Class 180, Paddington
Originally uploaded by Coffee Lover.
Went to Oxford for the weekend. The fare from Brighton to Oxford via London was £28.65 after allowing for my railcard discount of 33%. Which is about the same as Copenhagen to Stockholm.
I arrived at Paddington at 6.30, for the 18.52 but when the train came up on the indicator, it said that discounted tickets were not allowed till the 19.22. The 'Service Delivery Assistant' (who thinks up these titles?) suggested I took the stopping train, but it was a three coach train and so full that it was physically impossible to get on. Partly that was the passengers' fault as they will not move away from the doorways.
The 19.22 also had only 3 cars because the correct 5-car train - an Adelante had broken down. As First Great Western has been getting rid of them and they are standing idle, in store at Eastleigh, there are no spares and only thing they had available was a 3-car Turbo train. I got a seat but the train was completely full ten minutes before it was due to leave.
On Saturday morning I went from Oxford to Reading with a friend. The train was 20 minutes late but nobody could tell passengers what was happening until just before the train came in and all the VDU displays and train indicators were out of action. The train back was just a few minutes late.
On the journey back on Sunday evening, the station indicators at Oxford were still out of order and again nobody knew what was happening. At the ticket barrier I had my ticket checked by a man who was not working for the railway at all but for a security firm, and of course he knew nothing about the train services. The Virgin Cross Country train arrived a few minutes late and because so much slack is now built in to the timetable it arrived on time.
Oddly it was a double-Voyager set with 8 coaches. After they have had the trains for seven years they have suddenly found a way of making them up to a sensible length. Is this because Virgin has just been taken over by Cross Country or what?
This is consistent with my usual experience that about 2 out of 5 train journeys go bad. But First Great Western has plenty of resources to make sure their trains are done up in their migraine livery, so it is reassuring to know they have got their priorities right.
To be fair, in the past my impression was that Great Western was one of the better train operators. I think what has happened is that they bid so high that they have to pay so much money to the Treasury that they are having to scrimp and save wherever they think they can get away with it. Which cannot make for a good service.
2 comments:
Good post.
Someone ought to write a book on the announcements given out on trains in Britain.
One I remember was 'we apologise for the overcrowding today but this is due to the number of passengers.' Another said 'The good news is that there is a buffet bar on this train. However the bad news is that we can't get the hatch open!'
I wish I'd written down many which I have heard over the years. Of course sometimes they are completely unintelligible. I always feel sorry for any foreign tourists as if we cannot understand them , what hope do they have.
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