More seats for Virgin Trains pasengers
- By Greg Rose -
- Dec 10, 2012
Virgin Trains passengers will benefit from more seats after the completion of a Pendolino extension project.
An extra 7006 seats have been added to Virgin Trains' West Coast Pendolino fleet, which now has a total of 29,834 seats.
106 carriages were ordered by the Department for Transport (DfT) in July 2008 to create four completely new 11-car trains (44 carriages) and to lengthen 31 of the existing trains from nine to 11 carriages (62 carriages).
Five rail industry organisations are celebrating the successful completion of the project, which was delivered on time and on budget. They are Alstom Transport UK who built the carriages, Angel Trains who provided asset management and finance, Network Rail who were responsible for platform lengthening together with track, signalling and depot layouts to accommodate the longer trains, and Virgin Rail Group who project managed all operator input into the design, manufacture, safety verification, testing, commissioning, delivery and integration of the new carriages and who are now operating the longer trains.
Customers travelling on Virgin Trains’ services are already benefiting from the longer trains as they have gradually been integrated into the existing timetable with deployment on the busiest services. From today, the four additional trains will also allow for the first time ever an hourly service in both directions between London Euston and Glasgow Central.
As well as the passenger benefits of extra seats, the 11 car Pendolino trains with their energy and regeneration efficiencies put together mean that there is a 12% improvement in energy consumption per seat-km.
Tony Collins, Virgin Rail Group CEO, said: “We have seen the way passenger numbers have doubled on West Coast in just five years to 31m journeys annually and in order to continue to meet further increases in business before the advent of a High Speed Line to the North it is essential that we are in a position to offer more seats that link the some of the biggest population centres in the UK. Well done to everybody on today’s achievement.”
This news follows the announcement that Virgin Trains have signed a contract to continue as operator of the West Coast franchise for a further two years. Head over to Virgin Trains to find out more.
By Greg Rose. Content Manager. Tweets @greglrose and blogs at greglrose.com
