Travellers won’t mourn the passing of Virgin trains

‘Virgin trains could be gone from the UK in November,’ blogged Sir Richard Branson from his billionaire hideaway after the Department for Transport barred Stagecoach, Virgin’s 49 per cent joint-venture partner, from bidding for new passenger rail franchises. This followed a row over Stagecoach’s reluctance to help fill a £6 billion black hole in the Railways Pension Scheme – and affects Stagecoach’s bids for the East Midlands and South Eastern franchises as well as the renewal of Virgin’s West Coast Main Line service.

Branson is always a sore loser on the rare occasions the dice don’t roll his way, but I doubt many travellers will mourn the passing of his trains. The truth is that they never lived up to his brand promise, being little more than a Stagecoach service plastered with Virgin logos. The cramped, swaying and strangely odiferous Pendolino trains on the West Coast line always make me feel sick (even more so if I’ve paid the peak fare), while the Virgin East Coast service that failed last year wasn’t a patch on GNER, the line’s much-missed first franchisee, and has swiftly been surpassed by LNER, the current state-owned operator.