Virgin Pendolino record breaker

Nothing to do with aviation or VS but Virgin Trains Pendolino 390047 has broken the Anglo-Scottish time record between Glasgow and London. It arrived in London at 16:32 taking 3h 55m 22s, 4 minutes earlier than the official booked time.

I saw this train pass at Leyland at 14:38 a train on a mission

I don't like them new Pendolinos, but congratulations Virgin [^][^][^]

I guess this wasn't on a weekend then! Having done the MAN-LON route recently it's just so slow, and no free food and drinks at your seat either [:(!]

err...Congratulations, virgin[?];)

VS.

Originally posted by locutus
I guess this wasn't on a weekend then! Having done the MAN-LON route recently it's just so slow, and no free food and drinks at your seat either [:(!]

I remembe reading somewhere that it was supposed to have been done on a Sunday but was on the Friday. Just as well really cos you can never get anywhere on time at weekends anymore anyways.

Today's achievement is hardly 'record-breaking' considering the Pendolino ran non-stop, covering the 401 miles between Glasgow and Euston in little under 4 hours, averaging just over 102mph.

Let's compare that to when British Rail ran scheduled InterCity services between London and Edinburgh in the early to mid nineties. The fastest trains completed the 393 mile journey between the two capital cities in 3hrs 59 mins - and that included scheduled passenger stops at York and Newcastle. More than 10 years on and not much of an improvement is there?

Even 5 years ago, a TGV ran non-stop from Calais to Marseille (distance of 667 miles - that's further than London-Inverness!) in 3hrs 29 mins, averaging almost 200mph. I remember that as I was in France at the time and it made headline news! Didn't see anything about Virgin in the news today.

Sorry to be the bearer of bad news but the record Anglo-Scot train time is actually 3h 52m 44s set by the Advanced Passenger Train in 1984 (and it stopped once at Stafford due to a signal fault).

Yesterdays trip was the first actual non stop run since 1949 and is indeed the fastest southbound run ever.

I was on board and driver Russel Southworth was doing his best to wring every last second out of his Pendo but with a few temporary speed restrictions to contend with and some yellow signals thrown in for good measure he really was up against it to beat the APT.

Regards

John

Originally posted by JAT74L
Sorry to be the bearer of bad news but the record Anglo-Scot train time is actually 3h 52m 44s set by the Advanced Passenger Train in 1984 (and it stopped once at Stafford due to a signal fault).

Yesterdays trip was the first actual non stop run since 1949 and is indeed the fastest southbound run ever.

I was on board and driver Russel Southworth was doing his best to wring every last second out of his Pendo but with a few temporary speed restrictions to contend with and some yellow signals thrown in for good measure he really was up against it to beat the APT.

Regards

John

Which side was you sitting on? If you was sitting to the right of the direction of the train you might've seen me at the end of Leyland station platform (the island platform). I was the one wearing the blue top with a silver camera.

I was in coach G RHS so would have seen you!

I see lots of folks at Leyland though as I'm normally on 1M44/1S96...

JT

Oh dear - looks like we have some spotters here who are interested in more, err, terrestrial forms of transport.

An adjudication please mods...

Originally posted by csparker
Oh dear - looks like we have some spotters here who are interested in more, err, terrestrial forms of transport.

An adjudication please mods...

No adjudication required - don't see a problem with a thread about Virgin Trains being in Travel-General (forum description: This forum is intended for discussions and questions about travel matters that are not directly linked to the Virgin Group of companies, and do not relate to any other forum.) meself

Cheers

Michael

[Neil]

Originally posted by mcuth

Originally posted by csparker
Oh dear - looks like we have some spotters here who are interested in more, err, terrestrial forms of transport.

An adjudication please mods...

No adjudication required - don't see a problem with a thread about Virgin Trains being in Travel-General (forum description: This forum is intended for discussions and questions about travel matters that are not directly linked to the Virgin Group of companies, and do not relate to any other forum.) meself

Cheers

Michael

This thread is actually more than fine when you compare it to some of the threads and topics that have been discussed before[:w][:I]

Thank you Micheal.

I am not a train spotter I am a rail industry professional thank you very much. [V]

Regards

John

[Bazz]

So John; without the delays you mention, would it have beaten the record set by the APT?

Well Bazz,

That's a good question - it would be very close. The APT run as I said, was unexpectedly stopped at Stafford and this caused a 5.6 minute delay so, the true time should have been in the region of 3h 47m however, the margin in which the driver can influence things on todays train is greatly reduced from what could be done on APT.

On Pendolino the speed is tightly governed - as soon as you go 3 mph over the it warns you and at 6 mph over it arrests itself by applying full braking. There was nothing like this on APT - that was a prototype train.

Regards

S. Potter

Originally posted by JAT74L
Well Bazz,

That's a good question - it would be very close. The APT run as I said, was unexpectedly stopped at Stafford and this caused a 5.6 minute delay so, the true time should have been in the region of 3h 47m however, the margin in which the driver can influence things on todays train is greatly reduced from what could be done on APT.

On Pendolino the speed is tightly governed - as soon as you go 3 mph over the it warns you and at 6 mph over it arrests itself by applying full braking. There was nothing like this on APT - that was a prototype train.

Regards

S. Potter

I agree with this. If you ask me if it weren't for the two or three signal checks/hold ups it might've just done it. We'll just have to wait and see for the northbound attempt...if VT are planning in doing this.