EMR train farce, booked hotel.

[Haywain]

I was at Trent Bridge for the test match on Friday and Saturday. My travel had been booked 3 weeks beforehand for journeys from Luton to Nottingham and back on each day. Obviously, the Bedford crash put the mockers on the original plan for Friday, with bus transfers to Bedford for onward trains. I also had Advance tickets for travel on Saturday from Bedford to Nottingham and back later in the day - I was planning on buying my ticket from Luton to Bedford on the day as a walk-up (50% local authority discount). All went well on Friday morning, apart from the bus doing a tour of Luton town centre before heading north, and arrival in Nottingham was only 9 minutes late. However, Friday evening was a different matter.

I had intended to travel back south on the 1912 departure from Nottingham, in lieu of my booked but cancelled 1950 departure. I became aware that it's inward working was delayed and by the time I got to the station it had been cancelled. The obvious next option was the 2011 departure, so I purchased some refreshment and in due course wandered back to the platform to find no sign of the 2011. The scenes were chaotic with staff struggling to cope due to having no information at all. Checks of RealTime Trains and Open Train Times maps did nothing to give me any confidence that EMR would be able to get me home before midnight (and I need to be up before 0600 on Saturday to make the journey back!), so I eventually resorted to booking a hotel room at an exorbitant price. This meant my tickets for Friday Night and Saturday morning would go unused.

I am aware that I can claim a refund of the unused train tickets and, as they were booked through Trainsplit, I am fairly confident that the two journeys will be seen as a return. But where do I stand with trying to get EMR to cough up some compensation for the expense of the hotel? The lack of useful information from their staff on the ground suggested that asking for any sort of help wouldn't have been any use, so I made the (mistake of) booking off my own bat. Do I have a reasonable basis to ask them to compensate me?

 

[Watershed]

It looks like the next train to run was the delayed 21:25, which ultimately arrived at Bedford at 23:17. The next onward connection would have been the 00:14, arriving into Luton at 00:40.

That would have meant a 3h15m delay compared to your booked arrival time of 21:25 (presuming you were intending to change at Kettering or Wellingborough onto an ex-Corby service).

Obviously that's a very substantial delay, nearly as much as the entire journey duration, but I'm not sure that it legally speaking entitled you a hotel given there were still later trains.

If you do want to try and claim back your hotel expenses, you will want to avoid getting a refund on your tickets (at least the ones for your Friday evening Nottingham-Bedford/Luton journey). If you accept a refund then that is generally going to be seen as an abandoned journey and thus mutually exclusive with claiming your entitlements for a delay (e.g. Delay Repay, food/drink).

By all means, put in a claim to EMR - there is a chance they will pay up some or all of your costs as a gesture of goodwill. But if they refuse, I think you might just be limited to getting a refund of your tickets.

 

[Haywain]

The next onward connection would have been the 00:14, arriving into Luton at 00:40.

At the time, there was no clear information about trains running between Bedford and Luton, and with engineering works booked for Saturday y assumption was that there would be no trains and it would be a bus.

But if they refuse, I think you might just be limited to getting a refund of your tickets.

Is there a time limit on applying for that refund?

 

[Watershed]

At the time, there was no clear information about trains running between Bedford and Luton, and with engineering works booked for Saturday y assumption was that there would be no trains and it would be a bus.

Oh absolutely, I'm not in any way suggesting your abandonment of the journey wasn't a sensible thing to do in the circumstances. But unfortunately I'm not sure that a lack of clear information on when you would arrive would constitute being stranded, such as to trigger your right to a hotel.

I think there would need to be some clear indication for that to be the case - e.g. EMR saying they weren't going to be running any more services and that they wouldn't be providing RRBs or taxis.

Is there a time limit on applying for that refund?

The NRCoT says there is a 28 day time limit on submitting a refund claim, but as the anticipated delay was clearly far in excess of 60 minutes, you also had the right to opt for a refund under Article 16 of the PRO.

