Back to the Pendolinos: this time, the 10.30 'off-peak' New Street to London Euston service. Not particularly busy which meant a '2-seater' table to myself in Quiet Coach 'A'. So able to plug my laptop into the socket and boot up the (paid-for) Wi-Fi which worked fine.
Smooth, on time journey. Tickets checks, shop announcements, and cleaning runs. Virgin have got it right, especially if you can avail yourself of the return fare of £41.90 ie return before 3pm or after 6.45pm or at weekends!
Came back to Coleshill Parkway using the 17.10 SuperVoyager to Nuneaton for a change onto the 18.17 CrossCountry service. The 17.10 service turned out to be two sets - the front for Holyhead and the rear for Chester - which were very busy though seats were available. After travelling Pendolino at speed, it is very different to use a SuperVoyager: there is much more of the sense of the power being unleashed to acheive the timings demanded.
Slight confusion over the Shop announcement which seem to indicate that only the Holyhead set had one (I was in the Chester set) but this was cleared up and I partook of one of Virgin's Meal Deals: hot chocolate, Red Salmon Sandwich, and crisps for £3.95. Certainly palatable but the W&S buffet is better...
The friendly shop steward extolled the meal being served to the First Class passengers which certainly sounded more interesting than the Pendolino First Class evening meal that I had received a few weeks ago. Serving it fully would take some doing though in the 62 minutes that the run takes...
No problem making the connection into a busy, tired-looking Class 170 3-car diesel set to Coleshill. Got a table seat however... No announcement, no refereshment trolley, but an on-time arrival at Coleshill Parkway gave a start-to-stop journey time of 82 minutes. Interestingly, the through single walk-on fare is £70 yet by splitting the fare at Nuneaton, this drops to £65.90. Aren't rail fares a nonsense!
So ends another week of on-time, safe, pleasant journeys. My thanks as ever to the teams across the privatised network who manage to make this happen. It's just a pity that their work is never recognised, only criticised...
On a final note, yesterday saw the announcement of HS2. I'm with Christian Wolmar: why can't we spend significantly less money by focusing on clearing the pinch points on the network so that our existing 'high-speed' services between the two cities are really given a chance to shine?!
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
now that virgin also use mega train have you booked any of the £1 tickets that are available
ReplyDelete