Thursday 18th March

When doing the First Class week in February, one of the combinations of Birmingham to London journeys that I didn't acheive was the 09.03 CrossCountry connection into the 09.46 Wrexham & Shropshire service from Leamington Spa (a combination giving an overall journey time of 132 minutes).

Last Thursday, I had reason to be in London and the above combination fitted in well with my day. Naturally, I baulked at the £148.20 walk-on First Class return fare but such are the vagaries of UK rail fares that I was able to travel to Leamington First Class for £9.60 (only £2.30 more than the standard single fare), and, as I mentioned last week, Wrexham & Shropshire's standard class is as good as First Class...

The Voyager from Manchester was packed as it arrived into New Street but was relatively quiet from there onwards. I had had a very mixed First Class experience on CrossCountry in February so was very keen to see if matters had improved... First signs were good as the friendly First Class host offered a copy of The Times before bringing round the drinks and food selection.

Despite the listings on the 'menu card' on the table, the food offering proved to be a Danish Pastry with a choice of fillings: brie & cranberry or marmalade. I plumped for the brie and cranberry which turned out to be a product designed to be frozen (frozen best before date was in September 2010) which had clearly been thawed out for the journey ('fresh' best before date was 19 March). It was ok but nothing more. Fortunately, the fresh orange was better!

A second offering came round after Coventry, so this First Class journey was the best to date, certainly in terms of value-for-money.

There is a rumour around that Deutsch Bahn, the owners of the Wrexham & Shropshire Railway, have bid for Arriva, the owners of CrossCountry. One can only hope that it is true as I would like to believe that CrossCountry is ripe for improvement and that the style and class of the Wrexham & Shropshire services might influence this improvement!

Thursday's 9.46 was as pleasant a journey as one could wish for, though, of course, the space available in Standard Coaches 'C' and 'D' occurs partly because the reservations are 'crammed' (relatively speaking) into Coach 'B'. The service continues to delight apart from the weakness of the 'free' wi-fi offering which once again wasn't working in Standard Class. Had a very enjoyable cappacino and chocolate muffin from the buffet car.

Submitted a comment card regarding the WiFi. Wrexham & Shropshire aim for a 10 day response time for comments. I can report that a week after my comment form from the 11th I had a letter saying that high correspondence levels meant that my comments might not be answered in the 10 days...

Came back from London Marylebone on the 16.00 Chiltern service. Another Deutsch Bahn company which does almost everything right, though of course the standards of comfort on the Clubmans can't match the Wrexham & Shropshire 'proper' trains.

Fingers crossed over the future of Arriva!