T.O.C On Twitter

[sheff'd victoria]

Were just wondering if anyone who is on the world of twitter is signed up to any of the the TOC's, and if so what sort of service do you get?

Northern Rail is very prompt is passing on info and sometimes will tweet you where your train is if your on a unmanned station.

East Midland Trains got a telling off as when they were giving an update on the running of their services they forget to put in the Doncaster - Peterborough & Lincoln - Cleethorpes lines

Their is of cause other Rail themes on twitter with @BouncyRailbus a good one for us who have to travel on the so called class 142 " Cattle Truck "

 

[oversteer]

Both LM and Chiltern are very good on Twitter, with multiple staff "running" the accounts and being proactive in advising of disruptions, impact, ticket acceptances etc

They must all have thick skins though, for the abuse they get.

 

[telstarbox]

This page includes all tweets from the 21 TOCs in Great Britain with active accounts. You can read this page (and most Twitter accounts) without an account on Twitter.

https://twitter.com/_charlie123/tocs

AFAIK Heathrow Connect don't have an account; Grand Central and Hull Trains have accounts but haven't tweeted yet.

National Rail Enquiries also run a separate live updates account for each TOC - example for VT.

 

[Goatboy]

FGW are dire at it. They use ridiculous hashtags meaning you get all sorts of junk - was on the NRES site a few weeks back and it was reporting delays at Starcross. There was a twitter link to the hashtag #Starcross for further info. It was full of American's chatting about what is presumably some sort of band.

Even when it's a more obsecure railway related tag you often have to wade through offensive tweets from passengers moaning.

Very professional to link to that when people are searching for information about disruptions.

 

[richw]

FGW are dire at it. They use ridiculous hashtags meaning you get all sorts of junk - was on the NRES site a few weeks back and it was reporting delays at Starcross. There was a twitter link to the hashtag #Starcross for further info. It was full of American's chatting about what is presumably some sort of band.

Even when it's a more obsecure railway related tag you often have to wade through offensive tweets from passengers moaning.

Very professional to link to that when people are searching for information about disruptions.

FGW also put updates on their twitter before their staff on board know whats going on half the time as well. Often hear passengers giving staff information off of twitter that the staff was unaware of!

 

[jopsuk]

The GA service is superb

 

[Qwerty133]

i 'follow' emt lm xc vt and chiltern out of these lm is the most use followed closely by vt and chiltern then a large gap to emt and then a gap the of the length to the moon and back 1 billion times to xc

 

[EM2]

Both LM and Chiltern are very good on Twitter, with multiple staff "running" the accounts and being proactive in advising of disruptions, impact, ticket acceptances etc

They must all have thick skins though, for the abuse they get.

As an illustration, look through what LM have received since about 5pm last night. I would say well over 200 tweets from ONE person. And then have a look at what that one person has tweeted to other people :roll:

 

[HST Power]

I think I might have followed East Coast at some point, but my tweets are few and my followers are even fewer!

Some of the tweets that FCC recieve are disgraceful. I'm sure each TOC recieves a fair amount of disgruntled customers, though at times their twitter page can be nothing less than a torrent of foul language.

 

[Goatboy]

Some of the tweets that FCC recieve are disgraceful. I'm sure each TOC recieves a fair amount of disgruntled customers, though at times their twitter page can be nothing less than a torrent of foul language.

Which is the problem with twitter as a medium for the distrubution of information like this. In an ideal world its ideally suited but the fact we don't live in an ideal world makes a completely public two way communication medium in appropriate place to use as your method of communicating travel information to customers.

 

[wolfman]

east coast is brilliant TPE quite good.

 

[HawkeyeTheNoo]

Scotrail and Virgin are really good in my opinion!

 

[AndyLandy]

As an illustration, look through what LM have received since about 5pm last night. I would say well over 200 tweets from ONE person. And then have a look at what that one person has tweeted to other people :roll:

How do you look at the tweets that someone else has received?

 

[oversteer]

How do you look at the tweets that someone else has received?

On the twitter site, search for @LondonMidland then click "All" in the Tweets section

They certainly get plenty of attacks. But, they are very helpful when you ask them a reasonable question!

 

[AndyLandy]

On the twitter site, search for @LondonMidland then click "All" in the Tweets section

They certainly get plenty of attacks. But, they are very helpful when you ask them a reasonable question!

Ahh, and you click on their replies to see who's been talking to them. I understand.

