London Banter - View Single Post

Colin Rosenstiel · April 9th 06, 12:43 AM posted to uk.transport.london

In article ,
(Paul Corfield) wrote:

Exactly - WAGN may not have been very "sexy" as an operation but it
did seem to have rolling stock stuff pretty well sorted out. Hornsey
always came out well in the Roger Ford "golden spanner" awards in Modern
Railways.

I'm afraid I am somewhat dubious about what First will actually be
able to deliver by way of improvements. There are too many issues on the
Thameslink part of the franchise which they have to deal with that I
can see the WAGN part becoming neglected. The issues around Kings Cross
and how they will ever deal with Thameslink 2000 (hah!) threaten to
divert attention.

I'll confess that I don't particularly like the way First run their
businesses as they seem to adopt the "sweat the assets until they
break" philosophy all too readily and then disguise this as
"transforming travel" or whatever their slogan is. I'd love to be
proved wrong though.

Their flying start is to scrap the refreshment trolleys on the Cruisers.
Cost-free to the TOC they were, too. Hardly in line with their policy of
encouraging off-peak travel.

At first we thought they were scrapping the lat night security guards
too but it now appears they have been taken "in-house".

--
Colin Rosenstiel