i cant wait til the wales franchise comes up for re-newal. can we have it being re-nationalised please by the WAG?
Sadly i doubt that will happen.
They should make whoever winds the new franchise invest in new rolling stock if they get a long enough franchise. maybe new class 172's
Both Labour and Plaid had, in their Assembly manifesto, plans to possibly put a not-for-profit company in charge of the Wales franchise. I heard somthing about the Scotish Parlement considering trying out vertical integration with ScotRail. It's a shame neither devolved administration's can actually do anything that isn't half-hearted regarding nationalisation because the main Westminister parties (Labour too apparently, not just the Tories) are so convinced that the railways should remain privatised.
I had my first trip on a refurbed 158 yesterday (from Holyhead to Shrewsbury), and I wasn't too impresed. The power points are a big plus but the only other improvements are the carpet on the floor and the appearance of the seats. The seats themselves are too hard though, and the horrid Arriva turquoise on the armrests and several other places is, well, horrid. The smart blue carpet on the walls beneath the windows has sadly not been replaced (I noticed it was getting very tatty on the unrefurbished sets though) and the blue strips on the edge of the luggage racks and above the windows where a nice feature that is sadly no more. I think they needed to concentrate more on reliability mods than Arriva-ising the appearance of the interior design. The external livery though is a huge improvement over the standard Arriva scheme, I heard some boarding passengers who sounded impressed with the train, not sure if it was the interior or the exterior they were commenting on though.
I had quite a wait for the unit (838 I seem to remember) at Holyhead as it was late arriving (not sure why) alone (the other 158s we passed seemed to be mostly 4-car). At Shrewsbury there was an anouncement saying the inbound service from Aberystwyth had been canceled due to a train failure. I expected the service from Birmingham (4-car) to Aberystwyth which I then boarded would sit there in Shrewsbury for ages until they had somehow managed to get the broken unit off the single track. I was wrong, we got to Newtown before being held-up, where we eventually passed a 4-car set (advertised on the information display as being delayed by getting on for 2-hours due to a train failure). We weren't held there to allow the following eastbound train to pass too, but to my supprise we got to Talgarig before it and had to wait there, strangly it was a single 158. A further oddity I thought was that all 4 coaches of our train continued to Aberystwyth (I knew this was the one without a Pwllheli portion, but thought 1 set would be dropped at the depot at Machynlleth). On arrival in Aber-Y at about 19:40 (possibly a bit earlier) though there was a large number of passengers waiting and some British Transport Police presence, so perhaps there was some event on that explained the 4 coaches.
