The Ticket Collector

GNER Offer £5 single London to/from Leeds

In prehaps GNER’s last ditch promotional offer before the new owner takes over, GNER are offering you the chance to get a single ticket for just a fiver. Leeds to/From London is the route.

If you wish to get these super priced tickets you will need to book in advance on the internet, you cannot book these in a ticket office.

To book go to http://www.gner.co.uk/GNER/Tickets/_LeedsLondonOffer.htm

Qualified Bidders for GNER. As Predicted

THE DEPARTMENT FOR TRANSPORT today announced the parties that have qualified as Bidders for the Intercity East Coast (ICEC) franchise. They are:

• Arriva Trains East Coast Limited, a wholly owned subsidiary of Arriva Trains Limited. The ultimate parent company is Arriva plc

• First London, Scottish and North East Railways Limited, a wholly owned subsidiary of First Rail Holdings Ltd. The ultimate parent company is FirstGroup plc

• inter city - railways Limited, a 50/50 joint venture between Stagecoach plc and Virgin Group of Companies

• NXEC Trains Limited, wholly owned subsidiary of National Express Group plc

DfT issued an advertisement in December 2006 inviting Expressions of Interest in the franchise. Short listed bidders will be asked to bid against a specification based on DfT proposals and the responses to a recent public consultation which closed on 15th February 2007.

The winner of the competition will be announced in Summer 2007 and it is anticipated that the new ICEC franchise will be in place in late Autumn 2007. The term of the new franchise is a maximum of 7 years and 5 months, the last 17 months being dependent on the franchisee achieving performance targets.

“Crowded trains are safer in crashes” - ORR

Was reading somthing of interest to regular visitors of this blog in the Evening Standard yesterday. The Standard/Daily Mail are continuing on there “Campaign” for a seat for every commuter. Well we all know that this will never be possible.
What defines a commuter? Someone who travels every day including weekends? Someone who travels 3 days a week? Prehaps someone who travels on the overnight trains once a week in both directions, are they classed as a commuter?

Now this is what really pisses me off about the Evening Standard, yeah we will moan and complain but what we wont tell you is we couldnt even run a train service, we barley run a newspaper.

But anyway onto the main reason for this blog posting.

The Office of Rail Regulation (ORR) yesterday stated that “Packed trains are safer”, “Research in the late 1990’s found that where there was a crowded or overcrowded train carriage there was no detrimental effect to people involved in crashes”. “In a lot of cases people were better off in train carriages where there was overcrowding”

The Evening Standard continued to moan about how commuters are getting a raw deal, but did they mention that fact that most companies offer you a 5% refund on your ticket if you dont get a seat? No because that would go against their unwinnable campaign “a seat for every commuter”.

There is actually no legal limit to how many people can travel in any given carriage at any given time, there is also no safety law regarding the maximum number of people in a train carriage.

FCC are planning to increase their services between Cambridge and London to 12 carriages, this is dependant on Network Rail and the DfT upgrading the power supply between Cambridge and Letchworth. Some platforms are going to have to be lengthened.
Also there are rumors and these are only rumors at the moment that FCC will be getting some new trains to replace the extra carriages which will be taken from other routes to lengthen the Cambridge - London services. These could be HST’s, 180’s or the trains which silverlink use.

First Great Western launches new refurbished train.

Biggest investment since Brunel built “God’s Wonderful Railway” in mid 1800s.

Thats what the First Group Corporate statment said.

Today First Great Western launched a new internally refurbished HST train, one of our regular contributers to this blog has sent us some information and photographs about the launch event today.

The redesign covers everything inside the trains from seats, lighting and toilets to at seat power throughout the train.

There is new seating in Standard Class, the new seats have a pitch of 32 inches, comparing favourably with top airlines such as British Airways World Traveller seats (31 inches) and Virgin Atlantic Economy seats (32 inches). One of the things in Standard which was noticable was the lack of tables in one of the coaches.

Other features of the new look interiors include:
· Leather seats in First Class – a first for any UK train operator;
· Vibrant new colour schemes – taupe and blue in First Class and lilac and blue in Standard Class;
· 240V power points at table level in all First Class seats;
· 240V power points between seats, which are mainly airline style, in Standard Class;
· Redesigned drop tables in Standard Class that are large enough to accommodate a laptop and a cup of coffee;
· Glass screens to replace old partitions of luggage racks so passengers can see their luggage easily from their seats;
· New toilets, including a drain-away floor, which has been designed for easy cleaning;
· Express Café to replace buffet area;
· Textured, ridged carpets in the vestibules, which are anti-slip and easy to clean;
· Dividers in the overhead luggage racks, which stop luggage moving along the racks;
· Hooks for jackets in both First Class and Standard Class;

· Both wheelchair spaces are in Coach E where the disabled toilet is;
· Braille signs on toilet doors and facilities inside the toilets.

Power cars are also having new engines, which will make them 15 per cent more fuel-efficient and produce less emissions. For example:
· 64 per cent less CO2;
· 21 per cent less NOX;
· Hydrocarbon emissions down 46 per cent;
· Smoke emissions down 42 per cent.

The Times = Theiving Bastards

It Seems that the theiving bastards more commonly known as The Times have decided to steal content of this site. We all know that most of the people that read The Times are a bunch of dinosaur thatcherite tories. Also the people that work for News International well I better not say because I want google to keep listing this blog as a clean friendly blog.

Well The Times have stolen the content of this site and NOT linked back.

The Times has learnt that as few as four groups are expected to submit expressions of interest in the service, which is expected to be worth more than £1 billion and run for up to 7½ years, when a deadline expires on Monday.

I wonder how they have learnt this hmmm. Was it because we were leaked to first and The Times were pissed of that they were left out of the frame as per normal because they are a crap paper? Makes you think that we reported the news first and The Times reported afterwards?

The Times understands that Arriva, National Express, FirstGroup and a joint venture between Virgin and Stagecoach will submit expressions of interest. A question mark hangs over the possibility of a fifth, joint bid from Serco and the Dutch rail operator NedRailways.

There we go again, cut and pasted from our blog. Needless to say we have had a new document leaked today from an unnamed source at the DfT, but to be honest its not going to be published because the greedy wankers from The Times will steal it.

Accredited Bidders for GNER. Leaked?

Ok right first off theticketcollector.co.uk will not release where the following information came from, will not release any names (we dont know anyway), and will not release anything which could comprise our source. The following information could change at any time as is NOT officially released.

ACCREDITED BIDDERS for EAST COAST FRANCHISE

The information goes on and on about start dates and stuff but the nitty gritty is as follows:
First Group PLC
Virgin Trains/Stagecoach Group
Arriva Trains
National Express Group
Serco/NedRailways

Basicly its the main players plus a few smaller ones, I have noticed that GNER are not an accredited bidder maybe cos the DfT told them not to bid.