It all started on Sunday evening. The wires came down onto the track at Watford Junction causing all kinds of issues – every single train in and out of London Euston was cancelled. As I personally travelled on Sunday evening, I was witness to a complete lack of information and problems all over the railway network. Passengers were being diverted to London Marylebone to catch the train to Birmingham Moor Street and change there.
The Chiltern service connects reasonably well at both Banbury and Leamington Spa to CrossCountry’s Birmingham New Street and Manchester Picadilly service thus preventing the need for the walk from Birmingham Moor Street and New Street in sub-zero temperatures. This, was not mentioned however. There were delays en-route due to a trespasser on the line on the Chiltern route and big delays on the route via Coventry due to a cracked rail.
Now, a personal tip for passengers out there. Sometimes when things are going badly train operators put on special services to try to assist in getting people home. If you are on a different train operator’s train other than the one that is running the special service the existence of this will not be announced to you – you have to physically check the departure boards at stations. This happened to me while I was being diverted via Manchester on CrossCountry even though there was a direct train to my destination just a few minutes behind the service I was on.
The problems with the West Coast Mainline (WCML) seem to have gotten worse with issues at Bletchley, Rugby and now Wembley affecting also the Overground between London Euston and Watford Junction and the Bakerloo line is partly suspended as well. There are now genuine doubts about the ability of Virgin Trains to run its new enhanced Very High Frequency (VHF) service. Indeed, there have now been five days of disruption on the line which does nothing to improve the image of rail as a quick and reliable mode of transport.
An accusation has been leveled at Network Rail by the British Chambers of Commerce (BCC) that, “the recent setbacks had occurred because the £9bn upgrade to the West Coast main line had been done in haste in order that it could be completed by the end of 2008.” It has been reported that the disruption has ‘cost’ businesses £38m.
Of course, with the recent inflation busting fare increases, passengers will not be feeling like giving an awful lot of goodwill to the train companies or Network Rail, especially with the all the buggering about train companies do with peak ticket restrictions now. This is shoddy deception from the published figures and a stop should be put to this.
The fare increases on the WCML should be postponed until mid-year as compensation for all, including those that followed advice from National Rail Enquiries not to travel unless absolutely necessary.
- Virgin expects to run a normal train service on Thursday 8th January 2009.