Christmas Record for Virgin Trains as Growth Continues

LONDON, December 11 - Virgin Trains today announced record-breaking sales figures for the
Christmas and New Year period, with advance bookings at their highest ever
level.

On the day it filed its latest annual accounts, Virgin Trains announced a
20 per cent year-on-year increase in advance ticket sales, with some routes
seeing bookings double.

Set to be one of the busiest festive periods for Virgin Trains, routes to
London, Birmingham, Glasgow and Manchester are proving popular with nearly
145,000 advance bookings. The Chester and North Wales line is particularly
popular this year with over 100% uplift in advance sales.

Virgin Trains has also confirmed that its business is thriving as
it continues to grow faster than any other UK franchised train operator.
Passenger numbers increased by 1.5m to 22.5 million in the year ending
February 2009, according to annual accounts filed today.

Main elements from the annual accounts to March 2009 include:

                       To 28 Feb 2009  To 29 Feb 2008  Increase/decrease
    Passenger revenue  GBP611m         GBP581m         +5%
    Franchise support
    Payments           GBP24.12m       GBP119.61m      -79%
    Profits after tax  GBP76.42m       GBP56.45m       +35%
    Passenger numbers  22.5m           21m             +7%

Further growth in 2009 has seen passenger volumes increase by
around 20% year-on-year since the launch of the high-frequency timetable in
December 2008. In the current year Virgin Trains expects to carry around 26
million passengers as more passengers are taking advantage of discounted
Advance tickets, with around 500,000 available every week.

Growth has risen sharply since infrastructure disruption which
impacted punctuality across the network in 2008 and early 2009. "We have been
pleased with the improvements made by Network Rail over the last few months
but will continue to monitor their performance and keep the pressure on them
to deliver a top class railway," said Tony Collins, Virgin Rail Chief
Executive Officer.

Completion of major route upgrade work has seen a reduction in
weekend engineering works. Performance has also improved with the highest
ever figure of 93.4% of trains arriving on time being recorded in the four
weeks ended 16 October. Performance between September and November 2009 has
been consistently above 90%.

There are now 2,180 train services operating every week,
including trains every 20 minutes between London and Birmingham, and London
and Manchester, along with an hourly service linking London and Chester.

Since taking over the West Coast rail franchise 12 years ago,
Virgin has increased the number of passengers from 13.6 million to 22.5
million a year in 2008/9, replaced the entire train fleet; and increased
trains on weekdays by 50%.

More than 200 million passenger journeys have now been made with
Virgin Trains on its West Coast operations since March 1997. Virgin Trains
also stands out as the only train operator that has significantly reduced
journey times across its entire network.

    Innovating for customers: highlights of work since 1997

    - Over 130 new trains (with over 750 new carriages) in our Pendolino and
      Voyager fleets have been put into service, at a cost of GBP2 billion
      Across West Coast and CrossCountry operations providing a legacy for
      CrossCountry customers.

    - Increasing services has resulted in 60% more customers in the last five
      years, from 14.5m in 2004 to an estimated 26m in 2009/10.

    - Major improvements to passenger facilities at stations, and enhanced
      our car parks - creating 5000 additional spaces.

    - A massive change in service in 2008, with 32% more services and the
      most frequent long-distance service in Europe (London - Manchester and
      London - Birmingham, both every 20 minutes).

    - Average journey times to Manchester have been slashed to 2 hours 5
      minutes, from 2 hours 30 minutes.

Notes to editors:

Virgin Trains currently operates 2180 train services a week on
its West Coast network. That's almost 113,000 train services a year.

The financial accounts for West Coast Trains Limited covering
the year to 28 February 2009 were filed with Companies House on 10 December
2009.

They show a profit after tax of GBP76 million on overall
turnover of GBP673 million. Franchise support from Government was GBP24
million, down 79.8% on the 2007/08 financial year.

Images of Virgin Trains and the company's operations are available in the
Image Library on our online Media Room website
mediaroom.virgintrains.co.uk

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Virgin Trains is the brand name of Virgin Rail Group. We have operated
the West Coast passenger train franchise since 1997; the current franchise
runs to March 2012.

Virgin Rail Group is owned 51 percent by Virgin Group and 49 percent by
Stagecoach.

Virgin Trains has been recognised in numerous industry awards. In 2009
the company was awarded the Globe Travel Awards 2009 'Best Rail Operator'
Category as voted by Evening Standard readers; voted Best UK Domestic Train
Service by Business Traveller magazine for the second year running; and named
Best Rail Operator in the 2009 Group Leisure Awards, run by Group Leisure,
the magazine for group travel organisers.

For further media information contact the Virgin Trains Press Office on +44(0)845-000-3333 or visit our Media Room website at mediaroom.virgintrains.co.uk