East Coast air-con failures

[Andyh82]

The other day I travelled down to London from Leeds and the air-con was broken in my carriage, as a result due to the weather it became uncomfortably hot.

The train was full so nowhere to move to unless you wanted to stand. The conductor was helpful and friendly and handed out water and said that we should all write to East Coast complaining as it was unacceptable. Anyone any experience to know if it is worth bothering?

I searched on Twitter and aircon failures on East Coast seems to be becoming a frequent occurrence with many complaining about it every week. Are the Mk4 coaches falling into disrepair due to a cut back in non essential maintenance or are they just due another overhaul (which I'm presuming won't be on the agenda on the east coast mainline)?

The return journey was by Grand Central who also let me down in a different way, so not a great set of journeys, first time down to London by train for over 2 years as well.

 

[fgwrich]

One of the problems I believe that seems to be hitting East Coast's rolling stock is the 'Eureka Timetable', which has tightened the times EC's set's have for maintenance and end to end turn arounds unfortunately. While it's good to provide more services, perhaps it's not so at the expense of the rolling stock? Something FGW is forced into on the West Fleet 158s.

Seems to be a nothing new problem either, as my parents were travelling back from Edinburgh on East Coast 2 years ago and several coaches in that set had failed air con. Although some of the Mk3s in NXEC times were even worse - spotted a HST set in Kings Cross with missing air con modules on 2 Mk3s!

Sorry I can't be much help with your query - someone will no doubt be able to help you on here though.

 

[Starmill]

Crossover and I were on a set working the Highland Chieftain recently and that had a coach with dud air con... boiling!

 

[DY444]

HVAC reliability has been an issue on MkIV stock pretty much since it was introduced. The ECML electrification was not BR's finest hour imo.

 

[47832]

I had this problem last year with East Coast travelling from Wakefield Westgate to Kings Cross.

The carriage that I was in had no working air con on one of the hottest days of the year. The train was packed out and no other seats were available.

The guard did hand out free water to the passengers in the effected carriage as well.

I emailed East Coast and received a reply quite quickly advising to send over a email with copies of the tickets.

I received another email afterwards with an offer of a free return journey anywhere on their network to use within a year. So I would say it is well worth sending off a email to them.

 

[Tom B]

Having travelled up and down the east coast mainline for the past 20 years I have experienced my fair share of failed air con units. I wouldn't say that it has got particularly bad lately, mind. It's always worse on a 225 owing to no opening windows. If units are more heavily used these days, is there not any possibility of obtaining another HST set to cover for maintenance?

Just a thought - could the vestibule doors not be locked open on the affected carriage, so as to provide some benefit from the adjacent carriages? Effectively creating a 3-carriage space with 2 working air-con units. Not perfect, but better than lightly boiling one carriage. There used to be a switch on the 225s (or was it HSTs?) high up on the vestibule wall to disable a particular door from shutting but I think it was removed (or, more likely, put behind a locked cabinet) in the refurb.

 

[YorkshireRider]

Staff are told NOT to open vestibule doors in the event of an air con failure as it can result in the failure of the adjacent carriage as well. Believe it or not, all the air con units had a overhaul on both train types recently. In fact all the sets were completed by his time last year and as a result its much improved on a few years ago. Yes there are still regular failures but back in GNER/NXEC days I remember working trains that had 4 out of the 9 coaches with faults, now you will just come across 2 or 3 a week