Bearded Smile (Virgin Trains)

Member Name: Alwaystrue

Product:	Virgin Trains
Date:	19/06/06 (358 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Very Little

Disadvantages: Where do you start

Virgin Trains promise everything, yet still deliver very little. The grand press launches, the smiling dolly birds, and where are we now? Well not much different from the days of Intercity! At least they promised very little and delivered it. We have cross country, with "state of the art" diesel "tilting" trains. Well these trains are 4 or 5 carriages long, old Intercity were 6 or 7, these trains have one toilet per carriage (which incidentaly you will smell before you see), old trains had 2, these trains have so little luggage space Virgin was even considering sending luggage by road at one point!, old trains had ample, these new trains are a complete unit (in other words if something goes wrong with one carriage they are all buggered), the old one's could seperate easily. Then we move onto staff, well were do we start. For something that can be as complex and volatile as a rail system you'd think they would employe people who know what they are doing? Well, when you over hear a phone call from a Virgin "train manager" asking the other person what a points failure is you start to wonder. Don't get me wrong, i'm sure the front line staff are the last to know whats going on, but when joe public knows more than the person "looking after your safety" it begs the question. Virgin stated early on they would be a "World class railway". GNER seem to be galaxys ahead! Virgin dish out vouchers and pre printed sorry letters like theres no tommorow, what a pity they don't invest more in the basics and less on stamps.
People who travel on virgin HAVE to, they don't want to. If a choice was available virgin would be back to the cola i'm afraid.

Summary: The dire staight of virgin trains