Regular readers of this blog will know that I am a great fan of the Chiltern Railways services between Birmingham and London. In my experience, the company provides reliable comfortable trains between the two cities at an amazing price when you consider the facilities offered, and the attitude of the staff who serve, both on board and at the stations.
Yesterday's return journey illustrated the Chiltern plus effect perfectly. Travelling up to London, I caught the 8.15 Clubman service from Birmingham Moor Street. As I have a Chiltern Gastro Card, I benefitted from a 10% reduction on the already bargain fare of £31.90 - paying just £28.70.
On its on-time arrival from Kidderminster, there was the usual mixture of many commuters (some of whom stay onto Solihull) and a few long distance travellers, so obtaining a table on which to work wasn't a problem. As expected, the socket was working so my laptop was happy...
Although a catering trolley joins at Moor Street for the journey through to London, it tends to be slow working its way through the train so I had bought a coffee from one of the many outlets on the station itself. In the event the catering stewardess made it through to the rear carriage by Warwick, and then appeared again around High Wycombe.
The train filled up during the run, particularly at Banbury, but wasn't over-full at any stage. Toilets were fine, and arrival at London Marylebone was on-time.
I returned on the 2.50pm Clubman from Marylebone. Reasonably busy to Bicester but again no trouble finding a table with a working socket. No catering trolley on the afternoon services but Marylebone has plenty of outlets. Arrival in Birmingham Snow Hill on time...
So what's there not to like? Well, the main weakness for those who want to work on the train is the lack of wireless connectivity which is aggravated for both Orange and Vodafone users by the poor coverage of the country portions of the route by the telecom providers. Apart from that, as I have commented before, speed isn't everything...
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