"The first UK sighting of the Voyager’s now familiar front end came on 6th July 2000... Five months later to the day, a high-profile and ceremonious outing for 220001 set out to woo the press."
220003 imposes at Birmingham New Street in the year of introduction - 2001. Class 47, No. 47793, is representative of the outgoing stock.
Back in the mists of March 1998, an eyecatching edition of RAIL magazine appeared on the newsagents’ shelves. The cover featured two artist impressions of futuristic-looking trains, and a headline alluding to a £1.85bn order for new Virgin passenger stock. The larger of the two images documented what was believed, at the time, to be the external design of the Bombardier DEMU which would serve the CrossCountry network. The DEMU was not, at that point, described as a ‘Voyager’, it did not look like a Voyager, and Virgin had a different plan for CrossCountry from the one that eventually came to fruition.