On 6 Jul, 08:44, wrote:
On 6 Jul, 03:20, TheOneKEA wrote:

On Jul 5, 5:07 pm, Bob wrote:

Possible bidders would include Britain's top five bus and rail
operators, Stagecoach Group (SGC.L: Quote, Profile , Research), Go-
Ahead Group (GOG.L: Quote, Profile , Research), First Group (FGP.L:
Quote, Profile , Research), National Express (NEX.L: Quote, Profile ,
Research) and Arriva (ARI.L: Quote, Profile , Research), as well as
Germany's Deutsche Bahn [DBN.UL] and French bus and rail operator
Keolis, the source added.

Oh wonderful. If any of the usual suspects acquire it I can see
Chiltern getting sucked into a tiolet tank and turned into a shadow of
its clean, reliable, expansionist, common-sense self. Whoopee.

*has horrible mental images of Barbie swirls all over the 168/Xs*

There are suggestions going round that whilst Chiltern is doing very
well on punctuality etc. there are many problems to do with other "key
performance indicators" linked to retaining the franchise that need
very urgent attention. (suggested as one reason behind the change of
MD recently announced) - so whilst it may seem to be doing very well
it could be that there are issues that need to be resolved elsewhere
in the company that we aren't aware of.

Tony

I think the tunnel collapse hit the finances hard and have they been
compensated yet?
Ridership does not seem to be a problem, but reliability of the 165
fleet, whilst hitting a peak a few months ago has again slumped to
around half that achieved by the Reading based examples. ATP problems
perhaps? The Chiltern 165s do have a few extra bits on them which
would mean more to fail. The Chiltern engineering staff are looking at
some innovations which have caught the attention of other DMU
operators, all of which would go a long way to improving reliability.
Doors and couplers being the main problem for most operators. In all
honesty though, apart from the tunnel incident, I cannot see what has
hit the finances to this degree. It was predicted at the time Laing
sold out that the business would be sold as a non core activity.