Virgin CrossCountry
Virgin CrossCountry was a train operating company in the United Kingdom operating the InterCity CrossCountry passenger franchise from January 1997 until November 2007. Virgin CrossCountry operated some of the longest direct rail services in the United Kingdom but most avoided Greater London after 2003. All services called or terminated at Birmingham New Street.
The company traded under the Virgin Trains brand, along with the InterCity West Coast franchise, however the two franchises were operated by separate legal entities.
History
was awarded the InterCity CrossCountry franchise in November 1996, with operations commencing on 5 January 1997. Services were operated by a wholly owned subsidiary, CrossCountry Trains Limited.In October 1998, Virgin Group sold 49% of the shares in Virgin Rail Group to Stagecoach.
In the wake of the collapse of Railtrack and the inability of Network Rail to deliver on the 140 mph West Coast Main Line upgrade, both the Virgin CrossCountry and Virgin West Coast franchises were suspended in favour of management contracts in July 2002.
Services
In May 1998 Virgin introduced new services from Portsmouth Harbour to Liverpool Lime Street and Blackpool North. The Summer Saturday service to Ramsgate ran for the last time in September 1999. The Summer Saturday services to Weymouth ran for the last time in September 2002.Operation Princess
In September 2002 Virgin Trains launched Operation Princess. This involved introducing a new clockface timetable with shorter trains running more frequently. However the new fleet suffered from a number of technical faults which coupled with infrastructure and capacity issues led to many problems. Between September 2002 and January 2003 punctuality fell to 54.1%, it was therefore agreed with the Strategic Rail Authority that certain services would be cut to improve reliability and robustness on the core network.When Operation Princess was launched in September 2002, Virgin CrossCountry served these destinations:
Project Omega
Project Omega was a project which would have seen a series of improvements following the West Coast modernisation. This included Virgin CrossCountry running services from to Teesside via and and another service from to via for Heathrow. These services would have been run by the Class 220. The project also involved extending Virgin's West Coast and CrossCountry franchises by 5 years as well as adding a fifth car to 38 Voyagers.By the time Virgin Trains lost the CrossCountry franchise bid to Arriva in 2007 the network consisted of only the following routes:
Rolling stock
Virgin inherited a fleet of Class 47s, Class 86s, Mark 2 Carriages, High Speed Trains and Class 158s from British Rail. Class 47s on hire from English Welsh & Scottish and Fragonset were also fairly common. A franchise commitment was the replacement of these trains with new stock. In December 1998 Virgin signed a deal to lease 34 four-carriage Class 220 Voyagers and 40 five-carriage and four four-carriage Class 221 Super Voyagers built by Bombardier Transportation. The latter were intended for use by Virgin West Coast on services from London Euston to Holyhead although they ended up being pooled with the other Voyagers. When Virgin West Coast started using Class 221 Super Voyagers on Holyhead services in September 2004, the five-carriage units were used.The Class 221 Super Voyagers were fitted with equipment allowing them to tilt between Oxford and Banbury and on the West Coast Main Line. The first Class 220 Voyager arrived from Belgium in January 2001 and entered service on 21 May 2001. The last Class 47s, Class 86s and Mark 2 carriages were withdrawn in August 2002.
After experiencing rapid growth Virgin CrossCountry decided to retain some High Speed Trains sets. In December 2001 it announced plans to refurbish eight High Speed Trains as Virgin Challengers for use on proposed services from London Paddington to Manchester Piccadilly via Cheltenham with the option to refurbish more. In the wake of the collapse of Operation Princess, the project was cancelled with the remaining HSTs withdrawn in September 2003 on the instruction of the Strategic Rail Authority.
To provide extra stock for services on Summer Saturday services to Paignton and Newquay, Virgin hired High Speed Trains from Great North Eastern Railway, Midland Mainline and Virgin West Coast and Mark 3B loco hauled carriages from Virgin West Coast. In 2004 Virgin hired Class 67s from English Welsh & Scottish and Mark 2 Carriages from Riviera Trains to operate Summer Saturday services to Paignton.
A standby set of Mark 2 carriages was leased from Riviera Trains from September 2004. It was usually used between Birmingham New Street and Manchester Piccadilly with an English Welsh & Scottish Class 90 although it did run to Newcastle with a Class 57/3 in January 2007.
High Speed Trains were hired from Midland Mainline and GNER on a number of occasions to operate services from Edinburgh Waverley to Plymouth when Voyagers were unavailable.
Original fleet
Final fleet
Planned fleet (Never Built)
| Class | Image | Type | Built | Number | Information |
| Class 255 Virgin Challenger | DMU | 2002 | 14 | Planned refurbishment of the High Speed Train to be used on services between Blackpool, Manchester and Birmingham, and Paddington to Birmingham via Swindon. These plans came to naught as the Strategic Rail Authority planned to transfer most of the stock to Midland Mainline for their London-Manchester 'Rio' services. |