced a new timetable from 14 December 2008, offering more trains and faster journey times. Train services overall increased by 30 percent following Network Rail’s £9bn upgrade of the West Coast Main Line. The routes from Manchester and Birmingham to London Euston saw train frequencies increased to every 20 minutes, comparable with many local commuter routes, and average journey times in the case of Manchester slashed to as little as 2 hours 05 minutes.

Further improvements from 16 February 2009 included an hourly service between Chester and London. The 16:30 London Euston to Glasgow Central service is now timetabled to complete the 401-mile journey in just 4 hours 10 minutes, the fastest journey time we’ve ever regularly run between the two cities.

Virgin Trains

Virgin Trains

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