[AMcWhirter]

[quote quote=944659]Tonight’s Glasgow-London sleeper has been cancelled owing to a “train fault” with the new rolling stock.[/quote]

Apologies. It’s London-Glasgow tonight. But it is a last minute cancellation and some customers will already be en route to Euston.

[AMcWhirter]

Last night’s Glasgow-London service was cancelled at short notice owing to what Cal Sleeper calls a “power issue.”

Passengers were offered the 04.14 hrs Virgin Trains service to London as an alternative.

There were also problems with the London-Fort William service last night and this train operates with the old BR rolling stock.

It’s running many hours late (by the time you read these words) on Saturday morning and would still not have reached Fort William even now.

[MartynSinclair]

Interesting review of the not so cheap service…

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AMcWhirter

[AMcWhirter]

[quote quote=946305]Interesting review of the not so cheap service…[/quote]

Quite a journey. Only half the train ex-London was operated because of technical issues.

Train routed via the ECML (because WCML was closed) which meant a roundabout routing to Glasgow via Wembley, reverse and then through the N London suburbs to join the ECML, then stops in Newcastle and Edinburgh (because train running early) then to Carstairs and then finally to Glasgow.

[AnthonyDunn]

Actually, British Rail Engineering was a pioneer with the original tilting train that was axed by Margaret Thatcher as part of her mean-minded vendetta against British Rail. So much so that BREL produced generally excellently engineered and manufactured trains that lasted the test of time. Where they failed (and the non-commercial/public sector charge is accurate) was in producing entirely for domestic use and they never had any serious export focus. Maybe this was also down to the fact that the UK has a smaller (narrower and lower) train gauge than is found in many other countries where double-decker trains are the norm. Sadly, UK bridges and tunnels are too narrow, too low or to curved to allow for larger gauge trains found across the continent.

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Montysaurus

[Gary L]

I was booked onto the GLC-EUS service on Friday 28 June.

Boarding is supposed to start at 2200, but when we arrived at 2230 there was already a queue of passengers standing on the platform.

We were told around 2300 that there was a “power problem” but that the “journey will definitely be going ahead”. Apparently there was no power being transferred from the loco to the passengers cars.

The train staff were almost invisible, and around 2330 we were told that an engineer was “looking at the problem” (it transpires that an engineer did not arrive at the station until 0100).

At 0015 we were told to “return to the main concourse and wait for an announcement”. At the same time, the train staff were also saying that passengers could use their tickets on “any Virgin train tomorrow”. However a quick tweet to Virgin Trains (kudos to them for answering multiple tweets during the early hours) confirmed that there was NO ticket acceptance in place.

No announcement took place, and I had to go & hunt down staff hiding at the front of the train before they finally announced around 0100 (to a small group of passengers on the platform) that we were to move into the Central Hotel for “refreshments”. It was left to myself & another passenger to relay this information to the large group of passengers sitting in the freezing cold concourse as the station was being locked up around them.

So off we trooped into a function room, with only 20 chairs and no refreshments (though tea/coffee did eventually arrive, but no food).

A replacement bus was then offered to those who wanted to take it, this arrived about 0200.

For those that wanted accommodation, rooms were offered in the Jury’s Inn or Premier Inn (both 10 minutes walk away – why couldn’t rooms have been provided in the hotel we were already sitting in?) … BUT … it now transpired that the ONLY train that tickets could be used on was the 0414 Virgin Trains service. Those who took up the accommodation offer spent no more than 90 minutes in the room before they had to come back to Central Station for that train.

Virgin Trains responded to tweets throughout the night – whilst Caledonian Sleeper refused to answer a single one. The video screen in the station crashed while trying to use it to have a video call.

Calling them useless is being very kind.

A ‘Delay Repay’ claim has now been submitted, but no doubt this will only provide a refund of the ticket cost and £zero for the sheer inconvenience & discomfort endured over this episode.

[Author]

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