Chris Gibb, Chief operating officer, Virgin Rail Group.
CHRIS Gibb’s emotions currently range between elated anticipation to moments of dread – not surprisingly, as he and more than 2,000 other Virgin Trains people prepare to launch the most intensive ever high-speed services on the West Coast route.
On Sunday 14 December, Virgin Trains much-vaunted Virgin High Frequency (VHF) services become operational – albeit with a ‘lighter’ timetable for six weeks – on a route which has been at the centre of controversy over its £8.2 billion upgrading for more than 10 years.
With 31 per cent more services operating every day, providing a regular-interval three trains an hour to and from the city centres of Birmingham and Manchester, the biggest question on Chris’s mind is: “Will it work?”
On the day we meet at his Euston office, the 45-year-old boss has just returned from a 370-mile round trip in the cab of a Pendolino travelling from London to Manchester and back.
He had been ‘shadowing’ the daily job of a female driver who had recently ‘shadowed’ him to see what life at the top was like. The trip had given him the chance to see the modernised route from a driver’s eye perspective.
Chris is constantly being reassured by voices at Network Rail that the route will be ready and robust enough to take the challenges of the intensive new services. Indeed, performance levels have swung upwards recently. But the Virgin Trains West Coast boss still has misgivings.
“I am very pleased that Network Rail made the decision to bring in a lighter timetable for the first six weeks. That is a brave decision. It will allow the whole operation to settle down before we start the full timetable. But I am still concerned about some issues.
“There are still a lot of speed restrictions on the route. The new timetable will be faster for VHF, and 10mph restrictions on the approaches to Euston will add a few minutes to a journey with a nine-coach Pendolino. It’s going to be very tight.
“Network Rail has promised that it will deliver, but I think we are some way from that at the moment.”
Chris and his management team are well aware of the en route incidents which can upset a journey, from derailments to suicides, signalling, points or track problems.
He is also concerned that some new track equipment has not worked immediately out of the box, that cables are sometimes cut on work sites and that the sheer quantity of work to do could upset timescales.
Performance of the Pendolino fleet is good and train failures form only a small proportion of the overall performance levels.
But he adds: “This is not a case of who falls over. When Terminal 5 was opened at Heathrow no-one worried whether it was BA or BAA who fouled up. It was the disastrous opening that everyone remembered – and they will not remember whether it was Virgin Trains or Network Rail if we have problems at the start.
“We don’t want this to fail. We don’t want to spend six months trying to get it right. We want to hit the ground running.
“My dream is to walk on to the concourse at Euston and there will be a Manchester or Birmingham train ready to board – to just turn up and board.”
Despite his concerns, Chris is impressed with the quality of much of the infrastructure work on the West Coast. On the 16-mile Trent Valley four-tracking area he talks enthusiastically of the 125 mph ‘slow line’.
“This area really looks like a new railway – new track, new OHL, new signalling. It looks very impressive. But, of course, the entire route won’t look like this. The Watford area still has 50-year-old signalling, in some areas there are 50-year-old power transformers. There is still major work to do around Bletchley as well.”
Chris is heartened that performance levels have been improving, with the recent MAA – Moving Annual Average – for Virgin Trains standing at 85 per cent of all trains right time. Under PPM – Public Performance Monitor – the weekly performance target agreed with Network Rail is also encouraging.
Meanwhile, Virgin Trains staff are seeing huge changes in preparation for VHF. “We are ready to go,” says Chris. “The trains are ready, the on-board crews are ready and the stations are ready.”
More train managers have been recruited along with extra station staff, and the revenue protection team has been upped to 50 people. There are adequate numbers of drivers and Alstom is taking over shunt driving at its depots to release Virgin drivers for main line duties.
Turnaround times under VHF will be tight and will have to be slick to keep the whole show on the road. A typical turnaround time will be 35 minutes for Birmingham and Manchester trains – 15 minutes to clean and 20 minutes to board.
Talks have been taking place with trades unions over new rosters and work diagrams for drivers, train managers and catering staff, and the proposed new control organisation will have additional resources to liaise with Network Rail controls.
Training has also begun for a severe disruption taskforce to assist control.
