On 11 Feb, 22:32, Paul Corfield wrote:

But let's hope that the OP's relations have seat reservations and are
not travelling on the 1730, 1800 or 1830 departures from Kings Cross.
I'm ignoring Grand Central who will probably have a fully booked train
for their late afternoon departure to Sunderland.

--
Paul C
This is off-topic, but I haven't heard about Grand Central in ages.
Are they actually getting a decent number of passengers?

On Feb 12, 7:46*pm, Paul Corfield wrote:
On Thu, 12 Feb 2009 00:52:35 -0800 (PST), sweek

wrote:
On 11 Feb, 22:32, Paul Corfield wrote:

But let's hope that the OP's relations have seat reservations and are
not travelling on the 1730, 1800 or 1830 departures from Kings Cross.
I'm ignoring Grand Central who will probably have a fully booked train
for their late afternoon departure to Sunderland.
This is off-topic, but I haven't heard about Grand Central in ages.
Are they actually getting a decent number of passengers?

I believe the "peak" trains for morning arrival at KX and late afternoon
departure to Sunderland fill respectably. *Not sure about the other
departures. I'm sure I've read that the trains that can cover football
match flows down to London also load well. I've only seen one Grand
Central train and that passed over Holloway Road on the bridge as I was
waiting for a bus - from what I could see it looked well loaded and that
was a Saturday.


Had a return London to York trip (for work) with them yesterday (£59
pay on train compared to £122 with a queue even for the ticket
machines on NXEC). The 08.04 from King's Cross was pretty empty, the
19.06 from York was comfortably loaded (about 50-60%).

They have gained provisional approval for a 4th daily train as part of
the ORR's views on a range of access applications on the ECML.

I understand their fleet reliability is also very high now after the
woeful start. *They've even updated their website to a new design!

The down train was lacking a buffet (formation TS, TS, TS, TS, TF; due
to planned refurbishment work, according to the website) and so there
was no free Wi-Fi, in the front standard class coach the power sockets
were dead and the toilet door lock was broken. On the Up train, the
stock seemed in better shape, but there were two declassified first
coaches (formation was TF, TRSB, TS, TF, TF). I would say that whilst
the powercars may be more reliable, there are still some maintenance
problems with the coaching stock.