I've had a few interactions with the LM twitter people, they're very good. As are Virgin, although their "opening hours" aren't so great. I don't think SWT have ever replied to me.

 

[oversteer]

Ahh, and you click on their replies to see who's been talking to them. I understand.

I've had a few interactions with the LM twitter people, they're very good. As are Virgin, although their "opening hours" aren't so great. I don't think SWT have ever replied to me.

If you click All you should see every tweet with @LondonMidland in it. The person EM2 mentioned sent hundreds of tweets but I believe they have been removed or blocked now, they seemed to be insinuating that the disruption earlier this week (when the wires came down in the up slow tunnel at Watford) was faked by LM !

 

[trainophile]

I clicked on that charlie123 link on my smartphone (not android) and it took me to a dark page with two skulls on it! I have Kaspersky mobile security, which obviously doesn't like charlie!

I follow LM, ATW and Merseyrail and they are always excellent.

 

[telstarbox]

That's my 'wallpaper' on my own page, it's not a security warning (or virus) !
I don't think the Lists feature works on the mobile site.

 

[trainophile]

Lol, and phew!

 

[Lrd]

I like reading the @Southern_Trains account, which is a fake account. Passengers often tweet them thinking it's the real Southern and they get a rather abrupt reply!

https://twitter.com/Southern_Trains

 

[Electrostar]

SouthEastern has improved and now replies to passenger's questions which goes a long way to alleviating frustrations.

 

[Starmill]

Looking through these twitter accounts, it seems TOCs have cause to be more accurate/frank with the reasons for delays (which we all know can sometimes seem opaque).

"This is due to disruptive passengers" haha

 

[cjohnson]

The Virgin Trains Rugby station Twitter feed is quite a good one...

Our information screens may be displaying old or test info as they have decided to go on strike at present. We're negotiating terms.

A very good morning to our passengers and spambots. We currently have a good service operating.

We're currently being entertained by a juggler on Platform 1.

 

[sheff'd victoria]

I have a feeling their will be a lot of upset passgeners this morning on Northern Rail.

Tweets all morning about stock that should be 4 cars long only been 2 cars.

 

[dvboy]

Arriva Trains Wales - poor - they are only interested in tweeting special offers and refer you to Journey Check for anything else. When I pointed out that the NR information boards at stations refer people to TOCs' twitter accounts for updates during disruption they said they'd speak to NR about getting this changed.

On the other side of the spectrum, London Midland reply to pretty much everyone to the detriment that if you are looking for disruption information it can be hard to find it among all the individual replies which may or may not be relevant.
--- old post above --- --- new post below ---

The Virgin Trains Rugby station Twitter feed is quite a good one...

Wolverhampton is poor in comparison, occasionally good but not when they need to be.

 

[brompton rail]

I have a feeling their will be a lot of upset passgeners this morning on Northern Rail.

Tweets all morning about stock that should be 4 cars long only been 2 cars.

But that information has been available on their app anyway. Follow the link Northern regularly tweet and you will get .... Cancellations. .... Train formation changes .... Engineering work etc.

Today is the first day that someone decided to tweet that too.

XC don't respond to any tweets, EC are a bit better

 

[CC 72100]

XC don't respond to any tweets, EC are a bit better

XC don't seem to believe in social networks, and seem to have a bog standard response of 'contact customer services department' to most things on Facebook.

 

[moogal]

On the other side of the spectrum, London Midland reply to pretty much everyone to the detriment that if you are looking for disruption information it can be hard to find it among all the individual replies which may or may not be relevant.

On the Twitter site, if you go to the LM page it gives you the choice of "All" or "No Replies", which will cut out any tweets which are just responses.

 

[Goatboy]

XC don't seem to believe in social networks, and seem to have a bog standard response of 'contact customer services department' to most things on Facebook.

To be fair XC are running a railway not a promotions gig for a student nightclub, so good on them - provided they are ensuring adaquete information provision via more conventional and accessible sources such as the XC website.

 

[CC 72100]

To be fair XC are running a railway not a promotions gig for a student nightclub, so good on them - provided they are ensuring adaquete information provision via more conventional and accessible sources such as the XC website.

They are, but if that is their only response when they get asked stuff on social networks, then there's not much point of having a presence on there. I'm not expecting updates every 5 minutes, but the way they seem to leave posts going unanswered for days and then responding with a 'contact us' (ummm I think the person already has, just via Twitter/FB etc.) doesn't look very good. As I said, social media seems to be very underused with XC.