On-board catering is a major issue. All dishwashers have been removed from Pendolinos – “they leak when the trains are at tilt and this can make floors slippery,” says Chris – and with all washing now carried out at shore bases, Rail Gourmet is planning investment at the Euston ‘pot wash’.
One of the biggest challenges is to ensure the ever-popular Great British Breakfast can be delivered efficiently in first class. “Trying to serve 140 people on Wolverhampton and Birmingham trains – Coventry to London takes just 58 minutes – is almost impossible. We can’t just throw more staff at this, they would get in each other’s way. So breakfast cereal will be offered in the first class lounges at specified stations to save time on the most time-challenged routes.”
Chris says that a major marketing campaign for the new service will not start until next spring, but Virgin is slashing single standard Advance ticket prices by up to 50 per cent on several routes. For example, Birmingham to London cheapest fare will be £5 compared with £10.50 and Manchester to London £8 instead of £13.
“These leisure travel prices will give us a whole new business,” says Chris. “These will be value-for-money prices such as the budget airlines offer – we want a share of that. This is key to our success.”
He adds: “I think business will continue to grow in spite of the prospect of recession, because the service is better. I am quietly confident that we can keep this going and win business from our congested motorways.”
Chris’s 27-year railway career – much of it in frontline operations – started in 1981 when he left school with eight ‘O’ levels. After being a postman for a while – he hated the 3 am starts – he joined the railway as a roster clerk. But then his potential was spotted and he was invited to become a BR management trainee.
Moving up the ladder as train crew supervisor and later train crew manager in Ayr, Scotland, Chris was appointed operations director for Wales & West Passenger Trains Ltd and later became MD.
Before his present job he was MD of Virgin CrossCountry.
Chris says the privatised railway has provided many more opportunities for people.
“In BR days there were very few vacancies for jobs but now there are many more opportunities. Take travelling with a female driver today – 20 years ago that would have been extremely rare. Now there are quite a lot of women driving.”
When not travelling at 125mph, Chris travels rather more slowly – on a bike. A keen cyclist for many years, he has raced cycles and used to like nothing better than careering down Alpine passes at 60mph.
But most of the time it’s a gentle pedal around the lanes near his home in Warwick. “It gives me time to think about some issues – and get some fresh air,” he says.
Reader Comments:
Views expressed in submitted comments are that of the author, and not necessarily shared by Railnews.
I think its shocking that a major town like Motherwell is not serviced by these new services.
if anything i had a better direct service with good old British Rail.
Motherwell should be included as this services Lanarkshire & surrounding areas.
I live in Wishaw and it now takes me an extra 2 hours as i have to travel into and from Glasgow
So why are Penrith and Oxenholme serviced with a more frequent service than Motherwell ?
Stephen Menzies, Wishaw North Lanarkshire, Scotland UK
In your latest news item you report new fast and frequent trains from B'ham and Manchester to London. Yet my local newspaper includes Liverpool in the list of new trains. Which of the two reports is correct?
Bond, Llanelwy, UK
I notice that on the main London-Glasgow route, there will be very few stops now North of the Border at either Lockerbie or Motherwell. On most Pendolino trains, ZERO stops in Scotland. That's a distance of around 100 miles stop-free versus the 25 miles or less between stops in England.
Great to have a faster service IF YOU CAN JOIN IT somewhere convenient!
Jim McCartney, Scottish Borders, Scotland
As a potentially regular rail user I wholeheartedly agree with Mr Weinberg's comment that having to change to get to Liverpool is ridiculous. And what makes my blood boil is that in order to able to travel at all one must book ahead. It really is disgraceful that the government allows this to happen when it constantly pleads with us to use less fuel.
Bond, Llanelwy, Wales
What's the point of a "turn up and go" timetable if anyone who does just that is penalised by usurious fares?
If you have to book to be able to afford to travel, whether the trains are every half hour or every 20 minutes hardly matters.
And as a citizen of Milton Keynes, Virgin's new timetable is worse than before.
To have to change trains to get to Liverpool or anywhere North of Crewe is ridiculous.
Milton Keynes is a growing city of a quarter of a million people so potentially if not already is the most busy station on the line. Yet at place like Oxenholme and Penrith nearly all trains stop! Barmy!
Michael Gerald Weinberg, Milton Keynes, UK