Paul Corfield wrote:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/6182027.stm

Seems the government have kicked GNER off the East Coast franchise and
are going to retender it.

What a mess and in some ways a shame as I've found GNER to be a pretty
decent operator - admittedly from a small sample of journeys. I know
there have been lots of issues with delays and overhead problems which
may colour some people's views.

I've used them a fair bit KX-Durham.

My only gripe is that, on any Sunday that is going to be very busy
(e.g. weekend of Great North Run) the seat reservation printer has
"broken" and there are no reservations.

The year before last (didn't make the mistake of travelling that
weekend this year) I got the last seat in first class getting on at
Durham, for a train starting in Newcastle because first class was
filled with people upgrading standard class tickets. There were first
class ticket holders who couldn't get a seat at all further down the
line despite having seat reservations on their tickets.

My suspicion is that the guards (understandably) don't want to get
involved in all the arguments about who has a seat reservation so they
don't have reserved seats. I'd have no objection to this policy if they
told you when you booked the ticket. But when the first you know about
the "problem" is when you get on the train and discover there are no
seats then it's extremely irritating. (To the extent that I've pretty
much stopped travelling on Sunday and moved to travelling Monday which
means I get a much cheaper ticket but also means I have to use a days
holiday)

(To be fair, on another occasion when I had a standard class ticket,
the guard did let me upgrade to first class and didn't charge me the
10GBP. Interestingly, on that train the announcements were saying that
there were no more weekend first supplements available but I'd got on
the train in first class intending to upgrade without being aware there
was a problem with the ticket printer - I only discovered the standard
class was packed when I got home and my partner (who was with me at the
station but not travelling with me) saw the rest of the train go by as
it pulled out of Durham)

I also suspect that whoever takes over the line will drop the
restaurant car. AFAIAA, you can no longer eat on the west coast line.
The restaurant car is usually full on a Friday evening (infact it's
often limited by the number of meals they have available rather than
the number of seats which seems to indicate bad planning)

The current (and fairly new) system where you can mix and match cheap
singles has been fantastic. I suspect that this will disappear.

But the recent timetable changes to the 9pm and 10pm trains out of KX
have limited my choice to just two trains. Although on checking just
now it looks like the 9pm train is back to a sensible speed and the
10pm train doesn't involve a change on 22nd (although it's still very
slow) but does today so maybe that was a temporary aberation.

Tim.