Hello & welcome to the fifteenth episode of Failed Franchises. In this series I look at train companies that have failed at their franchise agreements or have been criticised by passengers & industry alike. Today is the third episode of my mini series on the East Coast Mainline and its operators. Today I am looking at East Coast and discuss whether or not EC should be classed as a failed franchise.
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Finally im on Time to see this video
As always a brilliant video
As always a brilliant video
Let's hope VTEC actually taught them a lesson having a nationalised route might actually do some good. Must say I never rode on East Coast but remember getting the ECML South route on Steam as part of TS2015 and really enjoyed it
East Coast is by far my favourite ECML operator. I have been riding on the ECML ever since 2009 and I have fond memories of East Coast. They were splendid with great service and comfort (in my experiences). Cant wait for the next instalment of this ECML Mini-series on VTEC (If there is one) Great video.!
as a 43 my i never liked or hated east coast the livery was extremely bland to so thats my opinion
Fuck the Tories
I remember when i was younger watching East coast 43s run through my local station, I love that livery for the nostalgia and its simplicity
Staff morale and senior management were both poor. The potential was there to achieve a lot, but the government were determined for a nationalised operator to fail.
East Coast was great!
They had a bunch of cheap discounted tickets and the food service was good – both disappeared immediately with Virgin.
The only failure here was for the government to insist at the 3rd attempt at privatisation for idealogical reasons – which of course was also unsuccessful.
They can't be considered a failed franchise, because a, they were not a franchise, and b, they didn't fail. The privatised operators before and after failed, and it had to be renationalised again.
I made enough journeys with East Coast to build up (more than) the points needed for a full journey all the way from London to Inverness and have very fond memories of the service.
Let's hope that LNER stays in operation.
I wish i was old enough to have a job as i would like to support your channel, anyway, Great and interesting video!
Hey I think you should look into First ScotRail for your failed franchises series.
I noticed that at 9:40, you mentioned about 3G wifi on the 225 sets despite 4G was introduced back in 2009, twice.
I feel like the next failed franchise video Will be about virgin east coast
Bizarre that the ECML franchise is basically just:
• Private Operator that performs mostly okay, probably loses money and declares the route unprofitable.
• Quits or gets stripped of contract.
• National Operator most people like, performs well and still cheaper than privatisation.
• Repeat
Why ? Money. Filching our money into the offshore accounts of the rich.
Brilliant video highly informative one slight point can you repeated yourself twice around 9 minutes 40
They should have bought those Pendolino
The East Coast was better than the National Express East Coast. However, it still had issues with poor rolling stock ( lots of times I went to open a door only for it not to open and had to rush to another door) and was often late when I was using them ( there has also been an issue at Peterborough, where, technically, they are on time even though it will be late by the time it hits the platform). I will state that station improvements were nice, though they were done with national rail. I personally never understand the love for this brand. Was a failed one in my books.
Do not use LNER much these days (moved down the ECML) but when I do that seems that final the franchise we need.
East Coast was fantastic and their first class was absolutely out of this world. I remember travelling from Edinburgh back to Doncaster with a friend in first class and having had two meals each, a 1.5 litre bottle of wine each (it wasn't busy so the staff just left the bottles on our table) and a few spirits each my friend pretty much fell off the train.
LNER is decent but East Coast was much better.
for much of the time East Coast were running I was doing a job that meant I travelled up and down that line from London a lot. Consequently I earned tons of the loyalty rewards including 3x completely paid for weekends in Edinburgh and several cases of wine and champagne. Obviously was quite sad when it all disappeared pretty much overnight!
I loved East Coast. The points scheme was great.
I wonder how history will look back at the current east coast company LNER – I used to really like them but their recent changes to ticketing, making it more complex and expensive, and their cessation of services to Glasgow have put me off.
As far as I'm concerned, the fact that profitability, customer satisfaction and punctuality were at an all time high (at the time) for the way it was run under the Department of Transport, it was an inconvenience to the government in wanting to maintain the franchise system. They consciously didn't want the railways to be renationalised, I feel that this was because they didn't want the "Operator of Last Resort" to be a long term solution. Therefore, when it was handed back to the Private sector, I was dismayed by the move, but also predicted it would go the same way as the previous National Express franchise, terminated earlier than planned due to over promising and under delivering. In the latter case, I was proved right
Was East Coast an open access rail operator run by the DfT after National Express lost the East Coast franchise and before Virgin Trains East Coast took over.
Tories have been an absolute shambles for our rail network. Last labour government didn't help, but the promise of re-nationalisation under the next labour government may repair a small part of the damage done.
I used East Coast a lot during its lifetime, the service was always good and the weekend first class upgrades were good value – even if you "only" got sandwiches and coffee/fruit juice. The sandwiches were good in fact, and the fillings rotated so you didn't always get the same. It was re-privatised by the Conservatives in 2014 because they wanted to rush it back into private hands before the 2015 election, which they thought they might lose and Labour would keep it nationalised.