Last Tuesday's trip to London gave me an opportunity to use the 7.53 LondonMidland service from New Street as I needed to arrive at Euston for the best onward tube connection and there were £16 Advance First Single tickets when I booked on Monday...
A pleasant surprise awaited me at New Street: the train's arrival from Crewe and departure to Euston was announced without reference to the train terminating first. Common sense at last! As ever, the train was busy with New Street communters on arrival and with International and Coventry commuters on departure but the First Class compartment was quiet enougn for me to be able to get a table for my laptop work.
Soon after departure, the trolley arrived. Complimentary tea and ginger nut buscuits - very welcome! However, no ticket check at any point on the journey...
No problems at Northampton this time, and arrival into Euston's platform 8 was 5 minutes early. For some reason the gates refused to recognise my ticket which was annoying but otherwise a good journey experience.
Returned to Moor Street on the 17.00 Chiltern Clubman from Marylebone. This proved to be suprisingly quiet (usually busy until Banbury) so was able to get to a table without any hassle. Good run too. What else is there to say other than Chiltern continue to deliver...
Well actually there is a pecularity to note... This week's Rail Magazine (issue 668) carries a news item along with a comment piece from Christian Wolmer on the Dept. of Transport's decision to impose a £500k fine on Chiltern for franchise (not operational) breaches. Not surprisingly, Chiltern are annoyed and Christian seems to feel the Company is justified in so being.
Actually, the DfT are consulting on the fine - see http://bit.ly/giAA7X - until 5th May. So if you have any thoughts, now is the time to let the DfT know!
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment