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.
--
Paul C


Admits to working for London Underground!

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.

wrote in message
oups.com...


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

You might be well placed to use GC when (if) they ever start up!


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


No reason why it should disappear - Virgin provided their VV fares while
operating under letter agreements.

Paul

On 15 Dec 2006 10:06:41 -0800, wrote:


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.

[snip story]

I have to say that your experience is not at all good. If I was booked
in first class and was unable to get a seat I'd be a tad livid.

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)

There is no dining service (or any form of supplementary first class
service other than the seat) on VWC at weekends. It makes it utterly
pointless to pay first class unless the space and relative lack of noise
are highly valuable. You even have to pay for items at the "shop" which
I think is a disgrace.

On weekdays I understand Virgin have just upgraded and revised their
entire dining offer but you can still get breakfast, lunch, afternoon
tea and dinner and many of the services. It is Great Western who have
dumped much of their catering which I think is stupid for long journeys
to the West Country. However GW seem to believe they are operating a
commuter railway on their entire network and not an Inter City service.
Colleagues at work are extremely unimpressed with the new timetable and
have had dreadful journeys this week including GW completely forgetting
they had to run a train on Monday morning!

I would be surprised if GNER(revised) withdrew the catering service in
the short term. I have not used it very much when I have it has been
excellent and from what I read it has a very good reputation. If First
win the retender then god help us - might get interesting if National
Express or Virgin / Stagecoach get it though. I can imagine there will
be great stakeholder interest in the future of the East Coast franchise
as it is so critical to the economic health of several (labour voting)
regions!

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

I would be surprised if this sort of change was made short term. Longer
term it entirely depends on how the replacement franchise looks. I would
expect the premium profile not to be quite so steep this time as surely
people must be learning the lessons of the process by now.
--
Paul C


Admits to working for London Underground!

wrote:

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.

No, you can. Virgin ended up backtracking and launched their Primo Pendolino
product, which has become quite successful and has just been extended to
more trains.

On Fri, 15 Dec 2006 18:41:43 +0000,
Paul Corfield wrote:
On 15 Dec 2006 10:06:41 -0800, wrote:


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.

[snip story]

I have to say that your experience is not at all good. If I was booked
in first class and was unable to get a seat I'd be a tad livid.

Fortunately, it hasn't happened to me. I've only been on two trains
where it has happened to people (and I've known about it). One was the
overbooking first class and the "broken" seat reservation printer which
is inexcusable and the other was a gas leak at Doncaster (might have
been Darlington) where it was utter chaos; trains cancelled, rerouted
via random places, wierd changes, special trains and there was about
four trains worth of people on one train and not enough seats in first
class which can't really be helped.

But regardless of whether it's first class or standard class, if you've
booked and paid in advance and got a seat reservation then assuming that
all the scheduled trains are running then I think you should always get
a seat. Usually this works, even if a 225 has been replaced with a 125 -
sometimes you have to listen to the announcements to find out where your
seat/carriage has been "moved" to.

The Virgin trains have seat reservations on little LCDs as well as
tickets so I presume they don't suffer from "reservation printer broken"
syndrome. I wish GNER had added something like that when they did the
refits.

My only other peeve is that GNER will no longer carry trikes. Perhaps
that's my excuse to buy a trice and buy or make some sort of large
suitcase that I can tow as a trailer and then fold the trice into to
bypass the rules.

But I can't believe that any franchise that takes over the East coast
line will do anything more than, at best, continue the status quo and,
more likely, restrict it further.

Tim.


--
God said, "div D = rho, div B = 0, curl E = - @B/@t, curl H = J + @D/@t,"
and there was light.

http://tjw.hn.org/ http://www.locofungus.btinternet.co.uk/

On Fri, 15 Dec 2006 20:55:30 GMT,
Jack Taylor wrote:
wrote:

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.

No, you can. Virgin ended up backtracking and launched their Primo Pendolino
product, which has become quite successful and has just been extended to
more trains.

This is useful to know, thanks.

I'll pass it on to the people I know who took a long journey assuming
they would be able to eat on the train only to discover there wasn't
anything other than the typical inedible sandwiches.

When they now make the (occasional) similar trip, they go by car and
stay overnight on the way, neither time nor money being the limiting
factor for them. They would prefer to take the train and make the
journey part of their holiday.

Tim.

--
God said, "div D = rho, div B = 0, curl E = - @B/@t, curl H = J + @D/@t,"
and there was light.

http://tjw.hn.org/ http://www.locofungus.btinternet.co.uk/

Tim Woodall wrote:

This is useful to know, thanks.

I'll pass it on to the people I know who took a long journey assuming
they would be able to eat on the train only to discover there wasn't
anything other than the typical inedible sandwiches.

When they now make the (occasional) similar trip, they go by car and
stay overnight on the way, neither time nor money being the limiting
factor for them. They would prefer to take the train and make the
journey part of their holiday.

Full details at:

http://www.virgintrains.co.uk/travel...b/default.aspx

In article .com, () wrote:

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.

[snip]

That's almost the opposite of my experiences on GNER, mainly travelling North of Peterborough or occasionally Stevenage. A regular source of a good seat is a no show on a reserved seat. Apart from the odd coach not having reservations due to stock mis-formation (which I think the Mallard programme has sorted out) I've generally found all too many reservations on GNER.

--
Colin Rosenstiel

Tim Woodall wrote:

I'll pass it on to the people I know who took a long journey assuming
they would be able to eat on the train only to discover there wasn't
anything other than the typical inedible sandwiches.


Did they take this long journey on the Central Line or something? I've
never (well, not since the dying days of the old loco-hauled trains)
been on a Virgin service that didn't have a good selection of
at-least-high-street-quality sarnies plus reasonably decent hot food...

(I also get to experience the delights of a Virgin first-class
breakfast for the first time on Monday. Looking forward to this very
much...)

--
John Band
john at johnband dot org
www.johnband.org