I dont see anymore First West Coast services out of Liverpool other than the one we have now .
I do think that St helens would only be getting a london service if it went via liverpool lime street and probably as i said in a previous message came from preston.
I also dont see First retaining Transpennine this will now probably go into the hands of another company. oh what lovely times we have ahead of us in the refranchising era.
I think a possibility could be the extension of one of the 3 Manchester trains via St Helens Junctiion to Liverpool once the wires are up - just a thought!.
I think St Helens Junction Station is not really high profile enough for a London service , but we will have to wait and see .
Merseytravel missed a trick when they let BR / Railtrack remove the track on the section of line from St Helens Central to Junction .
Another problem with using the line through the Junction is this line is going to be quite busy since Transpennine also want to run an extra service to Manchester Victoria and Newcastle that way , path are going to rather on the tight side .
Perhaps should be in Aviation section, but the link is surely connected to First Group winning the WCML franchise!
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-19324962
(Virgin Atlantic to fly between Heathrow and Manchester)
Link to e-petition on direct gov website asking the government to reconsider the West Coast franchise decision although quite a tight timeline as August 28th is the deadline for which a judicial review can be lodged:
http://epetitions.direct.gov.uk/petitions/37180
Appears to be quite well subscribed already.
I do think Virgin should be looking at further opportunities to get there teeth into like trying to turn East Coast around after two failed bidders and then the government coming to the rescue .
(21/08/2012 16:22)wirralbus Wrote: [ -> ]I do think Virgin should be looking at further opportunities to get there teeth into like trying to turn East Coast around after two failed bidders and then the government coming to the rescue .
I don't think they will go for the East Coast or Great Western after considering the future of both franchises.
Virgin won't run a 153 to Looe, whilst the EC franchise is supposed to be taking over a number of more "local" services in the future, which probably won't suit their brand image.
I suspect the next we may hear of VT in franchise world is for HS2.
It would be a good punt for Virgin to also look at Open Access London-Europe services via HS1 as a competitor for Eurostar. The line has LOADS of capacity.
(21/08/2012 10:41)First Class Wrote: [ -> ]Perhaps should be in Aviation section, but the link is surely connected to First Group winning the WCML franchise!
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-19324962
(Virgin Atlantic to fly between Heathrow and Manchester)
Completely unrelated, this has been in the pipeline for some time. Also, Virgin are after some of BMIs Heathrow slots now BA have bought BMI.