There is no time limit specified in the PRO for exercising this right and the PRO states that any purported waiver or exclusion of your rights is non-binding, so if you make your refund claim under the PRO, there would be no basis for rejecting for being made than 28 days later. Although as with many PRO rights, your practical experience enforcing those rights may be... variable.

 

[Adam Williams]

The NRCoT says there is a 28 day time limit on submitting a refund claim

Setting aside the PRO, if the reason for the refund request not being submitted in the 28 days was the passenger trying to progress a claim with the TOC first, I am confident Raileasy would be reasonable.

 

[Haywain]

Setting aside the PRO, if the reason for the refund request not being submitted in the 28 days was the passenger trying to progress a claim with the TOC first, I am confident Raileasy would be reasonable.

Thank you, that is suitably reassuring.

 

[Swedenorer]

Why not just try it on with an invoice along the lines of expenses incurred due to 3h 15 min delay in train service making later onward travel impossible?

 

[LowLevel]

I don't think you'll have an issue getting your reasonable costs paid. EMR had said it would be a disaster pretty consistently all week and it to be fair it pretty much lived up to that throughout being miserable for all concerned.

I saw all the cricket fans piling off trains on Friday morning and thought it had the makings of a disaster.

Staffing at Nottingham won't have been helped by the sudden passing of a long serving and very well regarded member of the platform team on Friday night with various members of staff unfit to work as a consequence and a skeleton staff scraped together from whoever was available and competent.

 

[Trainman40083]

I don't think you'll have an issue getting your reasonable costs paid. EMR had said it would be a disaster pretty consistently all week and it to be fair it pretty much lived up to that throughout being miserable for all concerned.

I saw all the cricket fans piling off trains on Friday morning and thought it had the makings of a disaster.

Staffing at Nottingham won't have been helped by the sudden passing of a long serving and very well regarded member of the platform team on Friday night with various members of staff unfit to work as a consequence and a skeleton staff scraped together from whoever was available and competent.

Said staff member at Nottingham will be sadly missed. What a character.

 

[Haywain]

Staffing at Nottingham won't have been helped by the sudden passing of a long serving and very well regarded member of the platform team on Friday night with various members of staff unfit to work as a consequence and a skeleton staff scraped together from whoever was available and competent.

That is very sad to hear, but would it have affected staffing during the evening?

 

[LowLevel]

That is very sad to hear, but would it have affected staffing during the evening?

To be fair - no, I misread the post as being about Saturday rather than Friday!

However - the conditions are quite likely to have, after several days of hot temperatures and significant disruption I've heard people describe them as amongst the worst shifts they've had anything to do with. I also tried to catch a train on Friday evening as it happens and gave up and caught a bus.

 

[Haywain]

Well, I've had a response from EMR or, more to the point, I've been fobbed off.

This is what I sent to them:

On Friday 26 June 2026 I was due to travel from Nottingham to Luton. I was originally booked on the 19:50 from Nottingham giving an arrival at Luton Airport Parkway of 21:28, but due to the unfortunate incident near Bedford the previous week I had revised my plan and intended to travel on the 19:12 train from Nottingham.

I became aware that this train had been cancelled on arrival at Nottingham station at around 18:45 and accepted that this meant waiting until the next departure at 20:11, so went to purchase some refreshments and find somewhere to sit down. In due course, however, it became clear that the 20:11 departure was unlikely to happen, in spite of there being no advice that it had been cancelled. As time went on it was clear that it wasn’t going to run but your staff on the ground at Nottingham had no useful information. They were unable to say when a train would be turning up or to give any assurance that one might run. Faced with a journey time of around 3 hours it was becoming clear to me that I would not be arriving in Luton (or Luton Airport Parkway) before midnight, and possibly long after. As I already had tickets to return to Nottingham the following morning with a departure at 07:00 this meant that I was not going to get anywhere enough sleep,

With no confidence of what time I would be able to get home, and knowing that I had an early start the next morning - and non-refundable tickets already paid for - I concluded that I had little choice but to book a hotel room for the night. This was far from my preferred option and, if it had been it would have been done much earlier in order to avoid the extortionate price that was being asked.

I am therefore asking that you provide me with financial compensation for the additional costs I incurred as a result of your failure to the provide a reasonable level of service on that evening, The hotel costs £150.29 for the one night, including breakfast.

On request, I can supply details of train tickets held and hotel booking details. I look forward to hearing from you.

And this is their response, which feels rather a lot like just being ignored (suggestions as to next steps welcomed):

Hi Haywain

Thank you for getting in touch.

Due to an incident on the East Midlands Intercity route, the line between Bedford and Luton was closed from 22 to 26 June 2026. As a result, there were no East Midlands Railway (EMR) services south of Bedford and no Thameslink services north of Luton. Customers were advised to travel only if their journey was essential.

During the disruption, rail replacement buses operated between Luton Airport Parkway, Bedford and Kettering in both directions. Ticket acceptance was also in place with other operators, allowing customers with valid EMR tickets to travel at no extra cost.

During the same period, the UK experienced exceptionally high temperatures, and the Met Office issued a red weather warning. Extreme heat can affect both railway infrastructure and trains, so Network Rail introduced temporary speed restrictions in some areas to keep the railway operating safely. This resulted in longer journey times and some short-notice cancellations.

If you chose not to travel and abandoned your journey, you can claim a refund from the retailer where you purchased your ticket within 28 days of your intended travel date. Please quote the service disruption when submitting your claim so that no administration fee is applied.

If you travelled during the disruption and your journey was delayed, you may be entitled to Delay Repay compensation.

Where an emergency or amended timetable is in operation, delays are assessed against the revised timetable rather than the original published timetable. If you arrived more than 15 minutes later than the scheduled arrival time shown in the revised timetable for your journey, you should submit a Delay Repay claim to the operator responsible for your delayed service for the quickest resolution.

The link to the EMR Delay Repay portal can be found here. Delay Repay Claim | Train Delay Compensation | EMR

I am afraid, as we were advising customers to only travel if your journey was absolutely necessary, as a result of the extreme weather warning, this would not be an instance where we would compensate the cost of the hotel taken.

I am sorry for any further disappointment that this may cause.

Thanks again for getting in touch.

 

[Egg Centric]

(suggestions as to next steps welcomed)

1. Politely ask for it to be reviewed
2. If no joy, ask for a final review or deadlock letter
3. If no joy, ombudsman
4. Still no joy - give up

Is more or less the path I think I'd follow.

 

[Watershed]

The last paragraph is the operative one.

Your contract to travel with them, and your rights under consumer and regulatory law, remained unchanged by any travel advice; you were quite entitled to insist on them upholding their end of the bargain.

They can no more advise you not to travel and thereby waive your rights, than you can advise them beforehand you're not going to have a valid ticket and waive the penalties for ticketless travel...

As mentioned previously, there might be other grounds for them refusing liability, but the reason they have given is entirely spurious.

I would ask them to reconsider their response, setting out that neither the NRCoT, Passenger Rights and Obligations Regulation nor the Consumer Rights Act make any reference to your rights being subject to the travel advice given, hence has no relevance to the situation.

Depending on how much of a hard-line approach you want to take, you could try to suggest that they were in breach of the duty to provide the service with reasonable care and skill (which is an implied term of the contract by virtue of the Consumer Rights Act) and that you are therefore recovering the hotel as damages for that breach of contract.

I'm not convinced it is a particularly strong argument in the circumstances, but it is just about the only legal grounds that could be invoked to give you an entitlement to reimbursement of the hotel.

You would then state that if their position remains unchanged, you are asking them to confirm if this represents their 'letter of deadlock' so you may take the matter to the Ombudsman. Asking for a deadlock letter often results in a complaint being escalated to a manager etc. who can actually get the problem sorted. It shouldn't require the mention of those specific terms but in my experience (albeit with other TOCs) this is what is often needed.

 

[furlong]

Alternatively, a 'do not travel' instruction could be deemed to be notification of their failure to provide the contracted service, a breach of contract for which you may attempt to claim damages.