Manchester resident and Modern Railways contributor TONY MILES describes how the improvements Virgin Trains delivered have transformed his journeys to the capital
When I moved from Birmingham to Manchester at the end of the 1980s, one of the first things I had to get used to was the way people planned for a journey to London. Moving from a half-hourly service to an hourly train with a journey time of slightly over two and a half hours, with an early meeting almost completely out of the question, was quite a challenge.
Planning a trip to the capital weeks ahead was not uncommon. Many business travellers opted to fly, as even the check-in process (shorter than it is today) and travel time into London on arrival still made it an attractive choice.
PATIENCE
The debut of Virgin Trains on the Manchester to London route was not the instant transformation that regular travellers expected. With failing infrastructure and trains in need of some urgent TLC, Richard Branson was forced to call for patience in a series of radio and TV interviews. Patience was indeed needed as the West Coast Main Line modernisation programme struggled through the collapse of Railtrack and the efforts of Network Rail to complete the p…
